NEW VOSTOKA HISTORY -- Part V "The Industrious War"

 PREFACE: Remember this? I got around to finishing the remaining maps and written sections, pertaining to New Vostoka's 700 year history! Its a bit wordy but, for those of you who enjoy world building and geopolitical history stuff, I hope you enjoy the rest of these!

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    The last hundred years of the fifth Interval literally and figuratively bled into the sixth, known as the Industrial or Industrious War, the Second Pantheon Wars, and the Third of the Hundred Year Wars. Igniting from the powder keg of conflicting governing forces and ideologies - namely the traditional vs the rising progressive - of the Lucid Age, and fueled by its new technologies. The first chapter of warfare technically began on 599Æ, with the advent of the Guild Revolutions: a series of armed people’s revolutions driven by Syndicalist cells throughout the Confederation. 

     Seeking to unseat the Guild Barons and their mercantilist allies by force, these revolutions would quietly destabilize the region amid the greater conflict that initiated that same year, when the convening of Barons at Prospect erupted into chaos, due to a successful Syndicalist assassination of the Baron of Riekwaulde [Aldous Werner], his family, and his council. While the nobility of Riekwaulde scrambled to fill the power vacuum, the surrounding Provinces of Stalwaulde, Vastwaulde, and Holograd moved to annex the Hollow City and its surrounding, ungoverned territory - culminating in the unofficial dissolution of the Guild Confederation and the first battles of the Industrious War, which defined its Eastern Theater for the next few decades.

     Trenches and fortifications began to fill the Vastlands of the northern Stalriek - as each of the three aforementioned Barons mobilized their forces against one another - while the Sage Cities became the sitting bastion of Riekwaulde’s political remnants [The Sage City Headmasters nobility]; flanked by the mountainous weapon-lords of the Onix-Guild backed Stalwaulde Baron to the west, and the agrarian militias of the Vastwaulde Baron and his Rhust-Guild to the east.

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Across the Stalwal, the Western Theatre formed congruent to the chaos beyond the mountains, as a series of revolutions and alliances followed suit in the wake of war’s declaration like a domino effect: 

• In the Province of Saltzgrad, Syndicalist cells embedded throughout the modernizing industrial landscape began conducting insurgent operations to depose the Factory Barons, who responded by hiring Ro’Thkai Mercenaries to protect their assets. Moreover, the Barons established the Stalriek Industrial League with Stalwaulde via the Mining & Industry Pact to maintain their mutual control over the mining network shared between them, and free-trade of industrial goods [namely weapons].
  
• The Baron of Novigrad [Atlus Greaves] consolidated his power by securing allegiance to the sovereign isle of Kobaul, where the Silver Citadel of the Order of Diarchs reigned over its sprawling faith - scattered and divided among the dying Confederation. Novigrad would provide protection with its superior navy, in exchange for annexation of the Isle and recognition as the only legitimate political inheritor of the Reverent. This shrewd maneuvering fueled mounting pressure on the Kingdom of Dunstol to avoid hostilities with Novigrad, culminating in the “White Water” Commerce Alliance. The treaty hinged on the stipulation that the pivotal trade-city of Briteport in Sorvigrad Province fall to Novigrad in the ensuing, inevitable conflict - and thus it inevitably became the first major battle of the theater.
  
• In response to this, the Baron of Sorvigrad Province [Minerva Aurmel] stormed the independent territory of the then-named City of Monarchs [Sorvigrad City], which had been divided between the interests of the Confederation during the Lucid Age, for the purpose of maintaining the neutrality of the Old Monarchy capitol. Prior to this, Sorvigrad struck a nonaggression alliance called the Ashen Accords with the United Provinces of Ghaswaulde and Volgrad - under the joint jurisdiction of the Karbyn and Solfyr Guilds, formed in the aftermath of the First Pantheon War. Eager to “reclaim” what was once the Republic of Stolgrad [Dunstol], the Ashen provinces ramped up their militarization as The Blackened Channel would soon become a ceaseless blockade of naval conflict - while Sorvigrad challenged Novigrad’s claim to authority over the crumbling Confederation.

As these events unfolded in relatively rapid succession, the Confederation of Khelod Guilds - as a single united entity - collapsed into civil war, with in-fighting Loyalist factions among the Barons and their respective Provincial territories, and the Syndicalist cells vying for a reunified People’s Confederation.

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      Elsewhere in the realm, civil and religious friction in both Karrikos and Kolov would erupt in the Second Pantheon Wars, which would be swallowed by the global catastrophe of the Industrious War as every nation was now irreversibly entangled with each other’s affairs.

     In 621Æ, The Feudal State of Kolov finally splintered, with the ideologically opposed Houses either dividing internally or Separating from the Council Nobility entirely, in what would be known as the Kolov House Crisis. This faction declared themselves the House Reformists, or Separatists, and were based primarily in mainland [Northern] Kolov where they shared a border with the Matriarchal Convent and the Confederation Province of Vastwaulde - wherein sympathetic Syndicalists allied themselves with the reformist Cyotek, and in some cases, took them into their ranks as part of their global effort to combat Nobility classists. This phenomena contributed to the multifaceted and intersectional nature of the Syndicalist movement and their aims [becoming the foundations of contemporary Novigrad Province]. 

      Three years later, in 625Æ, The Province of Vastwaulde succumbed to internal strife as emergency food stock-piling and famine stirred the Rhust farming Guild into fully embracing the Syndicalists, leading to the Agrarian Rebellion - ending swiftly with the execution of the Rhust Baron [Richter Vastwyn] and the establishment of an Interim Party Government, which formally backed the House Reformists in neighboring Kolov. The traditionalist House Orthodoxy responded with open warfare, beginning with the infamous Ethyr Isle Slaughter - a militarized purge of all suspected Reformists on the southern-Kolov Island. 

     Outcry throughout the realm demonized the Orthodox Houses, but an official front with another power did not open until late in the conflict, when in 627Æ the Kolovan Navy shot down a Khelod Guild trade-airship suspected of harboring Reformists/Syndicalists [The G.A.S. Grunhilde] - the resulting Khelod death toll immediately drew the ire of Holograd Province, where the ship originated. Their Loyalist armies promptly crossed the borders of Kolov in an attempt to seize the cities of Admeos and Glimmerfall. The inevitable pushback led to a sizeable contested territory as both nations now vied for each other’s Hollow Cities: Obsidia and The Fell - the latter of which was consumed by warring Houses, each embedding themselves within the massive city and its surrounding landscape.

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     The nation of Karrikos, surrounded on all sides by the steady outbreak of civil war, experienced its own crisis in the Breaking of the Clans: an inevitable rupture among the remains of the 5 Greater Clans, as the unresolved tension between both Karrikan Sects - The Prae’tors and Th’rashik - plunged the entire subcontinent into yet another internalized conflict.

     During the Lucid Age of Steel, the Th’rashik sect circumvented military restrictions placed on the Clans following the end of the First Pantheon Wars, by forming numerous disjointed and non-unified militias, known as Marauder Packs [essentially Tribes of mercenaries] which provided armed service to Khelod Guild Barons, Tetryan lords, and various other figures and factions of Nobility - as well as a number of underground, unsanctioned organizations. Many of these contracts permeated the Protectorates, which would soon become the chaotic Southern Theater of the Industrious War, after authorities within both Kolov and the Confederation [namely the House Orthodoxy and Holograd] would utilize Marauder mercs in their exchange.

     This spelled total disaster when in 630Æ the Th’rashik sect formally declared its intent to avenge their patron Kafrah [now canonized] and conquer the Protectorates, wipe out the Prae’tors, and enslave the Kin-races - as well as the Cyotek - for whom they had developed a mutual hatred after the Pantheon Wars. Their violently expansionist campaign was only made possible by the binding of the Marauder Packs [now known as The Scourge], which readily - and very likely with premeditation - united against their various employers. This event initiated the Second Desert Crusades and once more involved the Cyotek, Khelod, and Tetryan races in a Ro’Thkai religious war. It was just as much a war for resources and territory: as with the Noxoleum rich lake of the Eye of Karrik [under the jurisdiction of Holograd, with the drilling-fields and newly constructed Black Oasis Noxoleum Rig] holding both practical and cultural significance to the Th’rashik, and therefore among their first raiding targets. The Protectorates too became entangled in the Crusades, with each rivaling faction therein committing forces to the region as it destabilized into unabated entrenchment and bloodshed for oil, faith, and minerals. Syndicalists sieged against Baron assets, Reformist and Orthodox Houses vied for colonial control, and so forth.

     The Scourge was also aided in their immediate alliance with the Korsairs of the Karrikan Gulf, a Ro’Thkai clan of pirates unimpeded by the laws of the mainland - pledging their sizeable naval force, open warfare on the Crystal Sea began, with Scourge forces reaching as far as the Fissure and the colonial shores of the Forgotten Expanse. Another addition to the Scourge were the Five-Families of the Vermkin underground civilization which continued to grow in the dank places of the Realm - seeking to claim their place on the surface amid the chaos and upheaval.

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     This left the reclusive nation of Xiros the last Vostokan civilization uninvolved in the Industrious War [which they called “The Bleeding of the World”]. During the Lucid Ages, the Queen of Riven - Evelyra Xir Kahn  - pushed her territory into the frigid north and the polar south, which were at last given names: Tyvos and Skoros, respectively. Both would become tentatively habitable havens for Kin races such as the Vermis, Grae, and Dreg - seeking to escape the unending chaos of the other races and their Nations. Unfortunately, it was not to last.

     Throughout the late 630’s, Th’rashik raiders would puncture the coasts of western Xiros, where Cyotek colonies - largely separated from the concerns of the House Nobility - fell victim to their brutalist campaign. Originally unconcerned with their fates, the Tetryan Queen soon found her nation reeling under the advance of a blood-thirsty, xenophobic Scourge which pierced further into Xiros. Acting from a century of isolationist practice, she took it upon her own people to combat the scourge, unassisted by other nations; rather, she turned to the symbiotic Kathar with whom the Tetrya of Xiros were now irreversibly bonded. The ensuing Osriek Campaigns of Fissures, Glass, and Plagues were three separate regional incursions by the Scourge, all of which were successfully repelled. It is recorded that during this time, the Tetrya militarized the Fey in some capacity, and both factions suffered tremendously from congruent outbreaks of the once-contained Blight Rot, which the Th’Rashik began to incorporate into their malformed religious sect.

      It was not until late in the War that the reality of this invasion became more clear in its origins - the Queen’s own son, Salazaar Xir Kahn, betrayed his royal birthright and the Tetrya of Xiros after his appointed administration of the expeditions to Skoros met with an ill-fate: there he encountered a “slumbering God of worms and ice”, the denounced Usurped Euclidean called Zaul. In the Tetryan faith, Zaul was a heinous figure ousted by his fellow Ancients and entombed within the planet itself as they ascended without him. Salazaar “bore witness” to Zaul’s stirring, and was “driven mad” - reduced to his possessed emissary. Salazaar - believed to be dead by his mournful Mother and his sister, Aurore - met in secret with the Th’Rashik to induct them into the faith of Zaul, co-opting their twisted visions of Karrik and converting them to his/Zaul’s cause. This created an entirely new derivative sect of clans - the Zol’Vhok - who were cursed with “Zaul’s Gift”: the ability to replicate upon death. And thus Salazaar orchestrated the invasion and sought to cripple his own people by personally weaponizing the Blight Rot, becoming among the first to practice functional Techromancy.

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     As the Industrious War progressed, so too did the innovations of the last Lucid Age, as the following technologies became widespread and available among its warring factions to each their benefit and expense:

• Armored Airships and Steamships: The advent of Noxoleum combustion engineering after the Surge resulted in transportation advancements tempered by warfare, in the form of aerial and nautical units which expanded the theaters of war. Powerful gunboats and Dreadnoughts would come to dominate both the seas and the skies.
  
• War Automata: Semi-autonomous machines, the precursors of which being armored artillery units known as “Clockwork Knights”, which were piloted by other races. Continued research into combining arkana and machinery resulted in the birth of an entire race of thinking metal soldiers and servants, which exploded forth from the factory districts of Novigrad - primarily those owned by the RAMSAY Mechanics and MAGNUS Heavy-Industrial companies [founded by the Tyton Guild-Barons Victor Von Magnus & Orwen Ramsay], which later merged with the financial giant Kings Bank, forming RMK [Ramsay, Magnus, & King] Automations; a dominant faction of the Industrious War.

     These technological marvels advanced alongside war’s events - within every theater, factions swelled, splintered, and succumbed. There was a stark contrast in the ongoing development of society across Vostoka; violence, disease, pollution, and turmoil as populations suffered the plight of war and Blight, while on the other hand economic boom and civil progression matched the war-fueled industrial revolution in step.

     By 650Æ, the geopolitical landscape of the New Vostoka had been altered drastically. The remains of the Confederation continued to be split among Four major factions:

-- In Saltzgrad, Syndicalists found further success in the Ashewood Riots, resulting in the ejection of the Guild Baron [Hyram Weston “H.W.” Grant] who fled south to Saltzgard City in an attempt to rule in exile, while his cities fell to the fold of the Syndicalist Provincial-Republic States. With three such States in total, the Syndicalists now held nearly half of the former-Confederation in its grip and had established a growing, disjointed nation-state governed by an apparatus called The Guild Union Lodge: a legislative body composed of Syndicalist Party Guild-appointees. 

-- With the division of Saltzgrad, the political remnants of the Stalriek Industrial League faced a two-front war for its material and munitional wealth. So began the Stalwal Campaign, wherein sprawling cave systems and mining networks became battlegrounds between Syndicalist and Guild Baron forces. Utilization of Kathar symbiotics as a weapon was popular in this time, as was mass deployment of Clockwork Knight armor-suits.

-- Shortly before its collapse, Holograd appealed to the Commerce Alliance of Novigrad and Dunstol, as the Pantheon Wars being fought between Ro’Thkai Clans and Cyotek Houses began to cannibalize its borders to the east and south, while Stalwaulde encroached from the north. In response, Novigrad “relieved” their dwindling forces and annexed it into their Alliance, stoking the regional war for Noxoleum Fuel - as both the Syndicalist States and the Industrial League declared war on the Alliance in their common pursuit of the precious resource, vital to the war effort on all fronts.

-- The contested territory between the Provinces of Novigrad and Saltzgrad [which was now divided into the Syndicated Provincial-Republic of North Saltzgrad and Southern Saltzgrad] became an independently controlled collective of manufacturing cities - Nuhaven, Gasquet, and Ashekov - under the jurisdiction of the enigmatic Ramsay Magnus & King Company, which merged in response to the division of Saltzgrad in 656Æ. Rather than capitulate the vital industrial districts to any one side, the shrewd men drew up two separate Mutual Independence Contracts - promising to provide each faction with weapons and military machinery endlessly churned out by the region, in exchange for political neutrality. The creation of this, the Mekha [or “Machine State”], led to the successful production and proliferation of advanced Automata, which would come to utterly define the latter half of the war.

-- In the Far western Stalriek, the Ashen nations and Dunstol continued their naval gridlock, with key battles exchanged throughout the Broken Sea and the Blackened Channel. The thwarted Invasion of Duke’s Landing was the climax of a bitter, decades-long siege of The Isle that nearly saw victory until the United Provinces of Volgrad and Ghaswaulde succumbed to mounting internal strife - a false-flag 2nd Blight Epidemic orchestrated by the Novigrad-aligned Triumvicarum, which relied on weaponized Blight Rot to cripple the Ashen Peninsula and provoke a civil war, as both Guilds blamed one another.

-- With the Ashen Accordant crippled, and Sorvigrad standing alone, the Province swiftly fell to the superior forces that surrounded it - the Holy City of the Monarchs once more became designated neutral territory [formally called the Null City], and the entire conflict of the Western Theater was ended in 657Æ with the signing of the Treaty of Three Forts - referring to the three remaining factions sharing borders along the Gulf of Ruin: Dunstol, Novigrad, and Volgrad. The office of Novigrad Regent Governor was created at this time, and granted to the sitting chairman elected by the Guild Barons [Atlus Greaves].

-- In 660Æ, Volgrad emerged from the short Ashen Civil War victorious with the chosen aid of the Commerce Alliance - having essentially usurped the Baron leadership and supplanted it with their own Diarchan nobility. The Province of Ghaswaulde was absorbed into the puppet state now named Volgast Province… forcefully uniting the Ashen Peninsula once more, but under the benefactorate of Dunstol and Novigrad, per the Treaty.

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     In Karrikos and the Protectorates, desert warfare raged and the Th’Rashik clans threatened its domination over the entire subcontinent, while the Cyotek House Crisis simmered to a virtual standstill.

-- By 665Æ, most Cyotek colonial territory was ceded to The Scourge, as the Crisis of the Houses consumed their meager military might. Moreover their distaste for the “Wretched Machines” [Automata] put them at a severe disadvantage while the 2nd Desert Crusade was defined by battalions of mechanical soldiers. The remains of the Eastern Protectorate was swallowed by the Scourge and Prae’Tor forces.

-- It was at this time that the Prae’Tor sect would bargain for an alliance with the northern Outlanders [Novigrad and Dunstol] - having “liberated” much of the Western Protectorate and spilled their own blood to protect their splintering borders. They agreed under the following conditions: The secured Protectorates would be merged into a single region under the joint authority of the signatories, and the Prae’Tors must aid in the political defeat of the Industrial League. The Pact Bound Alliance was formed.

For the remaining duration of the War, the subcontinent would slowly stabilize with the overwhelming mechanized forces of the Pact Bound grinding against the Th’Rashik, though the entrenched nature of the conflict would draw it out for nearly three decades.

-- In 667Æ, An informal armistice between the Orthodox and Reformist Houses was struck, with the overwhelming pressure of the Scourge forcing their hand in unity; in a desperate maneuver, the Houses formed a fragile peace to focus their combined military might in repelling both the Th’Rashik and Zol’Vok sects.

-- This fragile peace was yet another formative aspect of the “Two Societies” that would define contemporary Cyotek culture and the deadlocked political factions of North and South Kolov. Though the Crisis would later calm to a tepid state of distrust, cessation of hostilities would never end through diplomatic means, and South Kolov would remain closed off to Reformist House membership, while continuing to flex their economic and naval dominance over the Crystal Sea.

-- For the next 20 years, the united efforts of the Cyotek Houses, combined with those of the Pact-Bound Alliance to the west and the Tetrya of Xiros to the east, culminated in a slow but inevitable victory over the waning Scourge, which were pushed to their strongholds in the icy poles of Vostoka - and in the case of Karrikos, contained in the desert wastes that would become known as the Exiled Badlands.

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     The Industrious War entered a period of “epilogue” during the 690s, in which the broken and isolated forces of the Scourge were eliminated in a lengthy campaign of containment throughout the Realm. The simmering Cyotek House Crisis was now at a standstill, the Reformists having all but abandoned Kolov Province as they integrated themselves into the settling Provincial territories. Xiros had successfully purged its land of the Zol’Vohk, now dormant - but yet stirring - in the wastes of Tyvos and Skoros. Karrikos itself would recover, but would forever be marred by the physical and cultural scars of religious civil war after civil war; the victorious Prae’Tor Sect would be left to pick up the pieces of its nation, and rebuild the shattered Protectorates… which would eventually culminate into one single defined territory.

     In the north, the ongoing war between the remaining viable powers of the Commerce Alliance and the Syndicalist States had reached a stalemate. The Alchemic fallout of the Flatte led to the ruin of Syndicated North Saltzgrad, while the cannibalization of the Industrial League [with the Invasion of Gunrot, and culminating in the three-way War of Fort Stokes and the Onix Armories] in 691Æ left only two exhausted factions, which were content to spend the last decade of the war in a nebulous state of brinksmanship at their ever-morphing borders. With no major victory in sight, the war essentially grinded to a screeching halt. 

     Moreover, the Guild Barons were caught in a transitive change in their power structure, having spent much of their collective wealth on the war effort while shifting their influence from the obsolete Guilds to the changing government of Novigrad, which had become the preeminent financial and industrial power of the Realm - with a population that no longer completely reflected its leadership. Growing emigrations of Cyotek and Ro’Thkai, amid the abiding Tetryans, demanded representation that the Khelod Guild Barons could not provide. Fearing internal civil strife that would aid in the Syndicalists storming their borders - coupled with the sudden liquidation of RMK Automations, after its founders became reft over their production of Automata upon learning the machines began to exhibit growing intelligence - the Barons were left with few options.

     In a final bid to preserve the new status-quo and retain their dwindled wealth and power, the Barons of the Commerce Guild [at the behest of the Diarchan Church as well] offered a mutual peace accord with the Syndicalists, to cease hostilities and draw the lines of the map where they now lie; the Northern Riek was divided equally among the two powers, and the “people’s war for independence” had earned the Syndicalist States the conglomerated Province of a reunited Riekwaulde, fully titled The Syndicated People’s Province of Riekwaulde. After a final century of warfare that consumed all of New Vostoka, the last vestiges of the Industrious War came to an end.