Great War - The Burning of the Great Library

The burning of the Family Hearth Great Library of Contracts is accredited to bringing the Goran nation into the Great War. Originally a plan by the Circle to undermine the Tallet war-machine by gutting the Empire's economy, the mission went sideways in an extreme manner. The end result was the provocation of the Family Hearth to redouble their efforts to sustain the Tallet's war efforts against the Circle and the Syndicate while at the same time hedge their bets against the Circle by beseeching the Goran to attack and punish the Circle for the loss of the Family Hearth's history.

## **The Burning of the Great Library**

### **Brilliant Merchants Make Blundering Military Commanders**

*"The great fires burned for a week, a tower of flame visible for as far as the eye could see that drew the envy of Gor himself."* -Mercenary journal on the burning of the great tower)=

The greatest blunder in the history of the Family Hearth occurred early in the Great War. So significant was the misstep of the Wise Elders that it is the first history lesson children in the Family Hearth learn, and also the last so that what occurred will never be forgotten, nor forgiven.

As the Great War began to pick up steam the Family Hearth quickly became a main source of logistics for the Tallet Empire. The size of shipments grew, profits soared, and all seemed well during the first few years. As things progressed, the Family Hearth had to send ever stronger mercenary escorts with their wagons; unfortunately mercenaries quickly ran out during the war effort as most able-bodied men became press-ganged into armies. Stretched thin and beginning to take significant losses to raiding, the Wise Masters decided to try a bold plan in order to keep trade routes and supply lines open. No stranger to being raided, the thought was that if they could just make raiding too risky for a short time as they had previously, the new vigor of attacks would slacken. The order came down for Handereke's Garrison to be stripped and used as an escort force to compensate for the mercenary drought. The idea seemed sound as the Tallet to the east and Goran to the west ensured no army capable of threatening the walls could get close, and the Ashed in the middle were staying out of the conflict; the shift of their garrison should even have gone unnoticed given the all but terminated state of travel during the time period. The choice to keep only a skeletal defense force, combined with perhaps the most cursed chance of luck to ever strike a nation, brought about greatest loss in history to be suffered by the Family Hearth.

### **The Blunder is Realized**

Early in the summer of the same year a small fleet of captured Family Hearth vessels left the ports of the Circle, sailing to Hearth Home with a special cargo to deliver. Inside their holds was hidden a raiding force of Woag who the Encircled had convinced to join them in an attack on their long-standing mutual enemy. The Encircled working as sailors would sail the Family ships into the harbor and dock. Then under cover of darkness the Woag and Encircled together would kidnap the Wise Masters and hold them hostage to put the final throttling on the Tallet supply lines that the Technocracy had orchestrated. The Technocracy's hope was to bring the war to a quick end as the body counts were mounting on both sides of the conflict. This bold action was hindered by early winter storms, the Circle forces far from professional sailors and the Woag unfamiliar with the sailing vessels so different from their own. When the force did arrive, it was shortly after the winter solstice, less than a month after the final redistribution of the Family Hearth garrison forces.

With the skeletal garrison barely able to man the walls effectively, let alone being able to patrol the docks and search cargo holds, the raiding force landed unimpeded. Under cover of darkness the Circle and Woag forces infiltrated the city and entered the Wagon's Head where the Wise Masters were meeting to discuss the effectiveness of their decision to utilize their garrison as an escorting force. The Wise Masters were captured without contest.

### **The Best Laid Plans**

It is theorized that the Encircled plan may have worked, that they easily could have taken the Wise Masters back to their ships or at the least held them hostage there in the Wagon's Head. The supply lines cut off to the Tallet, the Empire's war machine would have soon ground to a halt. Unfortunately, history did not unfold this way.

The Woag, in the process of ransacking the Wagon's Head, found the vault in which the Woag canines were turned in for the bounty placed upon them . Countless teeth were in the vault, representing over a millennia of tension and, in the Woag viewpoint, unjustified assassination by the Family Hearth. The Woag raid-master became overcome with rage and was joined by his men. In a frenzy, the Woag immediately slew the Wise Masters and the Encircled who tried to stop them, then turned their wrath upon the city. Fires were set and any who stood in their way were cut down. The entire city may have been destroyed save that the winter storms had done their work for weeks prior that night. The damp weather unfortunately could not save the Great Library of Contracts, its ancient tomes and scrolls dried by time and igniting in the most spectacular bonfire Soi had ever seen. Legend has it that the glow from the fire of the library could be seen in Goran lands and drew the envy of the Fire God himself.

After the initial shock of waking to a Woag raid in the heart of the city, the population began to fight back. It was a bloodbath as cobblers tried to fight warriors with their hammers, carpenters tried to use their saws and axes, butchers their cleavers to kill the marauders. In the end, numbers won out and the Woag were slain to a man. The Friendly operatives who were unable to escape in the confusion surrendered to what was left of the garrison after bluffing to still have the Wise Masters alive in order to evade mob justice. This is of course the first and only real mistake the Friendlies made in the entire ordeal as they did not realize the extent of the destruction the Woag had wrought.

### **Resolution**

Following the appointment of new Wise Masters, the Encircled were sentenced to die for their part in the burning of the Great Library. The seething rage of the Family Hearth at the loss of their history was so great that each of the surviving operatives was killed slowly, each in a different manner with as much pain and suffering as possible. The leader and mastermind of the raid was forced to watch and write about each death in a report of their failure to the Technocracy.

The diplomatic response of the Technocracy was to extend their most sincere apologies and assurances that the library had not been targeted, the message making it clear that the Technocracy valued history and knowledge too much to ever intentionally destroy such a collection. Indeed even an offer of restitution was made. The Family Hearth replied by sending the officer back to the Circle. The gruesome mess that arrived at Kallipolis could barely be described as a man. Every limb, the eyes, and the genitalia had been removed surgically in small pieces to cause the greatest amount of suffering possible to the officer. With the maimed officer arrived a single message from the Family Hearth, *"Some things cannot be rebuilt."*

### **Fallout**

The ultimate effect of the attack was for the new Wise Masters to redouble their support of the Tallet, oftentimes supplying the armies for as little of a profit as a single copper piece per shipment. It is theorized that this greatly extended the war as prior to this change the treasuries of the Tallet would have run dry within a few decades due to the Family Hearth profiteering. Further the Family Hearth was instrumental in sparking the great Goran offensive which the Circle now calls the Goran Genocide Campaign. Records of the time suggest that the Family Hearth convinced the Gorans that since the Circle had slain their leaders, the only fair restitution could be the death of every member of the current Technocracy. The Goran, being unable to translate this fully, concluded this meant that every Encircled with a gadget on their person needed to be killed, a qualifier which described the bulk of the Circle's population.

To date the Family Hearth retains a deep hatred of both the Woag and the Circle. The loss of the documents in the Great Library had thrown a bit of chaos into the normally well-structured bureaucracy of the Family Hearth and even today many decisions are complicated and delayed due to the loss of original documents that were in the library.