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New Tyria Credit Union Siege

New Tyria Credit Union Siege
Republican Guard units taking aim at the League of Neptune Credit Union building, 25 January
Location	New Tyria, Tyreseia
Date	23–28 January 1939
Attack type	Bank robbery, hostage taking
Weapons	Various
Deaths	1
Non-fatal injuries	13
Perpetrators	Anchor Gang

The New Tyria Credit Union Siege was a foiled bank robbery and hostage crisis in Tyreseia that popularized the term "New Tyria syndrome." The event was widely broadcast in real time across radio news, and was one of the first financial institution robberies to gain mass nationwide coverage in Tyreseia. A group of Invictist militants known popularly as the Anchor Gang had raided the vault of the League of Neptune's Credit Union building in central New Tyria in hopes of acquiring banknotes to fund their operations and perform a high-profile act to gain notoriety. The Gang had hoped to use local tellers as hostages and a means for a guaranteed escape back to a safehouse of undetermined location. The attack quickly faltered as elements of the New Tyrian Metropolitan Constabulary and Republican Guard laid siege to the building. The incident gained further infamy through captives refusing to testify against the Anchor Gang or help law enforcement during the siege. Many at the time theorized about a potential manipulative emotional bond that could have formed between captor and hostage during the long siege; such behavior could also be amply explained by simple distrust of law enforcement's cavalier attitude towards the lives and safety of all involved. The siege ultimately ended in a pitched gun battle and storming of the Credit Union building. One captor was killed by gunfire while several Anchor Gang members, hostages, and law enforcement were wounded.

Events

Republican Guardsmen lead away surviving Anchor Gang members

The end of Xidduni's personal rule saw a general opening of Tyreseia's mainstream politics in the early 20th century, with numerous groups on different points of the spectrum coming to fruition. The increasingly powerful Trade-Anarchists and newly-formed Pax Tyreseiana salons were gaining increasing political currency. This sparked the outgrowth of numerous statist groups as a response, the most infamous of which being the fringe Anchor Gang. Part political action group and part criminal syndicate, the group merged statist, socialist, and Invictist ideals in their propaganda while performing increasingly daring and provocative acts of criminality to spread their message. The Gang's leader, Xem Nassaña, was particularly notorious as a career criminal, with many contemporary media sources doubting the sincerity of their political beliefs; instead, it was hypothesized their politics were merely a mask to "justify" their kleptomania and love of the spotlight. Their planned robbery of the central New Tyria branch of the League of Neptune's Credit Union was to be the capstone on an increasingly brazen string of bank robberies and train heists that spanned up the Exec riverfront, an event designed to, as Nassaña later described, "showcase the ineptitude of the current government without a strong force of will behind it." The group was typically armed with rifles either looted from Workers' Navy storehouses or legally acquired through Red Guards service.

At 4:50 PM on January 23rd, the

Aftermath

The event also forced Tyreseian law enforcement to totally rethink hostage-taking procedure. Such events were in themselves a novelty in the country; the antics of the Anchor Gang were some of the first widely-known modern instances of hostage robberies.