The River War

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The River War
Date: 1635 (Elw Calendar)
Place: Elwynnese Union, Shirekeep
Casus belli: Surprise attack on Eliria by Imperial Volunteer Forces.
Outcome: Elwynnese Victory. Conquest of Shirekeep. Accession of Kaiser Hjalmar. Ongoing Insurgency in the Vale of Angularis.
Participants
Shireroth Imperial Government (Faction)

Win'Eth House of Win'Eth
Order of the Final Days
Dark Orchid Society
Brotherhood of Lest

ElwynnElwynnese Union
ElwynnHouse of Ayreon-Kalirion
Elwynn House of Ettlingar Freyu
Commanders
House of Win'EthPrincess Margana Win'Eth
Imperial ForcesRollo Maibock†
Mercenaries Mattias von Roon†
Mercenaries Joachim of Walstadt†
Elwynn Hallbjörn/Hjalmar
Elwynn King Noah
Elwynn Fjǫrleif Llængjarla
Elwynn Francisco Burnside†
ElwynnThorgils Tarjeisson
Strength
Imperial Shirerithian Air Forces:
Imperial Volunteer Forces:
Order of the Final Days:
Mercenaries:
Behsaz Militia (Nationalist Faction):
Fleur de Lys-Longships Guard:
Union Defence Force:
Leonid Guards:
Vanic Temple Guards:
Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels:
Emirati Riddare:
Behsaz Militia (Royalist Faction):
Casualties
Notes
Strength and casualties of both sides are estimates

The River War was an unsuccessful attempt by hard-line Cedrists and Elwynnese ultra-nationalists to mount a quick decapitation strike on the Monarchy of Elwynn which was led by Princess Margana, the daughter of Kaiser Brrapa VII and sponsored by the patricians of Shirekeep and the Court within Raynor's Keep.

In spite of being well resourced and brutally executed, the attempted takeover of Elwynn by a combination of a coup and 'hybrid warfare' failed spectacularly and rebounded upon the heads of the plotters. Not only were they unsuccessful in their efforts to exterminate the Royal Family of Elwynn but the war ended with the King's father entering Shirekeep as a conqueror.


Timeline

Reire 9 Vixaslaa, 1623 - The Abdication of the Prince Jonathan. Storjarl Hallbjörn Haraldsson appointed Steward for Prince Thorstein Noah. Courtiers in Shirekeep alarmed. Republicans, Communists, Nationalists & Humanists in Elwynn furious.
23 Vixaslaa, 1623 - Concordat of Avaldsnes. Cedrists outraged at the introduction of 'yet more foreign demons'. Church of Elwynn notably unhappy at
Amnure 19 Gevrader, 1629 - Prince Noah is elevated to kingship, the first in Elwynn's history and a break with tradition and precedent that infuriates Ayreonists.
Izillare 8 Vixaslaa, 1629 - The Union Defence Force re-established.
23 Vixaslaa 1630: Constitution amended to further criminalise discrimination against non-human 'Sentinent Beings'. Perceived by Humanists as undermining the Human Supremacy in Elwynn for the benefit of the Vanafolk.
Reire 9 Fasmas, 1633 - Brrapa VII ascends the Golden Mango Throne. Hallbjörn Haraldsson appointed Steward of Shireroth.
Reire 21 Araroqpinu, 1633 - Father Dominus, Master of the Order of the Final Days granted royal patronage to defend the Cedrist Faith. Originally intended to target Sighvat the Yardistani.
TBC 1633/1634 - Margana WinEith falls under the influence of Father Dominus.
1634 - Margana WinEith engaged to protegee of Father Dominus, Count Delven of Kezan.
Early 1635 - The murder of Count Delven by Deimos Jasonides (why not) after an altercation in a bar. Stricken with grief and rage, counselled by Father Dominus, Margana aligns strongly with the faction in the Imperial Court that advocates a preemptive war against Elwynn before it grows to dominate all of Shireroth.
18 Araroqpinu 1635 - al-Zaraqi Cell (Jingdaoese Tegong) organises a medical kidnapping and stages an attempt on the life of heavily pregnant Queen Noor. Heavy handed response by the security forces results in localised fighting in Alalehzamin and Utasia. Conspirators take advantage to begin moving assets into Elwynn.
24 Araroqpinu, 1635 - Attack on Eliria.
Reire 15 Elroqpinu, 1635 - Siege of Shirekeep begins.
Izillare 20 Elroqpinu, 1635 - UDF enters Shirekeep. Death of Brrapa VII. Hallbjörn acclaimed as Kaiser Hjalmar.

The Beginnings of a Conspiracy

A Coalition of the Desperate and the Damned

The Plan takes Shape

Battle of Eliria

Bombs detonated along the route of the King's traditional morning procession. Mass civilian casualties ensue. Hallbjörn Haraldsson rushed to the scene at the head of a security detail under his personal command to ensure the safety of the King and to extract him from harms way. Gunmen ambush the first-responders arriving at the scene, including Hallbjörn's detachment, killing most and wounding Hallbjörn who is cut off and pursued by a death-squad as a high priority target. In the meantime Noah, although encumbered by ceremonial armour and thrown from his eviscerated horse, had managed to stagger clear of the kill zone, although dazed and bloodied as he did so. He remained however, singularly conspicuous and his attackers quickly set to work trying to bring him down. The King however was not one for yielding. After hacking to death one assailant who foolishly had defied orders and tried to capture him alive, Noah was saved by loyalist civilians who, by acting as human shields, sacrificed their lives buying him time to escape. The King was then rescued by a detachment of Longships Guardsmen, who delivered him to the police barracks on Cho'Gall Avenue.

Under the cover of this carnage the plotters launched a devastating surprise attack on Eliria utilising mercenaries and rebel militants smuggled into the city during the days prior to the attack. Prince Nathaniel International Airport stormed by terrorists disembarking from a specially chartered flight.

UDF Aerodrome and main depot in Eliria hit by 'shock and awe' air strikes organised by elements of the Imperial Shirerithian Air Forces in league with the coup plotters.

The Palace of Krull and Eliria Castle was locked down by the palace guards and suicide car bombers where thwarted by a combination of automatically raised steel barriers on the approach roads to the palaces and accurate sniper fire from the turrets and battlements of Eliria Castle. The chaos however meant that both Noah and Hallbjörn were, for the moment, effectively incommunicado, leaving the task of organising a response in the hands of Fjǫrleif Hallbjörnsdóttir and the slightly improbable character of Yumi Zotrasdóttir.

Hallbjörn, trapped out on the streets and forced to engage in a battle of wits with his pursuers, began to turn the tables on them by leaving false trails causing the assailants to split up, allowing him to double back and begin to pick them off, one at a time, whittling down their numbers and undermining their morale and resolve at a time when they needed to be brutal and decisive in order to achieve their objectives before the authorities were able to re-establish their command structures and bring overwhelming firepower to bear.

Battle of Islus

The strategic importance of Islus for the coup plotters was that it controlled the East Elwynn Sluices which controlled the flow of water on the White Elwynn and served as a barrier to navigation between Shirekeep and Eliria. For the bulk of the mercenary force to continue its journey northwards it would be necessary to secure the sluices.

The Imperial Volunteer Forces launched their offensive on the same day as the attacks in Eliria unfolded, no pre-raid bombing took place as to avoid damaging infrastructure in and around the sluices and to maintain the element of surprise. Destruction of the East Elwynn Sluice would have had grave results for both sides and the peoples of Elwynn, Goldshire and Shirekeep.

The strike force disembarked at a landing zone 1.3km north-west of the sluices from a rigid airship disguised as a Ryker blimp that had experienced technical problems and been obliged to make a forced landing just inside Elwynnese territory. A convoy of four ambulances, two fire-engines and a heavy rescue vehicle was dispatched by the Islus Commandery of the Society of St. Harald's Emergency Services (SHES) and swiftly arrived at the scene. The emergency workers were allowed to begin their inspection of the airship before the crew and 'passengers' of the revealed their hostile intent, at which point it was too late and those who tried to radio a warning back to Islus were gunned down in the cabs of their vehicles. In this manner an ambulances and the two fire-engines were rendered inoperable. A total of thirty society members (eighteen male confrères, twelve female consœurs) comprised of ten paramedics, eleven fire fighters and nine rescue specialists, including the twice decorated King's Rescuer, Ahmed Farhan KR, were forcibly detained by the commandos. These prisoners were then led into a nearby copse where they were forced to strip out of their uniforms before being forced to kneel down naked in the dirt. Each one was then executed by being shot once in the base of the skull at point blank range by a semi-automatic weapon. The bodies, subsequently identifiable only from their dental records, were left where they had fallen. The commandos then gathered up the discarded uniforms and returned to the airship where they quickly washed the blood from their hands and faces before selecting who from amongst their number would don the SHES uniforms. Taking the surviving two ambulances and the heavy rescue vehicle, a party of fifteen commandos set off in the direction of the sluice. Taking full advantage of their disguises the raiding party gained access to the perimeter at the west gate, whereupon they were able to surprise and overpower the Emirati Riddare guards before garroting them and leaving behind a party of five men, now changed into those uniforms, to hold the gate for the main party of the strike force, who were advancing on foot. The bodies were dragged out of view and dumped into a janitor's cupboard in the guardroom.

The remaining ten men took the heavy rescue vehicle and drove round to the pound locks and floodgates of the navigable western channel of the White Elwynn. Holding this would prove crucial to allowing the towed invasion barges to sail north beyond Islus.

Although it was unbeknown to the attackers at this stage, they had already lost the advantage of surprise. It so happened that, on that morning, a shepherd had taken the local baker's young daughter into that same copse so that they might get to know each other better before returning to their respective chores for the day. As it happened, they had become so thoroughly acquainted that they had fallen into a deep slumber and overslept to the point that the morning was well advanced when they were rudely awoken by a succession of loud gunshots. Crawling through the undergrowth, they were able to observe the raiders departing the scene of the massacre. Pausing only to gather up their clothes, the pair crept through to the edge of the copse where they were able to see the whole scene of armed men stood in front of a vast airship, changing uniforms and taking the three commandeered vehicles and driving off in the direction of the sluices. They also saw a party of eighty heavily armed men in khaki combat fatigues form up and set off on foot in the same direction. This left five men, two in uniforms of the Ryker Airship's corporation and three in civilian clothes of a cut that suggested plain-clothes detectives of the Corps of Gentlemen-at-Cudgels to clean up the crime scene and to deal with any countryside strollers come to gawp at the grounded airship. Appalled at what they had witnessed, the pair doubled back into the dense and tangled foliage of the copse. Their distress was multiplied as, in their hurry they blundered onto the row of mowed down corpses. Rushing now through the undergrowth, but fortunately not pursued, they had, after moments of agonising dread and mounting panic, managed to locate their bicycles and retraced their route out of the copse along the by-lane that led back to the rural outskirts of Islus. The baker's daughter had an Elwnet enabled communications hailer and, as soon as she heard the ping that confirmed she had a signal, she was able to place a call alerting the authorities that 'terrorists' had brought an airship down near the East Elwynn Sluice and murdered the first-responders.

By now the first garbled reports of the atrocities in Eliria were starting to fly over the Elwnet and this emergency call, combined with the earlier reports of an airship in distress, was sufficient to spark considerable alarm amongst the authorities in Islus.

Disaster at Zoroaster

Struggling to react to the news of the fall of Islus, the Arandur of Alalehzamin and Utasia dispatched his aide, an Alexandrian who rejoiced in the name of Francisco Solano Burnside, to take command of what forces could be gathered in the precinct to halt the advance on Eliria and retake the second city of the Emirate. It did not prove to be an inspired choice.

The man, described as a 'tsunami of corpulent flesh' with a pear-shaped face and heavy pendulous jowls, was often ridiculed for having lost all semblance of the human form. Moreover, this physically repulsive megalomaniac fancied himself as an expert of military matters and had built his career upon somehow being able to convince his colleagues of this quite improbable fact. He was even known, it was said, to keep one arm inside his jacket to ape the posture of that famous general Lord Montague. At this first conference with the contactable UDF commanders and various paramilitary leaders in a hastily convened 'operations room' in Xahazerke city hall, he was however able to impress upon those gathered there a sense of his determination and confidence. It was a pity for them all that this was a confidence without foundation.

Islus, he portentously informed them, was the key to control of the White Elwynn, without it there could be no victory and Eliria could not be defended. Without hesitation he ordered Brigadgeneral Mankell to mobilise the 101st Elwynnbrigaden and to take it back. His certitude of victory was reinforced by the flattery of the politically astute Kapten Eliza Carstens, who now became his foremost accomplice. It is fair to say that she was possessed of a personality almost as dreadful as that of Burnside himself. Indeed it was Carstens, who claimed to be the third cousin of the late Conducător Royston Merrick, who fed Burnside's vanity, filling his mind with ideas of military greatness. Henceforth she was always at his side urging him onwards and it is widely presumed that she became his mistress after that first evening.

It was probably at her suggestion that a state banquet and formal ball was organised in Xahazerke, a town that had, in all likelihood, never previously witnessed such a spectacle. Eliza certainly was at the fore when it came to managing the event. All the burghers of the city were instructed, on the pain of deliberately unspecified consequences, to appear in their richest clothes and the ladies to year all their jewels. An oil painting of King Noah was placed upon an empty throne and everyone obediently bowed to his likeness throughout the evening during the six course banquet. No sooner had the orchestra finished its uncertain recital of the National Anthem and struck up the first chords of the first dance, which Francisco's waddling form had the dubious privilege of leading, when a motorcycle courier arrived bringing Burnside news of the 101st's surrender to the coup plotters. Burnside lost what little self-control he normally possessed, shrieking the foulest imaginable curses against the name of Mankell. The Brigadier-General, wisely as it happened, elected not to return with news of his humiliation and instead travelled south to Shirekeep as an honoured prisoner, to make his submission to the Mango Throne. In his absence Mankell's family was subjected to a vindictive and vicious 'writ of cudgelling' instead. In the absence of the normal peacetime rules and procedures, the punishment beating was appallingly brutal and the Brigadier-General's nine-year old son subsequently died from internal bleeding on the brain caused by a fractured skull.

As for the disaster that overwhelmed the 101st, it proved to be one of the worst humiliations to ever befall the UDF.

Repulse at Echo

The Pursuit

Siege of Shirekeep

Aftermath

Controversy

It was said by some that Brrapa VII was conveniently ill at the start of the war and conveniently dead at its end.