![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Following on from Southwark Babble Post III: People of Note, this post goes into the timeline of the actual events of the Civil War.
This could almost be seen as a story in itself, I suppose. *smiles* It actually almost feels like doing a history project, except on a fictional war in a kingdom I made up. Heh. Anyway. This is the Story of the Southwark Civil War, Phases One and Two.
This could almost be seen as a story in itself, I suppose. *smiles* It actually almost feels like doing a history project, except on a fictional war in a kingdom I made up. Heh. Anyway. This is the Story of the Southwark Civil War, Phases One and Two.
Southwark Timeline Of the Civil War Period:
Alight. First, I'm now, for the purposes of this post, randomly assigning Southwark a calendar and pinning the war to specific years within it. I'm going to take the calendar as being a bastardised Imperial calendar running from the initial Imperial colony of Southwark, established some thirteen centuries ago. The War starts in 1289 CS of this calendar, for no better reason than that's what I've just decided it does.
Second, the actual length of the Civil War is slightly complicated. From one point of view, it actually ended in Year Three/Four, with the birth of the Northern Alliance. From another point of view, it still hasn't ended at the point the story has reached, it's just that the sides have shifted around a lot. So the 'Eight Year War' stretching between the Sack of Riverton and the start of Madadrian's reign is an extremely suspect grouping that I'm using purely because it's convenient. Okay? Right.
Third, I'm going through this year by year, but the War itself can be divided into two, maybe three real phases: the Opening Phase, Years One & Two, which were massively destructive and aggressive, the Restructuring Phase post Nightmare Push, Years Three & Four, where the forces on the Line regroup and new Alliances are born, and then the Illusion War, Years Five through to Madadrian, where the focus has almost entirely shifted south into the Capital, and the War goes almost completely underground into political manoeuvering. Due to length, this post covers phases One and Two of the War, with Phase Three and Madadrian's reign in yet another post -_-;
Phases One and Two of the Civil War:
Pre-War:
There were several important events previous to the War that affected its trajectory.
Internationally, the recently escalating tensions between Sunland and the Empire obviously had a major influence, with several smaller wars or proxy wars taking place between them in the few decades leading up to the Southwark Civil War. The internal restructuring of the Empire also had a significant impact: there was a turnover in Emperors just prior to the Southwark campaign, which had two major effects. It made the new Empress in great need of military victories to her name, and it created several splinter factions within the Imperial government who may or may not have launched wholly unauthorised actions against other nations.
Such as, for a random example, the Imperial Mage who arranged to have a curse cast on the Southwark Royal family, killing the Queen outright, prematurely ageing the Prince, and causing the King to become both increasingly insane and increasingly unwell over the next eight years.
Internally, there had been a steady low-level increase in anti-elven sentiment in the human part of Southwark anyway. This was for multiple reasons, including but not limited to a) the series of smaller conflicts between the human and elven provinces over the past century or so, b) the relative trade and economic autonomy the elves enjoyed, since a lot of Lords and a lot of commoners thought they shouldn't have been exempt from the tithe system, c) the growing power of the Sunland Coast Alliance, d) King Adrian's pre-existing public anti-elven stance.
Other events of note in the run-up to the War was the creation of the Lordship of the Black & White on the borders of the Elven Province around Riverton, the increasing divide between the West Coast Trade Alliance with their Imperial focus and the Sunland Coast Alliance with their obvious Sunland leanings, the effective dissolution of the Central Plains as a political entity in and of itself, and the legal changes regarding rights to Lordship titles (which was what let a lot of the major players of the War gain power in the first place).
Year One:
In the early spring of 1289, an unknown but definitely elven assassin enters the Royal Palace in the Capital and casts a magical attack over the Royal Family, killing the Queen and visibly injuring the Prince.
Two weeks following this attack, after his wife's funeral, King Adrian quietly arranges for the military Lordships closest to the Capital to gather under his command and sends clandestine warning to the Border Lordships to prepare for 'hostilities'. The first anyone understands of what this means is when a very large human force, primarily Blue & White and Blue & Purple, is seen marching northwards through the southern reaches of Black & White lands towards Riverton and the Elven Capital.
March of 1289: King Adrian effectively declares war on the Elven Province of Southwark by launching a massive unannounced assault of the Elven Capital at Riverton. This assault rips throught the unprepared city, hammering the Elven forces out of nowhere and forcing a mad scramble northward out of the city towards the bulk of the province to the north. Unfortunately, this scramble only comes in the aftermath of the wholesale slaughter of the royal family, the upper echeleons of government, plus anyone else who happened to be in the city when Adrian's forces razed it to the ground, captured any elf that came in range, and spent four days brutally executing any and all captives resulting from the assault.
Immediately following the Sack of Riverton, the closest military Lordships realise the untold potential for reprisal, and immediately muster their forces to prevent it. The Black & White and the Red & White focus all their force on harrying the elven forces northward past the Line while they're still too broken and horrified to regroup, while across the length of the northern Kingdom the other Border Lords scramble to fortify the Line.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the elven Royal family and the Lords reel from the shock of losing almost their entire Court overnight. In early May, Prince Arien is found to be one of the survivors of the Sack of Riverton, and he immediately takes control of whatever shreds of a military he can gather in Riverton's aftermath. With the aid of the Lord Callind, he manages to stop the northern advance of the Red & White in its tracks, and buys a few months for his people to figure out what the flying fuck just happened.
Summer of 1289: King Adrian formally announces his intention to wage war against the Elven Province until 'the rightful forces of Southwark reach the mountains, and every last elf is purged from our Kingdom's shores'. The Border Line descends into War.
Elven forces under Arien and the landholding lords along the northern edge of the Line muster to descend south. On the Western end of the Line, the Red & White under Elena and Elven Forces under Callind lock the entire Western stretch of the Line solid, creating an immovable but also impassible barrier between the two provinces. Fighting along the Western Line for this period of the War is traditional, exhaustive and bitterly fierce as the remnants of Riverton's forces form the bulk of the Elven advance and the Red & White remain impassive to any and all grudges directed against them.
The initial Royal factions King Adrian had mustered for the Sack of Riverton fall back, leaving the main thrust of the War to the five Border Houses. The Black & White takes control of the previously Elven Lands around Riverton, and begins to move North and East along the Line as an independant military faction to be used by whichever Lordship needs them most.
On the far Eastern end of the Line, the Sunland Coast Alliance immediately begins an aggressive offensive on the trailing end of the Northern Province, with the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold joining forces to try and force a line between the main bulk of the elves and Bracith's eastern Lordship. Arien realises very rapidly that the Eastern Line is the more lethal threat, since Elena and Callind can probably hold the Western Line between them until both factions crumble into dust behind them. Abandoning hope to avenge Riverton for now, he begins to move the bulk of his forces eastward along the Central Line.
The Black & White move into the lands of the Red & Green and the Red & Gold along the Central Line, and a series of relatively small skirmishes along that section of the line reveal that they may have perhaps the most important weapon against Arien's Illusionist forces. A Black & White commander nicknamed the Lord Badger wins a series of small victories against the elves as both forces move steadily eastwards, and as a consequence Arien himself halts with the main bulk of the Central Line forces, only sending extra troops (and Lord Mahan) ahead to bolster Bracith rather than moving fully along the Line himself.
Autumn/Winter of 1289: the Central and Eastern Lines explode into a long, vicious series of small battles. In the East, Bracith struggles to hold the southern extension of the Province against the Red & Gold and Rose & Gold, almost losing twice before Lord Mahan arrives with an Illusionist cohort to bolster him, and the Red & Gold are pulled away from his forces to focus on Mechan and Arien's Central Line assault. Along the Central Line, the Line itself fluctuates wildly north and south over the autumn and winter months as Arien and Mechan trade battles with the Black & White and the Red & Gold.
Back in the Southern Court, King Adrian sends the visibly cursed Prince Madadrian south to the Trade Consulate on the Trade Islands, in theory to give him experience but in practice as a last ditch attempt to curb his own grief and rage by removing the physical reminder of it.
During this period, Aem rises through command of the Black & White from a small unit commander to the main field commander by the last months of the year. Also during this period, the full madness of King Adrian and the Sunland Coast Alliance begins to be apparent, as the first of the atrocities that would become the Northern Bonfires begin to be perpetrated along the Eastern and Central Lines, with full and public approval from the Capital. Bracith's forces begin to be severely pressured and Arien, facing the prospect of another loss like the slaughter at Riverton, realises that he needs to mount a massive assault southwards, to break the Line and move his assault onto Adrian personally, if his people are to have any hope of surviving this war longterm.
Year Two:
The early months 1290 are actually relatively quiet. Fighting along the Western Line stabilises into fixed lines and boundaries, with Elena and Callind settling in to hold until war's end or world's end, whichever happens first. On the Eastern end of the Line, Bracith manages to strike a relatively stable balance against the Rose & Gold, and begins to move his civilian population north when breaks in engagement allow. And behind the Central Line, Arien and Mechan begin to build the massive force that will become the Nightmare Push, simultaneously sending civilians northward into the mountains proper, and drawing military forces from the northern Lordships south to bulk up the great force on the Central Line.
South of the Line, the Black & White settles along the Central Line between the Red & Green and the Red & Gold, leaving their own lands in Elena's hands to the West. With the lull in activity along the Central Line, the Red & Gold begins to refocus attention on Bracith and the Eastern Line. Small scale atrocities on the Eastern Line begin to pile up as Anson and Esher begin to build the Northern Bonfires in earnest, while the commoner soldiers along much of the Line begin to be very, very uneasy with the way things are going.
Then in late spring of 1290, a series of small scale battles erupt along the Central Line, driving southwards against the Red & Green, bending the Line south to try and flank the Plateau and the Red & White and burst through into the Central Plains where no-one will be prepared to stop them as they swing back west towards the Capital. Simultaneously, Bracith and Mahan begin to hammer the Red & Gold from the East, pulling away from the Rose & Gold and focusing the entirity of the Elven assault on the Central Line.
As this happens, Arien also switches tactics. The battles and advancing forces are preceded by Illusionist spies and assaults, focusing on large-scale psychological assaults against anything that gets in their way. This is the phase of the War where Arien earns the title of Nightmare Prince. Any human force arrayed against him has to hold together through horrific illusionary assault, get an idea of where the fuck the enemy is in the maelstrom, and then muster enough organisation to launch a counterstrike.
In the first months of summer, very, very few succeed. The Line buckles southwards, pulling Elena in from the West to bolster that flank and breaking the Rose & Gold's northward assaults to try and shore up the Red & Gold from the rear. Directly in the line of fire, it's the Red & Green, the Red & Gold and the Black & White that take the full brunt of the Nightmare Push. Behind them, the Lordships of the Central Plains panic and scramble to muster a bolstering force from the south, but for three grim, terrifying months, it looks like Arien will break through into the plains and bring the War right back to Adrian's doorstep.
Then a small force breaks through the central assault from the lands of the Red & Green and drives northward and eastward to break through Arien's forces between the Central and Eastern lines, cutting off Bracith's Eastern flank and splitting the assault down the middle. Aem, the Lord Badger, has managed to create a functional, unifed force of the Black & White and the Red & Gold under Desrith, and has driven them at an angle up through the bulk of Arien's forces, driving a spike between the Lines and completely isolating Bracith behind enemy lines. Anson and Esher immediately capitalise on this, driving in behind Aem and Desrith and slamming the southern extension of Arien's forces from the east. On the far side, Elena swings the southern Plateau Lordships up into support of the Red & Green under Tobrick, threatening to close on Arien like a pincer from both west and east. Arien, recognising that if his force is stranded on the Central Plains it's not going to last long, allows the Nightmare Push to collapse and pulls as much of his forces as possible back behind a slightly southern version of the original Central Line.
The consequences to the Elven assault are catastrophic. The entire Eastern Line under Bracith is cut off, and Esher and Anson move with the rest of the Sunland Alliance to slaughter anything that moves in that section of the Line, committing the series of massive atrocities that will later be called the Northern Bonfires. The loss in manpower and military capability is devastating, between outright casualties and prisoners of war that will shortly become something much, much worse. Overall, Arien loses about twenty five percent of the remaining total population of his people on the collapse of that one assault alone, including significant civilian casualties on the Eastern Line. For the first time, the reality that they might be facing the complete and utter annihilation of their people begins to impact on the Elven Court.
The winter of 1290 is the single most grim period of the War on the Line, with both forces struggling to reconstruct in the aftermath of the Nightmare Push, and the growing horrors of the East creeping into everyone's minds. To the south, however, in the Capital, the defeat of the Nightmare Push is seen as the culmination of everything King Adrian believed about the Elves, both their intrinsic evil and their eventual designated defeat, and he begins to structure his Council towards their destruction in earnest, rerouting the bulk of the tithe system to feed the Border Lords and the Sunland Coast Alliance. The destabilisation of the central government begins to slowly take effect under his rule, and his increasing volatility begins to become apparent.
Years Three & Four:
After the Nightmare Push, the War on the Line begins to enter a new phase. While the Western Line holds rock steady under the Red & White, and the Eastern Line slowly devolves into utter horror, the forces on both sides of the Central Line begin to slowly shift goals and allegiances, though nobody realises it immediately.
The Black & White and the Red & Gold have become the Heroes of the Line for the human forces. Most of their efforts in the early part of 1291 are focused on hammering down a solid Line across the East, while the Rose & Gold focuses on the final eradication of Bracith's forces to their south. Aem, having become the de facto military commander of the Black & White, has spent the past few weeks following the Nightmare Push consciously doing everything in his power to ameliorate the atrocities coming from Anson and Esher, up to and including risking execution for treason by granting an entire POW camp of elves a mercifully clean death (which gave Scheiss the final choice of backing her commoner commander or executing him for treason), and personally escorting a civilian party from the Eastern Line north into Arien's territory (which was his first personal meeting with Arien, and something he survived purely because Arien is an honourable man and he had just brought 97 elves, including 14 children, clear of the horrors of the Eastern Line at great personal risk). With Scheiss now fully behind him and the Black & White almost rabidly loyal to the man who led them through the horrors of the Nightmare Push, Aem begins to tentatively act on his real agenda of stopping the War altogether.
At the same time the Lordship of the Red & Green under Tobrick, despite having been the primary battleground and first victims of the Nightmare Push, begin to react violently against the excesses of the Sunland Alliance to the East. Elven survivors fleeing northwest from the Rose & Gold and the Red & Gold begin to surreptitiously find safe passage through the Central Line guarded by the Red & Green, and Tobrick has begun to call in favours from the Central Plains to funnel supplies north to help support a shattered people, partially disguising it as aid for his own shattered people. And I say partially only because his people genuinely were shattered and genuinely did need it. Tobrick just asked for a little more than necessary, and aimed it northwards.
The initial seeds of what will become the Northern Alliance under Aem come when a Black & White patrol under his command discover one of those supply lines through Tobrick's Line, along with another group of civilian survivors of the Eastern Line fleeing north. Unbeknown to any of the human Lords, this group also contains the Illusionist Lord Mahan, one of the only surviving commanders of the Eastern Line. Faced with the evidence of wholescale treason on the part of the Red & Green, and also with just over a hundred potential POWs attempting to escape north, the Black & White ... let them through. And Aem, personally, forges a tentative alliance with the Red & Green in order to keep letting them through, supplies and all. All of this being witnessed by Lord Mahan and thus essentially the entire command structure of the Elven Court.
Following this, the Central Line begins to shift. The Red & Gold are split between leaders, Esher on the one hand as the legal Lord but utterly horrifying in his excesses, and Desrith on the other hand as the Hero of the Line but also only a commander and not a true Lord. The Black & White leaves them to it because they've little choice, and instead focus on cementing the alliance with the Red & Green and through them into the northern Lordships of the Central Plains.
And behind the Lines, Arien, Mechan, Mahan and Callind try to regroup after the catastrophic losses of the Nightmare Push, and begin to look two possible directions for a future path out of the war. They can call for Imperial aid through the Western coastline, securing the survival of their people against Adrian's now apparently genocidal assault, but at the cost of inviting a foreign army onto Southwark soil and forfeiting any chance of future independance. Or they can examine the developing Alliance between the Black & White and the Red & Green and see if it can be used for their own benefit, preserving independance as a people but running the risk of falling into a trap and facing utter annihilation.
In the end, it's the personal opinions both Arien and Mahan have formed from their meetings with Aem that decide them. With more knowledge of the Imperial hand in events than anyone else, Arien was always reluctant to go anywhere near the Empire, but for the sake of his people's survival would have had to risk it had Aem not provided a possible alternative. Now though, he determines to see if an Alliance with his enemy might be possible, and sends Lord Mahan to ask Aem to come behind enemy lines to discuss a future.
Aem comes. Immediately. Possibly the only person more shocked than Mahan and Arien is Scheiss, who had thought that Mahan was there to assassinate Aem. Leaving Scheiss and Tobrick behind him to continue the Alliance if he ends up walking into a trap, Aem leaves the Line and moves north into Arien's camp.
This is the birth of the Northern Alliance. Aem, in that meeting with Arien, related his eventual goals of stopping the War altogether, with both sides still alive at the end of it. He asks Arien just for the time to see if a further alliance of the Border Lords is possible, enough to stabilise the Line and act as a buffer between the Elves and Adrian's genocidal crusade. They can renegotiate again afterwards if he manages even that much. Arien, who has some idea of the foreign hands at work in the War (though not revealing them to Aem at this point), is tentatively willing to grant him that, and reveals that there have been elven parties being allowed to flee north through the lines of the Red & Gold as well, showing that Desrith is definitely an option for alliance if they can wrest control of the Red & Gold away from Esher and onto her. Aem balks somewhat at the suggestion that he should attempt to murder one of the Lords on his own side, which damages his initial standing with the Elves, but Arien is willing to handle that himself if Aem is willing to just look the other way. Reluctantly, because murder was not part of the plan, Aem agrees to the necessity.
In the summer of 1291, Lord Mahan slips back into the ravaged territories of the Eastern Line, and enacts both the Alliance's scheme and his own personal vengeance for himself and Bracith in the brutal murder of Lord Esher of the Red & Gold. In the aftermath, Desrith becomes Lord of the Red & Gold, and joins the putative Northern Alliance alongside the Elves, Lords Aem and Scheiss of the Black & White and Lord Tobrick of the red & Green.
And Lord Telison of the Blue & Silver, the Spymaster General, comes to the Central Line to see what's what.
The winter of 1291 is relatively quiet in terms of actual battles, though the Western Line still maintains its slow, bitter stalemate and the remains of the Eastern Line is destroyed in a holocaust under the Rose & Gold. On the Central Line, however, it's a period of semi-frantic covert action, stabilising the entire Central Line southwards, towards the Capital. And it does not go unnoticed, though Adrian and his Court remain oblivious, as does the Sunland Coast Alliance. The Blue & Silver and the Blue & Gold, increasingly beleagured though they are back at the Capital, rapidly realise the true scheme unfolding on the Line. In December of 1291, Lord Telison personally contacts Lord Elena of the Red & White, the western bulwark of the Line and the single most politically stable entity left in the north, to inform her of the treachery at the heart of the Black & White.
In the spring of 1292, Lord Elena leaves the bulk of the Plateau's forces to her lesser commanders, and moves along the Line to the now semi-permanent fortifications under the control of the Black & White and the Northern Alliance. Given that she commands the entire Plateau Alliance, which is powerful enough to scare the Capital, let alone a tentative and treasonous alliance of lesser Lords, news of her arrival strikes possibly more terror into the Northern Alliance than the entire Nightmare Push. Two nights after her arrival on the Central Line, she enters into a closed conference with Aem, Scheiss and Tobrick (Desrith is further East by this stage, holding the Line between Arien and Anson). Two more days later, and Aem sends a message north to Arien's court, asking him if he would be willing to enter a negotiation with possibly the most powerful and feared military commander on the Line. Arien, more than a little alarmed, agrees.
On the twelfth of March 1292, a secret council takes place in the forests just north of the Central Line, consisting of the entire Elven Court and four of the five Border Lords, along with Lord Telison of the Blue & Silver: Arien, Mechan, Callind, Mahan, Aem, Scheiss, Desrith, Tobrick, Elena and Telison. From this meeting, the Northern Alliance is crystalised in the opening months of the fourth year of the Civil War, with the express goals of striking southward into the political landscape of human Southwark and derailing the course of the Civil War at its source.
The basic plan goes as follows: The Lord Aem, Hero of the Line and the man who broke the Nightmare Push, will head south to Adrian's court in the Capital. Information from Telison tells them that Adrian has actually been pushing for this for the past year, even since the initial collapse of the Push. The Court would strongly welcome him, and King Adrian would seize the chance to make Aem into his primary vassal in the north, his bulwark against the corruption of the elves. Aem, accompanied by Scheiss, would scout the political situation in the Capital, attempt to insert themselves into it, and see about beginning to break the power of the King and the Sunland Alliance from within. In this, they would have the full political backing of the Plateau Lordships under Elena, and some inroads into the Central Plains Lordships through Tobrick.
Meanwhile, back on the Line itself, Elena would form a false offensive along the Western Line, with Callind and Mechan opposing her. The intended implication would be that Arien, in the wake of the failure of the Nightmare Push, was attempting to focus the bulk of his forces on breaking the Plateau and reopening the coastal access to the Capital. Elena would pull Tobrick and the Plateau Lordships into the illusionary conflict behind her, creating a false war to keep the Court happy. Over on the Eastern Line, Desrith would hold the Line between Arien and the Rose & Gold, with Arien and Mahan behind her, and try to curb the worst of the excesses of the Eastern Line. This puts her in the direct line of fire from the Sunland Coast Alliance, but with the legacy of Esher to back her up, it's probable that no-one will realise that she's not a loyal member of that Alliance herself until hopefully it's already too late.
When Aem finally leaves the Line in the autumn of 1292, having left as stable a structure behind him as they could arrange in five months, the War leaves it's second phase and enters into its third and final phase under Adrian's rule. Unfortunately for his alliance, conditions within the Royal Court when he finally reaches it prove to be much more complicated than anyone save Telison anticipated, and that final phase lasts a full four years before Adrian's untimely death brings it to a close.
TBC with Southwark Civil War Phase Three and the First Year of Madadrian's Reign
Alight. First, I'm now, for the purposes of this post, randomly assigning Southwark a calendar and pinning the war to specific years within it. I'm going to take the calendar as being a bastardised Imperial calendar running from the initial Imperial colony of Southwark, established some thirteen centuries ago. The War starts in 1289 CS of this calendar, for no better reason than that's what I've just decided it does.
Second, the actual length of the Civil War is slightly complicated. From one point of view, it actually ended in Year Three/Four, with the birth of the Northern Alliance. From another point of view, it still hasn't ended at the point the story has reached, it's just that the sides have shifted around a lot. So the 'Eight Year War' stretching between the Sack of Riverton and the start of Madadrian's reign is an extremely suspect grouping that I'm using purely because it's convenient. Okay? Right.
Third, I'm going through this year by year, but the War itself can be divided into two, maybe three real phases: the Opening Phase, Years One & Two, which were massively destructive and aggressive, the Restructuring Phase post Nightmare Push, Years Three & Four, where the forces on the Line regroup and new Alliances are born, and then the Illusion War, Years Five through to Madadrian, where the focus has almost entirely shifted south into the Capital, and the War goes almost completely underground into political manoeuvering. Due to length, this post covers phases One and Two of the War, with Phase Three and Madadrian's reign in yet another post -_-;
Phases One and Two of the Civil War:
Pre-War:
There were several important events previous to the War that affected its trajectory.
Internationally, the recently escalating tensions between Sunland and the Empire obviously had a major influence, with several smaller wars or proxy wars taking place between them in the few decades leading up to the Southwark Civil War. The internal restructuring of the Empire also had a significant impact: there was a turnover in Emperors just prior to the Southwark campaign, which had two major effects. It made the new Empress in great need of military victories to her name, and it created several splinter factions within the Imperial government who may or may not have launched wholly unauthorised actions against other nations.
Such as, for a random example, the Imperial Mage who arranged to have a curse cast on the Southwark Royal family, killing the Queen outright, prematurely ageing the Prince, and causing the King to become both increasingly insane and increasingly unwell over the next eight years.
Internally, there had been a steady low-level increase in anti-elven sentiment in the human part of Southwark anyway. This was for multiple reasons, including but not limited to a) the series of smaller conflicts between the human and elven provinces over the past century or so, b) the relative trade and economic autonomy the elves enjoyed, since a lot of Lords and a lot of commoners thought they shouldn't have been exempt from the tithe system, c) the growing power of the Sunland Coast Alliance, d) King Adrian's pre-existing public anti-elven stance.
Other events of note in the run-up to the War was the creation of the Lordship of the Black & White on the borders of the Elven Province around Riverton, the increasing divide between the West Coast Trade Alliance with their Imperial focus and the Sunland Coast Alliance with their obvious Sunland leanings, the effective dissolution of the Central Plains as a political entity in and of itself, and the legal changes regarding rights to Lordship titles (which was what let a lot of the major players of the War gain power in the first place).
Year One:
In the early spring of 1289, an unknown but definitely elven assassin enters the Royal Palace in the Capital and casts a magical attack over the Royal Family, killing the Queen and visibly injuring the Prince.
Two weeks following this attack, after his wife's funeral, King Adrian quietly arranges for the military Lordships closest to the Capital to gather under his command and sends clandestine warning to the Border Lordships to prepare for 'hostilities'. The first anyone understands of what this means is when a very large human force, primarily Blue & White and Blue & Purple, is seen marching northwards through the southern reaches of Black & White lands towards Riverton and the Elven Capital.
March of 1289: King Adrian effectively declares war on the Elven Province of Southwark by launching a massive unannounced assault of the Elven Capital at Riverton. This assault rips throught the unprepared city, hammering the Elven forces out of nowhere and forcing a mad scramble northward out of the city towards the bulk of the province to the north. Unfortunately, this scramble only comes in the aftermath of the wholesale slaughter of the royal family, the upper echeleons of government, plus anyone else who happened to be in the city when Adrian's forces razed it to the ground, captured any elf that came in range, and spent four days brutally executing any and all captives resulting from the assault.
Immediately following the Sack of Riverton, the closest military Lordships realise the untold potential for reprisal, and immediately muster their forces to prevent it. The Black & White and the Red & White focus all their force on harrying the elven forces northward past the Line while they're still too broken and horrified to regroup, while across the length of the northern Kingdom the other Border Lords scramble to fortify the Line.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the elven Royal family and the Lords reel from the shock of losing almost their entire Court overnight. In early May, Prince Arien is found to be one of the survivors of the Sack of Riverton, and he immediately takes control of whatever shreds of a military he can gather in Riverton's aftermath. With the aid of the Lord Callind, he manages to stop the northern advance of the Red & White in its tracks, and buys a few months for his people to figure out what the flying fuck just happened.
Summer of 1289: King Adrian formally announces his intention to wage war against the Elven Province until 'the rightful forces of Southwark reach the mountains, and every last elf is purged from our Kingdom's shores'. The Border Line descends into War.
Elven forces under Arien and the landholding lords along the northern edge of the Line muster to descend south. On the Western end of the Line, the Red & White under Elena and Elven Forces under Callind lock the entire Western stretch of the Line solid, creating an immovable but also impassible barrier between the two provinces. Fighting along the Western Line for this period of the War is traditional, exhaustive and bitterly fierce as the remnants of Riverton's forces form the bulk of the Elven advance and the Red & White remain impassive to any and all grudges directed against them.
The initial Royal factions King Adrian had mustered for the Sack of Riverton fall back, leaving the main thrust of the War to the five Border Houses. The Black & White takes control of the previously Elven Lands around Riverton, and begins to move North and East along the Line as an independant military faction to be used by whichever Lordship needs them most.
On the far Eastern end of the Line, the Sunland Coast Alliance immediately begins an aggressive offensive on the trailing end of the Northern Province, with the Red & Gold and the Rose & Gold joining forces to try and force a line between the main bulk of the elves and Bracith's eastern Lordship. Arien realises very rapidly that the Eastern Line is the more lethal threat, since Elena and Callind can probably hold the Western Line between them until both factions crumble into dust behind them. Abandoning hope to avenge Riverton for now, he begins to move the bulk of his forces eastward along the Central Line.
The Black & White move into the lands of the Red & Green and the Red & Gold along the Central Line, and a series of relatively small skirmishes along that section of the line reveal that they may have perhaps the most important weapon against Arien's Illusionist forces. A Black & White commander nicknamed the Lord Badger wins a series of small victories against the elves as both forces move steadily eastwards, and as a consequence Arien himself halts with the main bulk of the Central Line forces, only sending extra troops (and Lord Mahan) ahead to bolster Bracith rather than moving fully along the Line himself.
Autumn/Winter of 1289: the Central and Eastern Lines explode into a long, vicious series of small battles. In the East, Bracith struggles to hold the southern extension of the Province against the Red & Gold and Rose & Gold, almost losing twice before Lord Mahan arrives with an Illusionist cohort to bolster him, and the Red & Gold are pulled away from his forces to focus on Mechan and Arien's Central Line assault. Along the Central Line, the Line itself fluctuates wildly north and south over the autumn and winter months as Arien and Mechan trade battles with the Black & White and the Red & Gold.
Back in the Southern Court, King Adrian sends the visibly cursed Prince Madadrian south to the Trade Consulate on the Trade Islands, in theory to give him experience but in practice as a last ditch attempt to curb his own grief and rage by removing the physical reminder of it.
During this period, Aem rises through command of the Black & White from a small unit commander to the main field commander by the last months of the year. Also during this period, the full madness of King Adrian and the Sunland Coast Alliance begins to be apparent, as the first of the atrocities that would become the Northern Bonfires begin to be perpetrated along the Eastern and Central Lines, with full and public approval from the Capital. Bracith's forces begin to be severely pressured and Arien, facing the prospect of another loss like the slaughter at Riverton, realises that he needs to mount a massive assault southwards, to break the Line and move his assault onto Adrian personally, if his people are to have any hope of surviving this war longterm.
Year Two:
The early months 1290 are actually relatively quiet. Fighting along the Western Line stabilises into fixed lines and boundaries, with Elena and Callind settling in to hold until war's end or world's end, whichever happens first. On the Eastern end of the Line, Bracith manages to strike a relatively stable balance against the Rose & Gold, and begins to move his civilian population north when breaks in engagement allow. And behind the Central Line, Arien and Mechan begin to build the massive force that will become the Nightmare Push, simultaneously sending civilians northward into the mountains proper, and drawing military forces from the northern Lordships south to bulk up the great force on the Central Line.
South of the Line, the Black & White settles along the Central Line between the Red & Green and the Red & Gold, leaving their own lands in Elena's hands to the West. With the lull in activity along the Central Line, the Red & Gold begins to refocus attention on Bracith and the Eastern Line. Small scale atrocities on the Eastern Line begin to pile up as Anson and Esher begin to build the Northern Bonfires in earnest, while the commoner soldiers along much of the Line begin to be very, very uneasy with the way things are going.
Then in late spring of 1290, a series of small scale battles erupt along the Central Line, driving southwards against the Red & Green, bending the Line south to try and flank the Plateau and the Red & White and burst through into the Central Plains where no-one will be prepared to stop them as they swing back west towards the Capital. Simultaneously, Bracith and Mahan begin to hammer the Red & Gold from the East, pulling away from the Rose & Gold and focusing the entirity of the Elven assault on the Central Line.
As this happens, Arien also switches tactics. The battles and advancing forces are preceded by Illusionist spies and assaults, focusing on large-scale psychological assaults against anything that gets in their way. This is the phase of the War where Arien earns the title of Nightmare Prince. Any human force arrayed against him has to hold together through horrific illusionary assault, get an idea of where the fuck the enemy is in the maelstrom, and then muster enough organisation to launch a counterstrike.
In the first months of summer, very, very few succeed. The Line buckles southwards, pulling Elena in from the West to bolster that flank and breaking the Rose & Gold's northward assaults to try and shore up the Red & Gold from the rear. Directly in the line of fire, it's the Red & Green, the Red & Gold and the Black & White that take the full brunt of the Nightmare Push. Behind them, the Lordships of the Central Plains panic and scramble to muster a bolstering force from the south, but for three grim, terrifying months, it looks like Arien will break through into the plains and bring the War right back to Adrian's doorstep.
Then a small force breaks through the central assault from the lands of the Red & Green and drives northward and eastward to break through Arien's forces between the Central and Eastern lines, cutting off Bracith's Eastern flank and splitting the assault down the middle. Aem, the Lord Badger, has managed to create a functional, unifed force of the Black & White and the Red & Gold under Desrith, and has driven them at an angle up through the bulk of Arien's forces, driving a spike between the Lines and completely isolating Bracith behind enemy lines. Anson and Esher immediately capitalise on this, driving in behind Aem and Desrith and slamming the southern extension of Arien's forces from the east. On the far side, Elena swings the southern Plateau Lordships up into support of the Red & Green under Tobrick, threatening to close on Arien like a pincer from both west and east. Arien, recognising that if his force is stranded on the Central Plains it's not going to last long, allows the Nightmare Push to collapse and pulls as much of his forces as possible back behind a slightly southern version of the original Central Line.
The consequences to the Elven assault are catastrophic. The entire Eastern Line under Bracith is cut off, and Esher and Anson move with the rest of the Sunland Alliance to slaughter anything that moves in that section of the Line, committing the series of massive atrocities that will later be called the Northern Bonfires. The loss in manpower and military capability is devastating, between outright casualties and prisoners of war that will shortly become something much, much worse. Overall, Arien loses about twenty five percent of the remaining total population of his people on the collapse of that one assault alone, including significant civilian casualties on the Eastern Line. For the first time, the reality that they might be facing the complete and utter annihilation of their people begins to impact on the Elven Court.
The winter of 1290 is the single most grim period of the War on the Line, with both forces struggling to reconstruct in the aftermath of the Nightmare Push, and the growing horrors of the East creeping into everyone's minds. To the south, however, in the Capital, the defeat of the Nightmare Push is seen as the culmination of everything King Adrian believed about the Elves, both their intrinsic evil and their eventual designated defeat, and he begins to structure his Council towards their destruction in earnest, rerouting the bulk of the tithe system to feed the Border Lords and the Sunland Coast Alliance. The destabilisation of the central government begins to slowly take effect under his rule, and his increasing volatility begins to become apparent.
Years Three & Four:
After the Nightmare Push, the War on the Line begins to enter a new phase. While the Western Line holds rock steady under the Red & White, and the Eastern Line slowly devolves into utter horror, the forces on both sides of the Central Line begin to slowly shift goals and allegiances, though nobody realises it immediately.
The Black & White and the Red & Gold have become the Heroes of the Line for the human forces. Most of their efforts in the early part of 1291 are focused on hammering down a solid Line across the East, while the Rose & Gold focuses on the final eradication of Bracith's forces to their south. Aem, having become the de facto military commander of the Black & White, has spent the past few weeks following the Nightmare Push consciously doing everything in his power to ameliorate the atrocities coming from Anson and Esher, up to and including risking execution for treason by granting an entire POW camp of elves a mercifully clean death (which gave Scheiss the final choice of backing her commoner commander or executing him for treason), and personally escorting a civilian party from the Eastern Line north into Arien's territory (which was his first personal meeting with Arien, and something he survived purely because Arien is an honourable man and he had just brought 97 elves, including 14 children, clear of the horrors of the Eastern Line at great personal risk). With Scheiss now fully behind him and the Black & White almost rabidly loyal to the man who led them through the horrors of the Nightmare Push, Aem begins to tentatively act on his real agenda of stopping the War altogether.
At the same time the Lordship of the Red & Green under Tobrick, despite having been the primary battleground and first victims of the Nightmare Push, begin to react violently against the excesses of the Sunland Alliance to the East. Elven survivors fleeing northwest from the Rose & Gold and the Red & Gold begin to surreptitiously find safe passage through the Central Line guarded by the Red & Green, and Tobrick has begun to call in favours from the Central Plains to funnel supplies north to help support a shattered people, partially disguising it as aid for his own shattered people. And I say partially only because his people genuinely were shattered and genuinely did need it. Tobrick just asked for a little more than necessary, and aimed it northwards.
The initial seeds of what will become the Northern Alliance under Aem come when a Black & White patrol under his command discover one of those supply lines through Tobrick's Line, along with another group of civilian survivors of the Eastern Line fleeing north. Unbeknown to any of the human Lords, this group also contains the Illusionist Lord Mahan, one of the only surviving commanders of the Eastern Line. Faced with the evidence of wholescale treason on the part of the Red & Green, and also with just over a hundred potential POWs attempting to escape north, the Black & White ... let them through. And Aem, personally, forges a tentative alliance with the Red & Green in order to keep letting them through, supplies and all. All of this being witnessed by Lord Mahan and thus essentially the entire command structure of the Elven Court.
Following this, the Central Line begins to shift. The Red & Gold are split between leaders, Esher on the one hand as the legal Lord but utterly horrifying in his excesses, and Desrith on the other hand as the Hero of the Line but also only a commander and not a true Lord. The Black & White leaves them to it because they've little choice, and instead focus on cementing the alliance with the Red & Green and through them into the northern Lordships of the Central Plains.
And behind the Lines, Arien, Mechan, Mahan and Callind try to regroup after the catastrophic losses of the Nightmare Push, and begin to look two possible directions for a future path out of the war. They can call for Imperial aid through the Western coastline, securing the survival of their people against Adrian's now apparently genocidal assault, but at the cost of inviting a foreign army onto Southwark soil and forfeiting any chance of future independance. Or they can examine the developing Alliance between the Black & White and the Red & Green and see if it can be used for their own benefit, preserving independance as a people but running the risk of falling into a trap and facing utter annihilation.
In the end, it's the personal opinions both Arien and Mahan have formed from their meetings with Aem that decide them. With more knowledge of the Imperial hand in events than anyone else, Arien was always reluctant to go anywhere near the Empire, but for the sake of his people's survival would have had to risk it had Aem not provided a possible alternative. Now though, he determines to see if an Alliance with his enemy might be possible, and sends Lord Mahan to ask Aem to come behind enemy lines to discuss a future.
Aem comes. Immediately. Possibly the only person more shocked than Mahan and Arien is Scheiss, who had thought that Mahan was there to assassinate Aem. Leaving Scheiss and Tobrick behind him to continue the Alliance if he ends up walking into a trap, Aem leaves the Line and moves north into Arien's camp.
This is the birth of the Northern Alliance. Aem, in that meeting with Arien, related his eventual goals of stopping the War altogether, with both sides still alive at the end of it. He asks Arien just for the time to see if a further alliance of the Border Lords is possible, enough to stabilise the Line and act as a buffer between the Elves and Adrian's genocidal crusade. They can renegotiate again afterwards if he manages even that much. Arien, who has some idea of the foreign hands at work in the War (though not revealing them to Aem at this point), is tentatively willing to grant him that, and reveals that there have been elven parties being allowed to flee north through the lines of the Red & Gold as well, showing that Desrith is definitely an option for alliance if they can wrest control of the Red & Gold away from Esher and onto her. Aem balks somewhat at the suggestion that he should attempt to murder one of the Lords on his own side, which damages his initial standing with the Elves, but Arien is willing to handle that himself if Aem is willing to just look the other way. Reluctantly, because murder was not part of the plan, Aem agrees to the necessity.
In the summer of 1291, Lord Mahan slips back into the ravaged territories of the Eastern Line, and enacts both the Alliance's scheme and his own personal vengeance for himself and Bracith in the brutal murder of Lord Esher of the Red & Gold. In the aftermath, Desrith becomes Lord of the Red & Gold, and joins the putative Northern Alliance alongside the Elves, Lords Aem and Scheiss of the Black & White and Lord Tobrick of the red & Green.
And Lord Telison of the Blue & Silver, the Spymaster General, comes to the Central Line to see what's what.
The winter of 1291 is relatively quiet in terms of actual battles, though the Western Line still maintains its slow, bitter stalemate and the remains of the Eastern Line is destroyed in a holocaust under the Rose & Gold. On the Central Line, however, it's a period of semi-frantic covert action, stabilising the entire Central Line southwards, towards the Capital. And it does not go unnoticed, though Adrian and his Court remain oblivious, as does the Sunland Coast Alliance. The Blue & Silver and the Blue & Gold, increasingly beleagured though they are back at the Capital, rapidly realise the true scheme unfolding on the Line. In December of 1291, Lord Telison personally contacts Lord Elena of the Red & White, the western bulwark of the Line and the single most politically stable entity left in the north, to inform her of the treachery at the heart of the Black & White.
In the spring of 1292, Lord Elena leaves the bulk of the Plateau's forces to her lesser commanders, and moves along the Line to the now semi-permanent fortifications under the control of the Black & White and the Northern Alliance. Given that she commands the entire Plateau Alliance, which is powerful enough to scare the Capital, let alone a tentative and treasonous alliance of lesser Lords, news of her arrival strikes possibly more terror into the Northern Alliance than the entire Nightmare Push. Two nights after her arrival on the Central Line, she enters into a closed conference with Aem, Scheiss and Tobrick (Desrith is further East by this stage, holding the Line between Arien and Anson). Two more days later, and Aem sends a message north to Arien's court, asking him if he would be willing to enter a negotiation with possibly the most powerful and feared military commander on the Line. Arien, more than a little alarmed, agrees.
On the twelfth of March 1292, a secret council takes place in the forests just north of the Central Line, consisting of the entire Elven Court and four of the five Border Lords, along with Lord Telison of the Blue & Silver: Arien, Mechan, Callind, Mahan, Aem, Scheiss, Desrith, Tobrick, Elena and Telison. From this meeting, the Northern Alliance is crystalised in the opening months of the fourth year of the Civil War, with the express goals of striking southward into the political landscape of human Southwark and derailing the course of the Civil War at its source.
The basic plan goes as follows: The Lord Aem, Hero of the Line and the man who broke the Nightmare Push, will head south to Adrian's court in the Capital. Information from Telison tells them that Adrian has actually been pushing for this for the past year, even since the initial collapse of the Push. The Court would strongly welcome him, and King Adrian would seize the chance to make Aem into his primary vassal in the north, his bulwark against the corruption of the elves. Aem, accompanied by Scheiss, would scout the political situation in the Capital, attempt to insert themselves into it, and see about beginning to break the power of the King and the Sunland Alliance from within. In this, they would have the full political backing of the Plateau Lordships under Elena, and some inroads into the Central Plains Lordships through Tobrick.
Meanwhile, back on the Line itself, Elena would form a false offensive along the Western Line, with Callind and Mechan opposing her. The intended implication would be that Arien, in the wake of the failure of the Nightmare Push, was attempting to focus the bulk of his forces on breaking the Plateau and reopening the coastal access to the Capital. Elena would pull Tobrick and the Plateau Lordships into the illusionary conflict behind her, creating a false war to keep the Court happy. Over on the Eastern Line, Desrith would hold the Line between Arien and the Rose & Gold, with Arien and Mahan behind her, and try to curb the worst of the excesses of the Eastern Line. This puts her in the direct line of fire from the Sunland Coast Alliance, but with the legacy of Esher to back her up, it's probable that no-one will realise that she's not a loyal member of that Alliance herself until hopefully it's already too late.
When Aem finally leaves the Line in the autumn of 1292, having left as stable a structure behind him as they could arrange in five months, the War leaves it's second phase and enters into its third and final phase under Adrian's rule. Unfortunately for his alliance, conditions within the Royal Court when he finally reaches it prove to be much more complicated than anyone save Telison anticipated, and that final phase lasts a full four years before Adrian's untimely death brings it to a close.
TBC with Southwark Civil War Phase Three and the First Year of Madadrian's Reign
Tags: