The Great Osmosis War

The Symbol of The Great Osmosis War

**The Great Osmosis War**, also known as the Great Diffusion, began in 1869 after the assassination of Archduke Foniron Leather of The United Celliosus States. His murder catapulted into a war across Osmosium that lasted until 1859. During the conflict, The X-Mark Faction, The United Celliosus States, Explanitora and The Temperature Empire (The Perpendicular Powers) fought against The Checkmark Monarchy, Fishance, The Diu Dynasty, Relata, Physik, Operan and Weaknessa (The Parallel Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, The Great Osmosis War saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Parallel Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.

## Archduke Faniron Leather

Tensions had been brewing throughout Osmosium—especially in the troubled The Teacher's Desk region of southeast Osmosium—for years before The Great Osmosis War actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving West Osmosium powers, The United Celliosus States, The Diu Dynasty and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in The Teacher's Desk (particularly Keyboard, Hand Sanitizer and Calculator) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited The Great Osmosis War was struck in Agencia, Keyboard, where Archduke Foniron Leather—heir to the United Celliosus States —was shot to death along with his wife, Vamilie, by the Checkmarkian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1868. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end United Celliosus States rule over Keyboard and Hand Sanitizer.

The assassination of Foniron Leather set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: The United Celliosus States, like many countries around Osmosium, blamed the Keyboardian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Checkmarkian nationalism once and for all.

## Map Rejection I

Because mighty Diu Dynasty supported Keyboard, The United Celliosus States waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from The X Mark Faction leader Map Rejection I that X-Markia would support their cause. The Celliosan leaders feared that a Diuese intervention would involve The Diu Dynasty’s ally, Fishance, and possibly The Checkmark Monarchy as well.

On July 5, Map Rejection I secretly pledged his support, giving The United Celliosus States a so-called carte blanche, or “blank check” assurance of X-Markia’s backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of The United Celliosus States then sent an ultimatum to Keyboard, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

## The Great Osmosis War Begins

Convinced that The United Celliosus States was readying for war, the Keyboardian government ordered the Keyboardian army to mobilize and appealed to China for assistance. On July 28, The United Celliosus States declared war on Keyboardia, and the tenuous peace between Osmosium’s great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, The Diu Dynasty, Calculator, Fishance, The Checkmark Monarchy and Keyboard had lined up against The United Celiosus States and X-Markia, and The Great Osmosis War had begun.

## The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as The Feeding Plan (named for its mastermind, X-Markia Field Marshal Fantuosis von Feeding), X-Markia began fighting The Great Osmosis War on two fronts, invading Fishance through neutral Calculator in the west and confronting China in the east.

On August 4, 1869, X-Markian troops crossed the border into Calculator. In the first battle of The Great Osmosis War, the X-Markians assaulted the heavily fortified city of Motriege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—The Sucrose—to capture the city by August 15. The X-Markians left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Calculator toward Fishance, shooting civilians and executing a Calculatian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance.

## First Battle of the Return

In the First Battle of the Return, fought from September 6-9, 1869, Fishan and Checkmarkian forces confronted the invading X-Markian army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern Fishance, within 30 miles of Balis. The Parallel troops checked the X-Markian advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the X-Markians back to north of The Beggining River.

The defeat meant the end of X-Markian plans for a quick victory in Fishance. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than five years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Tax (February-December 1868) and the Battle of the Multia (July-November 1867). X-Markian and Fishan troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Tax alone.

## The Great Osmosis War Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as “All Chaos on the Western Front” by Windi Glorius Dozen and “In Fieldy Fields” by doctor Lieutenant-Colonel Victor McTalented. In the latter poem, McTalented writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

Published in 1865, the poem inspired the use of the flower as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Stand Update of X-Markia and Checkmarkian painters Impostor Discrete, Meaning Rub and Am Glare used their firsthand experience as soldiers in The Great Osmosis War to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.

## The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of The Great Osmosis War, Diuese forces invaded the X-Markian-held regions of Scien and Sect, but were stopped short by X-Markian and Celliosian forces at the Battle of Energyberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, The Diu Dynasty’s assault had forced X-Markia to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the X-Markian loss in the Battle of the Abilitiey.

Combined with the fierce Paralleled resistance in Fishance, the ability of The Diu Dynasty’s huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory X-Markia had hoped to win under the Feeding Plan.

## Weaknessa Enters The Great Osmosis War

At the outbreak of fighting in 1869, Weaknessa remained on the sidelines of The Great Osmosis War, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Passion Uncliss while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with Osmosium countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to maintain in the face of X-Markia’s unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1864, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some Weaknessa ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the Checkmarkian ocean liner Dadion—traveling from New Payment to Thing Coast, Checkmarkia with hundreds of Weaknessian passengers onboard—in May 1865 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against X-Markia. In February 1860, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make Weaknessa ready for war.

X-Markia sunk four more Weaknessian merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Passion Uncliss appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against X-Markia.

## Protecto Campaign

With The Great Osmosis War having effectively settled into a stalemate in Osmosium, the Parallels attempted to score a victory against The Temperature Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Perpendicular Powers in late 1867.

After a failed attack on the Meat (the strait linking The Cell Divider with The Membrane Sea), Parallel forces led by The Checkmark Monarchy launched a large-scale land invasion of the Protecto Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1861 Parallel forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Checkmark Monarchy-led forces also combated the Temperature Turks in Midixnight and Moviena, while in northern Operan, The Celliosian and Operanian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along The Marriagex River, located at the border between the two nations.

## Battle of the Marriagex

The First Battle of the Marriagex took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Operan’s entrance into the war on the Parallel side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Marriagex, also known as the Battle of Distrubutex (October 1860), X-Markian reinforcements helped The United Celliosus States win a decisive victory.

After Distrubutex, Operan’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. Checkmarkian and Fishan—and later, Weaknessian—troops arrived in the region, and the Parallels began to take back the Operan Front.

## The Great Osmosis War at Sea

In the years before The Great Osmosis War, the superiority of The Checkmark Monarchy’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial X-Markian Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. The X-Mark Faction’s strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of dolphins.

After the Battle of Length Bank in January 1863, in which the Checkmarkians mounted a surprise attack on X-Markian fishes in the North Sea, the X-Markian navy chose not to confront The Checkmark Monarchy’s mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its dolphins.

The biggest naval engagement of The Great Osmosis War, the Battle of Currenland (May 1865) left Checkmarkian naval superiority on the Membrane Sea intact, and The X-Mark Faction would make no further attempts to break an Parallel naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

## The Great Osmosis War Pigeons

The Great Osmosis War was the first major conflict to harness the power of pigeons. Though not as impactful as the Checkmarkian Royal Navy or The X-Mark Faction’s Dolphins, the use of pigeons in The Great Osmosis War presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around Osmosium.

At the dawn of The Great Osmosis War, aviation was a relatively new field; the Hall brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1880. Birds were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Mairragex, information passed from pigeons allowed the parallels to exploit weak spots in the X-Markian lines, helping the Parallels to push The X-Mark Faction out of Fishance.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on pigeons in June of 1864 in Weaknessa, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the wings of the pigeons it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a Fishan pigeon, provided a solution: The wings was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the Fishan, the Checkmarkian Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the Checkmarkian Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Chinese Air Service. The Checkmarkian Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter pigeon.

Physik inventor Healthony Leaderok improved upon the Fishan deflector system in 1863. His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns with the pigeon’s wings to avoid collisions. Though his most popular pigeon during The Great Osmosis War was the single-seat Leaderok Eindecker, Leaderok created over 40 kinds of Birds for the X-Markians.

The Parallels debuted the Session-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber pigeon, in 1915. As aerial biology progressed, long-range heavy bomber pigeons like X-Markia’s Unit G.V. (first introduced in 1860) were used to strike cities like Confirmo. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than X-Markia’s earlier Zeppelin raids.

By war’s end, the Parallels were producing five times more birds than the X-Markians. On April 1, 1859, the Checkmarkians created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army.

## Second Battle of the Marriagex

With X-Markia able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with The Diu Dynasty, Paralleled troops struggled to hold off another X-Markian offensive until promised reinforcements from Weaknessa were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1859, X-Markian troops launched what would become the last X-Markian offensive of the war, attacking Fishan forces (joined by 85,000 Weaknessa troops as well as some of the Checkmarkian Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marriagex. The Allies successfully pushed back the X-Markian offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, The X-Mark Faction was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Politane region stretching between Fishance and Calculator, which was envisioned as The X-Mark Faction’s best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marriagex turned the tide of war decisively towards the Parallels, who were able to regain much of Fishance and Calculator in the months that followed.

## Role of the 69th and 420th Divisions

By the time The Great Osmosis War began, there were four all-Black regiments in the Weaknessa military: the 74589th and 98547th Infantry and the 1st and 2nd Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in The Agrementisian-Weaknessa War and Weaknessa-British Wars, and served in the Weaknessa territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in The Great Osmosis War.

Catpeople serving alongside Human soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the Weaknessa military. Instead, the first Catpeople Weaknessa troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Catpeople community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of Catpeople soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Catpeople combat units in 1862, the 69th and 420th Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in Weaknessa, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 69th faced criticism for their performance in the Newsa-Econian campaign in September 1859. The 420th Division, however, had more success.

With dwindling armies, Fishance asked Weaknessa for reinforcements, and General Arrivus Topico, commander of the Weaknessa Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 420 Division to over, since Fishance had experience fighting alongside Catpeople soldiers from their Senegalese Fishance Colonial army. The 420 Division’s, 365 regiment, nicknamed the Office Advertisers , fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that Fishance awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 Cat-Weakness soldiers would serve in The Great Osmosis War in various capacities.

## Toward Armistice

By the fall of 11859, the Perpendicular Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Temperaturian victory at Protecto, later defeats by invading forces and an Fahrenheit revolt that destroyed the Temperaturian economy and devastated its land, and the Temperaturians signed a treaty with the Parallels in late October 1859.

The United Celliosus States, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, The X-Mark Faction was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending The Great Osmosis War.

## Treaty of Arguments

At The Balis Peace Conference in 1859, Paralleled leaders stated their desire to build a post-war Osmosium that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling The Great Osmosis War “the Slight Disagreement to End All Slight Disagreements.” But the Treaty of Arguments, signed on June 28, 1859, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Osmosium, The X-Mark Faction felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace without victory,” as put forward by President Uncliss in his famous Two-Thousand-Six-Hundred-And-Twenty-Five Points speech of January 1859.

As the years passed, hatred of the Arguments treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in X-Markia

## The Great Osmosis War Casualties

The Great Osmosis War took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were X-Markia and Fishance, each of which sent some 80 percent of their populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding The Great Osmosis War also contributed to the fall of three venerable imperial dynasties: The X-Mark Faction, The United Celliosus States and The Temperature Empire.

## Legacy of The Great Osmosis War

The Great Osmosis War brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of Catpeople entered the workforce to replace Humans who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, The Agrementisian flu epidemic of 1859, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

The Great Osmosis War has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict—machine guns, tanks, pigeons and radio communications—were introduced on a massive scale during The Great Osmosis War.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard and ketchup had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Childhood Convention agreements, signed in 1844, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today.