Civil War in Goldshire

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Civil War in Goldshire
Date: 24 Rugaall 1639–the present
Place: Goldshire
Casus belli: Martial Law in Goldshire, Avakair Massacre
Outcome: Ongoing
Secession of Southern Counties. Collapse of the Royal Government. Beginning of the Warring States Period.
Participants
Kalirion!House of Ayreon-Kalirion (Kingdom of Goldshire)
Mercaja!House of Mercaja (Duchy of Goldshire)
Commanders
Kalirion!Queen Noor

ESB-Jörmungandr GroupErnst Cryptsinger

ShirerothThorgils Tarjeisson

Iron CompanyVilliam Al-Basani
AvakairTudor ap Rimetar

Golden DawnGrigory Mazower

Golden DawnMo'lluk Hawthorne (GLF)
Strength
ShirerothImperial Army

ShirerothImperial Navy
KalirionJaysh al-Sathrati: 120,000
ESB-Jörmungandr GroupDirectorate of Security: 1,002
Goldshire RegularsGoldshire Regulars (1639-1640):20,000
Iron CompanyIron Militia: 9,000

Golden DawnArmy of the Golden Dawn
County Militias
Goldshire RegularsGoldshire Regulars (1640-):20,000
Casualties
1639-1640: 126,000 1639-1640: 121,000
Notes

Background

Martial Law in Goldshire was declared after the assassination of the Goldshirean and Elwynnese Princes Arn and Rostam Ayreon-Kalirion by parties unknown in the year 1639. This being the third such attempt on a member of the Ayreon-Kalirion bloodline in which poison was administered in a secure environment, suspicion quickly turned to the Leonid Guard whose duty was to protect the family of the Emira of Sathrati.

Towards the end of her reign Queen Noor was increasingly depicted as a depraved and blood-thirsty pseudo-Babkhan, as can be seen depicted here in an unsympathetic artistic portrayal created by noted local artist Raul Benedict, who was subsequently fed to a herd of pigs in the Kingsgate Fighting Pit.

Concerned about wavering morale amongst the Goldshire Regulars, the Royal Government, on the 11th of Araroqpinu 1639, invoked its right under the Martial Code of Shireroth to seek the assistance of Imperial Forces. The Imperial Government had already taken steps to order Leonid Guards based overseas to return to ESB run rendition facilities in Goldshire and Zy-Rodun. Now, with an official invitation, it could act with full force.

These actions led to an inevitable moment of renunciation when during Muulantooqu 1639 the Lunatic Legion had risen against the ESB Group and broke with the Royal Government, in so doing openly taking up arms against the House of Ayreon-Kalirion to defend the people of Lunaris and the articles of the Codex Aureus that Queen Noor was so flagrantly violating.

Following the example of the Lunatic Legion which defected from Royal Government to the Army of the Golden Dawn, the County Militias of Ran and Elsenar also rose in late 1639/6232. The spread of organised resistance into the southern counties of the Kingdom marked the beginning of the Civil War in Goldshire.

Jaysh al-Sathrati

With the Leonid Guard deemed to be unreliable and subsequently purged, a new personal force was recruited by Queen Noor in her capacity as Emira of Sathrati. This force, known as the Jaysh al-Sathrati, was brought into being on 23 Fasmas 1639.

Queen Noor intended that the recruitment process for this new force was so stringent than only the most loyal would be chosen for the more advanced programme to become guardsmen. More than half of the volunteers in the initial batches died in training. This had an impact on the recruitment and retention rate so a new policy was implemented whereby Doctors Ernst Cryptsinger and Tokaray al-Osman initiated selection procedures for the psychological and behavioural conditioning of the most suitable candidates for Queen Noor's personal guard. The washouts from this process, rather than being wasted through ill-considered brutality, were assigned to a new militia under the banner of the Jaysh al-Sathrati, and it was this force that was unleashed on Lunaris when the Queen ordered their deployment to flush out Assayers she believed were hiding amongst the villages and clans of that unusual county.

The Jaysh al-Sathrati, the core of whom were recruited from the Babkhi communities of Alalehzamin and Utasia and Agnesia and Wintergleam, became a militantly racist and Imperialist organization which stressed the 'Elwynnese' character of the Kingdom. A kingdom which, it held, had been donated to Elwynn in the previous century by Duke Leo Dine. Accordingly they had neither sympathy nor mercy for those Lunatics the Royal Government had sent them to police when they were first deployed on the 17th of Rugaall, 1640. Such indeed was Queen Noor's intention for she wanted Assayers being so fearful of capture that they would rather kill themselves on the spot[1].

The well armed Jaysh al-Sathrati quickly gained made their mark on a dumbstruck Lunaris. Several thousand people had been killed and as many as a million more had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis. Over 100,000 refugees poured towards Lune Villa, pursued by militiamen who clashed with detachments of the Lunatic Legion who were trying to direct the displaced into the Eth Lune Forest and away from the fighting. More than 70 Sathrati militiamen and 10 Legionnaires were killed in one gun battle in late Rugaall. An Imperial Army observer team reported that Lunatic villages and Octalune encampments were singled out, while the homes of migrant families were left untouched.

Now, with all the southern counties openly in revolt, the last pretence of restraint was cast aside and the Jayash al-Sathrati was unleashed to vent its full fury upon the people of Lunaris. With Imperial Forces advancing into the county to secure an area identified as the 'Southern Martial Law Zone', the Jaysh al-Sathrati had the task of holding open the rear, the so-called 'Feudal Zone' under the notional rule of the Khan of Cabbagefall, to allow lines of communication to be established and held. The Growth of partisan bands in Elsenar, Lunaris and Ran, the defection of the County Militias and threatened disintegration of the Goldshire Regulars, complicated the task and stretched the deployed forces of the Jaysh and the Imperial Army over a vastly increased area and to breaking point.

To protect the rear therefore, the Jaysh al-Sathrati was to crush the gangs of bandits it encountered with a singular brutality in order to annihilate them. One of the orders issued in the name of the Khan of Cabbagefall specified: "It may be necessary to seize the entire male population of a ward, insofar as their immediate liquidation is not an operational imperative on account of their participation in or support of the insurgency, and insofar as they are capable of work, to bring them to the ESB Rehabilitation Facilities of Meadowhall, Trafford and Arndale, for reassignment to areas where their labour can be utilised and their actions properly monitored and supervised." In short, if it proved too difficult to distinguish between a partisan and a lunatic, and the commander on the ground didn't feel sufficiently able to execute them on the spot, the answer of the Royal Government was to have the Jaysh al-Sathrati empty the county completely, creating a dead zone and calling it pacified.

Rebel Offensive

The Army of the Golden Dawn went over onto the offensive on the 2nd of Gevrader 1640 with an audacious raid on the island of Mediguttula using the previously unknown triskele to destroy a pair of radar installations [2] operated by the Imperial Order of Technomaezji as part of the Imperial Republic's air defence network. The destruction of these two units created a gap in radar coverage and a blind-spot over southern Goldshire where the venerable Ikol Anti-Ballistic Missile would now be useless in combating the hallucinogen tipped missiles of the C'ort Somnis of the Lunatic Legion[3]

The Bashembazooks of the Tripudium were the most feared headhunters in Lunaris. Formerly a troupe of entertainers they subsequently learned to turn the skulls of their captives into musical instruments.


Lacking an effective countermeasure to the triskele and unable to gain sanction from the Imperial Advisory Council for the use of nuclear weapons on the Benacian mainland, the Imperial Army was forced to withdraw from all of Lunaris south of Teldrin, leaving only an isolated garrison of ESB security officers, Goldshire Regulars, and sailors from the Imperial Navy to hold Mesior. The Imperial Shirerithian Air Force refused pointblank to operate over Lunaris and the Elwynn River Delta until the nature of the Triskelion and its seeming ability to deploy a directed energy weapon beyond the range of visual sight was better understood. This thankless task fell to the Technomaezji.

Although the triskele could seemingly scythe a path through Imperial lines at will, they were few in number and the Mercaja forces were cautious in deploying them only sparingly. For this reason the rout in the south did not, for the moment, spread beyond Lunaris. The Imperial Forces therefore contented themselves with trying, insofar as was possible, to contain the situation on the borders of Lunaris and to keeping open the shipping channels of the Red Elwynn, the most vital artery connecting Shirekeep to the outside world.

The ESB Group meanwhile, for reasons of pride as much as anything, refused to relinquish control of Teldrin to the rebels. Having invested too much time and money in building its headquarters and cantonments in the city. The company did not, moreover, trust the garrison of Goldshire Regulars to provide for its safety, and, by the good offices of the Martial Law Administrator, prevailed upon Noor to order away the three battalions of the 2nd Infantry Brigade on one errand or false alarm or another, until only the 4th Artillery Brigade remained in Fort Erutirn. The fort was seized by the ESB's Directorate of Security in a coup de main under the cover of darkness, with the landing party of helicopter borne commandos masquerading as a returning medivac experiencing engine difficulties. The remaining Regulars were subdued efficiently and reassigned to other garrisons. Subsequent chemical analysis of the Moraquine SRBMs revealed that the supposed Dimethyl Mercury warheads, returned with such fanfare before the breakdown of relations with the Assayers, were, as many suspected, fraudulent duds - with the lethal neurotoxin remaining therefore, alongside the stockpiles of weaponised hallucinogen Somnis, in enemy hands.

With radar coverage down, the request to employ nuclear weapons in a tactical role refused, and the deterrent power of the government held Moraquine rockets exposed as a sham, the Kalirion and Imperial forces were wide open to chemical and biological attack.

In desperation the MoMA resorted to an outright bluff. An ISAF Spiegelflügel was dispatched from Zy-Rodun to Mesior by a circuitous route, going far out to sea, avoiding the islands of the Elwynn River Delta and approaching at night from a low altitude whilst adhering to a strict radio silence. As expected it was intercepted and destroyed. Eleven passengers and crew were on board the destroyed flight, including a magister of the Technomaezji's Chemical Defence Cohort (CDC). Chained to his wrist was an attache case containing a heavily encrypted external hard-drive. In the cargo hold of the Spiegelflügel was a ruggedised and temperature controlled medical container carrying vials of antidote. Folded in the magister's inside jacket pocket was a well-thumbed reprint of an old Ashkenatzim pamphlet on precautions to take in the event of exposure to chemical agents of Babkhan origin, such as Tabun.

The continued absence of chemical weapons from the battlefield suggests that the message was received and understood.

Iron Company

The Royal Iron Company of Goldshire which had been granted a number of trading concessions it regarded as being political concessions in Goldshire, began to move battalion strength formations of men into the ports of New Harbour, Chryste and Erudition in response to the deteriorating security situation, in addition to 20,000 men-at-arms dispatched to Goldshire at a theatre level and an unspecified number of operatives aligned with the Office of Shadows [4]. This deployment was a source of unease for the ESB Group which was, by this stage, and after having ostensibly crushed the Assayers, increasingly jealous of the powers and privileges it had amassed in Goldshire since its inception in 1634. However, since both corporations were the beneficiaries of the patronage of Queen Noor, they remained, ostensibly, on the same side.

Mutiny of the Regulars

The revolt of the remaining Goldshire Regulars began at 5 p.m. on 3 Vixaslaa 1640, when the 5th and 6th Mechanised Infantry Battalions rose and began to murder the Imperial officers garrisoned at the Auraumbre Barracks in Goldshire Hamlet. They were quickly joined by a rabble from the city, who set upon any Elw or Imperialists they could find. The timing of the uprising was intended to catch the Imperialists in the dining halls of the officer's messes where they would be concentrated together and mostly unarmed. In this they were brutally successful and soon swept on into the city itself. The 7th Manoeuvre Support Brigade meanwhile, having held back originally, quickly joined the mutiny as its success became evident and drove on Goldshire Palace in the hope of catching the Queen.

Noor however was still in Kingsgate, enthralled by her new religious advisers and the spectacle of the fighting pits, leaving the city of Goldshire Hamlet in the care of Doctor Cryptsinger.

This was unknown to the mutineers and her public diary had her scheduled to be hosting a trade fair in the city on the following day.

Effects

The civil war saw a revival in the ancient Cedrist religion as well as the reintroduction of various practices such as gladiatorial combat, human sacrifice and the mass enslavement of displaced persons. The various factions on both sides sought to make the war pay for itself by resorting to the plunder of the opposing sides territory. Criminality also dramatically increased with the Mercaja side especially resorting to drugs smuggling, extortion, racketeering and the fraudulent transmutation of base metals into gold and silver in order to fund its operations.