Note: This subject does not appear and is not mentioned in the anime.

[NOV] The Arkansas Protectorate was a friendly Zee-town during the years of reconstruction following the Zentraedi Rain of Death. It and its Zentraedi inhabitants were also the focus of controversial RDF operation: Operation Tiger.

During the Battle of the Rain, Wuer Maatai, Commander of the Jiabao Battalion decided to position his ships on Earth’s light side. Of the 10,700 Jiabao warships that survived the Grand Cannon’s attack, only 8,550 survived to reach the envelope of Earth’s atmosphere. Of those ships, only 1554 managed to maintain enough control to not transform themselves into glowing meteors to crater the Earth. Of those 1554 ships that managed to strike the surface of the south-central portion of North America intact, less then 100,000 of their estimated 1.8 million strong crews lived to emerge from the wrecks. Of those, injuries, illness, and starvation killed nearly 95% of them within the first five months, and barely 4,000 remained by 2013 and only a third were full-sized. The crashing of the ships of the Jiabao Battalion turned the state of Arkansas into the calm eye of a firestorm-hurricane which expanded to erase St. Louis, Atlanta, Dallas, and Oklahoma City. The bulk of the Arkansas survivors abandoned their homes and businesses to flee the area only to die of radiation poisoning at the borders of their safe haven. The people that survived and stayed behind managed a truce with the Zentraedi who stumbled from out of the wastelands and within two months, necessity forced Zentraedi and Humans to work side by side. The Humans assisted in feeding the aliens by salvaging, repairing, and maintaining their nutrient synthesizers, and the giants aided in the rebuilding of the population centers the bombardment and the impact of their ships had destroyed. By late 2014, the 20 square mile area made up of dormitories and factories became known as the Arkansas Protectorate, and was recognized by the Macross Council and granted autonomy.

The Protectorate, like it’s distant cousin Monument City, received help from the RDF in construction of it’s factories and complexes, but unlike it’s cousin, it’s was mainly an industrial sector and contained just enough housing for the workers of the factories. Because of it’s purely industrial capacity, it never officially became recognized as a city, and therefore never elected itself an official governing body. The factories and refineries of the Protectorate produced a variety of exports such as nutrient, textiles, ore, steel, and oil to other cities, as well as the RDF. The RDF had established an installation near the Protectorate in the Arkansas Territory to act as a forward base for units specially designed to operate in the deadly radiation of the surrounding ‘hot spots’. The Protectorate had been a relatively peaceful haven for non-violent full-sized Zentraedi, but by mid-2016, with the increase in Malcontent activities and escalating xenophobia, security had been tightened and it’s borders were shut down by UEG dispatched Civil Defense mecha supplemented by RDF troops.

The devastating Malcontent attack on a RDF escorted convoy near the city of Goias in the Southlands, on 20 June, 2016, changed the Protectorate for the worse. The attack saw the debut of the ‘Stinger’, a Zentraedi Battlesuit comprised of a variety of salvaged and smuggled mecha parts modeled after the Female Queadlunn-Rau Power Armor. A single Stinger destroyed the convoy of 190 vehicles and killed 205 people, including two RDF Veritech pilots and a handful of miscellaneous RDF support personnel. The UEG, under pressure to respond from the ASC and the xenophobic populous, decided to target the only Zentraedi they could find, Malcontent or not. They came to the conclusion, that Malcontent actions were being supplied and funded through the Arkansas Protectorate. There was no evidence of any sort that the Protectorate was in any way affiliated or in support of any Malcontent band, but despite that, the UEG secretly decreed that the Zentraedi of the Protectorate would be forcibly downsized as punishment and as an effort to shortcut the violent lusts of the Imperative which were stronger in the fully-sized Zentraedi. Realizing that they couldn’t carry out their plans without proper military assistance to enact it, they twisted the arm of the RDF to participate by promising that if they didn’t cooperate, they would allow the Army of the Southern Cross to handle the situation. Knowing the ASC’s violent dealings with both innocent and Malcontent Zentraedi, the RDF was essentially forced to agree.

In late June, 2016, the story created by the RDF to lure full sized Zentraedi to the Arkansas Protectorate was made public. It was reported that they needed assistance with work at the factory satellite dismantling Zentraedi ships for parts. Over 200 full-sized Zentraedi, nearly every one of the fully-sized non- Malcontent Zentraedi, reported to the Protectorate to join the other 1000+ resident giants to receive special demolition training to prepare them for their transfer to the satellite. They were relocated from Denver, Monument, Detroit, Portland, and other Northland cities by choice, eager to escape the xenophobic conditions which plagued them. Many Zentraedi and their sympathizers questioned the UEGs and RDFs intentions to bring the Zentraedi to the Protectorate, which didn’t even have a launch facility capable of transporting them to the orbiting factory. But by then, it was too late to the wheels of Operation Tiger, which were already in motion.

In the evening of 21 July, 2016, a battalion comprised of over 300 Civil Defense mecha brought from city garrisons as distant as Albuquerque, stormed the Arkansas Protectorate, with no less then six resizing chambers in tow. A government-imposed media blackout revealed no official explanation of the invasion of the area. Two weeks later, compelled by rioting, the UEG reported that the Protectorate had been identified as the source of mecha parts that were ending up in the hands of dissident bands. The Civil Defense and RDF mecha that encircled the facility were meant to prevent and additional supplies from reaching the Southlands. Once the sizing chambers were in place, the official explanation changed again to account for the micronizations. The ASC was convinced that their territories were in danger from Protectorate-supplied Malcontents, and threatened to attack the Protectorate, CD or RDF defenders be damned, unless the construction facilities were shut down and it’s full sized workers were micronized. This was partially true, but the UEG would have down-sized the Zentraedi despite the pressuring from the ASC. The ‘unconfirmed’ pressure from the ASC only made the UEG’s down-sizing decision easier for the public to swallow.

The RDF would not give the personnel to operate the sizing chambers as they wanted as little to do with Operation Tiger as possible. With Zentraedi supervising the process, the resizing chambers ran continuously for five days. During these days, twelve Zentraedi died as a result of suicide, complications during the hastily done resizing, or failed escape attempts. Twenty were killed when on two occasions when CD Destroids opened fire on “noncompliants” protesting the micronizations. In the wake of Operation Tiger, 32 of the 1396 detainees of the Arkansas Protectorate died and the survivors would be permanently exiled to the factory satellite months later. With the banishment of the Zentraedi, the Protectorate turned into a ghost town, was abandoned and by the Second Robotech War, was all but forgotten. -Macross

Note: This subject appears in other sources as well. Information from these additional sources that mirrors any of the content above has been omitted from the following entries to prevent redundancy.

[RPG] The Arkansas Protectorate contained under 6 million humans and just over 20,000 Zentraedi. It was governed by both Zentraedi and humans. -Macross