Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Underground Tram

Background
"We know that the research that we did has put unbearable weight upon our consciences. But sometimes, you just have to fight their atomic fire... With their own fire."

-Recording from an unnamed Elonan scientist supposedly working in the "Nightmare Hall". The recording was subsequently confiscated and destroyed by Dalits.

It is a mountain of many names. Chhogori, Qogir, Ketu or Kechu, Mount Godwin-Austen. The wider world outside the subcontinent knows it as K2, but recently dark rumors have given it the name, "The Savage Mountain".

It started simply at first. The Sultanate's volunteered Reservists and Sepoys came back from the Alliance and Empire with strange technologies and the bodies of men and women with pointed ears. The wounded were taken to the best Voshkod research hospitals for treatment and study, and the captured weapons and salvaged vehicles were taken to find out more about the Alliance engineering and metallurgy. This has allowed some small advances in the Voshkod understanding of the Alliance, but the coveted crystal of Jade has only been taken twice back to any Allied facility. Only two small shards have been taken to secure research facilities in Ascalia and Limsa Losma. Ascalian scientists have found that a sub-zero environment is effective in keeping the strange crystal from spreading uncontrollably. Elona has had more success, only by dint of being closer to the makers.

The Sultanate quickly organized a specialized department to deal with this new potential resource, gathering their best scientists and technicians to study what they'd found. The scientists confirmed two things; the crystal was giving off immense amounts of radiation, and it could be manipulated to give them similar advantages. The Sultanate's high command debated the benefits and costs heavily. On one hand, having the same abilities as the Empire would give them a greater advantage over any enemy they would cross. Conversely, the fact was that the Empire had become the monster it is thanks to the crystal. But if crushing poverty is anything, it's an incentive to do the impossible.

Over the course of a few months at an incredible rate, a base was carved out of the rock of K2. Multiple systems were put in place to ensure that, if the Jade ever escaped containment, the base could be sealed for a thousand years. Biologists, engineers, and particle physicists, all of them were taken from Elona's best universities with full severance and support for their families guaranteed. A small but elite guard of Pioneers were placed around the facility to ensure nothing enters or leaves that they aren't cleared to let pass.

Soon enough, the rumors started to fly. Doctors being released from the facility with thousand-yard stares. Bodies taken out with strange mutations or half-covered in Jade crystals to be incinerated as soon as possible. Men carried out as babbling wrecks, or catatonic and wheeled out. The pioneers closest to the facility's incinerator reported smoke billowing out in strange colors, or even the smallest peaks of flame erupting from the chimneys in ethereal colors. Enough to unnerve even the elite pioneers, the mountain base soon became the Nightmare Hall.

To actually get any use of their experiments, the Elonans needed a way to get their results on the field. Airdrop was one of the first options, but quickly shoved aside due to the danger of transporting any of the results by air. There needed to be a stable system by which the Sultanate could move their dangerous new soldiers around. So a great subway system project was started, going south from Grand Delhi across the country. The strange thing is, the costs are overrunning what even the Voshkod would expect, and the materials required seem to grow each month instead of shrinking. The Sultanate simply plays these concerns off, saying that their engineers have run all the calculations on the project.

Simultaneously, the MLA are claiming that all isn't right in Pakistan. They tell stories of monsters once men that tear apart Scorpion tanks with their gargantuan hands. Pictures are spread about of rebels and terrorists with their brains leaking out of their noses and eyes. Even strange human-like shapes flying through the air. The Sultanate has given these pictures over to Voshkod command and has gotten the conclusion that the "evidence" is simply MLA propaganda to try and manipulate public opinion. There are no giants or monsters in Elona after all. Because monsters only exist in Nightmares.