War in Wintergleam
| War in Wintergleam | |||||||
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| Part of Kalirion Fracture | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Elwynnese Republic Benacia Command (after 08.XIV)
|  Sovereign Confederation Benacia Command (after 08.XIV)
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Firdaus Abdollahi Mehr
| Doir Jen Mera / Selardi Jen Daniyal
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| Units involved | |||||||
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Background
The Shirerithian county of Wintergleam, bordered by Agnesia to the northwest and Suthergold in the south, laid on the border between the former states of Elwynn and Goldshire. Control of Wintergleam had oscillated between the two realms ever since Wintergleam had first passed under Elwynnese control in 1516. In part this back and forth, and Wintergleam's Goldshirean roots, explained the weak strength of the both Elw language and the Church of Elwynn in the area. Once a heartland of the much maligned Vanic tendency in Elwynn, this legacy was violently expurgated during the Auspicious Occasion of 1651 which resulted in the port of Avaldsnes and most of eastern Wintergleam being ceded to Goldshire by the State Law & Order Restoration Council, a puppet government installed in Elwynn by the Imperial Republic and on which the King of Goldshire had a seat as State Councillor. The act of cession was formalised by the last king of Elwynn, Vili Esposito, as part of the Partition of Elwynn.
Calamities would heap up on the Imperial Republic meanwhile, in the form of wars, epidemics, and the staggering cost of sustaining a globe-spanning great power rivalry whilst relying upon an wholly inadequate economic system. The collapse of the impoverished and demoralised old aristocracy, presaged by the Modanese Emigration, signalled the beginning of the end for the Shirerithian model of neofeudalism which had sustained the Imperial Republic for centuries. This faltering would permit the apparent victory of the centralising - Imperialist - tendency in Shirerithian politics, and the final ascendancy of the Kalirion dynasty which took the opportunity of sweeping away the last vestiges of Particularist privilege by abolishing the states in the year 1669. In the midst of these sweeping changes, Elwynnese partisans would take the opportunity to assert local control in Wintergleam.
It would swiftly become apparent however that, without the brutal, corrupt, and inefficient local elites to rely upon, the brutal, corrupt, and inefficient agents of central Imperial government were entirely inadequate to the task of keeping the provinces in order. A peculiar paralysis set in as the apparatus of government ossified, but it would take the defiance of Inner Benacia, and the singular weakness of the Imperial response - namely the complete absence of any retaliation for the murder of its envoy in the country - which would signify to an entire continent that "Shirekeep" was silent and could now be safely ignored. The cantons - left to their own devices - acted as they saw fit.
Preparedness
At the outbreak of the conflict both the Union Defence Force and the Sovereign League of Defence and Deterrence were hamstrung by being caught in the midst of organising their newly raised forces, the training of commissioned and non-commissioned leadership cadres, and the cycle of operational training required for the vast variety of ex-Imperial hardware that had passed into their hands as a consequence of the Kalirion Fracture.
