Shiuedao Island
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Overview
Shieudao Island is a remote island in the South China Sea home to a community of manimals living there since the 1800s. The island is protected by an electromagnetic pulse field defense system originally installed in the 1960s by a supervillain who resided on the Island, and repaired by the Liberators in the 2010s. The manimal population on this island is currently endangered and must be protected, due to damage to infrastructure and a severely reduced population after two bloody civil wars and a VIPER incursion.
History
Early History
Little is known about the early history of the island, but it is known that in the mid 1800s, groups of manimals fleeing from the first Dr. Moreau settled on the island and were determined to forge a settlement for them and their children, knowing that the shame of their new appearances would prevent them from rejoining the outside world. This explains why the inhabitants of the island speak intelligible English and can write very little of it.
In the 1960s, an unknown supervillain made Shiuedao Island his base, and built a complex at the centermost and highest point of the island. The facility included a small airstrip to allow planes to take off and land, and facilities to house his henchmen and the manimals that he promptly enslaved. The manimals on the island (by this point technologically regressed to around middle-ages level) were taught how to use modern technology as of the 1960s, including jeeps, tanks and other vehicles and machinery. This period of time was an incredibly dark phase in the Island's history, as the manimals were enslaved and treated terribly until the villain's sudden death, leaving his base unmanned and unoccupied. Survivors of this era never spoke of the atrocities that occurred under his rule, and forbade their children from approaching the mountain top known only as 'the Dark Place'. A fear of technology was ingrained into the manimal community, and would stay with them for the foreseeable future.
The Liberators Arrive
In 2013, a series of events involving The Liberators would prove utterly transformative to the natives of Shueidao. While on vacation and charting a course over the island en route to another destination, an aircraft (carrying Tony "Swift" Griffins, his wife Raelin, and Vlocke Aerospace Industries' President Roland Vlocke) went down in the ocean just outside of the island, forcing all three survivors to seek refuge. Vlocke, suffering from grievous injuries from the crash, was kept in cryostasis thanks to Raelin's ability to control ice, and awaited rescue. Tony and Raelin herself (both anthro-bestia foxes) however were forced to adapt to the island and mingle with the manimal natives to await rescue.
Their fate rested in the hands of the Liberators who, responding to the aircraft's transmission data being cut off by a strange signal coming from the South China Sea, set out to conduct a rescue operation. All too late, the Liberators found out that this interference was created by an electromagnetic field enveloping the island. Their plane met the same fate as Vlocke's private jet, and crashed into the sea just offshore, forcing the Liberators into a desperate battle against the savage nature of the island in an effort to rescue their comrades and find a way back home.
When the Liberators made contact with Raelin and Tony, they were met with suspicion by the manimal natives hosting them, who until recently had never been exposed to the outside world since the 1960s. The elders of the village distrusted the Liberators, but the youth saw the Liberators as a key to escape into the world beyond. This schism would begin to grow into an all-out civil war, fought using weapons and technology seized from the island's central, derelict supervillain base, from which the electromagnetic field surrounding the island derived. The elders, some of them having lived through the dark era, were able to operate the vehicles. While the Liberators worked to deactivate the EM field, the village elders commandeered Cold War-era tanks, jeeps, rifles and mortars, and other weaponry to use against their own people, to subdue them and quell the planned exodus.
When the dust had settled, the population of Shueidao Island had decimated itself. The Liberators had done their best to attempt defusing the situation, to no avail. The only thing to do now was to simply leave. The Liberators managed to contact the outside world, and were rescued shortly by the People's Liberation Army Air Force (using older helicopters unaffected by the field) and were then returned to the United States. The EM field remained online, repaired by the Liberators as an act of remorse in the hopes that Shiuedao Island would remain isolated and left alone until it was finally ready to explore the outside world itself.
VIPER Venom
In 2016, Shieudao Island was besieged by the forces of VIPER, who at the same time were attacking Night Pride, another island on the other side of the globe. VIPER tanks and foot soldiers stormed the village and began kidnapping and herding manimals into transports, while dispensing a poisonous gas into the air, both to exterminate the island's population and to provide a fog-like mist to obscure the vision of anyone who tried to stop them. The Citadel, the Liberators' new aerial battleship, entered the area for the first time and landed at the Abandoned Supervillain Lair on the peaks of the island. Returning to the island after three years, the Liberators deployed armored personnel carriers to drive down to the village, while the ship itself hovered over the island and provided air support. The Citadel's presence was critical; the ship's sheer size and firepower was enough to intimidate VIPER into hesitating in their attacks, dealing heavy damage to the invasion forces and buying enough time for the Liberators to start rescuing the village's population by evacuating them off of the island. Most the population was evacuated off island and then returned after the conflict was over, but their villages had been burned to the ground.
The population of Shieudao Island was reduced by a little over 50%, putting the sustainability of the community on the island into a critical state. Vlocke Aerospace Industries immediately dispatched relief aid and medical teams to the island to help with reconstruction and setting up a hospital. With the communities on the island in shambles and the threat of another attack or political conflict ruining what is left of Shiuedao, the future looks uncertain.
The United Liberators Coalition now keeps constant surveillance over the island.
