[centre][h2]The Crusade of 1885 (aka. The War of Ulgyrikinan Aggression, the Colonial War)[/h2][/centre]

The year 1883 saw the breakout of a minor feud between human and orcis villagers in Volanth-held Walderia. Concerned about the conditions of humans in Walderia - who were a minority relative to the orcish population - the SK intervened and demanded that the Empire see to it that its humans are treated better.
As this was a minor and rather isolated incident, the Empire dismissed the SK's concerns as overblown. But the SK saw an opportunity here. It had long been the view in SK military circles that establishing a colonial presence was vital for the long-term security of the SK. The dominance of non-humans and non-Christians in the world was worrying, and any opportunity to weaken such powers was to be capitalised upon. This was just such an opportunity. That is not t say, of course, that there was not also genuine concern for the safety of fellow humans - but it was seen as advantageous to exaggerate such concern.

With the SK not letting up, Volanth eventually agreed to a joint commission to investigate the 1883 incident and recommend reforms geared towards preventing such things happening in the future. Ever reluctant to do as this commission asked, the Empire did not exactly make things smooth for it and it eventually collapsed. The SK accused the Empire of actively sabotaging the commission, and the Empire denied this and accused the SK of infringing upon its sovereignty. In early 1885, the SK landed its 1st Colonial Division on the Volanth-held Isle of Christ (then known as Tshan's Tooth). News of the the SK's declaration of war reached Volanth almost at the same time as the news of the capture of the island. The Virgin Islands and the Aegeas Isles were captured in the following months, and the Empire shored up its colonial defences - particularly in Walderia - in expectation of an SK landing somewhere there.

 It came as a tremendous shock when the SK, in a completely unexpected move, landed a force in Malta and the Pyrenees. The idea that the SK would turn a purely colonial war into an all-out clash between Narrevian powers was somewhat unthinkable. But it had happened, and there was now every possibility that the aggressive SK would consider landing troops on the Imperial mainland. Caught completely unprepared, for there hadn't been an actual war against the Empire in almost a century, the Imperial military floundered. The Emperor, Rurn, ordered the Empire's huge navy to protect the channel between the SK and the Empire, and the military to reclaim lost Imperial territory. Thousands of ships headed towards the channel, while the rusted Imperial war machine ponderously moved into action.

It was a disaster. 

While the Imperial navy vastly outnumbered the SK, it simply couldn't compete with the SK's armored ships and torpedos. In one of (then Admiral) John Fisher's greatest naval military displays, hundreds of Imperial ships were sunk, compared to a mere handful of SK ships. But the Imperial goal was achieved. The SK was discouraged from invading the Imperial Mainland, though at a horrendus cost. 

The war to reclaim the Empire's colonial holdings went even worse. Hundreds of thousands of poorly trained troops who had joined expecting the occassional conflict with bandits, armed with single shot rifles and no machine guns or modern artillery to speak of, marched against the effectively modernized military of the SK, and were slaughtered en masse. Entire Legions broke and ran in a disorganized mess, shaming the Empire and ceding more land to the SK.

In one of the few notable displays of the discipline the Empire used to be known for, Legate Zavoon Crian (now commander of the Dragon's Claws) commanded his Legion  to hold a defensive line as the rest of the Host retreated. Expecting to die, the 51st Walderia dug their heels in and held their ground. Slowly, the advance of SK forces pushed them back into a small peninsula in southern Adro - seventy thousand men crammed into a small area of land, barely holding off the forces of the Sacred Kingdom. Supplies were nearly nonexistent and conditions were beyond untenable - the Legate was on the verge of ordering a suicidal last charge, his men further whittled down to fifty thousand in strength. On the eve of the planned assault, heavy shells began whistling in from off the coast. At first, many thought that Sacred Kingdom naval forces had been diverted to flsuh them from their position, but after a few minutes it became blatantly obvious that the furious hail of shellfire was slamming into the SK vanguard.

Minutes after that, landing craft began to beach themselves upon the Imperial position, disgorging the full contingent of marines on what was now plainly an Etresnakiten pre-dreadnought accompanied by a motley flotilla of vessels of all kinds, many piloted by civilians moved to the cause. With the well equipped and superbly trained marines forging ahead to distract the SK forces, the trapped Imperial legion began an urgent evacuation into the hastily assembled armada. All told, at the cost of well over three hundred dead and wounded marines and a truly staggering amount of naval ordnance, the fleet succeeded in evacuating almost all of the trapped Imperial forces, another thousand dying in a desperate rearguard action alongside the Marines. The defeat, known as the Miracle of Adro to some, caused outrage in the SK's senior military circles, and various admirals were removed from their posts for allowing an inferior force to outmanoeuvre the pride of the SK - its navy.
 
 Not long after, the Realm extended formal military assistance to the Empire in their war. While the Empire had been able to check the SK's advances since early 1887, a bloody stalemate had developed with neither the Empire able to push back the SK and retake its lost territories, nor the SK able to continue its tremendous advance. The longer the stalemate continued, however, the mre untenable the vastly outnumbered SK's position became. It had relied on swift attacks and stunning victories against numerically superior but disorganised Imperial forces to attain victory. With the Empire now more prepared and pumping its hunreds of thousands of soldiers into the war, such advances and victories became more and more difficult for the SK. However, time well-spent meant that the SK had managed to shore up its defences across the board, and senior military officials were confident that, even if they made no advances, they would be able to hold on to all they had captured.
 
 The Empire, throughout the early beginning of Etresnakiten involvment in the war, was restructuring and rebuiliding it's military. In what would be dubbed 'The Great Forging'. Discipline was restored into Imperial ranks, often with a brutal hand. Those who broke ranks before the order was recieved were shot. Deserters were crippled and left for the SK to find. Thieves had a hand cut off and were given a pistol. Such was the standard of punishment throughout the Imperial military.
 
 Emperor Rurn, the Dragon's Wisdom, ordered all Imperial Legions who fought against the SK but broke and ran to be decimated, and given one chance to restore their honor. They were to be the first units in any assualt, always on the frontlines. Anyone of them who ran without orders would be shot. 
 
 The Etresnakiten officers examined the Imperial officers, and were given full right to demote and replace any they deemed unfit. Those who argued were given one chance to prove themselves worthy. All failed. 
 
 One Host of the Empire had fled before the SK forces without firing a single shot, running away before the SK could engage them. The Emperor ordered them Eradicated. They would be armed with pikes and simple armor and driven before the main Imperial/Etresnakiten host. When conflicts began their goal was to charge into the enemy's position and overrun them. By the end of the first year after the 'Great Forging', they had all died.
 
This all changed when, in early 1888, Etresna joined the fray on the Empire's side. Bringing with them powerful artillery and the latest weaponry, the Etresnakiten tipped the precarious stalemate in the Empire's favour. Despite tenacious resistance, the SK found itself losing ground and its commanders were often left paralysed in the face of unpredictable lightning Etresnakiten attacks backed by terrifying bombardment. Key SK positions were targetted with terrifying efficiency and accuracy, and many good soldiers and weaponry was lost. Additionally, many officers both higher and lower were lost to dedicated sniping formations deployed deep behind enemy lines by the Etresnakiten expeditionary force. 

A crippling blow was dealt to Sacred Kingdom forces in the continent of Selim. The eighty thousand strong Etresnakiten expeditionary force, under the command of Firahl Kyni Panarre, spearheaded a massive counterattack against the thus far largely uncontested SK colonial forces. Dug in and well prepared, Imperial assaults had failed to gain much headway, gaining some of the lower lying areas. However, the eastern highlands, and with them much of the occupied territory, remained firmly in the grasp of SK troops, resisting many attempts both by Imperial and Realm forces to reclaim it. When the fresh contingent arrived, Panarre immediately set about deploying her forces and marshalling the still unorganized and poorly led Imperial armies in the area. It is unknown how she cowed Imperial commanders, but several of their number went missing at a similar time, and their disappearances were noted.

With her subordinates in line, she split her own forces to form the tips of a pincer move, lightning fast massed night assaults flushing many SK forces from their fortified positions - albeit at a high cost in taking the well defended locations. Having successfully punched through the Expeditionary forces abandoned all but light artillery support and pushed on, smashing through comparatively light resistance put up by unprepared reserve units. Within two weeks, the jaws closed and the Ulgyrikan forces found themselves encircled and pressed in from all sides, constantly showered with artillery barrages and harassed by lightning raids and constant sniping attacks. In cold blooded determination, Panarre forbade the surrender of the main force, further tightening the noose. However, she instructed one regiment to abandon their positions and dig in further back in a gambit to funnel the surviving Ulgyrikan forces into what was expected to be an escape, only to stumble upon a prepared killing ground well within range of heavy artillery batteries and interlacing machine gun fire. In this display of what would come to be a characteristic lack of mercy, she forbade a single soldier from surrender for a full day, until the Ulgyrikan forces had hunkered down in a low lying defensible position in a small blind spot in the massed artillery. Assaulting such a position would've cost an inordinate number of her troops' lives for little gain, so at last she relented and allowed them to surrender. But they refused. Both angered and amused, Panarre ordered the redeployment of her artillery to a new position and continued shelling the last holdout of Ulgyrikan forces. Every hour interrupting the bombardment with another offer of surrender. The battered Ulgyrikinans - who would be forever remembered as the Lions of Selim - again and again refused. 

Panarre eventually instructed the emplacement of machine guns in a high spot overlooking the depression in the earth and systematically wiped out this last vestige of resistance in the Selim theater of the war. The naval power of the Ulgyrikan prevented her from launching further assaults against their occupied islands, but much of the mainland had been retaken in a shockingly savage battle, even for the standards of the war, that became known as Panarre's Abbattoir.  When news of the extermination of everyone on the Selimfront to a man, SK high command was thrown into utter pandemonium. It sent shockwaves throughout the military establishment and one high ranking general was so shocked that he suffered a stroke and died some time later. On hearing of the last stand of the Lions of Selim, Field Marshall Prince Fredrick Roberts commented, 'It is magnificent, but it is not war; it is madness.'

The Field Marshall was then personally deployed to Selim with 100,000 soldiers. Roberts stayed for a short while in Northern Firland where he drilled his soldiers for a good two weeks as the navy carried out various operations under Admiral John Fisher in the sea east of Argonia, capturing and destroying various enemy vessels and bombarding enemy attempts at constructing coastal defences in the area. This meant that Field Marshall Roberts' eventual landing at Argonia was met with little resistance and he was able to successfully and swiftly make a beachhead. Having heard of the by-now infamous Panarre, the senior SK military man was somewhat eager to face her in battle.

However, Panarre had left by the time of his arrival - her military expertise urgently needed elsewhere in the theatres of the war. Without her oversight, the allied forces rapidly lost ground to the fresh wave of Ulgyrikan forces. Disorganized and ill informed, many allied forces fell into disarray, defaulting to their usual tactics in the absence of informed command - Imperial units stubbornly holding onto every inch of ground, and Etresnakiten formations rapidly seeming to abandon vast swathes of land before launching lightning raids back into them. Despite this, the slow meat grinder of Roberts' well lead, if relatively new, army wore into them and pushed them back, reclaiming ever more land at a high cost in lives on both sides. Things began to change with the return of Panarre, and she was able to coordinate command at all levels, once more playing to the strengths of the forces under her command and relaunching similar tactics to those used prior. Light probing attacks by scouting forces found the weak points in the Ulgyrikan line and pushed through with relentless force, sowing chaos and havoc behind the front lines and allowing the relentless steamroller of Imperial might crush the now disorganized and disrupted defenders remaining on the front.

She rain into a wall, however, when her forces reached the initial beachhead of Roberts' landing, the general knowing well that it was difficult to counter her tactics and wisely choosing to fortify heavily this initial point. Further probing found little, if any, weakness in the Ulgyrikan defenses, and the rapid reconquest ground down into a brutal war of attrition. Panarre experimented further, modifying her previous tactics to further probe along the lines of enemy defenses under cover of night, fog, or other concealment and seek out the tiniest weakness - after finding such weakness they would infiltrate or sabotage them, or merely hurl grenades into the works, doing their best to sow further havoc among the defenders. Roberts, however, had concentrated all his available forces in this small beachhead once more, and Panarre's probing could do little against such an overwhelmingly firm defense.

After two months of this, she drew back, hoping to goad Roberts into sallying forth from his impregnable defenses and allow her to once more resume the unpredictable lightning raids and encirclement tactics that had proven so devastating before. Roberts, however, was not so easily provoked, and though SK forces engaged in light assaults, the war ground down to localized firefights, and little progress was made.

Panarre, in a gamble, withdrew her forces entirely, laying a trap wherein a dead soldier, disguised as an officer, was laid in a field nearby an Ulgyrikan defensive post, with a letter on his person detailing what appeared to be plans for a total withdrawal from the current theatre and redeployment elsewhere, and the workings of a naval buildup for an amphibious assault upon the Ulgyrikan position. The gambit appeared to have worked, and Roberts redeployed some of his forces further inland to secure higher ground for heavy artillery emplacements to counter any naval engagement. Pillaging and raiding many of the abandoned camps, the Ulgyrikan reinforced their position and expanded their occupied territory, digging in further with the little time remaining to them before the alleged naval assault.

Except it never came, instead the SK units were harassed and subject to improvised land mines and suicide bombings in their midst, rendering the entire occupied zone a nearly uninhabitable hellhole. Panarre had accepted that she could not easily dislodge them from their holdings, and instead adopted a policy of demoralization and slow eradication. She was never able to fully reclaim the occupied territory, unwilling to incur the massive casualties a forward assault on the position would entail, but her tactics precluded the further expansion of Ulgyrikan influence in the area - allowing many of the Imperial and Etresnakiten forces engaged in Selim to be deployed elsewhere. 

Other than Roberts' relative success, albeit bottled up and in deadlock, by early 1890 much of the SK's conquests had been undone, and it found that it only held on to fractions of what it had captured. However, the islands it had conquered early in the war meant that it could continue supplying its troops on the various continents, and when peace was finally arrived at in mid-1890 the SK held on to all land still under its control - this included the various islands, parts of Walderia, the Horn of Candor, and parts of Argonia. The early stages of the war, as well as later Etrasnakiten victories, had convinced SK high command that the tactics of the future were all about heavy firepower and deeply aggresive and powerful attacks aimed at taking out key enemy positions before the enemy could prepare properly or recover from prior bombardment. Given the small size of the SK military, such a strategy is now viewed as key to ensuring the SK military's victory over forces which vastly outnumber it.



The War in Numbers

Strength of the Nations
Etresnakiten forces: 120,000 deployed, further ~160,000 raised but never deployed abroad, 43 ironclads and 30 modern warships including four pre-dreadnought battleships. 
Sacred Kingdom: est. 550,000 volunteer soldiers, 160,000 trained regular forces [at start of the war]. Additional 100,000 raised after the slaughter in Selim and deployed with Field Marshall Prince Fredrick Roberts.
Imperial Forces: Est. 2 million forces at the beginning of the war.  Addtional 4 million raised over course of war.

Losses
Etresna: 71,829 killed or wounded, around 5000 missing, thirty one ironclads, 22 modern vessels - all but one of the battleships  (surviving vessels scrapped in anticipation of naval restructuring.) 
Sacred Kingdom: est. 260,000 on the Selim front. 17,000 during Roberts' campaign in Selim. Est. 100,000 on the other fronts.
Imperial: est. 3 million lost to combat, 1 million lost to Eradication and Decimations, and a final 1 million uncounted for.