Military: Croesgadwr Fyrch, Tollyn Maeryn
Population: 51,725,000
Capital: Solvik
Governor: Governor Har’s. 1770-1774, 1776 – Present
Nationality: Maer Braechi (both noun and adjective)
Affiliation: Western Crusader State
Allies: Easky, Western Arnyara, The Crusade
Climate: warm with mild winters adjacent to Lake Morandi; hotter, drier to the north and west, with harsh winters otherwise.
Terrain: Grasslands and Prairie central; hills south and west; semiarid, rocky desert north and east. Morandi shoreline rocky, often with high cliffs.
Since it’s liberation by the Crusade Maer Braech has seen her population explode and her infrastructure improve dramatically. Recent years of leadership by Campryg – “Marshal In the West” – Loeck have also seen Maer Braech reassume her long-neglected role as military powerhouse of the prairies, extending her influence far abroad.
With the death of Alykinder and the resulting divide between the Crusade in the west and east Maer Braech has become the center of what is essentially a new Crusader coalition completely separate from its parent in the east. Campryq Loeck is a power and command unto himself while still loyal to Crusader ideals and principles.
Loeck and his Crusaders and their allies launched a daring strategic campaign in 1780, with planning going for the attack dating back years prior. Their goal was the solidification of western Crusader rule in Maer Braech and Easky with the taking of major ports and coastlines of southeastern Creevin to link those two countries and control trade across Lake Morandi. Ultimately Campryg Loeck’s plan is a full scale re-invasion of Coftyr.
In service of this strategic plan compromises and alliances were made between Loeck and the Western Arnyaran Foskyldae. No shots between the two forces have been fired but both know the day will come. Maybe sooner than any suspect…
Recent Timeline
1763 Aerg Croesgadwr – Age of the Crusader
For several decades Maer Braech occupied western Toulmore as far east as Bovund. In early 1763, as one of the first Crusader offensives outside of Tok, the Crusader war machine drove Coftyr and Maer Braech from Toulmore’s borders. Maer Braech’s defeat in Toulmore came shockingly fast and was as much a blow to Maer Braechi morale as it was to its military forces.
Despite this defeat at the hand of Alykinder’s Crusaders most Maer Braechi looked upon the defeat as a reflection of their monarchy and their own First Families and admired rather than condemned the Crusade’s ideals. Much of this sentiment was driven by Maer Braech’s decades-long economic and military downturn and the growing distrust of the common Maer Braechi.
1766 Grand Army Rise
When the Grand Convocation of Royalist noble clans met in Creevin and agreed to form a vast, unified army to oppose the Crusaders, Maer Braech, with its deep water ports was chosen as the host for the supplies arriving from all corners of Alwyd. King Faelswyth, having reigned over a period of economic instability, worsened by the In the preceding three years what started as pub gossip as to the state of affairs of Maer Braech’s ruling class had become dangerously seditious protests, anti-royalist daily periodicals, arrests, trials and frequent crackdowns. Popular opinion within the country openly advocated revolt.
King Faelswyth, weary of the waning loyalty of his subjects, welcomed large formations of Creevish and Craesilian troops to garrison Maer Braech’s ports and to manage the massive stockpiles of supplies collected for the Grand Army. He knew as well that those foreign troops had it in their best interests to defend the King’s claim were it to come to revolt from his royal subjects.
1768 Grand Army Falls
As the Grand Army was picked apart piecemeal in Creevin to Maer Braech’s north, the most devastating blow to the Grand Army came with the destruction of Maer Braech’s major ports. Laugardi and Hovudra had their major wharfs destroyed and massive stockpiles of Grand Army munitions were bombed or sabotaged. There was limited ground fighting in Maer Braech and what there was, was mostly limited to the coastal regions. The primary source of this fighting was led by Crusader SBS backed Maer Braechi resistance groups against foreign troops of the Grand Army stationed in Maer Braech. The SBS exploited the existing rift developing within Maer Braech between rulers and the ruled to the Crusade’s advantage.
At the end of 1768 Maer Braech was in financial ruin. Too much of the nation’s capital had been invested in the Grand Army, and the country’s main source of trade, the ports of Laugardi and Hovudra were providing zero revenue to the monarchy.
Gaeryn Har’s started 1768 as school teacher and by the end of 1768 had risen to lead one of the largest anti-royalist factions in Maer Braech. Sympathetic to the Crusader cause, Har’s’ writings were used for motivational pamphlets, anonymous “letters to the editor” and other anti-royalist propaganda. The SBS noted Har’s’ gift early on and groomed and supported his rise to a leadership position.
1769 Rebellion
As spring dawned in 1769 so too did open rebellion in Maer Braech. Most armed conflict consisted of small skirmishes when there was actual fighting. Early on the majority of the rebellion was fought in the pubs and papers and on the radio. Har’s was a truly motivational writer and, though he was unassuming physically and possessed a soft spoken voice, his words carried weight when he spoke them aloud in pubs or from pirate radio broadcasts. While not a skilled military leader, Har’s survived several assassination attempts which provided an image of military prowess with the common quar. This drew many current and former military officers to his banner providing the martial experience he lacked.
In the fall of 1769 what became known as the War Along Caenal Way broke out on the 33rd of Hynafaed. Har’s and his leadership council were not so quietly meeting with local cell leaders in Solvik, the capital and home to the royal residence. Though expressly ordered by the king not to attempt an arrest, overzealous caenerols organized a daring raid on the warren where Har’s was staying. As the armored column surrounded the warren the news spread throughout the city. Within the hour thousands of civilians had filled the streets around the siege. As the crowd became increasingly agitated and began to hurl more than insults at the cordon of rhyflers Har’s exited the warren and climbed on top of one of the government tractors and began trying to talk both sides down. One royalist caenerol noticed that both the nearly silent crowd and the rhyflers under his command were swayed by Har’s words. Fearing mutiny, he drew his pistol, aimed at Har’s and fired. Har’s was knocked from the tractor and disappeared from sight. He was not fatally wounded, but this was not known to the crowd for at least a day afterward.
The streets erupted in a wild melee that in the end involved tractors and kites, rhyflers joining the crowds, civilians on both sides, and a fighting withdrawal down twenty two city blocks down Caenal Way over the course of three days. As the rebelling forces reached the gates of the royal residence at the end of Caenal Way on the morning of the fourth day King Faelswyth escaped in his rigid airship with close family members and only the riches they could carry. By nightfall any royal courtiers who would not renounce the King were banished from the city and their residences occupied by jubilant revelers. By lunch the next day a reluctant Har’s, limping from a bullet wound and shocked at such a rapid turn of events, Har’s was the de facto leader of Maer Braech. Modelling after the crusade, Har’s declared himself governor rather than king as was royalist tradition for centuries. He then called for elections at a national level to build a moot to help steer the country’s future.
1770 Crusader State
At the outset of 1770 two Crusader armies lay along the border to the north, the ports were invested, and the royal coffers were dry. Maer Braech had avoided the widespread devastation that so many other nations had suffered during the Crusade, however, her financial situation however, was dire. The SBS agents that had supported Har’s rise to power approached him with a message direct from Alykinder beseeching Har’s to join the Crusade willingly with the promise of upgrading Maer Braech’s infrastructure starting with a rebuilding of her major ports. In return Maer Braech would become the Crusade’s manufacturing and economic hub in the west.
The events of the preceding two years had shown the common quar of Maer Braech that the first families could not and would not take care of them. That the so-called commoners themselves could have power and a say in their daily lives and fortunes.
Har’s delivered many impassioned speeches emphasizing that his ideals, the ideals that had inspired the nation, were kin to those of Alykinder and the Crusade. That an alliance between the nation and Alykinder’s commonwealth of nations would be a boon to both.
In the summer of 1770 Maer Braech signed the Commonwealth Treaty and officially became a Crusader State.
In the winter of 1770 King Faelswyth was apprehended in Coftyr. The King and his immediate family, dressed as farmers with wagons stuffed with Maer Braech’s royal jewels, were caught by Crusader forces when the King attempted to bully his way past a security checkpoint.
1773 Waess Revolt, Cythwyn
The Cythwyn of 1772/1773 disrupted many of the traditional trade routes and was generally regarded as one of the worst Season of Storms seen in many generations. The Cythwyn was devastating to national economies, resource stockpiles and to every family and clan across Alwyd.
As the snows melted and the lakes thawed a full scale revolt took place in the east. Known as the Waess Revolt, large sections of Kryst, Lower Barro and Craesil broke into civil war and insurrection against their Crusader occupiers. Trade was effectively stopped via land routes between nations of the east and the west. More importantly to the western Crusader HQ was the vital flow of supplies to the Crusader armies in the west was no more.
Though repairs to Maer Braech’s major ports were not finished they were opened early to accommodate the armed convoys braving the waters of Lake Morandi to deliver what quar and material from Tok to Maer Braech that they could. By the end of 1773 even the armed convoys stopped attempting the lake crossing. Craesilian and Fidwogger surface fleets and submersibles made short work of any enemy convoys they encountered.
Much of the industries of Maer Braech, Easky and Leitrom were turned over to manufacturing Crusader equipment as quickly as those factories could be retooled. Trucks idled outside these factories and traveled straight to the front once loaded, swapping crews at way-stations along the way to keep the army’s lifeblood flowing south. Crusader Campryg Lycasta began purchasing major stockpiles of grain from Creevish farmers and moved it south by cadier, faerf and taru to support the Crusader forces besieging Coftyr.
Governor Har’s, whose strength lay in rhetoric and motivation, not national economies, stepped down as governor in favor of a series of governors more to Campryg Lycasta’s liking.
1774 Retreat from Coftyr
As Crusader Campryg Lycasta ordered the full retreat from Coftyr due to lack of fuel, bullets and chow. Great camps were built across Maer Braech to house the retreating army. Maer Braech’s own stockpiles and resources were low after the long winter but the populace turned out to welcome the beleaguered Crusaders as they crossed over the border and marched back into Maer Braech.
Over the next several years many Crusader units, after settling in their great camps, began their own farms where they grew vegetables and raised termites. They traded and bartered with the local Maer Braechi and intermarried and an even stronger bond formed between the populace and the “occupying” army. The ranks of the Crusader army began to swell as young Maer Braechi chose to join the Crusade rather than the Maer Braechi Tollyn Maeryn military.
Maer Braech became a refuge and then home for the Crusader armies.
Of note: As the Crusader loss in Coftyr became obvious, (medically) retired Caerten Loeck re-enlisted, as a Syrnol in the Croesgadwr. is-Caerten Loeck’s biography is covered elsewhere in this chapter.
1777 Har’s Returns
In early 1777 rumors of Alykinder’s failing health began to spread through the upper echelons of Crusader command and in the governing bodies of nations across Alwyd. The rumors appeared substantiated as the father of the Crusade disappeared from public for many months at a time and when he was seen it was quick and with short, prepared remarks only. In the east, Tok, home of the Crusade was nearly in a state of civil war.
Most notable to Maer Braech in 1777, as Loeck declares himself Campryg in the West, is that Loeck convinced Har’s to come out of retirement to take on the mantle of chief political advisor for the Western Crusader Forces and de-facto governor of Maer Braech. Loeck attributed much of the “fire in his belly” to reenlist to Har’s’ writings during Maer Braech’s darkest time. The two had corresponded via letters during Loeck’s time as caenerol while stationed in Creevin and both held the other in the highest respect and esteem. When Har’s refused to be reinstated as Governor the Campryg drove himself to Har’s’ mountain village home outside of Skagerholt and spent a weekend charming the Har’s clan and laying out his plans for the future of Maer Braech. At the conclusion of the weekend Loeck and Har’s drove back down the mountain together and by the following weekend Har’s was fully in charge of Maer Braech’s affairs once again.
1779 Secret pacts and the HQ moves to Maer Braech
It is generally believed that sometime in the winter of 1778/1779 Gigor Raedaer of the Arnyaran Nodd Ffae used the cover of a merchant caravan to meet in secret with the Campryg on more than one occasion. During this meeting Loeck, Raedaer and Har’s worked out their pact to allow Western Arnyara to reclaim ancestral lands within Creevin. In return Loeck required two conditions be met. First, the Western Arnyarans were to attack into north western Coftyr with enough force to draw resources away from Coftyr’s border with Maer Braech. Second, to progress no further east in Creevin than Abergerell, leaving northern Creevin intact and under the Dowager’s control. The pact between Maer Braech, Loeck and Raedaer, was only known initially to the Campryg, Har’s, Raedaer and Governor Labyl of Easky and was still considered speculative and unverified until late 1781.
In the spring of 1779 Loeck then stood in front of the Creevish Court and declared Creevin a free state and that the Crusader military and all political power would be withdrawn from Creevin in 70 day’s time.
By the end of summer all Crusader forces in Creevin had withdrawn south into Maer Braech and Creevin was abandoned to her fate.
For most of the preceding decade Maer Braech had remained relatively stable and untouched by direct warfare on a large scale. By this point the average Maer Braechi civilian was intensely loyal to Har’s and looked upon Campryg Loeck as a charismatic and dashing figure. Loeck was larger than life to the Crusader rank and file and the officer corps were desperate for his notice. Loeck’s actions during his time as Caenerol of the Western Rhyfler Corps, effectively responsible for the well being of all enlisted Crusaders in the west, had generated intense loyalty among the rhyflers and his name was often invoked along with Alykinder’s. By 1779, with the increasingly frayed relations between Crusade HQ West and the Main HQ in Tok, Loeck had fully replaced Alykinder as the spiritual leader of the Crusade in the hearts and minds of the troops under his command.
1780 Death and Opportunity
In 1780, as Arnyaran spies rushed home to Arnyara with the news that Alykinder, father of the Crusade, had passed, SBS agents loyal to Loeck delivered a message, by air rather than over open frequencies, that Alykinder was dead, to the self-appointed Campryg. Bul Maren, capital of the Crusade, was locked down and the news of Alykinder’s death was tightly tamped down and controlled. In Tok, two competing factions were split over whom should inherit Alykinder’s mantle. One side argued for his eldest son to lead and the other argued that leadership by blood was the way of the Royalists. In late 1780 shots were fired between the two factions and the Crusade, in the east, shattered and collapsed into civil war.
In the west Campryg Loeck saw the opportunity created by the last of Crusader HQ’s control on the west slip away. This allowed Loeck to move up the timetable of his grand plan to create a Union of Free Nations. Coded messages were sent to Gigor Raedaer of the Arnyaran Nodd Ffae and Governor Labyl in Easky; setting in motion the plan Loeck and Har’s first conceptualized in 1777.
The pact between Loeck and the Arnyaran’s allowed Arnyaran land trains to cross into eastern Maer Braech uncontested and to then move north. These movements were kept quiet by the Maer Braechi as the land trains staged on Creevin’s border. On the 6th of Pryfaen, six months before the date originally agreed upon by Arnyarans and Loeck, the Arnyarans crossed simultaneously into Creevin from both Western Arnyara and Maer Braech catching the Creevish completely by surprise. As the Arnyarans carved a path across Creevin the first military phase in Loeck’s plan to control the west had begun.
1781 Phase Two and Three
The second phase came on the 1st of Haelwyn 1781 as the Western Arnyarans conducted their second massive surprise assault, this time into Coftyr. The invasion was as successful and as much of a surprise to the Coftyrans as the Arnyaran invasion had been to the Creevish the previous year. The Crymuster was caught flat-footed and stunned.
A key element of the Campryg’s plan was a link between his manufacturing base, Easky, and his power base in Maer Braech. In 1779, with the loss of access to the Creevish ports and rail networks, which the Crusade had relied upon for supply, connecting those two had become critical. Since the Crusade’s inception the air above and the waters of Lake Morandi had been patrolled by enemy fleets of every nation and pirate activity, especially in the air, had been increasing. The Crusade needed the coastal lands of Creevin and the vital ports of the Aeritini River to connect Maer Braech and Easky and to strengthen the western Crusade’s position. This task fell to Governor Labyl and the Easkovite military.
Phase Three of the plan involved Easky’s newly manufactured tractors and the Asis mechanized divisions which were more wildly successful than Loeck or Governor Labyl had predicted. As Easky gobbled up Creevish territory and the news of their stunning victories spread across Alwyd fear also spread with it. As the continent had begun to take advantage of the near destruction of the Crusade with Alykinder’s death, the Crusaders once again introduced a new form of warfare that threatened to start a new arms race. The vaunted Air Mobile units of the Crusade were rightly feared but they were a scalpel with a long reach while the Easky mechanized forces were an unrelenting wall of steel that took territory at an alarming speed.
Author’s Note: There has been conjecture that perhaps it is not coincidence that the coastal lands taken by the Easkovites belonged to the majority of Creevish nobles that actively worked against the Dowager’s interests at court.
Now
In the late 1760s and early 1770s, at the height of the Crusade’s power, Maer Braech was the keystone of Alykinder’s plans for the Western Theater. Catrawds by the thousand were billeted there, and from there marched on and conquered Western Arnyara, Creevin, and the northern kingdoms. After the Waess Revolt of 1773, however, the Western Theater was bogged down into a long line of stalemates. Foremost among those was Coftyr and some would say the Crusade never recovered from the debacle there.
Campryg Loeck has made strengthening Maer Braech military position and his idea of a Union of Free Nations his highest priorities, but without direct assistance from Crusader GHQ in Bul Maren and the eastern Crusader states some have begun to wonder how long even he can keep the revolutionaries and insurrectionists at bay.
Loeck’s pact with the Western Arnyarans holds, barely. To the south the Crusaders and their Maer Braechi allies are once again poised to march into Coftyr to confront The Wall. While to the north the Campryg’s plans lay in near ruin as the Fidwog FOD has split Maer Braech from their Easkovite allies in a move as bold and unexpected as Loeck’s own pact with the Arnyarans. The Arnyarans, themselves, have broken that very same pact. Arnyaran forces have continued east, well past the agreed upon line of advance, and while the advance is still well west of Invevenverta, and the Dowager, Loeck worries his thinly spread forces may yet need to intercede.
War, on a scale not seen for a decade, looms on the horizon…
