Leandran War

The was a 550- war fought between the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum, Second Fialta Imperium, Alusian Empire, and Thannasid Dominions on one side, and the Shantine Empire on the other. It ended inconclusively, with the Shantine Empire continuing on as the significantly smaller Leandran Dominions. The Leandran War marked the beginning of the post-Leandran era of cosmic history.
== Background ==
The historical record on the Leandran War of has been contested in its details from the moment there was a history to be written, but the essential facts are widely accepted.
In the 540s, the dominion of the Leandran sect of Kirvanism seemed to have been checked by the intervention of Adarnum on Bishant, and a new balance reached, in which the moral authority of Leandra was much diminished but the ascendant Adarnan sect lacked the power to fully replace it within the Shantine state church. The Pentacle churches had acted to restrain Adarnum's full vengeance on Leandra and seemed to have scored a dramatic victory against Kirvan radicalism by leaving the Shantine people in a state of deep theological confusion, with the Shantine state unable to abandon Leandra but no longer able to treat the Church as an extension of the Kataph dynasty. More pressing matters soon seized cosmic attention: the ascension of the Secular Nationalist Party in Aeldrum, and the Aeldman-led normalization of Thannasid diplomatic relations coupled with the public demonstration of an Aeldman system for "fully programmable" elder script seemed to suggest a cosmic fault line between powers aligned with the Great Pantheon and a new radical secularism that rejected divine limitations on mortal accomplishments. In this environment, the Sermayan constitutional crisis and the coup against the Lawe administration were notable perhaps less for the political struggle than for the election of a superintelligent soul-computer facsimile of Alexander Wynn.
At the close of the 540s, the Fialta Imperium appeared to successfully undermine the Thalranese Marches through a campaign of assassinations and bribes, poised to annex them. The Old Coalition of Aeldrum, Alusia and Bishant rallied to the defense of an independent Thalranese Marches, proxied by an emergency "provisional government" whose leadership alleged that they were the only major lords not bought or slain by Imperial connivance. As the provisional government proved utterly unable to retain control over the Marches, Coalition and Imperial forces were drawn into confrontation on behalf of their regional proxies.A relative footnote from this period is that in the brief window of peace over the Marches, the Fialta Imperium took advantage of the lull to glass dozens of worlds in the Thannasid Ascendancy, apparently to destroy the Thannasids' capacity to disrupt a peaceful cosmos. Subsequent Thannasid action in the Leandran War suggests that the effect on their military capability was minor, and that they bore relatively little interest in avenging their feeding grounds.
== First Strikes against Fialta and Aeldrum ==
When a diplomatic settlement appeared in sight, which would essentially have allowed the Imperium to gain suzerainty over the Marches but retained a polite fiction of independence, the Shantine Empire struck at Imperial naval and military positions, not in the Marcher conflict zone but within Fialta Imperial borders. Tens of millions of Fialta citizens were killed, though the Fialta rapidly organized to secure critical infrastructure and key worlds. While the Fialta-Shantine military conflict escalated, religious violence erupted between the Knights of Adarnum and various Leandran and Kataph-aligned factions of the Shantine state, seemingly at the instigation of the Leandrans. Far more shocking, however, was that as the Fialta launched a retaliation campaign of their own, other Shantine fleets, desperately needed for the defense of Bishant, were sent to strike at Aeldrum.
The reason for this attack was soon demonstrated by the Shantine declaration that the angel Leandra, sustained by mass-produced souls from a secret soul computer farm, was prepared to claim her rightful place as Kirva's avatar within the material universe and reopen the Pantheon War. Seemingly expecting the cosmos to unite against her regardless, her followers had sought to cripple the other great powers rather than give them time to move against her.
Aeldrum especially was a target of interest, evidently destined to be annihilated by null bombing not only for its political and economic significance as for the role of its seven spires in keeping the ley lines stable. In the event, two Aeldman spires were shattered, but the planet and perhaps the entire Serene Duchy was spared by the sacrifice of Kyrashvell, the Alusian artificial world connected to Aeldrum. In the hagiography of Alusia and Aeldrum, the planet’s leadership chose not to sever the artificial ley line connection in order to add to the stability of Aeldrum, accepting devastation to their world so that Noloth's ancient work on Aeldrum could be preserved.Other sources claim that the Thannasid powers behind the Alusian regime willfully sacrificed hundreds of millions of Alusian pioneers to power a bload-soaked occult ritual to save Aeldrum, or perhaps to the rumored God-Mind of Kyrashvell in order for it to achieve the same end.
== Destruction of Bishant ==
The cosmic response to Bishant's treachery was swift, and for a time the divine power of Leandra was utterly absorbed in shielding her chosen worlds from endless assaults with strange and terrible weapons no power would previously have admitted to controlling. The Thannasids gained an unorthodox admission to the fellowship of nations by contributing their own sentient war-planets to the onslaught against Leandra, while the mortal agents of the Pentacle negotiated desperately with the gods themselves (including their own) to keep the Great Pantheon from intervening and realizing Leandra's dream of a Second Pantheon War.
The Aeldmen undertook yet another escalation, however, and visited their version of proportionality on the planet of Bishant. The affectionately named "Thumper" apparatus and a series of carefully timed temporary tunnels in the ether were used to awaken and draw the deranged machine-hordes of Baradun-Unnamed from their impossible configurations in the Underside of the cosmos and on a crash course for Bishant. How many trillions of automata fell upon the Shantine cannot be counted, but the planet and its surroundings were shattered by Leandra rather than give them up, and a firebreak opened at the core of the Shantine Empire. Leandra withdrew her protection from far-flung reaches of the Empire, to focus her power on a new center while her adversaries swept into the vacuum of retroceded Shantine territory.
== Conclusion ==
Close to four billion souls would die as a direct or proximate result of the first three years of conflict.
In the following years, no serious negotiation with Leandra was attempted, but the intensity of conflict ebbed as the Aeldmen, Alusian and Fialta (ironically known to some as the New Coalition) contrived a Material Covenant, to match the old Partition and forestall not only divine intervention but perhaps a still greater fear, the Horizon, a total divine withdrawal from an insane and unworthy timeline. This covenant was made by all the great powers, and entailed once unthinkable new heresies, including the birth of a contractual god to police Aeldrum's own fertile fields for technological disruption. Artificial gods, for which Saldan was once been nearly condemned to fiery oblivion, became the guarantees of compliance with a strange new bargain to mitigate the potential of mortal power.In all of this, while Kirva disavowed Leandra, some wondered how much the parent had truly disowned the child. Endless cults would form around this open theological wound. In turn, exhaustion and the seeming inability of either side to definitively destroy the other, brought if not a peace between Leandra and the cosmos she had betrayed, then a rough ceasefire.
== Notes ==
Category:Wars