Upland Confederation
| Upland Confederation | |||
| |||
| Motto: Došman Došmanarijbijŋaŋ, Bjezneŋ Duslarijbijz (The Enemies Of Our Enemies Are Our Friends) | |||
| Anthem: none | |||
| |||
| Map versions | - | ||
| Capital | - | ||
| Largest city | - | ||
| Official language(s) | Laqi, Yehudi, Istvanistani | ||
| Official religion(s) | Pesakhnik, Siyachism, Holodomatic Cedrozurvanism | ||
| Demonym | Uplander | ||
| - Adjective | Uplander | ||
| Government | Clan Confederation | ||
| - Ataman | Varҳat Ҳazedinov | ||
| - Adjutants | The Iezauli | ||
| - Legislature | Congress of Džirgas | ||
| Establishment | 214 Anno Libertatis | ||
| Area | ~150,000 sq.km | ||
| Population |
| ||
| Active population | - | ||
| Currency | Benacian sovereign, occasionally Kalgarrand or natopo | ||
| Calendar | |||
| Time zone(s) | CMT -10 | ||
| Mains electricity | |||
| Driving side | |||
| Track gauge | |||
| National website | - | ||
| National forum | - | ||
| National animal | - | ||
| National food | - | ||
| National drink | - | ||
| National tree | - | ||
| Abbreviation | - | ||
The Upland Confederation (not to be confused with Uppland) is a portion of the moribund Republic of Inner Benacia populated by allied clans of the Black Laqi living alongside minority populations of Yehudim and Green Laqi. The relative impotence of the Inner Benacian Dolmen as an organ of governance, having sown the Kalirion Fracture and reaped the sustained military attentions of the Unified Governorates ever since, led the Uplanders to consolidate their once-sprawling distribution along the foothills of the Octavian Mountains where they increasingly relied upon the support of neighbouring Kalgachia to maintain their security. The unsatisfactory outcome of the Inner Benacian Conflict between Kalgachia and the Raspur Pact alliance resulted in the establishment of a condominium over the Upland Confederation under the joint suzerainty of the Garden and the Unified Governorates. The terms of the Treaty of Gloomburg (1681 AN) resulted in an increased political and military presence by the Black Legions within the territory, the payment of a yearly tribute to Merensk and the foundation of twelve veterans colonies in the east of the country.
Geography
The Upland Confederation is located in the intermittently-wooded hill country which previously comprised the northern reaches of Whisperwood, a Minarborian province which was afforested and biomically engineered by the Deep Singers between 80 AL and 141 AL. The profusion of modified flora and fauna in the area, left to become thoroughly feral after Minarboria's demise, has combined with sporadic governance to retard its resettlement into a developed society; as was the case in neighbouring Lepidopterum during the immediate post-Minarborian years, the inhabitants of the Upland Confederation tend to reside in excavated cellars and fortified structures, supporting themselves by foraying in force around the surface.
History
Ashkenatza and Minarboria
The Upland Confederation straddles what was once the integral, if provincial Ashkenatzan regions of Porolia and Litovina. By the time the first Minarborian settlers arived in 80 AL, the area had been largely depopulated by the depredations of raiding Kossars from ruined population centres further north. The subsequent 'cultivation' of the area by the Deep Singers was thus met with negligible resistance; initially in the east and then, from 110 AL, in the west. There was, for a time, some social divergence between the eastern settlers (the migrants of the so-called 'First Great Replanting') and those in the west (from the 'Second Great Replanting') who had fled Shireroth at different intervals; combined with various other factors (most notably an epidemic of the 'Crystal Death' pathogen which devastated the Deep Singer population) this would go some way toward the breakdown in societal cohesion which accompanied the eventual collapse of the Minarborian Empire in 141 AL and precipitated a general migration north to the relative safety of the Octavian Mountains, a process which was accelerated after 175 AL by the arrival of Laqi and Yehudi warbands affiliated with the nascent Republic of Inner Benacia, until the area's last Deep Singers were driven away.
The Dolmen Years
Under Inner Benacian rule the area came under the general control of the Ś°ecehe Yśehe (Black Brothers), the predominant faction of a group known more generally as the Black Laqi who had migrated from the mountains of Karalakh some three thousand kilometres to the east. Their migration, having been from a Minarborian territory and initiated by the collapse of the Minarborian government, sought out remnants of the latter regime and found due affinity with the settlers of the Octavian Mountains who had established the state of Kalgachia. This marked the Black Laqi out from the other factions of the Republic of Inner Benacia's tribally-confederative government, whose own tenor toward the Kalgachi was more hostile on account of the latter state's tendency to raid neighbouring lowlands for resources during its infancy.
Initially viewed within the RIB as the questionably-loyal mercenaries of a foreign power, the Black Laqi were able to turn the sentiment to their advantage in 194 AL by feeding the wave of discontent against the RIB's invasion by Shireroth and its forced incorporation into the Raspur Pact; an arrangement which only lasted until 208 AL when the pro-Shirerithian puppet government was violently overthrown. The event did, however, result in a more general outbreak of factional warfare within the RIB as revolutionary and counter-revolutionary clans cast aside the pretences of civil discourse which had held together their ruling 'Dolmen' council and exploited the political schism of the moment to take up generations-old feuds against each other. Shireroth's inability to control the situation not only gave the warring parties a free rein in their mutual slaughter but ultimately triggered the tumults of the Kalirion Fracture in Shireroth itself.
The Upland Stand
The Black Brothers, although occupying a favourably-large segment of the RIB's western territory, now found themselves assailed on nearly all sides by forsaken units of Shireroth's Imperial Armed Forces who had placed their loyalties to the Shirekeep government in abeyance and rallied themselves as the Black Legions, an avowedly Nationalist-Humanist force whose designs for conquest of the entire Benacian continent were enlivened by the removal of a moderating Shirerithian hand and included, among other things, a decisive settlement of old military scores with the Laqi peoples.
It is the resolute will of our sovereign Perfecti that a common border between the Nationalist-Humanist menace and the Benefactor Races, entailing as it would a state of indefinite provocation, aggression and archonic fixation, cannot and shall not come to pass. Our cultural, scientific and genetic inheritance from the Deep Singers is of existential value to the entire Kalgachi nation and our debt of protection to them is outside all question. If, by our safeguarding actions in the southwest, we can atone for the ugly expediencies of our nation's birth in the eyes of the Inner Benacian Laqi then so much the better.History commands us to act at this time and in this place. Within two decades the reanimated factories of Mishalan will have poured forth along our frontiers a force even greater than its Shirerithian predecessor in potency and hostile intent. Our Salvator the Empress Lyssansa did not hesitate to move on Nackolom when the Froyalanish hordes threatened Sansabury's flank, and with her blue-haired spectre as our witness we shall not dither in the Garden's defence today."
—Rubina Yastreb, Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan, addressing trainees at the Kalgachi Defence Force School of Biomic Warfare and Special Operations, Lithead
It was in 210 AL that one Varҳat Ҳazedinov, a Black Brother Iezaul of likeable yet violently decisive tenor, returned from the tour of Kalgachi military training schools and intelligence organs which he had inexplicable cause and clearance to visit over the preceding year and now stepped into the maw of the impending slaughter. Accompanying him were a cadre of learned men of 'Green Laqi' heritage from the Eastern Octavian Mountains, a wagon train full of arms including anti-tank munitions and MANPADS, contact details for purveyors of essential consumer goods on the border with Lepidopterum and several chests full of gold Kalgarrand coinage in varying denominations. As might be expected the bonanza won Ҳazedinov a great many friends among his fellow Iezauli who nonetheless found themselves unable to usurp or replicate his carefully-guarded status as sole legitimate intermediary with whatever Kalgachi contacts had donated the bounty; contacts who were, in Ҳazedinov's tantalising words, willing to provide an indefinite flow of similar 'humanitarian aid' on the condition that Ҳazedinov remain as their liaison and that his musings with regard to the wider governance and military strategy of the Black Brothers be respected for the imperative wisdom that they represented.
By 214 AL this had led to Ҳazedinov's installation as ruling Ataman of the entire Black Brotherhood, from which he decreed a systematic shift in their fighting emphasis from one of tactical manoeuvre toward one of operational positioning. This was backed by a seemingly-endless programme of trenchwork excavation in depth along the northern reaches of the Brotherhood's controlled territory which was now named the Upland Confederation, a suitably secular nod to the minority clans of Pesakhnik Yehudim and touring bands of Kalgachi partisans who had settled the area with their own diverse motivations. As news spread of Ҳazedinov's stand and the prosperity enjoyed by those who stood with him, Black Laqi clans from the unfortified south began migrating into the safer territory. The greater density of Ҳazedinov's forces were concentrated at the Confederation's western extent where the Black Legions' captive state apparatus, the Unified Governorates, had asserted a territorial claim all the way to the frontier of Lepidopterum. Here they were joined by an unknown number of well-equipped, presumably-Kalgachi special forces operators and at least one regiment of confirmable Kalgachi Kossars equipped with medium-range surface-to-air missiles, howitzers and anti-tank guns. The Black Legions' forays into these defences were iniitally limited to harrassment raids and the manning of an opposing defensive line intended to protect communications between their southern hinterland and the ruined city of Litkov.
The Kalgachi Occupation
In 218 AL as part of Unternehmen Dschingis, the Black Legions launched a massed air raid on the Upland Confederation whose casualties included several operational personnel of the Kalgachi Defence Force. The response from Oktavyan was swift, deploying over 300,000 KDF troops in an earnest occupation of the territory which vastly increased ground-based air defence cover and provided the manpower to accelerate Ҳazedinov's fortification programme by orders of magnitude. The Unified Governorates, preoccupied with other battlefronts and regarding the Upland Confederation with a fraction of the strategic value assigned to it by the Kalgachi, now sensed that its continued use as a venue for distraction raids in the face of a full KDF occupation would only result in an escalatory drain on manpower and resources for little tangible result beyond the inulgent oppurtunity to get within shelling distance of some Deep Singers, the prevention of which was the central objective of the Kalgachi campaign. The front line duly became even more static and assumed the form of an undeclared truce which consequently developed into a de facto ceasefire, culminating in formal negotiations and eventually a codified cessation of hostilities with the Slavegate Convention in 219 AL.
The military occupation and fortification programme nonetheless continued, albeit at a slower pace and increasingly accompanied by humanitarian works. KDF units rotating through the area were invariably better fed and equipped than the local population and the enlisted troops soon found themselves donating spare rations and bartering for local crafts. Commanders of idle units awaiting orders, seeking to keep their restive troops occupied, formed work parties to carry out structural repairs and agricultural improvements. These efforts did not go unnoticed by the local clan Džirgas who sought to prolong the arrangement wherever possible; Ҳazedinov, on hearing of this at one of their periodic congresses, remarked that the situation could be sustained indefinitely if the Congress accepted the nominal authority of Kalgachia's ruling Perfecti who in turn would allow them to retain a great degree of autonomy as they had in Northbloom, Lepidopterum and Lapivril. The Congress duly issued a resolution that Ҳazedinov should travel to Oktavyan and formally request just such a thing on the Džirgas behalf - he undertook this journey in 223 AL and his proposal was met with favour by Kalgachia's occluded sovereigns whom, he would later remark, seemed to have been awaiting the request and offered the faint implication that Ҳazedinov's entire cereer had been directly sponsored by them to achieve just such an outcome. Now, apparently satisfied with Ҳazedinov's proposal as the final piece in the jigsaw, the Perfecti formally declared the Upland Confederation a Kalgachi protectorate with immediate effect and appointed Ҳazedinov as Lord Protector.
After the Treaty of Gloomburg
The Treaty of Gloomburg, ratified on 7.X.1681, ended the Inner Benacian Conflict between the Raspur Pact and the Kalgachi alliance. It resulted in the annexation of the Republic of Inner Benacia by the Unified Governorates of Benacia, the establishment of a condominium over Lepidopterum, the Upland Confederation and Northbloom between Kalgachia and the Unified Governorates, as well as an effective informal protectorate over Kalgachia proper, including Lapivril. Radio broadcasts over Kalgachia by the long lost Yastrebs lent legitimacy to the treaty.
It was a time of intense demoralisation and disorientation in the Upland Confederation, especially as the confederation had served as the springboard from which the Kalgachi forces had managed to secure some of their initial triumphs in the opening stages of the conflict.
In the years that followed, cross-border cooperation in the eradication of Tyrannocricetus aliger nests has become an established fact of life in the Upland Confederation with the significant presence of penal battalions from the Biological Remediation Service of the UGB within its borders and the enforced cooperation of the local protectorate forces with the BRS in the regular "tee-al" hunts which lay waste to vast swathes of the heavily forested countryside.
The increased political and military presence of the Black Legions within the Confederation, the payment of a yearly tribute to Merensk and the foundation of twelve veterans colonies in the south of the country, strained the patience of the native populace of the territory and put the Confederation's Ataman, Varҳat Ҳazedinov, under an increasing strain and pressure as the victim of geopolitical forces now quite beyond his control. Ataman Xazedinov also found his position, as of 1687 AN, found his position threatened by the rising prestige of Kurgoko Vecht who had presented himself as a veteran Tamtḥemat of the Ŝḥenĉeł'yhe in its campaign against the Guttuli Protectorate.
By 1689, with somewhere in the region of sixty thousand veterans of the Black Legions settled in the southern portion of the protectorate, and with Vecht's band of followers at large, operating as "freelance tax-collectors" throughout the region and offering their dubious protection for those clans whose delegates could be relied upon to vote the right way at the Congress of Džirgas, matters were coming to ahead. The reported success of the Biological Remediation Service in clearing the Governorate of Upper Lywall of Tee-als in that same year threatened the Upland Confederation with the prospect of a new wave of traders and settlers arriving along the roads from Sansabury in the following spring. Caught in a pincer between Vecht's machinations, and the increasing demands for voting rights on the part of the settlers, Ҳazedinov on 13.IX.1689 dissolved the Congress that had been preparing to debate a motion of no-confidence brought forward by Vecht's partisans.
With the dissolution of Congress and the rejection of demands for the extension of the franchise to the settler communities, Benacia Command began a steady build up of forces and infrastructure along the border with the protectorate. Forces assigned to the 4th Battle Division began to concentrate in Upper Lywall, receiving new, more energetic and purposeful, commanders and reinforcements consisting of modern armoured fighting vehicles and artillery pieces.
Sansabury Conference
At the staff conference held in Sansabury on 19.IX.1685, attended by Frainan-Streïakeï Bruno Rambert Strohkirch for the Central Banner Group, Frainan Hohmin Sepp Käser for the 11th Army, Frainan Hohmin-bi-Łoidi Farzan Marduniya for the Central Banner Air Forces, and Frumst Þeïn Zacharias Avon-El for the IV (Combined Arms) Corps, proposals were submitted for a discrete and deniably intervention on behalf of the Vecht-clique. These proposals were strongly disputed by Avon-El, who contended that whomsoever of the two protecting powers of the Upland Confederation - being Kalgachia and the UGB - materially established the facts on the ground would be presenting the other side with a fait accompli. In view of the outcome of previous actions in the region, this could only be achieved by overwhelming force before the opposing force could put their own intervention plans into action.
This intervention was however deferred whilst the spectacular collapse of Stormark and Francia increasingly held the attention of Benacia Command and drew away the resources of the Raspur Pact towards other continental theatres.
Political situation in the settlements
The six settlements founded by the UGB for the purpose of resettling veterans of the Black Legions were founded in the east of the country, in the midst of the forested zone bisected by three rivers flowing north to south. The most westerly of these three rivers is known as the Giḥón, upon which two settlements were founded, one in the north and one in the south and upon opposing banks of the river, east and west respectively. The middle river, the Pishon, flows through the most densely forested part of the country and was graced by a single settlement. The final and most easterly river, the Hiddekel, has a fertile alluvial floodplain and received three settlements - two on the east bank in the north and one on the west bank in the south.
It is to the settlements along the east bank of the Hiddekel that a road from Sansabury was driven, and this river is crossed by means of a ferry that may travel either to an encampment on the opposite bank or further down river to the west bank settlement. Travel into the river valleys of the Pishon and the Giḥón are carried on by overland trails or by rotorcraft where they are available. Unlike the Hiddekel, the two western rivers had fordable points up river, and trails reflecting this. An Ashkenatzim road is known to have once passed east to west through the country but its whereabouts is presently lost.
Sixty thousand settlers were received into the Upland Confederation with the majority favouring the Hiddekel, where 48% of the veterans and their families received their grants, primarily in the form of plots of agricultural land. 30% of settlers found their way to the Gihón settlements, where plots were allocated with a view to establishing upland sheep farming. The remaining 22% of settlers found their way into the valley of the Pishon, where claims were divided with a view to prospecting for minerals and for forestry work.
Each settlement is expected to provide for and sustain with manpower and provisions a full regiment of the Varþataræn.
Situation in the early 18th Century after Norton
In 1708 AN the Salb IV “Aurangzeb” had entered Lepidopterum effectively unopposed. Additionally the invaders were able to reorganise Spindlelimb's Regiment into a light cavalry force of native and mixed-race collaborators. This considerable force was positioned across the railway linking the Black Brothers, the pro-Kalgachi Laq militia of the Upland Confederation, with the bountiful supply depots of the Kalgachi Defence Force in the mountain fastnesses of the Garden proper. Meanwhile, to the southwest, the Benacians had been prolific in raising kossar regiments, mercenary cavalry drawn from the Yehudi communities of Siyachia to bolster the Salb III and the 3 Kossarfördelningen, which together would hold the Upland Confederation in a vice-like grip.
Squeezed in this manner, as he had been ever since the Treaty of Gloomburg had ended the Inner Benacian Conflict, Varҳat Ҳazedinov had focused on a patient strategy of outlasting the Benacian encroachments. Whilst the intention had originally, in line with the doctrine taught the original Kalgachi sponsors of the Upland regime, been therefore to wait out the “Archonic fixation” with the lands of the joint-protectorate, and rely upon the self-destructive tendencies of Humanism to bring about the ruin of its adherents, by 1711 however, the Benacian Union showed no signs of imploding and Varxat himself was beginning to suffer the ravages of an evidently advanced old age. His adjutants, the Iezauli, began understandably to despair.
In the third month of 1711 AN, three of these iezauli had grotesquely beaten three Benacian defectors who had attempted to flee the Ketek Legion in Stonetree. Subsequently the Kalgachi border guards had ceremoniously returned two mutilated corpses, whilst disclaiming any knowledge as to the fate or whereabouts of the third. News of the incident was widely circulated amongst BUDF formations facing Kalgachi frontier in an effort to stir up indignation amongst the rank and file. Kalgachi sources subsequently characterised the incident as foiled infiltration attempt by the Military Intelligence Directorate of Benacia Command.
The incident, combined with the rumoured decrepitude of the Upland Confederation's ruler, encouraged the commander of the Army of Siyachia, Frainan Hohmin Farzad Riahi, to take his subordinate commanders into his confidence regarding the possibility of seizing control of the Upland Confederation via a coup de main; ostensibly for the purpose of exacting a suitable retribution upon the guilty iezauli, but in reality to effect a change of regime that was, in the opinion of many, long overdue.
By the fourth month of 1711 AN, the deteriorating quality of interactions with officers from the BUDF, never cordial but now downright hostile, was being reported with mounting consistency by their counterparts amongst the command cadres of Black Brothers. This, combined with the reports of mess-hall gossip by sympathetic informants in Spindlelimb's Regiment, caused increasing apprehension amongst the iezauli, and at last they were able to prevail upon the Ataman to dispatch a coded signal to the general staff of the KDF warning of a deterioration in the general condition of security in the Upland Confederation. The matter was passed by KDF Deep Command to the Foreign Powers Liaison, which was obliged to consult with the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes over several rounds of meetings, with additional input from KDF Intelligence Command and the Prefects.
Finally, in the sixth month of 1711 AN, an encrypted signal was dispatched, via a microburst transmission, to the KDF mission at the Military Coordination Council in Stonetree. After a lengthy decryption process involving a series of analogue mechanical devices, a meeting was convened on 13.VI.1711 AN at which a Captain Bertrand Allan Probity, the interpreter and acting head of mission, was obliged to read a lengthy démarche to the Tribune Iago Ohler, representative of the Bureau for Relations with Foreign Powers for Benacia Command, who noted that the complaints would be forwarded to the appropriate authorities for investigation without undertaking to provide any form of redress. This said, Iago yielded to another tribune, this one being a certain Johann Norrell from the External Service of the Benacian Union, who in turn read out his own litany of complaints, culminating in a denunciation of the treatment of the previously mentioned defectors. To this, Captain Probity tartly remarked that, had the the trio been genuinely attempting to defect, whatever treatment the Black Brothers had dispensed upon them would have been a mercy compared to the agonies that would have awaited them if they had been consigned to the Benacian Labour Reserve. This remark infuriated the Tribune Norrell, who exclaimed that the Kalgachi were in no position to complain about the use of forced labour nor the treatment of traitors. He also noted that the failure to return the defectors, alive and intact, to await the lawful judgement of the Union-State was contrary to the spirit of the Convention. To this, Captain Probity retorted that if the convention was to be adhered to, the tribune of the Benacian Union would remove himself from the meeting, as the policy of the Garden was to negotiate with the organ grinder, rather than the monkey. Further acrimonious words were exchanged, and although the records do not indicate which of the parties threw the first punch, a flurry of accusations and complaints were to pass between the KDF, Benacia Command, and the High Presidium of the Benacian Union, with no party willing to admit fault.
In consequence of the growing diplomatic spat, Eckehard Maier the Benacian head of mission at the Fastenborg Keep in Kalgachia, was obliged to host a visit by one Ilessa Rubinevna, a Commissioner from the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes, on 19.VI.1711 AN, who bore the unwelcome news that the Benacian Union Kalgachia Aligned Corridor Exchange was to be closed to military traffic with immediate effect, and that work crews from the Benacian Labour Reserve were to be withdrawn from Kalgachia Proper by the end of the month. Maier, in contrast to his colleague in Stonetree, managed to maintain the semblance of civility, and merely remarked that there might be difficulties in adhering to such a regrettably tight schedule, before offering the commissioner another pastry.
Notice of the demand was expedited post haste to the Commission for Foreign Affairs in Chryse. The response was comparatively mild, a formal protest followed by an undertaking to comply – provided that guarantees would be forthcoming concerning any articles of machine equipment which it may not be feasible to evacuate within the specified time. Maier was able to call upon the surface-level offices of the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes within the same day as the receipt of the initial demand. The duty keybearer of the office promised that a response would be given within twenty-four hours.
