Aaaaaand here's the other scene idea I promised for today. The explanation for this and the previous one will have to wait until tomorrow. I recognize the potential similarity a recent IRL event and just want to note that I put this scene together way, way before it happened and that the narrative of this fictional scene should in no way be seen as a statement on, or comparison to, that recent event. I have absolutely no intention of bringing political discussion out of Chat and would prefer consideration of this cinematic idea be limited to the context of its depiction of the pre-game start event and its thematic/trope relevance to the corresponding playable in-game factions.
Red Baikal:
A group of NKVD officers work at desks in a semi-austere office. A few discuss a chart with the faces of various dissident targets considered for potential arrest. Some are factory workers, others are local government and militia, and a few are only teenagers. Most look exhausted in their photos. Of all of them, the only ones photographed committing acts of obvious sedition are a saboteur who has long since fled to Kansk and a party official caught using his security detachment to settle petty personal feuds and “disappear” his rivals for power. Below his photo, depicting him standing beside a frozen lake as soldiers dump a pair of corpses into a hole in the ice, a note is scribbled denoting the tyrant’s party rank and stellar production quotas. He will never face judgement for his actions; he’s too useful and he knows it. The officers freely smoke cigarettes and display appropriated luxury goods on their desks.
We follow an officer who leaves the office space to walk down an adjoining hallway where only half of the lamps still work. He opens a side door and leans inside on one foot to speak with a senior officer. This commander stands over two chairs. One holds a man who is nearly unconscious, the signs of hours of beatings apparent on his arms, face, and torn clothes. The other chair is recently emptied and still drips blood onto the floor below. The commander nonchalantly returns the greeting then turns back to the dissident to wake him up for more. The officer leans back and shuts the door, unswayed by this everyday interaction, and proceeds upstairs to the radio room. He enters and offers a similar greeting to the communications operator, but is surprised to find him intently inscribing an urgent communication. He tears off his headset, shouts something we do not hear to the officer, and wildly gestures out the window. The camera moves to the edge of the square room and faces inward to focus on the two men’s faces as they peer out the window. They squint and the operator starts to point while the officer’s eyes widen and he sprints from the room back down the stairs.
We hear “The Battle is Going Again” start to play as he rushes down to hall, shouting banging on the doors, and reenters the office space. He exclaims again to get his coworkers’ attention and motions toward the radio room he came from. The jaws of the officers around the chartboard drop collectively and the officer lifts another from his desk to help him try and push over the steel shelf by the door. It is laden with the records of tens of thousands of folders, making it too heavy for the two. As another joins them to pull the case from the opposite end, papers on innumerable surveillance targets spill out from the shelfs. They almost knock the shelf on its side when the entrance doors burst open to reveal a sea of riotous citizens. They press forward, pushing the shelf backwards and some start to squeeze under it into the office space. The officers by the shelf try to push the shelf back over the door but can’t stop the tide. The first of the trespassers notice them and they wrestle over control of the shelf while others rush the officers at the chart, their mouths still hanging open. The analysts are both tackled by a muscled Buryat woodcutter and the officer still desperately pushing the shelf is sucker-punched by a girl half his size. As he falls back, so does the shelf and more from the crowd outside enter the enlarged gap into the building.
The chorus section of the song plays. Workers, students, farmers, and even a few in uniform flow into the room to challenge the police who emerged from the hallway, armed with batons and rifles, and the commander who brandishes a rusty Tokarev pistol. The newcomers run forward as the security forces bludgeon them, pressing them against the walls with sheer numbers. The commander methodically fires, dropping a rebel with each shot, but he too is overrun by the enraged group and pulled to the ground. A pair of students break through the chaos and climb the stairs while their comrades hold the NKVD back. The first, a bespeckled female student, seizes control of the idle radio and speaks excitedly into the receiver, announcing to Valery Sablin that the people have heeded his call. Her partner, a bruised but optimistic rail worker, opens the window and climbs out, the camera following him to reveal thousands of citizens surrounding the security station. He pulls himself up onto the roof and
unfurls a flag of the Buryat ASSR to the jubilation of the crowd.
Previous part
here. Next part TBD.