Ansazian Conquest

## Naval Battle

You are General Laysander Dranius , appointed as the supreme commander of the campaign to conquer Ansazia and bring it under Atlantis’ heel .

The naval battle was surprisingly quick and easy ; The much smaller Ansazian fleet had been docked at the time of the attack and they didn’t expect an attack giving you the element of surprise and numerical superiority . The fleet crushed any Ansazian resistance in record time. Only the Admech cruiser suffered any significant damage.

With Orbital supremacy achieved it is time to land troops on the ground. You coordinate with the rebels who in accordance with prior preparations, mass revolted in coincidence with your fleet arriving in system.

The Ansazians sent their troops to quell the revolts and were surprised to face much better organised and equipped rebel forces who at first drove back the Ansazians but after falling back , reorganised and dug in ; managing to blunt the rebel onslaught.

As the reports pore in your mind begins to ponder what strategy to employ, orbital bombardment of the cities is out of the question as that would cause a cataclysm on the surface when they make planetfall nor is bombing the Ansazians on the ground possible as they are concentrated in the mutant urban areas and bombing would kill your allies as well. There will have to be boots on the ground for this and these are the plans you have in mind.

The rebels being bogged down is not ideal but still serves to draw away a significant portion of enemy forces from the Ansazian Sky cities , the seat of their power . A full frontal assault now while they are in disarray might just grant you a quick victory.

However the rebels being bogged down complicates things as while they outnumber the Ansazians, not a lot of them were able to be equipped to full Atlantean standards and most are still inferior to the average Ansazian trooper. If you leave them you risk having them be defeated too quickly by attrition and the Ansazians bombing them from the cities. You can divert forces to aid them.

## Sky City Conquest

You have decided while the Sky cities are the priority , you can spare some forces less suited for urban warfare for your allies on the ground

Before you land forces on the ground , you have ordered an orbital strike on all known Ansazian ground targets such as outposts and military bases. It has been a relative success but the Ansazian atmosphere’s interferences with your scanners has severely limited the accuracy of such strikes.

Afterwards the air force was deployed, tasked to clear beachheads for forces attacking the cities . Though the Ansazian Air Defense systems tried their best to stop this , your pilots have proven skilled enough to finish the job with minimal casualties.

Your forces successfully land and establish a foothold in each of the 15 Ansazian Sky cities. You accompanied the forces attempting to take the capital city Barsia. Orbital scans indicate that the central white monolith is the source of the city’s gravitational levitation.
It must be taken at all costs to prevent potential Ansazian self destruction to deny you resources.
The battle begins with the fanatic Ansazians attempting a counter attack on your beachheads while you are still fortifying, you send the skirmishers to hold them off .
Though they fail to drive the hordes back , their combat prowess and shock and awe tactics are enough to hold them off enough for your positions to be sufficiently secured and you order them to withdraw.
Meanwhile half your remaining air forces provide support to your push to the monolith . The phantom planes in particular are of great assist as they are undetectable by imperial equipment rendering them invincible to the terrified Ansazians, who unlike Atlantis do not have Thorner Dragons to help them in this regard. The Avengers likewise were effective but suffered casualties from fierce resistance and kamikaze attacks.

Your forces advance with the skitarii at the forefront and the Auxilia moving behind them providing support and covering fire. This is due to no small part to the Skittari being inhuman enough not to hesitate when confronted with Ansazian child suicide bombers who charge at your formations screaming like mad imps regardless of their chances at success.

No doubt a desperation tactic meant to buy time as the Ansazian higher ups attempt to bring down the city rather than accept defeat , taking you with them and denying Atlantis their technology.

Your forces advance at a crawl’s pace due to fierce resistance from the enemy who make you pay dearly for every inch of ground you take. But still you advance though at this rate you might not reach the monolith in time.

You decide to call in part of the armoured reserve in this situation to punch a hole through the enemy defense lines , combined with a skirmisher charge to further disorient them , giving you a chance to advance swiftly.

The plan is a complete success, the Tank volleys gave an opening that your Skirmishers exploited to get into Ansazian positions and butcher them mercilessly, including many of their commanders and commissars .

This proved to be the limit for Ansazian fanaticism as they finally broke and either attempted to flee or surrender.

Encountering only sporadic resistance from then on , the monolith is successfully taken and Barsia is secured. You receive similar reports from the cities of Arkan, Jessar, Yosser, Kaiser and Utler. However the transmissions revived from the forces on the remaining cities are incoherent and jumbled.

You fear the worst which is horrifically confirmed by multiple shockwaves you feel as well as reports from the orbitals. The remaining nine Sky cities were successful in disabling their gravitational devices and doomed hundreds of millions of people on the surface (including the not insignificant Ansazian forces on the ground) in what is effectively an Exterminatus. All the while you can only watch helplessly.

## Aftermath

On one hand your forces successfully secured several Sky Cities intact along with the hidden vaults which house many technologies the Ana’si had been forbidden from using. This no doubt will be a great boon in your future colonisation efforts and reclaiming the technology levof the golden age.

However this came at too high a cost. The Ana’si’s mass suicide has devastated whatever ecological stability that remained on the heavily polluted surface and has already triggered cataclysmic storms and seismic activities, wiping out hundreds of millions in the attempted holocaust (estimated two billion casualties so far ) . Not to mention you have lost much of your offensive forces

Sephyr has survived the Skyfall as it is called fortunately, but his sister is in a critical state and had to be moved to Atlantis for further treatment . Sephyr’s survival is good as he is helping you organise the survivors into their new homes in the Sky Cities (the surface being uninhabitable for the foreseeable future) and the distribution of aid from Atlantis (luckily Ansazia is only a week away from Atlantis by Azul, most of the time ). It will take time to build up the planet to Atlantean standards but it’s a start.

Remarkably neither Sephyr or the survivors blame you for not capturing the cities fast enough. They had expected to suffer immense casualties anyways and are used to massive losses in life, in fact they are grateful that you showed up at all , such was their dehumanisation at the hands of their enslavers.

They are seething with rage however at the Ana’si -of which one and a half billion who yet live- who now will face the full brunt of the rebels’ vengeance. You have ordered your forces not to interfere with their plans for the former elites as there is no point in potentially alienating your allies . You have only requested that you be given one hundred thousand Ansazian infants for DNA sequencing and isolating useful gene codes. The rebels found no issue with that and obliged.

The Masrei arbites (spared mostly because of the need for a trained police force ) now have a new task of overseeing their former Ana’si masters who have become nothing more than “indentured servants” put to work rebuilding the cities for the ones they once sneered at , being given the most hard, dangerous and back breaking labour. The population now lives in the lower polluted hives where they have been sterilised so that their lineage will die out in a century or less (you are told the children below 17 were simply shot ).

Such is the price for freedom in these dark times. At least you have now learned the very valuable lesson of never underestimating the imperials especially when they are desperate.