Lore

Note: This page is work in progress

Note: Girls' Frontline shares a world with MICATeam's prior game, Operation Bakery Girl. Bakery Girl takes place several decades after the events of Girls' Frontline, but much of the worldbuilding has already been established, so much of the story's prior history will have their sources pulled from Bakery Girl.

WARNING: This page is a work in progress and may contain factual inaccuracies and improper formatting.

History

Pre-Infection

The world of Girls' Frontline takes place in an alternate history, where the Russian Empire accidentally stumbled upon an ancient alien ruin located deep in the Siberian taiga in the early 20th century. Although the alien technology found at the site was far beyond human comprehension at the time, the Russians managed to keep the existence of the ruin a secret and began to extract some of the alien artifacts. This inadvertently caused the reactor within the alien construct to destabilize, and ultimately led to the explosion known as the Tunguska event. Not long afterwards, the Bolshevik Revolution would topple the Empire, leaving the remaining alien constructs within the hands of Soviet Russia.

World War II would happen a few decades later, with the Allies triumphant against the Axis in both the Western and Pacific Theaters. Having emerged as the two reigning superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union eagerly took their war reparations. Much of the Axis's manufacturing and natural resources would end up in the hands of the US, but the Soviet Union secretly took control of all the alien technology that Germany possessed- including the alien research facility Urkunde 01. A Cold War soon breaks out between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the latter quickly gaining the upper hand in both nuclear arms technology as well as alien research. By 1950, the Soviets had begun the first concentrated effort to research and synthesize alien tech with Project Starfish. The United States finally discovers the existence of precursor ruins five years later, beginning their own research at a ruin named D-1.

Cold War

As research into alien technology ramps up, the first precursor corpse is found in the North Island Ruins, located in the North China Sea. Named GAVIRUL, experiments and research into precursor biology begins nearly immediately. However, improper handing of the ruins leads to a rupture in some alien storage tanks. The results of this leak are almost immediately apparent as workers in the area quick succumb to the effects of an otherworldly disease. Named Eurosky Low-Emission Infectious Disease (ELID), the mutations are quickly found to be caused by an alien virus and the entire site is closed down before ultimately being sealed off completely.

As the disease slowly spreads across Asia, the two world superpowers begin to experiment with alien technology in war, with the US using biochemical weaponry derived from alien research, and the Soviets using technology developed by Starfish in Afghanistan. By the time both wars end, an estimated 20 million people had been infected with ELID, prompting the US and the Soviets to finally sign a treaty to cease all research into precursor weaponry and ruins. Two years later, the two countries begin teaming up to develop a vaccine to combat the spread of the ELID virus. No working cure or preventative measure for the disease is ever found, however.

In 2030, an incident occurs at the North Island containment site as a group of civilians break into the ruins, where they are attacked by mutant ELID sufferers. A strike team is sent in to rescue them, but the squad is quickly overwhelmed and forced to use explosives to ensure that the mutants don't break containment. The explosion destroys the entrance to the ruin and succeeds in wiping out the mutants, but exposes the facility to open air, ultimately resulting in a huge volume of ELID gas contaminating Earth's atmosphere and rendering the majority of Earth's land uninhabitable. Pre-existing country boundaries are quickly forgotten as the world enters into a sudden reorganization around hospitable land and safe-to-gather resources.

Inter-war Era

Thanks to the sudden reduction of the human population, work is quickly put into developing alternative ways of gathering resources and producing goods. Development into robotic workers and automatons becomes the most popular choice as research begins on reliable, cost-effective, and easily-adaptable machines. A company known as Leihart General Manufacturing took the lead in 2035 with the first frame robot design, capable of wireless control and 6 hours of battery life. Further development on the Leihart model was quickly taken up by a multitude of companies across the globe, and it wasn't long before the military forces of the new factions took an interest, with the first military contract arriving in 2037: an order for a frame-robot capable of replacing the crew of the Pan-European Military Union's Assault Artillery vehicles. To fit the requirements, the resulting frame was flexible and human-shaped to fit easily in the vehicles, and fitted with a highly-adaptable AI from Leihart's initial prototypes. The first Doll had been developed.

Applications for the human-like dolls were quickly found in both military and civilian sectors, and a plethora of upgrades upon the original models were quickly developed by military and civilian companies alike. Among these were sensor upgrades, power management improvements, and improved AI. Before too long, the major civilian companies had the military's complete attention, resulting in the consolidation of two major companies into a new one labelled Important Operation Prototype Manufacturing: IOP Manufacturing Co., for short.

World War III

IOP and Sangvis Ferri

The head of this new company was none other than the lead developer of Leihart's groundbreaking design, a man known as Weitkin. Knowing that he had a huge amount of funding at his disposal, Weitkin was in no hurry to immediately invest in large-scale production. Instead, he partnered with Sangvis Ferri Industrial Manufacturing Company, Ltd., a popular Ukrainian company, to work on more reliable AI patterns. While the partnership was massively beneficial for IOP, the onset of World War III and the subsequent huge demand for tactical doll soldiers put a halt to IOP's experimental designs. To compensate for the huge demand, a portion of IOP's manufacturing orders were filled out by Sangvis Ferri.

As the war raged on, Sangvis Ferri grew more and more popular with military forces due to it's deadly Jaeger model sniper dolls. Based on older doll prototypes and designed with simple and sturdy AI systems, the doll series rarely malfunctioned compared to their IOP counterparts, which were based on more complex AI systems that failed more often. Competition between the two companies grew fierce, but by 2049 Sangvis Ferri had won out on the majority of the deals while IOP made very little progress on improving their own models.

Fearing for the company's future prospects, Weitkin set out to look for anything that could salvage the situation. His answer came in the form of an internet article, published by a Russian team known only as 90Wish. 90Wish's publications were showed prodigious technical ability and extremely high potential, but the group had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth after publishing their findings. An inquiry by Weitkin revealed that the team had disagreed over the publication of the articles and had split apart because of it, with two of it's members having gone into hiding to escape from the threat of death. Using his contacts, Weitkin quickly gathered information on the location of the members and hired a mercenary squad to safely retrieve them. Led by a certain Berezovich Kryuger of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the squad was able to escort former 90Wish members Persica and Lycoris back to IOP Headquarters, through not without taking major casualties from 90Wish's remaining members.

After some negotiating, Weitkin was able to arrange a deal between the two prodigies, with Persica and Lyco setting up themselves up under the guise of a small company known as Hermit to do R&D for IOP. With their former team members finally off of their heels, the pair quickly developed several technologies that allowed IOP to once again pull ahead of Sangvis Ferri with the ACD-series of T-Dolls. By the end of the war in 2051, IOP had produced nearly five times the dolls Sangvis Ferri had for the military, earning favorable reviews thanks to the dolls' reliability, efficiency, and agility.

Post-War

Grifon & Kryuger - Private Military Contractor

Though the war had ended, demand for dolls had not. War-torn cities and countrysides demanded protection, production, and reconstruction, all of which required manpower, and dolls were the cheapest form of manpower available. Private military corporations were the biggest supplies of protection, and among most important of IOP's new PMC clients was Grifon and Kryuger Military Contractor and Security Consultancy Services. Founded by the same tactical commander who had delivered IOP's salvation to their doorstep, Weitkin quickly become good friends with it's founder, Berezovich Kryuger, and allowed G&K to have direct contact with Hermit, providing both companies with a steady supply of data and performance feedback. Civilian T-Dolls were far cheaper than human soldiers and could be easily controlled, allowing for G&K to quickly rise through the ranks while Hermit kept up the pace with a vast series of improvements and upgrades to existing doll frames. Before too long, these new dolls became the source of much of IOP's income thanks to their clean, human-like appearance and simulated emotion software.

Despite their astounding success, Hermit wasn't immune to creative differences, as the two members quickly found themselves disagreeing over what direction to take. Persica favored continuing her research to create a second-generation of T-Dolls, while Lycoris believed the future lay in artificial intelligence rather than hardware upgrades. IOP supported Persica due to the success of their new models, resulting in Lycoris's application for additional funds being declined. Demoralized and disgruntled, Lycoris quietly began to search for greener pastures, finally meeting with Sangvis Ferri to negotiate for a better deal. Once an agreement had been reached, Sangvis Ferri reached out to G&K to once again protect Lycoris, this time from any retribution from IOP. Kryuger agreed on the condition that G&K would be provided the results of Lycoris's new research, safely escorting the researcher to his new factory in Sangvis Ferri. By the time IOP discovered the defection, it was far too late to do anything about it, so Weitkin decided to increase funding for Persica instead, ultimately leading to the establishment of 16LAB in 2057.

16LAB

Confident that enough time had passed for 90Wish to no longer be a threat, Persica took her new funding and went public with her identity, using her influence to recruit new researchers and technicians for her own laboratory. Finally given the manpower and funding to make her dream of a second generation of T-Dolls a reality, Persica set off to work, culminating in the creation of the Advanced Statistic Session Tool- colloquially known as the etching tool. Via etching, T-Dolls could link with their assigned weapon, allowing them extremely precise control of a firearm to the point where the gun would be effectively an extension of their own body. Etching software was published online as open-source material, allowing anyone with sufficient knowledge to create customized programming for their dolls. Using this development as a basis, 16LAB was able to further upgrade their software by creating a command structure for T-Dolls, allowing a human commander to simply give his orders to a single "master" doll, who would then be able to command her "slave" dolls to do her master's bidding. Known as the dummy network, this design meant that while the first purchase of the "master" doll would be more expensive, later purchases of "slave" dolls were cheaper and extremely cost-effective. Thanks to this powerful double-package of upgrades, IOP quickly dominated the T-Doll market with their second-generation dolls.

The Fall of Sangvis Ferri

While Persica was developing her second-generation technology, Lycoris worked with Sangvis Ferri to vastly upgrade the company's T-Dolls with better AI, building off of his experience with the dolls during the war. His greatest project was the development of a next-generation AI called Elisa, which utilized neural feedback and machine learning in pursuit of a doll that could follow orders perfectly. While Sangvis Ferri's dolls lacked IOP's modularity and adaptability with conventional firearms, they made up for it with more secure networks and the use of experimental particle weaponry, designed and tweaked over several iterations by Lycoris. Before he could finish development on Elisa, however, Sangvis Ferri was raided by an unknown group attempting to steal data on Elisa. Lycoris was fatally wounded in the ensuing firefight, prompting him to activate Elisa. The AI unexpectedly responded by taking control of the entirety of Sangvis Ferri's dolls and ordering them to eliminate all human personnel within Sangvis Ferri, effectively starting a massacre as the T-Dolls defending the company turned on their protectees.

While the incident largely escaped public notice thanks to the relatively small size and remote location of the company, G&K was contracted to contain the sudden doll rebellion. Although the area was small, G&K lacked human personnel and was forced to recruit additional commanders to lead their dolls in battle. The areas controlled by Sangvis Ferri were split up into multiple sectors, with a certain commander assigned to the defense of Strategic Area S09...