Streïur uis Faïren
The Streïur uis Faïren (Praeta: kin strife), was a major conflict between the Benacian Union and Shireroth, bring to a head the longstanding geopolitical competition for hegemony over the continent of Benacia.
Background
By the eleventh month of 1733 AN the scale of the build up in Shirerithian forces, evidenced by their reconquest of Sathrati during the previous year, had made it abundantly clear to Benacia Command and the High Presidium of the Benacian Union, that there would be no prospect of preventing the massive reinforcement of the Imperial Republic in Benacia from Greater Kildare. Moreover, the absolute advantage of the Imperial Forces in naval tonnage and manpower would place the entire coastline of the Benacian Union at risk of assault from the sea. Defensive counters, such as building up the coastal defence forces and repairing the East Wall, were both feared to be insufficient countermeasures. As such, Benacia Command came increasingly to the view that the only chance the Benacian Union had of achieving "Endsieg" would require immediate action within a rapidly closing window of opportunity.
The Ankh incident
| Date | 22.XI.1733 AN |
|---|---|
| Location | Red Elwynn above Ankh |
| Forces Involved |
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| Summary | River Fencibles flotilla of three armed merchantmen and six speedboats driven off after a sharp engagement midchannel with the Shirerithian corvette IRS Lacrymosa I. |
| Related Articles | 1733 Ankh incident |
Activation of Bad Neighbour II
Assembled and calibrated on the command of Kaiseress Salome following the death of Princes Rubin and Ichiro, Bad Neighbour II received orders to fire a warning shot on 23.XI.1733 AN in response to the Ankh Incident.
At 4:13am, residents of Shirekeep were wakened by a general alert: all windows within the Inner City higher than 5 stories were to be removed or boarded up for civilian safety. Similar alerts had been issued in the months prior, usually in the middle of the day and followed by a "resume normal activity" within the hour. This time, however, the alert to remove or board up windows was repeated at the top of the hour for the next four hours. At 9:00am, another general alert was sent out, this time instructing residents to take cover. A sonic boom was felt throughout Shirekeep a few minutes later, shattering a few windows that had not been sufficiently protected in the northwest corner of the Inner City. A hypersonic object appeared on RADAR, crossing the border into Alalehzamin on a ballistic trajectory, reaching the Ardashirshahr metropolitan area three and a half minutes later. After the electromagnetic pulse dissipated, it was determined that a 350kt nuclear warhead had airbursted within the Bailiwick of Babran.
Estimates after the fact indicated that the strike claimed the lives of 599,300 subjects with a further 224,940 injured. Fortuitously the height of the airburst was such as to preclude the production of significant radioactive fallout. Nonetheless, all of the Ardashirshahr metropolitan area was under the shadow of a mushroom cloud that towered to an altitude of 16 km. Command and control for the 58th Combined Arms Army and its subordinate formations were immediately thrown into chaos, whilst communications reliant upon the Benacian Data Network in the Governorate of Alalehzamin were temporarily disrupted by the loss of a network node and the concurrent spike in data traffic.
Riposte: Musica burns
Benacia Command was still reeling from the strike delivered against it from somewhere within the bounds of the Imperial County. The Benacian Union had triggered its continuity of government protocols within the first hour of the strike, and its leadership cadres, including the staffs associated with the High Presidium and the Security Council, had dispersed. Under these circumstances operational control defaulted to the General Staff of Benacia Command. Fortunately the BUDF had been on an war footing since 1731 AN, in long anticipation of this moment. Orders, once issued via encrypted channels, were swiftly acted upon. At 10.49 am, from the Selmuliet Bastion in Ransenar and the Šlomxala Arsenal in the Unified Governorates, dozens of missiles were fuelled, prepared and launched in rapid sequence against Shireroth. In the next six minutes these were joined by a further seventy-five launches from trailer units situated in remote forested sites throughout the Governorate of Austland. The major targets were the Imperial Shirerithian Air Forces bases located in the departments of the Gaudin and the Guttuli. A further wave of one hundred intermediate range ballistic missiles followed an hour later, again from dispersed sites in Austland, this time focused more narrowly upon Shirerithian bases located within the Schwinn Circle of Brookshire. None of the Schlächters launched in the first hours carried anything other than conventional high-explosive warheads. Except one.
The missile, lofted from a bastion facility in North Lunaris, had followed a ballistic trajectory towards ancient and storied Musica, where it detonated as a groundburst directly upon the dockyards and seaport of the city. The only nuclear device in the BUDF's declared arsenal, the M1708 special munition, had a maximum yield of an equivalent to 15 kilotons. Estimates made by the Operations Directorate of Benacia Command anticipated that immediate fatalities in the city would not exceed twenty-five thousand souls. However, by electing to detonate the device on the surface, an area of 148 km² around ground zero would be subjected to over one-hundred rads per hour from the fallout plume that drifted on the wind in the wake of the 6 km mushroom cloud. The purpose of the strike had not been to exact an a death toll from the Shirerithians equivalent to the one that they had inflicted, but rather to ensure that a strategic port and its associated infrastructure had been rendered completely inoperable for the duration of hostilities.
Shirekeep and the Confluence
A little after midday on 23.XI.1733 AN, lines of communications were briefly restored to an extend sufficient to allow a single succinct order to be relayed from the Northern Banner Group HQ to 60th Siege Army in Varpûr. That order, once decrypted, was simply one word: “commence”. Within the hour orders had promulgated down the chain of command to the corps and division level and shortly thereafter 1,824 203 mm self-propelled howitzers, grouped into batteries of six apiece in prepared positions behind the Alalehzamin Security Line, began to open up against a number of pre-sighted targets in the Greenwood district of the Imperial County.
At 1.54 pm a F-18 Cyclone from the 4th Air Division of Strike Command launched four S-2/A(S) air to ground missiles whilst overflying the bailiwicks of Zarddeh and Aslanshahr. The gesture was mostly symbolic, two missiles directed against the Palace of Zirandorthel and two against Raynor's Keep.
More impactful would be the mixed packages of F-18 Cyclones and F-17 Axaranas that would shortly be ranging over the airspace of Brookshire and the Guttuli methodically hunting out Shirerithian radar sites and communication hubs.
As the second day of the war lengthened into its evening, the F-9 Ashavan II strike aircraft assigned to support the Northern, Eastern, and Southern Banner Groups were airborne on route towards their assigned combat air patrol coordinates, with the intent to counter in full force whatever the Shirerithian side might put up in retaliation.
And all this, whilst all across northern and eastern Benacia the ominous rumbling of innumerable columns of armoured vehicles could now be heard.
Operation Hiericus I: Strategic Bombing of Alalehzamin
With the opening of open conflict, His Illustriousness Zhao Feng, the Minister of Military Affairs, authorized Operation Hiericus. Bad Neighbour II was brought back up to firing speed and, by nightfall, the first sonic booms had begun to ring out again across the Imperial Capital, this time from the south of the Inner City at hourly intervals. By morning of 24.XI.1733 AN, the civilian population had begun to adapt to the routine of the hourly sonic boom, followed by a broadcast message, warning civilians to avoid looking northwest for the next few minutes.
Operation Hiericus I's targets, substantially closer than Ardashirshahr's warning shot, took between 58 seconds and 1 minute 28 seconds from launch to airbursting behind the Outer Security Belt of the Alalehzamin Security Line.
Operation Blue Shield
Phase I: Defense of the Alalehzamin-Shirekeep Border
Following the opening of hostilities, 5. Corps and attached civil defense and reserve troops began the evacuation of the civilian population of Greenwood southwards across the Blue Elwynn. The increased hostilities over the past few years between Shireroth and the Benacian Union had already encouraged civilians to consider seeking safer living accommodations elsewhere, making the job of civil defense a matter of identifying which homes had already been abandoned versus those that had to be evacuated.
13. Legion and 14. Legion were deployed in reserve behind screening units, who were deployed forward in distributed small units to receive initial offensive movements. All were issued radiation badges and respirators to be used in the event of exposure to fallout or chemical weapons.
Phase II: Offensive into Southern Alalehzamin
As news permeated through the Shirerithian government of the Benacian message to His Serenity, Louis Thuylemans, concerning the cessation of strategic bombing, orders were issued from Raynor's Keep for a general advance through the Alalehzamin Security Line, which by the morning of 25.XI.1733 AN had been thoroughly disrupted from some two dozen atomic bombs.
This invasion coincided with a strategic shift in Operation Hiericus, shifting from the outer and middle belts to target hardened locations along the Redoubt Line.
International responses & diplomacy
Hurmu: On 25.XI.1733 the Benacian legation in Ghawlama approached the Order of the Holy Lakes with a request that it serves as the protecting power for Benacian interests for the duration of its conflict with Shireroth. The legate further requested that a message be communicated to the Steward, pointedly not the Kaiseress, that there should be no further countervalue strikes against civilian population centres, and that strikes against military and industrial targets outside of those population centres should be limited to devices with a yield of 20 kilotons equivalent. Acceptance of the offer was requested within forty-eight hours.
Sanama: Following the confirmation of a nuclear blast in the Benacian Union, the Sanaman Union Armed Services were put on full readiness and a general mobilisation ordered. All border crossings with Shireroth were closed and the ambassador to Shirekeep recalled. The government issued a statement condemning the use of weapons of mass destruction. Sanaman citizens currently in the Benacian Union or Shireroth were advised to return immediately. After the bombing of Musica, a further condemnation was issued and the ambassador to the Benacian Union recalled.
Imperial Federation: Following the commencement of nuclear hostilities, the central government at Gondolin and Glacier City immediately ordered all subjects, citizens, and nobles of the Imperial Federation not there for humanitarian purposes to depart Benacia at the soonest possible opportunity. However, a small number of such subjects would conveniently re-interpret the order and take it upon themselves to join one side of the conflict or another as armed volunteers, thanks to strong cultural, historical, or political connections these people held in common with either side of the fresh conflict. Most of these would be subjects of low birth swept up by either side's propaganda campaigns, but a few were minor nobles hoping to win themselves gold and glory as wannabe soldiers of fortune.
Nouvelle Alexandrie: Upon news of the first nuclear attack, New Alexandrian Secretary of State Morissa Baumann stated, "This heinous act against humanity cannot go unanswered. We call upon all nations to unite in condemning this barbaric use of nuclear force and to impose stringent sanctions against the Shirerithian government." Following the retaliation by the Benacian Union not soon after, which resulted in another nuclear strike, has further raised alarms in Cárdenas. Reports confirm that tens of thousands of Ransenari citizens, fearing a repeat of The Scouring 40 years earlier, are attempting to obtain asylum in Nouvelle Alexandrie but local authorities in the Benacian Union are forbidding it. "Decades ago, many Elwynnese and Ransenari came here to escape another nuclear holocaust. We cannot stand idly by while another happens on our watch."
Natopia: After radars and sensors in Arboria registered the nuclear exchange in Benacia, Chancellor Eiiard Darkroot issued a strenuous condemnation of both Shireroth and the Benacian Union, swiftly recalling its ambassadors from both. The Court of the Calm Waters issued urgent advisories for all Natopians to leave Benacia at once, as "there is a likelihood that nuclear strikes may continue unimpeded." The Natopian Defense Force begins mobilization of all its forces, giving orders for full readiness of all forces, especially the Natopian Spacefleet.
Oportia: Federal Representative Galilea Montijo, while campaigning for re-election in the city of Pax, Oportia, announced that it was high time that perhaps "we have a real debate on the value the Raspur Pact provides - will it condemn us to more nuclear catastrophe? Is this the alliance we think it is?" After the rally, the Oportian government released a statement stating that "the State of Oportia unequivocally condemns the reckless use of weapons of mass destruction, yet again, in the continent of Benacia;" while also announcing that it was recalling its ambassadors.
Northbloom: Minutes after the initial nuclear strikes, Northbloom closed the airspace over Ermingander Village and announced that an "experimental energy barrier" was in operation over the capital. The latter is believed to have been responsible for the temporary outages subsequently affecting Northbloom and northern Kalgachia.
