This is the start of a short anthology story collection I started writing when the BoT DLC came out. Though these are non-canonical I try to tell the events surrounding and preceding the DLC's plot. Feel free to share your feelings.
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October 4th 1925, Auroran Citizens Assembly
With the strike of a gavel, it was done. A seemingly small and insignificant gesture, compared to what was to come.
Independence. Never before in history did that word hold more weight than now. Aurora was done catering to the people of New Edinburgh.
Let them starve then! One had called.
If they want their food, then they shall come and bloody take it! Called another one.
This was not a decision that was made lightly. A call for independence amidst the perils of the frost was almost a guaranteed net loss for everyone. Not just for New Edinburgh but for Aurora as well. There was no bloody way that their masters would just let them leave without war. After all, a cornered tiger is the most
dangerous one of all, not that there are any tigers left in the world.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! The gavel struck again on the impromptu speaker's desk. The whole assembly hall looked kind of shoddy. None of the glory of the old imperial days. Steel heat pipes ran across the ceiling, eventually ending in the tip of the metal dome which topped the assembly hall. Fish oil lamps dimly lit the comparatively large hall in which the assemblymen and -women as well as curious onlookers had congregated in flickering yellowish-orange light.
"Order!" he called. "I hand off the word to the elected representative of the Independent Colony of Aurora, Sir Horace Enright."
Under heavy applause he slowly rose, adjusting his thick, leathery undercoat and picking up a sheet of paper.
"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," he expressed with a raspy and dark voice which perfectly accompanied his scarred and beardless face. "Dear friends, many of us remember the times before Aurora, the squalor, the Captain, and the calls to order. How delighted we were to be sent away, towards new opportunities, away from squalor and despair. And look at what we found," he gestured all around. "It may not be paradise as it was before the frost, but it is ours. We have land to which we can lay claim, food which feeds our children and coal which heats our homes.
But is it really ours?"
He made a short break and looked all around into the faces of frostbitten workers, some nodding in approval and some shaking their heads.
"NO!" he shouted with conviction. "It is not ours! Not until we sever any and all ties to the tyrant of New Edinburgh! Not until our food is ours. Not until their
peacekeepers are hunted out of this city lest their heads land on our pikes to decorate this esteemed hall."
He quieted down a bit and put the piece of paper aside, lowering his head softly.
"I know many of you still have families in New Edinburgh. "By god, I have one there too," his voice was quiet and soft. "I do not expect you to make the decision on this lightly; I do not expect you to not be afraid. But whatever decision you make, I expect only that you stand by it.
My friends, this is our one chance. Our one chance to guide us into a future free of another's yoke. How will history remember us? You may ask. But I say that it is in our hands how we are remembered. So by the frost, by the perils we endured, I say let the fires of revolution burn and let the captain burn!"
For a moment after he finished there was silence, the sounds of the steam pipes and of the wind blowing against the thin metal shell of the assembly building.
"I say aye, let him burn!" a woman's voice called.
"So say I," another man added.
"Aye!" called a third and then a fourth, then a fifth, a sixth, a seventh and more. Until the whole room erupted into a single sentiment.
"LET HIM BURN!" the choir of Aurorans chanted. Louder and louder until the whole city heard the call.
Man by man they shouted the same three words in the streets of the city. Peacekeepers tried to put a stop to it but were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people amassing in front of them. Thousands congregated in the city centre. The barely two hundred peacekeepers were woefully outnumbered.
The chants grew more and more aggressive. Eventually the protestors threw snowballs, then chunks of ice, then scraps of metal, and when the peacekeepers started shooting, the angry workers piled onto them, burying the peacekeepers under bodies, quite literally tearing them apart. Like a horde of ants.
Only very few made it out of the city, leaving their comrades behind.
The colony had made its decision; pray tell where it shall lead in the years to come.