Effectively the faction that digs up and activates the gate to kickstart the plot is a bunch of Turkish inspired tribal/clan industrialists currently united under force by a Saddam like strongman. Hes run the show for quite a few years and has had military blunder after military blunder, his latest being the occupation of the neighboring nation to their northwest. Known of the Lebian Barony, it not only has a more mild climate versus the north African/eastern med of his, but had his campaign succeeded would have also netted them an open water port. However aside from land gains and more hospitable farmland, they've netted a hostile population, an insurgency, and growing unrest at home. His last hope is a strange group that has approached him and revealed the presence of an ancient technological facility underneath these occupied lands and a gateway to another world.

The actual incursion begins some months before the first actual shooting, the Galliporian forces (Gali for short) managing to open the gateway and stabilize it. A mixture of a remote location, the fact the colony world is a frontier planet with a smaller population, orbital infrastructure being at a minimum, and that its defenses are geared toward expecting an enemy from orbit. These all allow them to generally go unnoticed and build up a proper supply base and springboard as well as generally begin scouting the surrounding areas. At least until one foolish company commander and his mechanized scout platoon fail to stop a farmstead from getting out a distress call, forcing the military effort to begin.

What follows is a sixteen day campaign opening with a snap mobilization of Cascadium's defense forces and a general blitzkrieg offensive carried about by a technologically inferior but massively numerical hostile force.