History FanFic / TheDilgarWar

* AndIMustScream: Jha'dur may not be a lover of YouHaveFailedMe as most of the other warmasters, but when you earn one of her punishments they're pure horror. ([[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] by battlemaster Yeg'dra, who, after a major blunder of his costed the Dilgar the ability to crush the Drazi, simply prepared a truthful account of the battle and reported for punishment: Jha'dur gave him paper, a pen, a pistol with a single bullet and five minutes to write goodbye for his family and kill himself). Then there's what she did to [[spoiler: Len'char]].

* LeaveBehindAPistol: When an officer screwed up and reported for punishment to Jha'dur without justifying himself, Jha'dur spared him whatever horrible punishment she was thinking about and gave him paper, pen, a pistol and two minutes to leave a message for his family and kill himself, allowing him to die with honour.

* CrazyPrepared: According to Jha'dur, Earthforce is this. Everyone else with a powerful military was expecting to use it soon (the Dilgar against the League, the Drazi against Dilgar, Narn, Descari and maybe the Centauri, the Descari against the Drazi, the Abbai and the Cascor against the Dilgar, Hyach and Brakiri against Narn and Centauri, the Vree armed their fleets because they actively explored potentially dangerous space, and Centauri and Narn against each other and maybe the League). Earth kept around a fleet of ships that outgunned everything the Dilgar had of similar size, the best army in local space and a nuclear arsenal so huge that bordered on insane even by Dilgar standards, ''just in case'' - and when they realized war was imminent, they started a ''build up''. Jha'Dur herself admits that she is quite unnerved by a race that takes its military preparedness ''that'' seriously.

* AllThereInTheManual: The basic plot and all the ships come from the ''BabylonFive'' GDR and the ''Babylon 5 Wars'' tabletop game, so anyone having read the background material about the Dilgar War will know part of the story [[spoiler: and Jha'dur's ultimate fate: she accepted Morden's offer and escaped the initial Vorlon assassination attempt, but her escape pod was the objective of a free-for-all between various League races, Narn, Centauri and Minbari until it disappeared, with the Vorlon (that the ''Babylon 5 Wars'' scenario implies managed to kill her while the Younger Races were too busy shooting at each other to notice) pointing out that they ''really'' were not ready for immortality]].

A [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2594689/1/ grand long fanfic]] (104 Chapters!) by [[http://www.fanfiction.net/u/901958/Lord_of_Misrule Lord of Misrule]] of ''BabylonFive'''s most neglected part of its BackStory; the war against the Dilgar that established Earth Alliance as a major power in the galaxy.

* MuggingTheMonster: When telling his story, Victor Chapel mentions how he met his wife: she was a waitress in a bar that got hold up when filled with Army Rangers and Special Forces. The robber is described as the unluckiest guy in the entire Earth Alliance, and Vic adds that "he was just happy to have enough bones intact to walk to the police truck".

** Some Earthforce ships have equally ominous names, most notable the dreadnought ''Nemesis'' (Joe Tennan's ship and the vessel that [[spoiler: gutted the ''Vendetta'']]) and the ''Thanatos''. Also the Ghost Riders squadron, assigned to the ''Nemesis'' during the Dilgar War and later part of Babylon 5 defense force.
* NeutralNoLonger: Earth remained neutral for most of the story due the Senate's opposition to the war. Then, between the League's ambassadors invoking the GodwinsLaw before the Senate and convincing it the Dilgar were an impending danger and the Dilgar's timing in invading Markab Earth entered the war and proceeded kicking Jha'dur's ass.
* NeverFoundTheBody: Played straight four times. The first time is when Dar'ro drives a car in the sea at Manhattan and his body isn't found (the EIA agents immediately wonders where he'll reappear). The second time is Dar'ro again, who apparently falls to his death after jumping from the Ten Thousand Tower (a skyscraper [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin ten thousands feet tall]]), and when he reappears Jenny plunges a knife in his heart barely a second after he was shot in the back, just to be safe. The third time is when Jha'dur's battlecruiser is destroyed by the ''Nemesis'' over Balos, with Jenny asking if they found the body ([[CaptainObvious when Earthforce searched the relic they discovered that the body was missing and the ship had been finished by unknown weapons]]). Finally, in the fourth, we have the canonical death of Jha'dur as happened in the series, with her shuttle disintegrated by the Vorlon... And the knowledge that [[spoiler: the Shadows had offered to save her, and no idea if she accepted or not]]. Being GenreSavvy, the EIA considers Jha'dur still alive...

** The liberation of Tiree is a truly egregious example. The planet was garrisoned by eight regular Dilgar division, one Stormtrooper division (low quality thugs in uniform) and one Guard division (elite). As a starter, Earthforce launched an orbital barrage with plasma and 'tactical' nukes of two megatons each that destroyed air and artillery support and reduced the eight regular divisions to fifteen thousands shaken soldiers who took refuge in a city near a concentration camp filled with Markab civilians. Due the concentration camp, Earthforce couldn't nuke the surviving Dilgar, so they deployed ''ten'' divisions (two of which armored) and devastated the city with orbital, artillery (conventional and rocket) and aircraft bombardament, with similar effects to a nuke. Then they deployed thermobaric weapons, before having the ten divisions advance. Amazingly, the only Markab losses where among the unlucky ones used as human shields to protect the trench line hit by the artillery.
** The facility where the Dilgar produced their final superweapon, the missiles of the [[spoiler: Shadow Planet Killer]], was deemed a target to destroy at any cost, but was buried deep into a moon ice. So, what they did? First they had a Hyach ship fire the most powerful laser in the galaxy at the ice over the facility until there's no ice over it, then they fired the four biggest nukes ever deployed by Earthforce. The facility did not survive the first nuke, but just in case...
* NothingCanStopUsNow: Jha'dur says it after destroying the Hyach's main fleet, justifying herself that with the Abbai and the Brakiri now bottled up in their own homeworlds, the Drazi fighting for their lives and the Hyach deprived of any mobile force there was nobody else that was both capable and willing to defeat them. And she was right: Earthforce wasn't capable ''yet'', as the necessary build up was taking time.
* NotSoDifferent: Humans and Dilgar, according to any character who knows both races' history. From Jha'dur's musings, it appears that on Omelos a regime similar to Nazi Germany took over the world with nuclear weapons and evolved in the modern Dilgar Imperium after enslaving or killing every Dilgar who wasn't a Dilgar Prime. From that emerged two similar but different nations, to the point that Jha'dur is clearly unnerved by Earthforce and consider it the nemesis to Dilgar armed forces.
** Jha'dur points out that the Minbari warriors are not that different from the Dilgar, and possibly even worse: after all the Dilgar rampage was motivated by their need to escape their sun going nova and their inability to even consider asking for help, the Minbari are doing it to avenge a man. She also compares Delenn with herself, declaring that if the humans knew who had cast the decisive vote to start the Earth-Minbari War her name would be reviled among them as Deathwalker's is among the League.

* CrazyPrepared: According to Jha'dur, Earthforce is this. Everyone else with a powerful military was expecting to use it soon (the Dilgar against the League, the Drazi against Dilgar, Narn, Descari and maybe the Centauri, the Descari against the Drazi, the Abbai and the Cascor against the Dilgar, Hyach and Brakiri against Narn and Centauri, the Vree armed their fleets because they actively explored potentially dangerous space, and Centauri and Narn against each other and maybe the League). Earth kept around a fleet of ships that outgunned everything the Dilgar had of similar size, the best army in local space and a nuclear arsenal so huge that bordered on insane even for Dilgar standards, ''just in case'' - and when they realized war was imminent, they started a ''build up''. Jha'Dur herself admits that she is quite unnerved by a race that takes its military preparedness ''that'' seriously.

* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: Earth armed the Olympus-class corvettes and the Artemis-class frigates with railguns. Dilgar ships of similar size are openly described as being wrecked by a single armor-piercing railgun round due too thin armor.

* CrazyPrepared: According to Jha'dur, Earthforce is this. Everyone with a powerful military was expecting to use it soon (the Dilgar against the League, the Drazi against Dilgar, Narn, Descari and maybe the Centauri, the Descari against the Drazi, the Abbai and the Cascor against the Dilgar, Hyach and Brakiri against Narn and Centauri, the Vree armed their fleets because they actively explored potentially dangerous space, and Centauri and Narn against each other and maybe the League). Earth had a fleet of ships that could outgun everything the Dilgar had of similar size, the best army in local space and a nuclear arsenal so huge that bordered on insane even for Dilgar standards, ''just in case'' - and when they realized war was imminent, they started a ''build up''. Jha'Dur herself admits that she is quite unnerved by a race that takes its military preparedness ''that'' seriously.

* DeusExNukina: Humans ''love'' their nuclear weapons, to the point that what they consider acceptable to hit a routed Dilgar fleet is openly considered insane by the Dilgar (who after Earthforce are the biggest users of nukes) for anything less than bombing a planet into oblivion. After that, they decide that the only way to attack Earth is a stealth ship armed with biological weapons because a direct attack would be met with enough nukes to make the earlier display look like a firework show.
** "Earth Force rule of war number one, Nuke it. Nuke it twice, then Nuke it a third time just to be sure."
** Also during the Dilgar assault on the Abbai homeworld the Abbai repeal the attack with liberal use of nukes, making into SuperweaponSurprise territory due the fact that the Abbai are [[ActualPacifist Actual Pacifists]] who fight only in self-defense and had never used or even built nuclear weapons before (these had been bought from the Drazi and the Brakiri).

** Francis O'Leary using the Dilgar's own jamming to keep contact between Earthforce command and the allied army trapped on Balos. When informed, Jha'dur actually asked "How is that possible?".

* DreadfulMusician: The Dilgar first reaction at hearing bagpipes is of pure fear. Years later, Jha'dur would play a recording of bagpipes to Delenn, making her cringe at the sound and gawk at the reveal that the warmaster grew to love them. Also [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Jha'dur herself when she describes bagpipes as "a musical instrument to some, or torture to others".

* EvilDetectingDog: The Dilgar's secret Spectre troopers, armed with an advanced cloaking tech that makes them invisible, learn the hard way that Earth dogs can detect them easily.

* CrazyPrepared: According to Jha'dur, Earthforce is this. Everyone with a powerful standing military was expecting to use it soon (the Dilgar against the League, the Drazi against Dilgar, Narn, Descari and maybe the Centauri, the Descari against the Drazi, the Abbai and the Cascor against the Dilgar, Hyach and Brakiri against Narn and Centauri, the Vree armed their fleets because they actively explored potentially dangerous space, and Centauri and Narn against each other and maybe the League). Earth kept a powerful fleet of ships that can outgun everything the Dilgar have of similar size, the best army in local space and a nuclear arsenal so huge that bordered on insane even for Dilgar standards just in case, and when they realized they were about to go to war they started a build up. Jha'Dur herself admits that she is she is quite unnerved by a race that takes its military preparedness ''that'' seriously.

* AssholeVictim: Len'char is especially callous even for the Dilgar. Having promised she wouldn't kill him, Jha'dur [[spoiler: tortured him the worse she could do without killing him, healed him and made him immortal, [[UpToEleven tortured him even ''worse'']] and then, verified he was fully immortal as long he wasn't hit in a vital spot, [[AndIMustScream sent him in the nearest approximation of hell she knew to be eternally tortured]].]] The reader may found himself cheering for what Jha'dur did him.
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: The destruction of the ''Persephone'' defending refugees from slaughter by the Dilgar proved enough to wake up Earth to a small degree. However, it was the Dilgar's moronic timing of invading the Markab territory, buffer state to Earth, just as the League survivors were giving an persuasively impassioned speech to the Earth Senate showing how despicable their enemy is to plead for help is enough to get Earth into the war.

* CrazyPrepared: According to Jha'dur, Earthforce is this. Everyone with a powerful standing military was expecting to use it soon (the Dilgar against the League, the Drazi against Dilgar, Narn, Descari and maybe the Centauri, the Descari against the Drazi, the Abbai and the Cascor against the Dilgar, Hyach and Brakiri against Narn and Centauri, the Vree armed their fleets because they actively explored potentially dangerous space, and Centauri and Narn against each other and maybe the League). Earth kept a powerful fleet of ships that can outgun everything the Dilgar have of similar size, the best army in local space and a nuclear arsenal so huge that bordered on insane even for Dilgar standards just in case, and when they realized they were about to go to war they started a build up.

* SyntheticPlague: Jha'dur job other than leading the war against the League was creating lots and lots of these, bringing entire planetary populations to extinction. There are even hints that she [[spoiler: created a plague mimicking the mythical Drafa Plague to exterminate the Markab in a way that would leave themselves unwilling to try and heal themselves and even think they were deserving to die [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge because they had killed her brother]].

** When owned by the Centauri, the system Sigma-957 had been quarantined in spite of being [[{{Unobtainium}} quantium-40]]-rich, and refused to go in the quarantined area for any reason when they owned the system. In the series we've seen that when they quarantine some place there's a damn good reason (like the Nakaleen Feeder, a quasi-sentient predator that ''will'' get the drop on you and reduce you to a vegetable and lives on a planet the Centauri quarantined). Yet Ta'kai choose the system for her meeting with the Dilgar. After the Dilgar went on their way, the reason for the quarantine came: [[spoiler: a group of [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] often pass in the system, and should you go too near their ships they may accidentally kill you without even realizing you're in the area]]. This is a ContinuityNod to a NoodleIncident from the series: G'kar was there, having tried to prevent the meeting but arrived late, and would later reference to this as [[spoiler: like being an ant and going too near a giant]].

* TheUriahGambit: Len'char tries and get rid of Sha'dur by forcing him to battle Earthforce over Bestine with a reduced fleet. Sha'dur immediately found a loophole in the orders (his orders were to [[ExactWords "Meet Earth in defensive battle over this world"]], [[LoopholeAbuse he never ordered him to perform a fighting retreat]]), but [[spoiler: [[RammingAlwaysWorks a Markab cruiser rammed his ship as it jumped in hyperspace]], either killing him or [[AndIMustScream eternally trapping him, his crew and the Markab crew at the moment of their death]].]]

* NeverFoundTheBody: Played straight four times. The first time is when Dar'ro drives a car in the sea at Manhattan and his body isn't found (the EIA agents immediately wonders where he'll reappear). The second time is Dar'ro again, who apparently falls to his death after jumping from the Ten Thousand Tower (a skyscraper [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin ten thousands feet tall]]), and when he reappears Jenny plunges a knife in his heart barely a second after he was shot in the back, just to be safe. The third time is when Jha'dur's battlecruiser is destroyed by the ''Nemesis'' over Balos, with Jenny asking if they found the body ([[CaptainObvious when Earthforce searched the relic they discovered that the body was missing and the ship had been finished by unknown weapons]]). Finally, in the fourth, we have the canonical death of Jha'dur as happened in the series, with her shuttle disintegrated by the Vorlon... And the knowledge that [[spoiler: the Shadows had offered to save her, and no idea if she accepted or not]].

** The Nova-class dreadnought is armed with [[MoreDakka ''thirty-six'' enormous laser cannons]]. Yet those aren't the most powerful weapons in Earthforce arsenal: the plasma mortars are shorter-ranged and too big for anything but a space station, but [[UpToEleven two of them have more firepower than the entire main battery of the Nova-class]]. Somehow, Earth engineers [[SerialEscalation managed to fit two on the bow of the Nova]]: when they fire the ship can't fire anything else or even move, but they can destroy a battlestation in less than a minute.

* AndIMustScream: Jha'dur may not be a lover of YouHaveFailedMe as most of the other warmasters, but when you earn one of her punishments they're pure horror. ([[SubvertedTrope Subverted by battlemaster Yeg'dra, who, after a major blunder of his costed the Dilgar the ability to crush the Drazi, simply prepared a truthful account of the battle and reported for punishment: Jha'dur gave him paper, a pen, a pistol with a single bullet and five minutes to write goodbye for his family and kill himself]]. Then there's what she did to [[spoiler: Len'char]].

* GodwinsLaw: Justified here in that Ambassador Sheridan quietly advises the League to play up the Diglar's parallels to the ThoseWackyNazis to the Earth Senate in order to persuade them to help.

* [[{{Ptitlekt6mtovm4vne}} Recycled IN SPACE!]] This story is essentially WorldWarII in space.

** Also initially done by the Drazi, who regularly outnumber the Dilgar by fielding small and fragile but fast and well armed ships. Later [[TheStrategist warleader Stro'kath]] teaches them how to fight better, using flanking manouvers, tactical retreats and bluffs (even launching a fleet-wide kamikaze attack to hide the fact his ships were almost out of fuel, causing a Dilgar retreat).

* FauxSymbolism: one example of which the author is not even responsible. The Dilgar launched their genocidal rampage to escape their sun going nova. Earthforce dreadnoughts and latest model of starfury are named ''Nova''-class, and Earthforce heavy cruiser class (the same class of the ''EAS Persephone'', the first Earth warship the Dilgar fought, when it obliterated five times her mass in Dilgar warship before Jha'dur arrived with her fleet. Then the ''Persephone'' charged Jha'dur's flagship) is named after Hyperion, the ''Titan of the Sun''. Had Lord of Misrule named them instead of the authors of the tabletop game, it would have highly symbolic of Earth's role in the war.

* AssholeVictim: Len'char is especially callous even for the Dilgar. Having promised she wouldn't kill him, Jha'dur [[spoiler: tortured him the worse she could do without killing him, healed him and made him immortal, [[BeyondTheImpossible tortured him even ''worse'']] and then, verified he was fully immortal as long he wasn't hit in a vital spot, [[AndIMustScream sent him in the nearest approximation of hell she knew to be eternally tortured]].]] The reader may found himself cheering for what Jha'dur did him.

** The Nova-class dreadnought is armed with [[MoreDakka ''thirty-six'' enormous laser cannons]]. Yet those aren't the most powerful weapons in Earthforce arsenal: the plasma mortars are shorter-ranged and too big for anything but a space station, but [[UpToEleven two of them have more firepower than the entire main battery of the Nova-class]]. Somehow, Earth engineers [[BeyondTheImpossible managed to fit two on the bow of the Nova]]: when they fire the ship can't fire anything else or even move, but they can destroy a battlestation in less than a minute.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: Nova-class dreadnoughts are armed with eighteen twin laser turrets, powerful enough that four or five are more than enough to kill anything the Dilgar have (at Markab, a full barrage from forty-nine of them was enough to kill a third of the Dilgar First Strike Fleet in seconds, and would have killed more if the hulks of the leading ships had not absorbed part of the salvo), and two plasma cannons [[BeyondTheImpossible that have more firepower than everything else on the ship]]. Also, see MoreDakka.

* AndIMustScream: Jha'dur may not be a lover of YouHaveFailedMe as most of the other warmasters, but when you earn one of her punishments they're pure horror ([[SubvertedTrope subverted by battlemaster Yeg'dra, who, after a major blunder of his costed the Dilgar the ability to crush the Drazi, simply prepared a truthful account of the battle and reported for punishment: Jha'dur gave him paper, a pen, a pistol with a single bullet and five minutes to write goodbye for his family and kill himself). Then there's what she did to [[spoiler: Len'char]].

* AssholeVictim: Len'char is especially callous even for the Dilgar. Having promised she wouldn't kill him, Jha'dur [[spoiler: tortured him the worse she could do without killing him, healed him and made him immortal, [[BeyondTheImpossible tortured him even ''worse'']] and then, verified he was fully immortal as long he wasn't hit in a vital spot, [[AndIMustScream sent him in the nearest approximation of hell she knew to be eternally tortured]]. ThisTroper found himself cheering for what Jha'dur did him.
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: The destruction of the ''Persephone'' defending refugees from slaughter by the Dilgar proved to wake up Earth to a small degree. However, it was the Dilgar's moronic timing of invading the Markab territory, buffer state to Earth, just as the League survivors were giving an persuasively impassioned speech to the Earth Senate showing how despicable their enemy is to plead for help is enough to get Earth into the war.

* SpannerInTheWork: Francis O'Leary, a young hacker who got voluntereed by Earth Intelligence Agency as a codebreaker with the express purpose to make him one for [[spoiler:TheMole in the Codebreaking section. Francis outed that TheMole was the head of the Codebreaking section]]. Later he did again at Balos, when he realized that [[spoiler: killing Jha'dur meant that her fleet at Balos would lose any coordination and managed to send Hamato the message 'It's not an hydra', prompting him to launch a final desperate counteroffensive against Balos aiming exactly for Jha'dur's ship]].

* AndIMustScream: Jha'dur may not be a lover of YouHaveFailedMe as most of the other warmasters, but when you earn one of her punishments they're pure HighOctaneNightmareFuel ([[SubvertedTrope subverted by battlemaster Yeg'dra, who, after a major blunder of his costed the Dilgar the ability to crush the Drazi, simply prepared a truthful account of the battle and reported for punishment: Jha'dur gave him paper, a pen, a pistol with a single bullet and five minutes to write goodbye for his family and kill himself). Then there's what she did to [[spoiler: Len'char]].

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: According to legends, if your ship is destroyed when it's in the vortex to cross in hyperspace you'll never die, being locked in the moment of death forever. In-universe, that's actual source of nightmares for many spacers, and Sha'dur the one who could have said if it was actually possible, [[spoiler: actually died when his ship was rammed in an hyperspace vortex by a Markab cruiser]].
** What happens to the Dilgar victims. If you're particularly unlucky, you may piss off Jha'dur, and that's even worse.

* ParanoiaFuel: An in-universe example (and, at least for ThisTroper, out-of-universe one) is Jha'dur ultimate fate. Did the Vorlon actually killed her? Did she join the Shadows and possibly the Drakh? Did she [[spoiler: recreate the Drafa Plague to exterminate the Markab in a way that made them unwilling to even consider searching a cure]]?

* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: Towards the end of the war, after Jha'dur's final defeat at Balos, Gal'shan sends thousands of people away, so that the Dilgar will be able to settle and make a comeback some day in the future.