Backstory 1711-1771
Alykinder- Crusade’s Father
Pete Murray, Edward McEneely and Joshua Qualtieri
1711-1727: The Early Years
Sune Alykinder Rhynn Venk was born in 1711 in the country of Tok, in the mountainous city-state of Skar. The Sune clan was one of the wealthiest in all of Tok, though they could not claim nobility in the First Families of that nation.
His grandfather’s grandfather had established a small airship repair stall in Skar that had grown into the largest airship manufacturer on the eastern continent. Sune Industries was preeminent among the airship builders of Skar, who were the finest in Tok and arguably across Alwyd. Sune Industries was also the financier of choice for the largest and most daring projects of Tok, and other nations when the alliances and frequent wars with her neighbors allowed it. The city-state of Skar occupied 6 peaks in the Svarld Mountains and at the time of Alykinder’s birth had a population of close to one million. Like all of Skar’s sons Alykinder grew up comfortable in treacherous terrain and proved quite adept at piloting the dirigibles and balloons that Skar’s citizens used to travel from peak to peak.
Alykinder’s path in life seemed settled when he was born—he would be raised with the intent to continue the family line of business, and perhaps he would be the first to raise the Sune to nobility. But Alykinder dreamed of being a soldier and from the beginning, Alykinder knew what he wanted, and it was not to be an airship baron.
This played poorly with his family. He was a mediocre student, and showed little aptitude or interest in business. He and his father were often involved in heated arguments about his prospects until a week before his 16th birthday, he left his parents a note, hitched a ride on a downstream aircargo and by his 16th birthday was in Bul Maren, capital of Tok. He enlisted under a false name and was in basic training two days later.
1727-1730: The Pre-War Years
It didn’t take long once training started for Alykinder and his training yawdryls to realize the slight, bookish fellow would never have the constitution or fortitude to be a Tokish rhyfler. They did recognize his exceptional intelligence and problem solving skills and he was quickly shipped downriver to Fort Till after basic and there found his new home in the Corp of Engineers. It seems that around this time Alykinder dropped his nom de guerre and began using his real name.
Not a lot about his time in Fort Till is known. Alykinder’s records as a recruit are lost, and most of his graduating class were later killed at Goana Creek. It is, however, where he first met and made a lasting impression on then-Syrnol Chot, commander of the Engineering School. Alykinder had two rare talents among the Quar—he was a creative thinker and a born conciliator. He could sooth over problems between two feuding comrades, and he could sort out more efficient ways to perform various engineering tasks.
After graduating engineering school, Alykinder’s first two years in the field were spent along the southern border with the 33rd Regiment of Tok and later the 10th Tok Guards. He spent a fairly leisurely time on the southern border learning his craft and staying out of trouble. Alykinder’s records from this time are filled with glowing reviews of the young enlisted quar. By the end of his two year rotation, he was well on his way to making is-Caerten.
He was involved briefly in the siege of Spir Tul when that city-state attempted to secede in 1729 but spent most of that 6 month battle packing demolition charges for the sappers and keeping his head down during the incessant bombardment. His role there has since been exaggerated by many, but never by Alykinder himself nor any of his inner circle.
In early 1730 Lower Barro finally, after several years of threats, crossed their southern border through the Miran Gap and into Tok in army strength. By a week into the invasion the Barroese armies were 13 miles in and had taken Wiss, Brackle and the Port of Holn and had moved a further 3 divisions into the area and had started to fortify their lines. Political negotiations had begun, and it appeared that Lower Barro would end the war with a significant increase in territory. The 10th Tok Guards, and Alykinder with them, were embarked on trains north for a 3 month refit in Bul Maren when they were diverted further north to assist in repelling the Barroese incursion.
syl-Caenerol Losta was commander in the north and fighting a desperate holding action while waiting on reinforcements from the south. The Tokish navy had managed to blockade Holn but Barroese supplies were still pouring over the border. Losta held and when reinforcements started arriving he wasted no time in putting them to use. His planned to use his new southern troops, unfamiliar with the land, to besiege Holn and thereby cut the Port off from land resupply. Losta would then take a detachment of light infantry units and plug Miran Gap, cutting the Barroese supply lines. Armored units would grind the Barroese out of Wiss and Brackle and would then turn towards Holn. Losta hoped to relieve the besiegers there within 10 days.
Baenyr Alykinder arrived with the rest of the 10th Tok Guards on an unseasonably stormy night. Flashes of lightning were mixed with the muzzle flashes of the first siege guns that had moved up to fire on Holn.
1730-1732: The Siege of Holn and Goana Creek
The 10th was among the first units to take up positions along the major roadways running into Holn. Supporting them was the 111th Engineering Battalion, commanded by Syrnol Chot, former Commandant of the Fort Till engineering school. Chot met his protégé engineering student shortly after arrival, and transferred him directly into the 111th and promoted him to is-Caerten.
The siege of Holn began badly. The early spring storms only increased in intensity. syl-Caenerol Losta’s armor was late, and Holn was held in greater force than the Tokish had estimated. No sooner had the 10th Guards invested the city than the Barroese forces counter-attacked with several divisions through the Miran Gap. The Tokish light infantry, unsupported by armor and still fatigued from having been in combat for nearly three months, were routed. Entire squadrons of armor were abandoned in the muck. The Barroese Army rushed through the gap created by the collapse of the Tokish lines.
The 10th Guards and 111th Engineers, unfamiliar with either the terrain or the details of the plan, had begun to construct elaborate siegeworks even as the light infantry units were breaking in the Miran Gap. With their fortifications set up to counter an attack from Holn, they were virtually defenseless from the rear. The first warning of this latest Barroese advance came in the form of survivors of the light infantry trickling in small groups back into the Tokish lines, and shortly afterwards, reports from a few engineer outposts who were unable to muster an effective defense before being overrun.
Syrnol Chot was the only ranking officer who deduced that a new assault had begun, and he ordered the siege trenches converted into defensive works. The 111th Engineers managed to construct hasty defenses, and then they found themselves facing attacks from both Holn and overland. With bad maps and no sense of the size of the enemy facing him, Chot attempted to withdraw back over Goana Creek into Tok. What had been intended as an orderly withdraw quickly broke down, and the Tokish forces began abandoning their trenches. But the pioneer units on the banks of Goana Creek found the rains had raised the creek to nearly impassible levels. The Tokish army was cut off, surrounded, and confused on the river’s edge.
After a flurry of confused and contradictory orders, and after Syrnol Chot’s efforts to redirect the Goana through a hastily dug canal failed, the 10th Guards and 111th Engineers hunkered down for a last stand in the Goana Creek valley. The swollen and impassible Goana was to their rear, and they lacked the forces to protect their flanks. Outnumbered nearly 5:1 and with Losta himself dead leading a futile counterassault, Chot ordered the Tokish rhyflers to surrender to prevent a further waste of life.
It was a significant blow to the Tokish military, and spelled the end of that campaign. Political negotiations between Tok and Barro resulted in a truce shortly afterwards.
1732-1735: The POW years
A dirty POW camp in Lower Barro was just one of the loose ends unresolved in the truce, and it was there that the remaining members of the former 10th Tok Guards and the 111th Engineers were detained. Although it was high in the mountains, it was as far from the comfortable life Alykinder had come from as one can go.
The camp was a dull place. Escape was almost impossible, given the remote location of the camp and the open terrain around it. Food was a never-changing diet of thin gruel, tubers, and the occasional loaf of hard black bread. It was the kind of place where it was easy to fall into lassitude and lose hope, but the bookish is-Caerten of the 111th was not going to let the wind-swept camp destroy him. He kept himself busy with two new projects.
The first of these was keeping the morale of his fellow prisoners up. Alykinder decided to start a newspaper for the POWs. In a tiny camp isolated from much of the rest of civilization, it might seem an unlikely enterprise, but Alykinder knew that keeping busy was more important than the end product. He began by recruiting his fellow prisoners into various projects. One group was put to work making paper out of old packaging and tuber starch. Another group (mostly engineers from the 111th) went about building a makeshift press. Alykinder coordinated, cajoled, and traded with the guards for necessary items until at last the press was ready and the first issue of the Camp Ledger rolled off the press, printed with ink made from bootblack and cinder, on paper made from old laundry.
More and more prisoners sought to work on the newspaper in some capacity, with Alykinder flitting from committee to committee to coordinate their actions. Through persistent badgering he even managed to score an interview with the camp commandant, who saw it as the only way to get the persistent is-Caerten to stop his constant letters.
None of this was lost on Syrnol Chot, who was the ranking prisoner. His rhyflers had gone from despair to activity, to even the glimmerings of hope. Injured in the final moments of the stand at Goana, his leg had grown infected and had to be amputated. From his sick bed,he met regularly with Alykinder, and the two came to have a strong friendship as a result.
Alykinder’s second project was secret and ambitious: Documenting what had gone wrong with the entire campaign and siege of Holn and capturing his thesis in the form of a book.
In the minutes before lights-out, or when he was able to spare five minutes, Alykinder had begun carefully dissecting the loss at Holn and writing up his thoughts. Examinations of failures by is-Caertens were not encouraged by military high commands, and compounding his heresies, Alykinder presented a radical political thesis as well. The failure of the siege of Holn, he argued, was nothing less than a result of centuries of Quar society and warfare.
Up to this point, war had largely been waged on the basis of sieges and campaigns of limited territorial gain. Wars were accompanied by simultaneous political negotiations, and stringent efforts were made to keep lands and cities intact at the cost of rhyflers’ lives. Alykinder argued that this was because of the heavily inter-related First Families and their interests. A limited war would preserve the value of property and land. rhyflers were an expendable resource in this context, but a city was not. The traditional siege style of warfare (indeterminate, protracted, usually accompanied by political considerations—a process designed to leave the target largely intact and promote the profile of the upper class) was, he declared, a system both morally wrong and militarily futile. There could be no end to the Long War so long as the First Families and their policies controlled the politics of the nations. Alykinder’s thesis was that the way to end a war, and to end the Long War itself, was to concentrate not on siege and limited territorial gain, but to take as much territory as quickly as possible to shock the other side into a political resolution. Enemy forces should be engaged only to pin them in position, so as to allow other troops to take weakly held areas of strategic importance.
Alykinder calculated that the logistical support needed to move the massive siege equipment could easily be used to bypass strongpoints in favor of lightning strikes on more sensitive targets, and it is his cogent logistical analysis and suggestion for changes, focusing on delivery of rhyflers and supplies by airship, that form the second half of the book.
One night in 1734, after the newspaper press had finished for the day, Alykinder shooed his workers out of the print room, and set down to print a slim book called “Principles of Applied Air Power.” This book would come to be known simply as “Principles” as Alykinder ascended to power.
The next morning, a somewhat nervous Alykinder presented the book to Syrnol Chot. Though severely ill from an infection, Chotspent two days reading and re-reading the little book, and a full day contemplating it. When Alykinder next visited him, the two spoke in low and serious voices. Alykinder has never discussed their conversation in detail, but when it was done, Chot embraced Alykinder.
In 1735, a political resolution on the POWs was reached, and the prisoners were returned to Tok. Alykinder was promoted to Caerten and assigned to Tok’s North Border military district. This region included his home town of Skar, and on clear days, it was possible to see the closest city-states of Lower Barro. Chot, sorely weakened by his illness, passed away just minutes before the returning prisoners would have passed into Tok.
1736-1741 The Airmobile Corps Takes Shape
With Chot dead, he became a convenient scapegoat upon which to pin the blame for the debacle at Goana, thereby preserving the military reputation of Losta, whose clan was far more influential at court. The 111th Engineering Battalion was reduced from a regular line to a militia formation, with the bulk of its enlisted and officers to consist of conscript and part-time rhyflers. It was the kind of posting that normally spells the end of a military career for a young officer like Alykinder.
But Alykinder maintained close ties with many of the officers from the days of the POW camp, and was eager to see the ideas laid out in “Principles” set into practice. Furthermore he could now rely on his family name to help coordinate the airship support his new tactics and strategies would rely on. The prominence and prestige of the Sunes was more than sufficient to ensure his own reputation was preserved, though the fate of his former commander rankled deeply and Alykinder’s writings often mention the slandering of Chot with great bitterness.
Within a year, Alykinder had three small airships and the 111th trained in parachute insertion. Within eighteen months, he had nine ships, a full brigade of airship marines, and two of the berths at Sune Industries were occupied by a pair of monstrous military transports. Christened “Long Walker”, these were lengthened versions of Sune’s most successful freighter design. A core of eager airship designers, crew, and military officers busied themselves experimenting with tactics.
At the same time, as heir to Sune Industries, Alykinder encouraged merchant clans on either side of the Tok/Barro border to work out informal and lucrative trade agreements. Some degree of trade had always existed between the countries except when war was waging, so the merchant and industrial clans were quick to take advantage of Alykinder’s inducements.
Between Alykinder’s guidance to militia forces in forming the Airmoble Corps, and his work in the Northern provinces, he began to gain a feel for developing political coalitions. By 1740, Northern Tok and Southern Barro cities had formed a loose political alliance. Merchant airships went freely between city-states on both sides, protected by militia forces trained in Alykinder’s principles of airmobile warfare. It was not exactly a rebellion, but rather a strong streak of independence on the part of these city-states. But moving between and among them was Alykinder, and the quar of the mountains strongly respected him.
1742: The Kryst Offensive and the Miracle of Skar
Interpreting the silence along the Tok/Lower Barro front as a sign of weakness, the forces of Kryst launched a surprise offensive along the Svarld with the intention of bringing the region within their sphere of influence. An old Kryst regency claim was used as an excuse for the war, though the pretext was transparent even by Quar standards.
Kryst is not as populous as either Tok or Barro, but many of its troops were veterans, particularly its widely feared Mountaineer Brigades. The Kryst offensive was classical Quar doctrine—investing a number of city-states by cutting off their roads, then conducting a classical siege operation while simultaneously opening negotiations.
But while diplomats of Kryst wrangled in the Tokish capital of Bul Maren, Alykinder in Skar was on the front lines and unwilling to negotiate. Trading space for time, and destroying roads and blocking passes behind him, Alykinder drew back towards Skar. He recalled the entire Airmobile Corps from their postings throughout the Svarld, staging them in the yards of Skar, but rotating them through so that the yards were supporting a fleet nearly three times as large as the docks’ capacity.
The prevailing winds of that region blow from Kryst, except for a few weeks out of the year, when a seasonal counter wind blows. Alykinder was waiting for his wind.
The Kryst forces were impressed with the ease by which they could extend their siege perimeter, and considered the campaign off to a resounding start. The disruptions to the roads were annoying, but not impassible obstacles, and Alykinder provided at least the illusion of resistance, until Kryst’s forces were stretched to the very limit of their supply trains.
Then the seasonal counter winds began. The entire Airmoble Corps blasted forth from Skar in force. The operation was a masterstroke of meticulous timing and eager troops led by brilliant operations officers. Simultaneous drops at the weak rear areas of the siege line resulted in mass panic, with some Airmobile forces conducting operations well within Kryst itself. The Kryst Army was shattered before it could even mount an effective resistance. Thousands of POWs were scooped up, as units on the march suddenly found themselves assaulted on all sides by rhyflers who appeared as if from thin air.
In Bul Maren, the negotiators of Kryst immediately sued for peace. The ensuing peace negotiations were among the most sweeping seen on Alwyd in centuries, significantly expanding the areas that Tok controlled. This time, there was no nominal transfer of one or two key locations—Alykinder had seen that Tok’s boundaries now include the entire area of operations for the Airmoble Corps (the Lower Barro cities were just as happy to see their relations formalized) as well as two or three key locations inside Kryst—not least of which was a brand new helium processing facility.
Alykinder’s success was due to three factors—small squad tactics with NCOs given a wide degree of autonomy, wireless communications (conducted in code), and improvements in airship construction, most visible in the ships of the Long Walker class. But the lessons of war were lost on the rest of the Quar nations. The victory was seen as a fluke—due to some hitherto unforeseen problem with Kryst’s military, rather than a major shift in tactics. Other military theoreticians managed to convince themselves that the old formula works—after all, didn’t most of the fighting happen near siege areas? Ergo, sieges are still the defining feature of warfare. Alykinder was swept into political power in the North by popular acclaim. The ascendancy of Alykinder was just beginning.
It is a sign of Alykinder’s regard that the first public printing of “Principles” emerged at this time, bringing the young soldier’s words to the world at large.
1743-1745: Exile in his own land
Though Alykinder was the single greatest political force of Northern Tok and a brilliant military mind, he did not anticipate the backlash building against him in the capital. King Vek IX was a weak figurehead on the throne. Real power was in the hands of the king’s cousin and Privy Counselor, Duke Icho. Icho knew what kind of threat Alykinder represented, very clearly reading between the lines of “Principles” and seeing in it the end of the First Families. Icho buried Alykinder’s accomplishments in court, to the point where Alykinder’s name was removed from consideration for knighthood, and credit for the “Miracle of Skar” was given to a young viscount whose only connection to the operation was that he had been touring the north at the time.
Icho then restructured the army of Tok to place the militias under the control of Caenerols loyal to him. The Airmobile Corps was disbanded. Most of the airships of the fleet were privatized to cronies of Icho, including both Long Walkers, which were put to service as bulk packet freighters. Icho himself commandeered the Goana Creek as his military yacht. For two years, Alykinder railed as best he could against Icho, but he could not compete with Icho’s grip on the court. Lacking political allies in the capital and the ability to sustain even a token Airmobile Corps, Alykinder could only watch in horror as Icho dissolved all of his hard work while taking credit for the campaign against Kryst.
If the bloody Battle of Goana Creek was the ground that nurtured the seed of the Crusade, it was Icho who watered it. Once again, the army was organized to fight a protracted and inconclusive siege operation, and the Airmobile Corps was erased from the history of the Army.
1746: The Lake Morandi Campaign
Tok’s primary port on Lake Morandi was the city-state of Dunport, which straddles the River Ootl. In the first month of 1746, Dunport’s new militia Caenerol arrived, sweating and feverish in the muggy lowlands, without ceremony and unannounced. In his satchel he carried a coded message which he was convinced was his death sentence. Tok was to declare war on Craesil in two months. Mobilization had already begun in the capital, but the frontiers had not been alerted. Alykinder looked around Dunport in despair. His orders forbade him from surrendering the city. The terrain offered few advantages to defense. He had never worked with the Southern Command before. In every war between Tok and Craesil, Craesil’s opening move had been to cut off Dunport and then hold it as a bargaining tool. It was joked that every citizen of Dunport memorized the lyrics to the National Hymn of Craesil because they heard it every dozen years or so.
But Alykinder was not prone to languishing in a depression for long, and he set to work planning the best defense he could think of given his orders: A hard offense. His senior officer corps balked at the planned naval invasion and landing along the Craesil coast, but the junior officers were fired by the idea.
Alykinder did to Dunport what he had done in the highlands of Tok. He cut the size of GHQ down to a minimum and commandeered every radio transmitter he could get. He seized ships of all varieties, insisted that the militia be called up in force and immediately begin training in riverine and maritime operations. There were no airships, but there were to be lightning raids along the coast. His shrewdest move was to take a member of the press along. Dain Bor was a well-respected essayist whose writings were widely read across Tok. Bor was seen as an affable supporter and romanticiser of the every quar, and Alykinder’s deal was: Write about the war, and you can go where you like.
Hostilities broke out on 7/1/1746. That afternoon, Alykinder’s 1st Provisional Littoral Brigade stormed into the harbor at Paqu like a mob of pirates—setting demolition charges on the hulls of troopships and cruisers, destroying stockpiles of ammo and fuel, and then retreating into the sunset in their motley band of converted fishing trawlers and tramp steamers. The Craesil timetable for the invasion of Tok was delayed by a week, then two, then four as Alykinder’s Littoral Brigades ravaged the coast, engaging in everything from sabotaging railroad viaducts to stopping fishermen for their ships. Bor’s essays from this campaign were later collected into a book called “The Lake Raiders”, and it was a bestseller. Bor had been there for the raid on Paqu, as well as the taking of the Craesillian submarine U-9. In one chapter was a flattering and largely true depiction of Alykinder, who ran the campaign while fighting a malarial outbreak.
Duke Icho did not read Bor, but he could follow a map, and he noted with concern that Alykinder’s sacrificial force was in real danger of beating his own Imperial Army to investing the lakeside capital of Craesil. He ordered Alykinder to consolidate his gains. Alykinder ignored the order. The capital of Craesil was a massive fortress town, and had been since the earliest days of the Quar. The Citadel sat on a marshy promontory, whose causeway was studded with gun emplacements and now that a naval invasion was a real possibility, the lakeward side was reinforced as well. After an extensive survey of the area, Alykinder drafted his plan of attack. Plan Cobalt was a gamble, but one whose payoff would be twofold—investing the capital of Craesil for a siege (typically a checkmating move) and publicly snubbing Duke Icho.
Alykinder saw diminishing returns from continued dispersed raids on the coast. He collected his Littoral Brigades into a single body, and attacked the Citadel at the causeway. Years later, Alykinder would express misgivings with this operation, saying that if he had to do it again, he would not have chosen a single costly assault straight into such powerful fortifications. It was one of his bloodiest operations in terms of casualties, as the makeshift navy lacked armor and the Craesilian gunners were veterans and prepared. But the Dunporters who stormed the casemates at the causeway would speak proudly of it years later, declaring that the alternative would have been to die in blast shelters in the trenches around Dunport.
Political negotiations in Bul Maren concluded the war less than two weeks later. Alykinder’s star was on the rise in Tok.
1747-1748: The False War with Lower Barro
Faced with a hugely popular upstart caenerol, Duke Icho ordered Alykinder back to Northern Tok with an order to prepare for an invasion of Lower Barro. To Duke Icho, this was the prime way to deprive Alykinder of the support of his political base.
It is difficult now to keep in mind just how triumphant Alykinder’s return to Skar was. The mission he had been sent on was one calculated to destroy him, but Alykinder had been returned to the place where he had first honed his military principles into fine operational art, and now he had the control of a new generation of eager Tokish officers and the pick of military equipment. He made no effort to conceal that hostilities were to begin with Lower Barro. Instead, he began political operations against that nation almost immediately. Envoys were dispatched to the various city-states which had formed the mutual defense pact with the Northern Tok region. Alykinder made sure his envoys made his intentions clear—he was coming into Lower Barro and he was going to win. The city-states had the option of remaining with a central government which had neglected them for decades, or they could offer token resistance and formalize their commitment with Tok.
To make sure that his threats were credible, Alykinder staged a massive and visible airdrop exercise of his First and Second Airmobile Brigades, which were now far larger than they had been in the previous war. Alykinder put on public spectacles, setting distance records for airships with the several newly upgraded Long Walkers. He put on massive displays of airship and kite formation flying. He made it adequately clear that the Barroese militias would be badly outclassed by his regulars. Then, in defiance of orders from the Privy Council on Military Affairs in Bul Maren, he began operations a week before their timetable. By the official date hostilities were to commence, Alykinder had accepted the surrender of three city-states and was in a position to receive two more. Only the Lower Barroese city-state of Mulf offered resistance.
The First Airmobile Brigade under the command of Syrnol Myn Ye dropped behind their lines and took the entire militia from the rear. Alykinder quickly replaced the rulers of Mulf with those who were of closer mind to him. The government of Lower Barro was shocked at how quickly Alykinder had gained territory. They attempted negotiations to end the offensive, but were horrified to discover that Alykinder would accept no political delegations beyond those authorized to conduct a cease-fire. Nor did Alykinder tolerate political interference from Tok, declaring that the “Zone of Operations” he was responsible for was governed by military, not civilian law. It is meaningful that not even the King’s agents could gain access to Alykinder, after he declared he would accept nothing less than the complete subjugation of Lower Barro.
The extensive airship facilities of Lower Barro’s mountain cities gave him the staging ground he needed to keep his troops moving at their incredible pace. Though Skar was his primary logistical base, Alykinder commanded from well forward of these positions, with the command airship Goana Creek often able to see the front lines from her telescopes. By narrowing his advance and leapfrogging regiments, he was moving upwards of twenty kilometers a day—a pace not seen for generations in warfare. Radio communication kept his officers in touch with his GHQ, whereas the Lower Barro army was relying on messengers, many of whom were captured by cavalry and Airmobile Marines. Alykinder was completely in control of the tempo of the campaign, and Lower Barro was all but unable to counter his advance.
Barroese forces, when threatened, would construct elaborate fortifications across what they felt would be necessary choke points. Alykinder would instead send an airmobile brigade beyond the fortifications to prevent supplies from reaching them. An encircled or cut-off army, dug into their field fortifications, was as good as captured—it was just a matter of keeping them pinned into position. To this end, Alykinder would task a conventional army group solely to keep the enemy from breaking out.
When the war with Lower Barro ended, Alykinder had managed to keep the bulk of the Barroese army completely in check. Shock operations to disrupt pockets of mutual support were undertaken, and these represent the bulk of the Tokish casualties of the campaign. With Alykinder-aligned rulers now in control of the mountain city-states, the Lower Barro government capitulated and its rulers went into exile. Alykinder installed a puppet government in Lower Barro, and ordered that its military be re-formed into the Tokish model.
1748-1756: A New Order
Alykinder now sought to consolidate his political gains in Tok and reorganize the Tokish military.
Alykinder moved into the Tok political arena in force. He chose legislators for the city-states that had served as his bases during the Lower Barro war, and Duke Icho was forced to accept Alykinder as Governor for the Svarld and (newly added) Barromarch. In addition, Alykinder’s allies in the parliament allowed the Zone of Operations to continue even though the war was over, meaning he was supreme ruler of any area where the military was deployed.
By his 45th birthday, Alykinder was the effective ruler of an area larger than all but the biggest of the Quar kingdoms. Why was he so successful? In large part it had to do with the growing popularity of the Crusader ideology—feeding on a growing discontentment with the rule of the First Families, nurtured by a very effective political propaganda campaign and the successes of Alykinder’s military.
Alykinder’s Reorganization was the largest military transformation in generations. The previous mix of Royal and Commissioned Catrawds were replaced. Though many retained their traditional names and heritage with their founding Syrnols, they were fully suborned to the Tokish Army. The biggest change came to the Guard Catrawds.
The Guard Catrawds consisted of an elite infantry catrawd with dedicated artillery and armor or cavalry assets. This brigade-sized formation often spearheaded major advances or were given the honor of taking major objectives.
Yet they were almost as much a pain to their corps commanders as enemy action. For almost a century they had been armies-in-miniature, officially answerable only to the King. Though famously skilled rhyflers, they could be insubordinate and often appealed unpopular orders directly to the court, where they were often given permission to act as they pleased. While Guard Catrawds were considered the finest rhyflers, they could often act rashly.
Alykinder stripped the Guard Catrawds of their authority to appeal orders to the court, making them fully under the control of their corps commanders. At the same time, he created the Light Infantry Army. A Guard Catrawd was reinforced with three to seven Militia or Line Catrawds, as well as a dedicated artillery Catrawd and cavalry troop. The Army commander was free to break his command into brigades as he saw fit, with the Guard Catrawd serving as a readily-detached formation.
The Airmobile Forces received special attention in Alykinder’s reorganization. Airmobile Armies were merely administrative formations. Brigades would be constituted from the Airmobile Army for specific operations. Once an Airmobile force had completed its operation, it would be relieved by a Light Infantry Army, sent back for resupply, and then a new Brigade reconstituted for the next operation. This served to keep Alykinder’s best rhyflers and officers directly under his supervision, and it left enemy spies baffled as to the exact number and organization of the Airmobile Brigades.
The Airmobile Marine Infantry fell into two classes. Marine Paratroopers jumped directly from the largest and fastest airships to prepare the landing zone and airhead, or across logistical routes to disrupt and link up with offensive operations. Lander Marines would follow on in larger units from assault landing airships, carrying the Brigade’s heavy weapons and equipment.
The Long Walker airship design was now the standard fast transport for the Airmobile, increasingly accompanied by the new Talon Path class of airship destroyer. Lander Marines used any number of roughly-built landing airships, designed to make one-way trips to the landing zone, where they would be cannibalized into supplies for the Airmobile forces.
1757: The Hasty War of Kryst
In 1757, a battered freighter, flying a flag of convenience from the Inishcol Archipeligo landed at Dunport, and to the surprise of the quar of Dunport, a host of infantry marched off. At their head was Caerten Kelrym Kee, and he declared himself commander of the Volunteer Brigade of Toulmore, pledged to serve Alykinder and his cause.
Caerten Kee was a Toulmorese patriot. A century ago, Toulmore had been partitioned by Craesil, Maer Braech, and Coftyr, and used as a pawn in the balance of power between them. Toulmorese independence movements had since not gained much in the way of success before succumbing to internal dissent and quashing at the hands of the other nations. The Toulmorese longed to rule themselves.
The political message of Principles resounded strongly with the Toulmorese, who saw their own rulers as weak or scheming, and the rulers of the other three kingdoms as strong and conspiring to keep them down. Where a Tokish reader might have taken gentle exception to some of Alykinder’s characterizations of the First Families, a Toulmorese reader was likely to endorse it wholesale.
Caerten Kee informed a curious and somewhat skeptical Alykinder that his Brigade was there solely to serve his causes, in whatever way Alykinder saw fit. “Because,” as Kee said, “In time you will recognize that the soldier of Toulmore is already sworn to your cause, and you will in turn come to free him from his oppressors.” The Toulmore Volunteer Brigade was posted to the border with Kryst, where Alykinder could stash them away from their most obvious enemies.
Since the Kryst invasion that had culminated in the Miracle of Skar, Kryster diplomats had been lobbying the parliament and king of Tok hard for a return of some of their territory. An inter-clan marriage between the sept-clans of the ruling families of Tok and Kryst was arranged, and as part of this strategic marriage, several large regions of land and some border city-states were transferred back to Kryst.
The agreement was unpopular in both Kryst and Tok. The agreement strengthened a particularly unpleasant family and their political faction in Kryst, and it was seen as a capitulation of the gains of Tok in the previous war. Alykinder’s political faction loudly decried it as more evidence of the realpolitik attitudes of the First Families. The attitude was particularly strong in the army of Tok, by now largely populated by officers sympathetic to the successful Alykinder.
If one were to read only the official messages of the court and government during that period, it would seem as if Tok and Kryst had never been closer. But on the dusty desert border between the two nations, armies massed. The posting of the Toulmoure Volunteer Brigade had led to an escalation of forces in the region, and the regional commanders of Kryst were convinced that the handover from Tok was a cover to launch armies from within Kryst territory.
The exact circumstances surrounding the start of the war between Tok and Kryst remain mysterious. Official Tokish military history says that a routine patrol was ambushed by Kryst’s famed “Sand Stalker” brigade, and Kryst insists that a Tokish Army suddenly advanced onto an oasis well inside Kryst’s borders. Regardless, the war seems to have begun near Guye Oasis on 3/14/57. Neither side seems to have been completely prepared for the war, and confusion reigned on both sides for the first two weeks. Political delegations in both capitals refused to accept reports of fighting in the trackless wastes of the desert, and the marriage ceremony took place in Bul Maren, even as artillery shells fell across the border.
Alykinder had been in Skar when the war began, and did not arrive in the theater until the sixteenth day of fighting. He set up GHQ atop a nameless mesa on the Tokish side of the border, cut off communications with Bul Maren, and announced that the new objective was the complete subjugation of the army of Kryst. The strategy would revolve around isolating the units of regulars operating in the forward area from their supplies and reinforcements, which were still being brought up.
It was the first campaign where Alykinder made extensive use of propaganda. Aircraft (including airships) dropped leaflets on the city-states whose loyalty to the ruling clans of Kryst was tentative, with the result that many militia units were significantly delayed in their call-ups, as political issues clouded their command. The militia of Kryst were unwilling to be rushed to the front lines to defend a political class they were growing to despise.
As a military campaign, the Kryst War was not the overwhelming victory of the war with Lower Barro. The Kryst regulars were not willing to dig into entrenchments or fortifications, but ranged widely across stretches of desert familiar to them. Alykinder could bypass the worst of the desert with convoys of well-protected airships, but his airheads were exposed and only through heroic efforts of mutual support did they avoid being drawn out and picked apart.
What ended the resistance of the army of Kryst was a complete shortage of munitions. Airmobile Marines severed their supply lines and raided their supply caches. The militia was stymied from rallying to the aid of the regulars. Only one unit—the infamous Sand Stalker Brigade—never surrendered, but marched back to their home city at the end of the war, heads high, proud that they had never surrendered their arms.
The unpopular ruling clans of Kryst were forced into exile. In their place, Alykinder arranged for a coalition of noble families. Kryst became a republic of ruling clans, rather than a monarchy. But a lasting truce between Kryst and Tok was cemented into place, and the Army of Tok learned from the desert regiments of Kryst, even as Kryst created its first Airmobile Corps.
1758-1760: The Republic of Tok
Endless clamor followed Alykinder wherever he went in Tok, with crowds strewing his parade routes with wreaths and fireworks. The Crusaders took the lower chambers of the Parliament, and some minor nobility began publicly allying themselves with the Crusader ideology. Alykinder was offered letters patent to be created a duke, which he politely but pointedly declined. When an unrefusable offer for enfiefment came from King Vek himself, Alykinder deferred to his older sister, and she was created the Viscomtessa Barromarch.
Duke Icho, who had arranged the political alliance with Kryst that had fallen to shambles, as a result of the Hasty War, was now the marginalized figure in the court. Those politicians he could count on were reduced to throwing up procedural roadblocks in session and various non-binding denouncements of Crusader principles. Though few in number, they made up for this in ardor.
The power of the king and the royal clan were gradually rolled back. Royal prerogatives were scaled back and the Chamber of Noble Lords were increasingly moved to a role as a ceremonial body. Ancient systems of taxation and courvee labor were dissolved, and the First Families were no longer accorded the deference they had once enjoyed. In 1760, King Vek was forced to accept a new national charter, recasting the country as a parliamentary democracy, with the king as its ceremonial head. For the first time in over a half-millennia, a major nation of the Quar was no longer ruled by a king.
Crusade Years 1-3 (1761-1764): The Liberation of Toulmore
While Tok had no king, there was no denying that Alykinder was the de facto ruler of the nation. He traveled widely, officially continuing the work of training and reorganizing the army, but also speaking to throngs on the core Crusader ideology: That the Long War would end when the First Families no longer used the lives of ordinary quar in their machinations to remain in power.
Each one of Alykinder’s speeches were printed in the underground presses of Toulmore, and no matter how often these subversive writings were intercepted, new presses sprang up to take their place. Young Toulmorese quar ran away to join the Toulmore Volunteer Brigade, now almost an Army in strength. In addition to the idealism of the Crusade, they were also driven by another factor: War was brewing again between Maer Braech and Craesil.
The Toulmorese city-states of Yprol, Marzol, and Parth had strong economic connections, though Yprol lay within Craesil’s sphere of influence and Marzol and Parth were subject to control from Maer Braech. A war between Craesil and Maer Braech would be fought between these cities, with considerable damage to the verdant farmlands and infrastructure between them. The native Toulmorese had no control over the situation, and despair was growing as armies began to mass.
In Tok, Caerten Kee of the Toulmore Brigade sought a private audience with Alykinder. After their day long, closed-chamber session, Alykinder announced that he would address the Parliament and quar of Tok.
In this speech, Alykinder proclaimed that the ideology of the Crusade could not end at the border of Tok. The situation in Toulmore was an abomination, created by the rulers of the kingdoms of Maer Braech and Craesil and paid for in innocent blood. Alykinder called on the quar of Toulmore to rise up in rebellion, and asked for a declaration of war against both Craesil and Maer Braech. He famously declared that it was the first day of a new age, the age of the Crusade the Aerg Croesgadwr.
The speech was met with wild applause, and with great patriotic fervor in Tok. Within days of the speech, it was circulating throughout Toulmore, where several revolutionary groups set aside their differences long enough to launch a coordinated uprising.
A complete description of the military campaign would be beyond the scope of this essay, but vignettes from it have been recorded famously in song, tale, and art. Airborne Marines dropped into the three city-states to support the popular uprising. The Crown Prince of Toulmore, descended from its most famous First Family, was given an is-Caerten’s commission in the army of Tok, famously saying he would rather die as a free Crusader than live as a chained king. The “Lost Company” of the 3rd Tok Guards took an entire Craesillian catrawd prisoner. The 2eme Toulmore Marines broke the 12th and 15th Maer Braechi Grenadier Guards to link up with the uprising, and liberated the capital. The Coftyr Border Army attempted to storm through the Tokish Army, and their elite formations were unable to break a handful of line Catrawds.
By the end of Crusade Year 2, Craesil’s army had surrendered unconditionally to the Tokish Army, and the Toulmore armies were pushing back those of Maer Braech and Coftyr. Peace negotiations concluded ten days after the start of Crusade Year 3. The Toulmore Republic was created, with its borders extended to the area of the old Kingdom. Craesil was to become a constitutional monarchy on the line of Tok, with the First Family of that nation to enter into exile in Maer Braech. For the first time in generations, an enforced peace was to be kept between Craesil and Toulmore.
This year also marked the first use of the phrase “Iron Regime” in reference to Tok and its allies and vassal states. It was created by exiles of Craesil, who used it in reference to the obstinacy of the Crusaders and their leader.
Crusade Year 4 (1765): The Battle of Bul Maren and the Regicide
While the Army of Tok was afield in Toulmore and Craesil, most of the officers who remained on the home front were loyal to Duke Icho and various court factions. Duke Icho consolidated their loyalty to him, promising a return to the old order. They began to siphon recruits into formations under their own control, creating a smaller army, though one loyal to them, rather than Alykinder.
Alykinder was in Toulmore, signing the Crusader Alliance between the nations taken by Tok during his tenure as an officer. Among its other provisions, it unified the organization of the armies, created common supply and acquisition systems, and formalized military command in Alykinder himself, now styled Marshal of the Crusade. This was accompanied by trade and border agreements, and a great number of other political issues which diminished the power of the aristocracy in those nations. A great number of these families would, in time, emigrate to Coftyr and Fidwog.
As the Crusader Alliance was proceeding, Duke Icho suspended parliament and declared martial law with the covertly-raised Provisional Imperial Army backing him. His first act was to convene a sham court to convict Alykinder of treason.
Alykinder’s response was swift and furious. The Provisional Imperial Army was less than half the size of the regular Army of Tok, and now Alykinder could draw on the resources of his allied nations. The Provisional Imperial Army marched out to meet the Crusader Army, whose ground forces Alykinder left in the hands of syl-Caenerol Mygr of Toulmore. Alykinder put himself at the head of the largest single airborne force assembled by Quar, and advanced on Bul Maren.
Syl-Caenerol Mygr dealt the Provisional Imperial Army a mortal blow at the Battle of Gul Lorch, doubly enveloping the unprepared army and their incompetent Caenerol, the Marquis of Bul Maren. Duke Icho is believed to have correctly surmised the complete destruction of the field army before the Marquis did, and ordered those surviving forces in the district to return to Bul Maren and prepare for assault.
The Crusader forces found that the outer defenses around Bul Maren had been prepared, but then abandoned. They advanced cautiously, not entering Bul Maren itself until some days after landing. Once inside, they found that Royalist forces had dug in the city itself. A seven-century prohibition on war in urban areas was broken.
A number of stories of that time have emerged, and their truth cannot be determined. All histories agree that the Royalists centered their defenses on the Imperial Palace. They were no match for the veteran Crusader Army, the Royalist defenders including military cadets and armed civilians commanded by inexperienced officers. Duke Icho died in the palace, leading a doomed assault at the head of a formation of young cadets from the King’s Military Institute, still wearing their ceremonial uniforms.
King Vek himself was found dead in the palace. The Crusaders have long claimed he was killed by his bodyguard to prevent the Crusaders from taking him alive. Royalists claim that King Vek was summarily executed by the First Crusader Guard, and this charge has stuck to the First Guard. Many Royalist units, particularly the Black Watch of Fidwog, will execute surrendered rhyflers from this Catrawd.
This heinous battle might have led to general insurrection in Tok, if Alykinder had not immediately continued martial law and locked down the cities with his forces, often ordering units of Lower Barro and Toulmore to the task, while keeping the Tokish Catrawds (who might be tempted to form the core of a rebellion) far a field. While the citizens of Tok acquiesced, they mourned their dead king and the destruction of their capital. Though the Crusader faction heaped blame on the Royalists, they lost significant support among the quar. Emigration began in earnest.
The Battle of Bul Maren was the last time Alykinder led troops into battle, and by the end of Crusade Year 4, he had resigned his post as Marshal and instead been appointed Chancellor of the Crusader Republics. Though he still eschewed the title of king, he was the undisputed ruler of many nations.
From the personal journal of Syrnol Lyttl—
Did you know that the retaking of the Palace was the last operation Alykinder led in person?
I was with the First Guards, a Caerten at that point. Alykinder wanted the Guard to handle the capital, not for the symbolism of the matter (we assure you, the point was not lost on us) but because we were the best trained of the ground troops at that point.
I remember that taking the outer ring of defenses went much easier than we imagined. The armor punched its way through the strongpoints, and we swept after, securing the routes needed to bring up reinforcements. We spent a few days checking to make sure there weren’t leave-behind nests of anti-kite or machineguns. We found one or two, the Royalists in them fighting with the tenacity of the already dead. The gates of the city were open—there was no fight there. They let us penetrate the outer neighborhoods and industries before they opened fire.
What a horrible affair! We were veteran fighters, and we were sorely pressed. Machinegun nests were everywhere, as were mines and traps. But they were amateurs, and it didn’t take us long before we learned their tricks before they learned to abandon these tricks. It should have occurred to me that such clinging to technique spoke to raw defenders, but at the time all I cared about was silencing the huge number of machineguns that had been laid to take us.
Oh, how horrible it was when we encountered the first wave of counterattacks! They had armed the civilians, whipped them into a frenzy, and then sent them at us. It was a wave of Quar, a furious mob, and it stood no chance against well-trained troops with good fire discipline. Many didn’t even have guns. Some carried clubs, others improvised pikes and lances. It was a slaughter.
Alykinder grew furious. He came to the area where we had stopped the first counterattack, and his face was stricken when he saw the piles of corpses. These were simple citizens of Tok, many of whom had lived in the capital for generations, and now forced to fight against the best-trained army in the history of the Quar. Alykinder had striven to preserve the lives of his troops, and the wanton and callous attitude that sent a wave of armed civilians to die made him sick.
There were at least two of these counterattacks that I remember. I can no longer remember the details. It has taken many years of willful forgetting.
The Royalist troops had chosen to make a last stand at the palace. It was a stupid, futile, worthless waste of troops, defending a position with symbolic value and limited military worth. If the Royalists had chosen, they might have broken our weak encirclement and fought their way to link up with the remnants of the Provisional Imperial Army. Instead they chose to send civilians to die in droves to weaken our numbers, but not to the point where success was ever in the balance. They chose to make their palace their funerary chapel, and the city the ossuary of the commoner.
The sprawling Palace could never have been completely sealed from intrusion, and they tried to defend too many places at once, spreading themselves too thin. Small squads of ours took out checkpoints, broke in through storm drains, scaled blind corners to gain access to interior chambers, all with token resistance. The outer curtain was breached within hours of arriving at the palace. We broke through the resistance at the Inner Gate without having to call up our armor. Then, once again, it was room-to-room fighting in the Keep. Deafening noise, the stinging splinter of stone and masonry, thick and acrid smoke which refused to clear—these are my memories of those hours.
Duke Icho died when his guard, the cadets of the King Vek Military Institute, launched a suicidal charge at us. They had fed so long on the lies and slogans of the Royalists that they accepted their death with pleasure. They died led by old Quar nobility, who had never to that point seen bloodshed up close, but who loudly professed the purifying virtues of warfare, and the necessity to die for the king and nation. For them, dying was easy—a little pain and it was all over. For those of us who murdered them, the pain has continued in the decades that followed.
Alykinder was there, too, to witness the removal of Duke Icho’s body. He saw his nemesis surrounded by the young quar who had died for the privilege of the First Families and he wept.
Crusade Years 5-9 (1766-1770): The Alliance of Creevin and the Iron Regime
Outside of the core Crusader states, Alykinder was now a pariah. The nobility from these states were readily granted asylum, and the world outside of the Crusader states learned that the Iron Regime was not a monolithic Crusader front. Alykinder’s Minister of the Interior was an ardent Radical named Tos Wen Cryk, and Wen Cryk proposed creating a secret police force to stamp out Royalist uprisings before they began. Alykinder is known to have approved of the formation of the Special Branch of Security—a force which operates beyond the bounds of the law, answerable only to Wen Cryk and Alykinder himself.
Between the actions of the Special Branch and the Battle of Bul Maren, Alykinder had lost the confidence of many in the Crusader states. Many were concerned that the old anchors of quar life, including the centrality of the clans, were being undermined in the name of an ill-defined progress. Many felt that the actions undertaken by the Army did not justify the goal of an end to the Long War, and even more felt that Alykinder’s actions were more likely to lead to more violence than less.
A Grand Convocation of noble clans in Creevin agreed to form a unified army to oppose the Crusaders. This project had been a cause of the Kydwyt sept of Fidwog and the Braerch sept of Coftyr since before Crusade Year 1. The combined armies and navies of these Royalist nations were almost double the size of the Crusader military.
But even as these armies were massive, they were subject to squabbling and infighting, particularly between nations. Old jealousies and feuds could not be reconciled by the existence of a common enemy. Alykinder’s propaganda arm exploited these, and the self-styled Grand Army of Kings was not equal to the veteran Crusaders, with their huge Airmobile Brigades and veteran Guard Catrawds.
The death of the Grand Army of Kings came in pieces. First Maer Braech, staging ground of the army, was forced into submission when the Crusaders were able to destroy the ports where arms and munitions were brought in. A combined fleet of warships from Easky and Sleevin were destroyed in the Inishchol Archipeligo by a daring Crusader battlecruiser squadron and krates from the Crusader Air Force. The King of Creevin was taken in a daring raid as he hunted in his mountain lodge.
The tenor and nature of warfare had changed since the first days Alykinder had served. No longer did armies dig trenches around an invested city and engage in the protracted process of siege and counter-siege. New and terrible weapons, such as the airship frigate and the baeliog tractor, the quar-portable machine-gun and the trench-bomb are used. Large formations of cavalry are almost unknown now, and the artillerist must be a master of the artillery tractor as well as the gun.
At the end of Crusade Year 9, the only nations which had not separately negotiated a peace with the Crusader States were Coftyr and Fidwog, yet it can be fairly said that the Crusader Army is not large enough to control the surrendered nations. Though these formerly-Royalist states were supposed to remove their kings and provide fresh legions for the Crusaders, they showed no compliance beyond empty words. Despite the efforts of the Special Branch, Royalist insurrections were known to be occurring or have occurred inside Upper Barro, Kryst, and even Tok itself.
Crusade Year 10 (1771): The Fate of Alwyd
The Crusader Army is fighting a war on two fronts, and is further extended by control of captured territory and suppressing insurrections. The Crusader Army is making increased use of penal formations, where criminals are sent into service rather than prison. This, coupled with retirement and loss of some key officers and veterans has diluted the fighting capacity of these armies.
The Royalist factions can be said to be unified in their opposition to the Crusade, but beyond that they share little in common.
All armies continue to rely on the conscript soldier at their core, just as they have for the last seven hundred years of the Long War. If there is any single image which captures the present state of the Quar, it is the lone Rhyfler on the march, his rifle in hand. He marches as if carrying a heavy weight, towards an uncertain future.