Pacification of Lyrica

The Pacification of Lyrica was an effort undertaken by the Raspur Pact nations to reclaim Lyrica for civilisation after the collapse of Stormark in 1685. Initially limited to the provision of humanitarian relief and the evacuation of foreign nationals affected by the twin collapses of Stormark and Krasnocoria, the pacification operations on Lyrica began to ramp up following the decision of the government of Alduria-Wechua in 1688 AN to open up the island to further colonial settlement by the Alexandrian and Caputian diasporas. This necessitated the commencement of a campaign to secure the territory and undertake the suppression of the "Forsaken" - the diehard adherents of the Vanic faith and the old nobility. Most operational activity was undertaken by Alduro-Wechuan and Florian forces assigned to the Yak Tail Banner Group of Apollonia Command.

The intervention of allied forces on Lyrica would also coincide with the national revival of the Hurmu people, a long victimised and oppressed minority group in the lake district of the north of the island, whose mostly peaceful restoration of sovereignty was achieved after 1685 under the auspices of the Hurmu Trust Territory. The Hurmu, conscious of all that they had suffered in the past, welcomed international assistance in the form of theAllied Reconstruction Mission in Hurmu, provided by members of the Raspur Pact, and the Ghawlama Expeditionary Force, contributed by Zeed. The Hurmu Trust also entered negotiations with Craitland with regard to Lakkvia that culminated in the Vesüha Accords.

Background

Many of the Vanakarls accepted a fiery immolation amongst their grand halls and ancestral longboats as being preferable to acknowledging that their life of self-indulgence, purchased through the misery of the native peoples of Lyrica, was at an end.

Verbiage to follow

Key points:

• After losing dynastic territories in Shireroth (Auspicious Occasion) and Natopia (Uppheaval), Harald, the High-King of Stormark sunk ever further into a dependency upon Idunn's Apples, a potent drug that enabled their users to feel rejuvenated and invincible whilst feeding their own sense of grandiosity and megalomania, and an incurable, indeed insatiable, satyriasis.
• With Harald, along with his favoured son Noah, sinking into mead-sodden dependency and self-indulgence, extolling their being seated at the high table in the finest banqueting hall in Haraldsborg as being proof of their continued fitness to rule and favour in the eyes of the goddesses, whilst the High-Realm decayed around them, power increasingly came to be exercised by Esther Esposito, Harald's granddaughter gotten on Noor, Kaiseress of Shireroth, by Noah. Taken into exile following the Auspicious Occasion, Esther was to grow into adulthood with an abiding hatred for those responsible for the deposition of her father - whom she would continue to term the "Livvist hordes" long after Liv Dravot's departure from office and eventual death.
• Under Esther's guidance the foreign policy of Stormark briefly regained some sense of purpose and direction. She noted in Arkadius IV, the King of Amokolia and Batavia, a kindred spirit and a personality type quite similar to that of her beloved grandfather. She also noted the estrangement that Arkadius felt towards the Raspur Pact after the rebuffing of his ambitions towards the Golden Mango Throne by Elwynn and the Unified Governorates of Benacia. The Kalirion Fracture had been met with some grim satisfaction in Haraldsborg when it had happened, being taken by many there as proof that it had been their steadying hand which had been required to hold the Imperial Republic together. Now Esther saw the conditions created by the fall of Shireroth as providing the opening that would allow for the restoration of her father's patrimony - as a true Froyalan. The seduction was easily accomplished, with Arkadius more than willingly falling into the role of eager suitor and thus doing the majority of the requisite legwork, and the couple married in 1681.
• The fruits of the marriage were manifold. In addition to the four offspring born from their union was also the Empire of Francia, a strategic alliance between itself and Stormark, and the establishment of the Froyalan Tribunal. The influence of Esther upon the Froyalan Tribunal in particular was observable in its fixation upon the marital status and dynastic rights of the House of Ettlingar Freyu over and above the fate of the millions of individual Froyalaners uprooted from Elwynn after the Auspicious Occasion.
• This dynastic alliance between the Descendants of Freya and the House of Vinandy committed Stormark yet further to rendering material and financial aid to Francia - a process that had begun even before the consummation of the marriage in view of the generous aid rendered by Stormark during the Second Amokolian War (1678–1679) which had made possible and sustained the Frankish war effort.
• What was not apparent at the time, in view of the way in which they presented their society to the outside world as the pinnacle of post-scarcity superabundance, was the strain that this aid had placed upon Stormark's economy. Although a global colonial power, Stormark had minimised its exposure to the remainder of Micras, considering the greater part of humanity (with the possible exception of Senya) to be accursed and with nothing worthy to offer in exchange for the good graces of the High-Realm. As such Stormark had operated as an autarchic political and economic system. In this it had achieved a good measure of self-sufficiency, albeit often times through more inefficient means than might have been realised through direct trading with foreign powers. Nonetheless the material surplus that was generated found itself eaten away at in order to sustain the standards of luxury, pomp, and courtly ceremonial expected in the court of the High King and amidst a myriad of Jarls and lesser notables. It has been observed by some that the dispensation of "royal boons", along with obligations of open house hospitality in Stormark's innumerable feasting halls, fulfilled the role provided by welfare states in more conventionally organised countries. On top of this wasteful and ever expanding munificence was then placed the burden of supporting a client state with revanchist ambitions directed against one of the more heavily militarised alliances operating upon the world at that time.
• It was under these circumstances that the gleaming edifice of Vanic kingship would suddenly buckle and crack in 1685 AN.