The Yenqalynn Riots

**The Yenqalynn Riots** were a civilian uprising in Yenqalynn, incited by the calling of the national service. The Draft was seen to overwhelmingly draw on the poor, immigrants, and the downtrodden. Though all of the Five Plots saw unrest, the worst was in the impoverish areas of Monarch's Glen and the Plot then known as Freshwater.

## Causes

The city of Yenqalynn is a melting pot, which is a lot like a powder keg except it's already heated up. In Yenqalynn, racial and ethnic segregation was impossible on a grand level, but almost meticulously managed on a street level. Dwarves and humans and elves and orcs all compete for labor, to say nothing of the ethnic issues. Yenqalynn is also a dirty, filthy, cramped city where one must claw out their parent's eyes just to get room to breath, half the time. As a result, it doesn't take much to get a riot going in Yenqalynn even on a good day.

Tensions were exacerbated by the looming threat of the Great War. As part of the opening salvo, Tambaku and Chelta's disagreements on certain border provinces and their laws lead to a huge increase in the demand for troops. The National Army of Chelta, a traditionally small body, was suddenly thrust into the position of needing a half million soldiers to march south. In response, the Cheltic National Service was instituted, and they issued a declaration of a draft. Any citizen called by the draft would be allowed to avoid their calling by paying a fee of $300.

Conflict was already brewing in Yenqalynn, between rival gangs and the various feuding authorities. A National Service office set up in Freshwater was almost perfectly positioned between two gangs, the Hooks and the Shame Hall Gang, who had been at each other's throats for years by that point. The day the draft numbers were to be drawn in Freshwater, an enormous crowd of civilians gathered, trapped between two vicious gangs, and surrounded by nervous policemen.

Exactly who fired the first shot, threw the first stone, or laterally bisected the first elf is unknown. All that's known is that the riot that ensued tore the office down, cut telegraph wires, smashed buildings, burned homes, killed horses and left hundreds dead throughout Freshwater. By midnight, Rokersfield was on fire. The next morning, Monarch's Glen likewise erupted into riots. By nightfall, rich men dangled by their necks from the windows of Calloway. Bombs went off in Hallowed Hill. The city was in agony.

## Aftermath

After three days of rioting and looting, the combination of fatigue and the crackdown by what little of the Yenqalynn Militia could be rounded up drew the riots to a close. Property damage, loss of life, and wounded morale sent the city into an economic and cultural depression that clung to the city for the duration of the war. Only the ship building industry was able to keep the city... *afloat?*

Speaking of the War, the riots did little to effect the results of the draft. The numbers called up during the drawing were kept at a district office which was untouched by the riots, and those called up were sent into service, excepting those who were killed or otherwise grievously wounded. Those in prison for their part in the riots were taken anyways, with their military service acting as their sentence for their crimes. As the war continued, new National Service offices were opened and new draft numbers drawn, to comparatively little violence.

The riots had some positive after effects, arguably. A lot of real estate opened up, for one. And everybody, even the people it's denigrating, agree that "Hell's Midden" is a way cooler name than "Freshwater". And even if transracial multiethnic cultural unity is difficult to achieve in a brutally capitalist society, collective self shame is at least a good bump in the right direction.