Kaden-Khiadamese War

The **Kaden-Khiadamese War**, also known as the Nurasar War, was a short war between the empires of Kaden and Khiadam fighting over the island of Nurasar in the middle of the Carall Sea, northwest of the Kaden dominion of Leso. The war lasted from August 1st, 1880 to August 12th, 1880, after a peace was negotiated, mediated by the Targnyasy Corporation.

## Background

During the collapse of the Masian Empire, several of it's former island territories in the Carall Sea were lost to the Khiadamese Empire. The Leso island chain in particular, was taken by a Khiadamese expedition in 1773 which captured the largest island of Leso. The surrounding smaller islands in the chain, Ercora, Nurasar, and Bahna, collectively called the Mézouar islands, were captured by a second expedition in 1778. By 1790, the Leso islands fell under a military dictatorship led by Khiadamese Admiral Salman Bishara who turned Leso into his own personal slave colony. The natives of the Mézouar islands were majority Arab, however, who colonized the island during the 16th century, so were protected from Bishara's dictatorship by the regular Khiadamese Army. Nurasar, the largest of the Mézouar islands, held the important port city of Lakhkra through which most of the goods produced by Leso would be distributed from. In August of 1797, due to a disagreement between the Khiadamese Army and Bishara's navy led to the army closing off Lakhkra's ports to any ships coming in from Leso, effectively embargoing the island. In response, Bishara gathered a mercenary force from Leso and invaded Nurasar in July, starting a minor civil war. Bishara's invasion ultimately failed after a week of fighting on the island, withdrawing to Leso and declaring independence from Khiadam.

The conflict between Bishara's mercenary force and the Khiadamese army eventually sparked a slave revolt on the island of Leso in 1799 that deposed Bishara's power. Before being captured, Bishara met with a Koniserad military committee in the south of the island and agreed to give his mercenaries to the Koniserad navy in exchange for being taken back to Kaden to live in exile. After Lesoan revolutionaries captured Bishara's former palace in the capital, Ávirón, on December 3rd, 1799, a republic was formed and Leso gained independence. Before the Lesoans could organize themselves, the mercenaries left Leso for Unterwald Island, owned by the Koniserads. After a month of preparing, the mercenaries embarked for Nurasar for a false flag invasion, appearing to be hired by Bishara as his final gambit to keep power, when in reality they were hired by the Koniserads. The Koniserad navy dropped the mercenaries off in unmarked transport ships to prevent the Khiadamese from identifying them. The invasion began on January 10th, 1800 and lasted three weeks. The Khiadamese defense of Lakhkra held off for two weeks without supplies but finally surrendered on January 31st, after losing more than half their men. Two smaller invasions of Ercora and Bahna happened on February 3rd and February 5th respectively and had little opposition.

By February, the Mézouar islands were completely under control by the mercenaries and Bishara arrived in Lakhkra on February 6th, proclaiming his victory. Shortly afterwards, on February 10th, the Koniserad navy arrived off the city's coast and performed a rehearsed "liberation" of the islands in cooperation with Bishara's forces. They surrendered the island to the Koniserad navy and were "arrested". When Khiadam began requesting Bishara be returned to them for a trial in Morosi, the Koniserads ignored them and instead put him and his government on a ship to Philadelphia. Bishara arrived in Kaden on March 10th, 1800, and began his comfortable life in exile. Meanwhile the Mézouar islands were placed under Koniserad authority despite protests from the Khiadamese Empire. Leso still heavily depended on the port city of Lakhkra for shipping most of it's goods and once the Koniserads took the city, they began putting heavy tariffs on Lesoan goods moving through the port. Leso's economic development was hampered by these tariffs while the Koniserads indirectly extracted wealth from Leso without having to control the island.

When the Koniserad Empire collapsed in the mid 1800s, the Mézouar islands were left undefended aside for the small 1,000 man garrison in Lakhkra. On May 5th, 1862, the Khiadamese navy arrived off the coast of Lakhkra and demanded the garrison surrender. After refusing, the Khiadamese launched an attack on Lakhkra, landing 5,000 men on the south side of the island. The battle was short, lasting only a day, before the garrison surrendered that night. The following day, Khiadamese flags were hoisted above the city hall. The arab locals welcomed the Khiadamese while the more diverse city of Lakhkra had mixed reactions, with many fearing that the city's role as a key port would be diminished. Instead, the city's business was mostly uninterrupted for the next decade. The tariffs on the island of Leso were lifted and a flood of business with ships from Leso came to Lakhkra.

## Kaden's Prelude to War

Following Kaden's rise in the wake of the Koniserad Empire's civil war and collapse in the 1860s, Kaden implemented a policy of reclaiming Koniserad's lost island colonies across the globe along with taking over former colonies of the Masian Empire. In 1873, Kaden invaded Leso to reestablish a colonial government, but now under them instead of Masia.