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[Vivalas]

I'll join Estroa. Steam power ftw

[Twinwolf]

Renaissance Era Conflict and World Developments

In the renaissance era, there were few conflicts between Askia and Etroa as compared to the previous ages - but that did not mean that it would be an era of peace. Askia was rent by a vicious civil war starting in it’s borderlands; the Ruularan Revolt, as it was known as it was going on, was made successful by the cavalry of the state from which the revolt takes it’s name. The Rulaaran cavalry wielded both pistols, and magnetized javelins that were attracted to the iron armor of their foes; a spearhead to break the royalist lines. The revolt led to the overthrow of the ruling dynasty and the installation of a new government, where the leader was decided from among the intellectual griot class. Before the revolt, the kingdom of Askia had worked on a new class of ships, large boats covered bow to stern in magnetoglass cannons - powderless weapons using the properties of magnetoglass to accelerate their ammunition as fast as it was loaded. While fast firing compared to contemporaries, the cannons did have issue with maintaining the speed and magnetic charge, and with lacking the explosive component of powder shells. In later years, the concept of the cannon was applied to infantry firearms during a failed counter-revolution, and magnetoglass was used to make a special pendulum clock that would be accurate even on the seas.

Etroa, meanwhile, was embroiled in it’s own wars and produced it’s own innovations to match them. The Sunic Lead cartridge was created in this time for use in Etroan muskets, creating shots that would catch fire in the air and set their targets ablaze as they expended their energy on contact, turning an Etroan gunline into a terrifying force to face compared to mundane nations. This would prove useful as the small nation of Eld, to Etroa’s West, petitioned to become a protected state rather than be conquered by a neighbor. In exchange for the military assistance of Etroa, they gave them the unique resource that attracted so many enemies: skytears, a strange black stone that changed it’s density in response to heat. After the war was won, Etroa used the skytears to build great galleons; absolutely huge, and with skytear-reinforced beams connected with sunseeds; when the galleon took on water, the sunseeds grew hot, causing the skytears to lose density and weight. It was nearly impossible to actually sink such a ship; most would limp back to port, and even those that became unable to function remained on the surface as floating shipwrecks, easy to salvage by following expeditions. Later on, they used horses provided by their new allies to create Colonial and Protectorate forces, or dragoons, using combination blunderbuss-pistols filled with tiny sunic lead balls, and they also upsized sunic lead into cannon balls.

It wasn’t long before new war broke out between the two; the new technology and the time since the last war not cooling tensions but instead making the soldiers on each side eager for another shot at each other.

[Twinwolf]

Industrial Era Conflict and World Developments

As war was officially declared, Askia and Etroa alike braced themselves; surely the upstart Yuzuan Empire wouldn’t be able to stand against their technology and resources, their fighting spirits. They had both prepared well, developing further even as the storm gathered.

Askian griots had invented the Lantarkifume Shells for their cannons, a terrible weapon indeed - rather than a traditional explosive, the payload of the Lantarkiufme Shell was a canister of a new variation on magnetofumes; crackling with electricity as if they had captured lightning itself, as the “lantarkifumes” spread from the point of impact they send vicious shocks of electricity into anything and anyone in their range. The invention of the Sundiata Engine and it’s integration into Askian industry helped to provide the war material to supply the army, and in the decades following the war would lead to a resurgence in secular invention and industry compared to the formerly religiously-dominated sciences. Less dramatic inventions included the Paasi-Kakano cruisers, a modernization of previous Askian ships using magnetofume-treated metal to seal breaches and be far more durable than it’s armor suggested, and the Lantarkifluid Grenades, which would send a mass of electrically charged fluid over an area with electricity arcing between splatters, denying the area until the charge was expended.

Meanwhile, Etroa’s military scientists worked and worked. The project had begun a decade prior and received it’s proper attention in the time leading to the war with Yuzuan. Inspired by the icebergs of the poles, a great scientist sought to weaponize them. Hithon Pike and his team, through the use of an alloy of sunseeds and various other metals dubbed “Olszewskium” that projected cold into water instead of heat, made a new kind of warship. A massive pentagonal floating fortress of a strong ice-like material, loaded down with enough cannons to outfit a fleet. The E.R.S. Eclipse, while very expensive and slow, with only one ship of it’s class created, was a terrifying thing to fight, as if a castle had uprooted itself and entered the fray. This would spearhead Etroa’s “Operation Eclipse”, a preemptive strike on Yuzuan territory. The ship was powered by the Self Contained Turbine Apparatus, an engine that revolutionized Etroan industry in addition to serving on it’s warships. Escorting the Eclipse were the new Anor-class Armored Cruisers, a modern design sharing the near unsinkable quality of the earlier galleons. On the ground, the creation of the Timekeeper Clockwork Marksman Rifle gave Etroan snipers a surprisingly high fire rate and aiming ability.

The allies of the nations prepared for war. Askia and Etroa had, for once, stopped bickering and warring each other to focus elsewhere - anything else would risk destruction.

The first wave, as it was, was batted away easily, by the Anor and Paasi-Kakano cruisers that patrolled the waves. The first ships had seemed utterly mundane, backwards even, wooden and with barely any cannons. People started to relax - was that it? All this preparation, and it was just a fleet sent to the slaughter. People started to relax. People started to lower their guards.

They weren’t ready for the second wave. It began when coastal defenses abruptly were attacked all across the ismuth. Scholars speculate how the Yuzuan infiiltrators had made it to them; had they been dropped from the first wave while ships were occupied mopping up? Had they been sent in a circuitous route to come in from the land borders? Had they contacted and funded existing dissidents among the citizenry? Whatever the case, the real war was on. While this was going on, another fleet had appeared; or rather what looked like three fleets worth of ships to either of the ismuth nations or their allies. What the Yuzuan Empire lacked in unique resources, it apparently made up for in numbers. Askian and Etroan ships took terrible tolls on the opposing forces, but there were so many, that they couldn’t totally stop landings.

The ground war was the bloodiest fighting as of yet seen in history. What had looked to be a short and clean war was four years of mud and blood, as the Yuzuan Empire managed to land their armies past the coastal defenses, and dug in. For the first year, they pushed and pushed and pushed, deeper into the territories of Askia and Etroa. Their soldiers were fanatic, willing to die in their places rather than retreat, and their suicidal ferocity allowed major early gains. In the second year, they lost steam as Askia and Etroa rallied; the Desert Tu was deadly to anyone unprepared and draining even if you were, and Askia’s superior knowledge of their own terrain ground them down. Etroa’s rapid fortification turned a simple trek downwards into the caldera into a meat grinder of forts after forts that weren’t on any maps because they hadn’t existed until the last week, nevermind that by this point the second attempt at Operation Eclipse was well underway on Yuzuan’s homeland.

In the third year, they were pushed off the ismuth, and the fight taken to them. Etroa had already begun, taking a beachhead on the Western shores, and now that fighting had ended on the ismuth they could finally reinforce them enough to make progress. Askia’s forces raced onwards into the Eastern section of the empire, using their army’s speed to take rapid gains like had occured against them. By the middle of the fourth year both armies were marching on the capital of Yuzuan from either direction, joined by resistance forces from those nations conquered by the empire in the past.

Just as they entered Yuzuan proper, a vicious citizen’s revolt broke out. The emperor was murdered in his palace and a provisional government installed, which promptly sued for peace. Askian and Etroan military commanders were raring to go, but by this point, the costs were too high - hundreds of thousands dead for each belligerent led to the leaders of each nation agreeing to peace. The Yuzuan Empire shrunk to a fraction of it’s former size and became the Yuzuan Federation, while the peace accords also guaranteed a lasting peace between Askia and Etroa…

---

Or that was how it was supposed to be. For a shockingly long time, it did last. There have been no major wars for 50 years. But the generals tire of peace. Politicans shout and scream at the despicable enemy, and rail against their predecessors for their peace accords. While cooler heads counsel caution, it is evident that peace will not last much longer…

It is the last preliminary turn! As promised, the lore contest will end this turn! You have until the end of the strategy phase.
To narrow the field a bit from broader “lore”, because that can be anything, there will be two categories:

One: History and Culture. What defines your nation? How has it grown and changed since it’s inception in ways other than those defined by contact with it’s opposite number? This could be a narrative (EX: The initiation of an Askian priest or an Etroan man carefully forging a weapon) or it could be more informative (EX: A description of the various governments the nation has gone through)

Two: Justification for war. What did the other side do that’s bringing you to the brink? This can take the form of an actual occurence (did dissidents in one of Etroa’s colonies claim Askian backing? Or was a high ranking Askian religious leader shot dead with a Timekeeper? Reminder if you go this route, that neither side will be guiltless.) or just propaganda (The Askians have insulted us for the final time! Or DEUS CHIJINDUM VULT!), or heck, maybe just old hostilities flaring up.

The winner of the first category will receive an Espionage Credit.
The winner of the second category will receive a Research Credit.

[Twinwolf]

Design votes locked, finally.