The Evacuation of Mercy was a mass evacuation during Emergence Day when the Locust Horde attacked every major city on Sera.
Prelude[]
Mercy was once a bustling town filled with people, but they never recovered from the UIR mortar strikes of the Pendulum Wars. Nine years after the mortar strikes, the Pendulum Wars came to an end, with the winning victor as the Coalition of Ordered Governments. During the six weeks of peace, earthquakes were reported across Sera.
Evacuation of Mercy[]
Six weeks after the end of the Pendulum Wars, a subterranean race known as the Locust Horde emerged from the Hollow to slaughter every man, woman, and child of the human race. The Coalition discovered that cities located on the Jacinto Plateau had some form of defense, as the Locust could not dig through the granite bedrock beneath. Because Mercy was not on the plateau, the Coalition evacuated the city. The residents were immediately evacuated to prevent being slaughtered.
Aftermath[]
While Mercy was prone to attacks on the surface, the Locust were unable to emerge as the city resided on the side of a mountain. Civilians then returned to Mercy in the aftermath of Emergence Day, as Mercy went unscathed.
Former Mercy resident, Maria Santiago of the Flores Family brought the bodies of her parents: Mr. Flores and Mrs. Flores, who were killed on Emergence Day while in Ephyra, to be buried in the family grave at the town's church. While she planned on burying her children given their timely deaths, Bendicto and Sylvia Santiago were swallowed by an Emergence Hole and thus unable to recover and bury their bodies. Despite this, their tombstones still resided within the Flores grave. During the first year of the Locust War, Maria made multiple trips to tend her family's grave, with the desire to be buried there one day as well.
One year after Emergence Day, the newly-elected Chairman Richard Prescott ordered all cities outside of the Jacinto Plateau to be incinerated by the Hammer of Dawn to deny Locust control. While not on the Jacinto Plateau, Mercy was one of the few cities spared by the Hammer strikes. The neighboring city of Char below, however, was not. Survivors of the Hammer strikes were known as the Stranded. A large population of Stranded settled as a community in the town and kept the Imulsion industry active, selling fuel to people during the Locust War. .[1]