First Gholan War

Belligerents	Shákjhara Gholan 	Talmoa
Dates 	174-254 ABV 	174-254 ABV
Location 	Sumir (Mir delta and salt flats) 	Sumir (Mir delta and salt flats)
Commanders 	
 Various
 Exiles† (178)
 Thsjhetherén† (250)	
 Amathálan‡ (178)
 Meruszyph† (250)
Strength 	Unknown 	~3000 (174)
~3,000 (178)
~4,000 (179)
~4,000 (250)
Losses 	Unknown 	Unknown
Result 	Defeat 	Victory
Result 	Talmoene control of Catagholmoa secured.	Talmoene control of Catagholmoa secured.
The First Gholan War (174-254 ABV) was a decades-long colonial conflict waged between Tālmoa and a insurgent Gholan in the territory around the mouth of Sumir, principally over the colony of Catagholmoa, an important salt mining centre which controlled the mouth of the Mir river.
As Talmoa's most important colonial possession, Catagholmoa was a major factor for the city's heavy involvement in the war against the mutineer admiral Jaszóumathan and his pirate kingdom, the Tengerrákan, which raged for twenty years between 170 and 190 ABV. It was thus an obvious target for Tengerrákene attack, and in 174 the city was captured and briefly occupied by Jaszóumathan's forces.
However, the Lobster King soon departed with most of his troops, leaving only a weakened garrison. Emboldened, the local Gholan tribes - with whom the colonists had had increasingly tense relations - attacked the city and wrested control from the Tengerrákene garrison, establishing a new government led by 200 exiles from the distant realm of Vht'sjenjé.
Although Catagholmoa itself would be recovered in 178 after a brutal siege, the rest of the Sumirene territory would not be pacified until the final defeat of the Shákjhara, the dominant Gholan clan on the salt flats, at the Battle of the Salt Rocks in 254, almost a century later.
==Prelude==
The colony of Catagholmoa had been founded by Talmoene colonists around the year 80 ABV, after the conclusion of the First Oathbreaker War, on the fertile country at the delta of the Mir river. Over the following decades it grew into a relatively large and prosperous town, serving as a hub for Talmoene trade with the many Scorched kingdoms along the Mir and the centre of the valuable trade in salt, which was mined by prisoners from the flatlands beyond the fertile delta.
Situated a long way from metropolitan Talmoa, and in very different country to the fertile, heavily-settled lands of Saian proper, the Catagholmoene developed into a distinct people, tough-minded and martial, although fiercely loyal to their mother city. 
However, the colony's situation was precarious. The blockade of the Red Serpent during the war highlighted how easily it could be cut off from Talmoa. Moreover, the city had no firm diplomatic relations with many of the nearby Gholan tribes, which co-existed uneasily with the colonists as they gradually expanded their mining operations. 
By 174 ABV, Catagholmoa was serving both as a prison colony for captives taken during the war against the Sleeping Moon coalition in the Sea Countries, and a base of operations for Talmoene efforts to suppress Jaszóumathan.
==The Colony Falls - 174 ABV==
=== Tengerrákene Invasion===
====The Battle of Szadigyreta and Jaszóumathan's Trap====
Following reports that Tengerrákene ships had been harassing salt convoys, the commander of the Talmoene fleet in the eastern theatre despatched a squadron of five warships out of Catagholmoa to hunt down the pirates. They run an enemy force to ground at Szadigyreta, a bay favoured by pirates for possessing a discrete smuggler's exit. The pirates are trapped, and several vessels either run around or sunk. Sarouthaetan, a prominent ally of Jaszóumathan, is captured along with several hundred pirates, although no stolen goods are located on any of the captured ships.
But the Talmoenë had underestimated the Jaszóumathan, and taken his bait. The operation north of the city had been a diversion whilst the Lobster King's elite captains quietly stalked the eastern squadron and learned its patterns. Meanwhile, the Lobster King used gold looted from Aran to disguise several captured Arani warships as Talmoene vessels, and fitted out a platoon of his fighters with captured Talmoene uniforms. 
Once ready, this force attached itself to a prisoner convoy carrying Sleeping Moon prisoners, and entered Catagholmoa undetected.
====The Lobster King Strikes====
The Lobster King then unleashed a coordinated mutiny against the Catagholmoenë. Inside the town, his agents infiltrated the prison one night and freed and armed the several hundred Sleeping Moon warriors who had just been shipped over. The Sāni quickly seized control of the prison. At the same time, two of the outlying mines are seized by prisoner revolts.
Szaburahmoan, the governor, despatched the military commander with a force of cavalry to restore control of the mines whilst he and his guards surrounded the prison. However, once the garrison was outside the town walls, Szaburahmoan ordered his men to disperse and lay down their arms. At the same time, the disguised pirate ships in the harbour launched a surprise attack on the naval forces in the harbour, eventually destroying the squadron.
With the main garrison deployed to the Salt Flats and the navy fighting in the harbour, more and more prisoners are freed. By the end of the day Catagholmoa is firmly in the hands of the rebels; the pirates and freed prisoners hoist the lobster standard of the Tengerrákan over the town, and a disgraced former clerk, Bórnutalan, is declared the leader of the latest addition to the confederacy. Jaszóumathan, his mission accomplished and presumably aware that he would be an irresistible target, returns to the sea with his elite squadron.
====Talmoene Counterattack====
Out in the salt flats the garrison, reinforced by a newly-raised squadron of camelry and unaware of developments in the colony, moved swiftly against the mutinous prisoners. The first of the two lost mines was recaptured, with terrible casualties inflicted upon the rebels. Only when the commander tried to take the prisoners back to Catagholmoa, in order to free his forces up to strike the second mine, did he find the town gates barred and the pirate banner flying over the walls.
Unable to storm the town with the forces at his disposal, the commander despatched messengers to Talmoa to inform it of the situation. He then set about levying a loyalist force from the free farmers of the delta, pulling together some two thousand militia infantry to reinforce his thousand camelry and professional garrison troops. This force then lays siege to Catagholmoa, watching the sea for any sign of a fresh attack and awaiting reinforcements from the homeland.
=== The Gholan Invasion===
Unfortunately for both sides, the chaos in the colony had not gone unnoticed by the nearby Gholan clans. With the hazy border shorn of any patrols, two of them bring their forces down from the Sunlands at night. The combined army then swept across the flatlands, occupying the mines and headed straight for Catagholmoa.
Trapped outside the town walls and comprised mostly of militia, the loyalist Talmoene army was trapped between two enemies and the sea, and despite a brave last stand is all but totally destroyed. Only a single camelryman escaped across the Mir, where his wounds were tended by the Gholan clan which dwelt there, and had enjoyed civil if not friendly relations with the colonial authorities.
Unchallenged by the Tengerrákene garrison inside the town, the invading Gholan proceed to devastate the unprotected farmsteads of the delta. Some two thousand Saiannic settlers are massacred, and another eight thousand carried off into slavery in the Sunlands.
==Recapture of Catagholmoä - 174-178 ABV==
Despite the ongoing pressure of waging both the war against Jaszóumathan and the campaign against the Sleeping Moon tribes in the south, Talmoa could not afford to simply let the territory go. In addition to the loss of prestige at losing an important colony to the pirates, the port was also a crucial naval base for the Red Butterfly's imperial ambitions in the Parelsa, and the profits from the colony's salt and copper exports, not to mention control of the lucrative Mirene trade, played an increasingly important role in Talmoa's economy.
Moreover, the Talmoenë feared that if the territory were not recaptured, it might be seized by another Saiannic state. Having recently fought the First Oathbreaker War over Dausaion, and with the strain of sustaining major naval operations against the Tengerrákenë, the city did not want to risk another colonial conflict breaking out into a major war in Saian proper. The Seraiat thus committed itself to the recapture of Catagholmoa.
===First Offensive - 176 ABV===
It took some time for the military command to put together an invasion army. With the navy fully committed against the pirates and the war against the Sleeping Moon ongoing, three thousand troops, including one thousand fresh camelry, were drawn from the Talmoene home army for the first Mir campaign.
Upon arriving in the delta, the army was welcomed as liberators by the surviving Saiannic population, whose scattered farmsteads had survived repeated but sporadic predation by the Gholan. However, following the defeat of the loyalist army two years before and subsequent slave raids, the farmers could do little to augment the strength of the invasion force, save somewhat supplementing its supplies. With supply lines through the Srasaiagha still heavily threatened by Jaszóumathan's forces, the plan was for a swift strike on the town.
In the meantime Samurahman and Amathálan, the famous explorer, mounted an intelligence-gathering operation, and reported back that the colony was no longer under Tengerrákene control. The rebels had been ousted by the Gholan, and the town was now ruled by two hundred exiles from the distant kingdom of Vht'sjenjé, their regime supported by the mountain clans. 
Samurahman and Amathálan would continue trying to gather information but after what the annals record only as "a series of adventures", the two men, unable to pass as Gholan, were captured.
====First Battle of Catagholmoa====
In perhaps unintentional tribute to the Lobster King, the Talmoenë mounted a combined land/sea attack on the town. The army was divided in two, with the main force launching an assault on the gate whilst a second force, supported by the fleet, attempted to enter the town through the harbour.
Unfortunately for the Talmoenë, a barking dog alerted the garrison to the naval attack, and despite a rising by the city's remaining Saiannic population the assault on the harbour was repelled. Without this support, the main assault on the town gates was also repelled, although it was reportedly a close-run thing.
Yet now the badly weakened Talmoene army was trapped outside the walls in hostile territory. A few days after the battle, the forces of the hill clans swept in from the flatlands and "flew over" the Saiannic force. The Gholan warriors did not manage to crush the professional troops of the relief army as they had the loyalist militia two years before, but the Talmoenë were forced to conduct a fighting retreat to the south-west, back to the coast, and lost over a thousand men dead or missing along the way.
===Second Offensive - 177-178 ABV===
Despite the losses, Talmoa was in a position to continue the war. After almost twenty years of continuous fighting, the allied moa seemed to have the upper hand against the Lobster King; in 177 the cities held a conference in Mara, mediated by Za'ah, to negotiate the eventual distribution of the islands of the Srasaiagha. In the south, the Sleeping Moon had been pushed back into the western highlands, and the first Saiannic settlers arrived in what would become Sudao.
The city thus committed another three thousand troops to the campaign, including a thousand elite marines drawn from the forces fighting the Tengerrákenë. This force was put together during the year 177 and despatched to link up with the thousand survivors south of Catagholmoa.
====Second Battle of Catagholmoa====
The Talmoenë once again attempted a combined land/sea assault on the town. However, this time they were better prepared. Instead of trying to sail into the harbour, the navy constructed a dedicated heavy lonsu (castle-ship), which sported a forward tower tall enough to overlook the sea wall. This ship was crewed by the veteran marines, at that point perhaps the most elite and battle-hardened troops in the Talmoene army. 
On the morning of the attack, the main force of three thousand troops massed before dawn on the eastern side of the city and arrayed for battle. The troops set up a ceaseless barrage of war cries and drums, drawing the attention of the garrison. Meanwhile, veiled by the sea mist, the lonsu was rowed near-silently up to the wall. Archers atop the tower took out the sentries posted to watch for a harbour assault, and as the sun rose the commandos had established a beachhead atop the wall; over the next few hours they fought their way along it, with heavy casualties, to capture the gatehouses and admit the main army.
At this point a normal garrison, at least in Saian, would have surrendered. But the Gholan instead dug in, barricading the streets and hiding troops in cellars to outflank the Talmoene troops. Vicious fighting lasted throughout the day as the Saiannics recaptured the colony street by street; bodies piled up, with Gholan fighters playing dead before ambushing isolated soldiers. By nightfall, however, Catagholmoa was back in Talmoene hands.
====Aftermath and Gholan Counter-Attack====
The battle had been won, but the war had not. The recapture of Catagholmoa had reportedly cost Talmoa between 1,000 and 2,000 killed or wounded, out of an expeditionary army only four thousand strong. Nor was the town entirely secure; whilst the main Gholan garrison had been broken, isolated attacks on Talmoene patrols continued throughout 178.
Moreover, the recapture had only broken the regime of the Vht'shjenjé rebels - not the Gholan clans which had supported them, and mounted the initial invasion. These once again arrived a few days after the assault, their cavalry easily repelling a probing force of 150 troops despatched from Catagholmoa to recapture the mines. Not equipped to storm a fortified town defended by professional soldiers (as opposed to Bórnutalan rag-tag Tengerrákene forces), the clans laid siege to Catagholmoa.
== Stalemate - 178-240 ABV ==
With the port of Catagholmoa secured, the way was now prepared for a full Talmoene push into the flatlands; the fortified town would provide a base of operations and an entrepôt for seaborne resupply and reinforcement of the army. However, events in the Saiannic world swiftly overtook the campaign. The result was a stalemate which lasted over sixty years: the Gholan clans unable to pry the Talmoenë out of their coastal fortress, and the Saiannics unable to spare the troops or resources to retake the salt flats.
=== The Pirate War - 178-195 ABV ===
Main article: War in the Reisra Delta
Contrary to the hopeful assessments of the city-states, Jaszóumathan was far from a spent force. In 178, just months after the recapture of Catagholmoa, the Lobster King launched a fresh naval offensive from his bases in the south-east of the Srasaiagha. The Talmoene navy, which was widely-dispersed on anti-piracy duties, was caught off-guard by the sudden emergence of a fleet as large as its own, and was hammered in a series of small engagements; Talmoene garrisons on the delta islands were isolated and destroyed.
Following this, any hope of a secure supply line to Catagholmoa was ended, and following the formal declaration of the Tengerrákan later that year there were neither ships nor men to be spared for the desert, as Talmoa found itself locked in a race both to strangle the new confederation and avoid losing out to its rivals in so doing.
Whilst the direct threat to Talmoa would recede after the Tengerrákene offensive up the Red Serpent was broken at the Battle of the Burning Skies in 180 ABV, it would be another fifteen years before the last remnants of the Great Lobster's forces were hunted down, and the Srasaiagha partitioned between the victorious moā at the Dausaion Conference in 195 ABV.
Following the end of the war, the Talmoenë were able to re-establish control over the arable country south and west of Catagholmoa, bringing the original Saiannic settlers back under the state's protection and beginning to plant new colonists. The salt flats, however, remained in Gholan hands.
=== A Fragile Peace - 195-207 ABV ===
Following the conclusion of the Pirate War, there was hope amongst the Sumirene colonists of a renewed offensive to reclaim their birthright. Catagholmoa's unparalleled access to the Mir trade route gave Talmoa a critical lead in the import and adoption of bronze, with which she was slowly modernising her armed forces. Moreover, this period saw the gradual rise to power in the capital of the Colonialist faction, who favoured expanding Talmoene power in the Parelsa rather than focusing on riskier and less profitable commitments in Saian.
The Talmoene military did indeed begin to scout the salt flats and draw up plans for the reconquest of the valuable salt mines. However, the decaying political situation in Saian forestalled any commitment of troops to so remote a theatre. Aran had fallen ever-more obviously under the sway of the Za'ahene Empire, whose meddling in Saiannic affairs was becoming more pronounced. Then in 207 Nehamoa occupied the Catasaszinat, Talmoa's first daughter-colony, and overthrew the Catasaszin, installing a sympathetic government in the newly-declared republic of Wemoa.
This might in other circumstances might have prompted a Talmoene intervention, which would itself have forestalled any new Sumirene campaign. But any such considerations were overtaken later that year when Aran invaded Szamoa.
=== The Second Oathbreaker War - 207-237 ABV ===
Main article: Second Oathbreaker War
Unwilling to let the kings of 'Zāran' secure a foothold on the Red Serpent, Talmoa counter-attacked, and the largest war in Saiannic history began. For the next thirty years, the Red Butterfly would be locked in war with the White Serpent alliance, one that would bring the Szaedean state to the brink of collapse - and see the redrawing of the map of southern Saian.
Full contact with the colony was maintained for the first fifteen years of the war, with the theatre confined to the dance of armies in the devastated country between Szamoa, Mara, and Aran. 
===== Thsjhetherén's Offensive - 215 ABV =====
However, the Gholan once again moved to exploit the chaos in Saian, and in 215 ABV a fresh host of Gholan raiders swept over the farmsteads of Catagholmoa's hinterland. Five villages were destroyed, with a thousand settlers killed and twice that number carried away into slavery. The host was led by Thsjhetherén, a warlord of the Shákjhara clan, who's house had sworn an oath never to delve back into the desert before "the last Syannic on Gholan soil is either thrown out or impaled."
===== The Blockade of the Red Serpent - 222-233 ABV =====
But as each side realised it wasn't going to win a decisive engagement in the field, the war expanded into the Srasaiagha. In 222 ABV the combined Aranmoene and Maramoene fleets launched an offensive against Talmoa's holdings in the delta, scattering its fishing fleet and raiding shipping at the mouth of the Red Serpent. This presence disrupted Catagholmoa's lines of communication with the metropole for over a decade, until Talmoa substantially enlarged her navy and retook the delta in 233.
After that, Catagholmoa was once again a critical line of supply, both for bronze and the thousands of Gholan mercenaries recruited by Talmoene agents from amongst the states of the Lower and Middle Mir.
== Meruszyph's Campaign - 239-254 ABV ==
Following the final defeat of the White Serpent army at the Battle of Kesczī and the sack of Aran by Doriyan mercenaries in 237, Talmoa was finally in a position to go on the offensive in Sumir. Having annexed both Szamoa and Aran, along with they and Mara's delta exclaves, her path to the sea was now secure. 
Moreover, anti-Gholan feeling was running high in the Talmoene army following the Gholan Mutiny and the Battle of the Camps. Keen to avoid more ethnic unrest in Talmoa proper, Serai Beiszoutalo deemed it prudent to despatch a force to finally settle the "Sumirene sore"; Meruszpyh, the hero of the war and seniormost general of the Talmoene army, was assigned to lead it. He was initially assigned several thousand infantry, along with Talmoa's entire chariotry and camelry corps. Several thousand Hereri mercenaries were also attached to the expedition, largely on the basis that it was on their way home.
There followed a more than decade of grinding warfare as the Talmoene army slowly started to secure the lost mines, one by one, working their way along the river and then striking down from the north so as to minimise the exposure of their supply lines to the ceaseless hit-and-run attacks of the Gholan. The Hereri proved deeply unsuited to the desert conditions and soon returned home.
This time, however, the campaign was reinforced by fresh troops from Saian. This was sufficient to keep the pressure on the raiders and ensure the war was fought out in the flatlands, allowing the fertile country around Catagholmoa to recover.
=== Battle of the Salt Rocks - 254 ABV ===
Determined to force a decisive end to the conflict, Meruszyph eventually managed to lure the Shákjhara host into a trap near one of the outlying mines. Attacking at dawn with the sun at their backs, the Talmoene ambushed the blinded Gholan force and inflicted a crushing defeat; over the next few weeks, Talmoene chariots and camelry squadrons wiped out the clan, and drove the remnants of the Shákjhara's allies back into the Iron Desert. 
However Meruszyph, leading from the front as he had in the Oathbreaker War, was mortally wounded by an obsidian dagger. He was borne back to Catagholmoa as his forces completed the mopping up operation. The annals record that:
"...despite suffering with fever he decides to fill out the documents outlining the payment for his troops, as well as reciting for his aide his final report for the conclusion of his campaign. Then he decides to lie down on his bed, place his hands crossed over his chest and his last words were: "For Szaeda, Talmoä and Syan." Then he died."
== Aftermath ==
Following the rout of the Shákjhara Gholan, the salt flats were finally at secure. Over the next few decades Talmoa would invest heavily in fortifying Catagholmoa and developing the province of Sumir, which continued to be a vital source not just of salt but also the tin, jewels, and exotic goods that flowed down the Mir to feed Talmoa's burgeoning maritime empire on the Parelsa.
The war became the defining event in the creation of the Catagholmoene people. Whole generations of colonists had been raised between the fall of their own in 174 and the final rout of their hated enemy eighty years later; the result was a hard-bitten and martial people, fiercely proud of their Saiannic and Talmoene roots but undeniably with something of the Iron Desert in them too. Veterans of the war were the first awarded the Silver Scorpion Stinger, Catagholmoa's highest military honour; Meruszyph was awarded it posthumously in 274.
As a result, they soon garnered the reputation as some of the fiercest soldiers at Talmoa's disposal, and following the completion of Alophas' Red Citadel, built as part of the commemorations of the 300th anniversary of the Beivei, Catagholmoa became a training ground for the most elite regiments of the Talmoene army.
Catagholmoa would not be threatened again for half a century, before the tyrant Kashánitsá seized power in the Scorched state of Jha'khyla and invaded Herer, triggering the Second Gholan War.