Frontier War

Commanders and leaders|  | * Kaito Hakim
* Arcelia Abescal
* Fleet Leader Devin Tandil

Strength| * Centran Defence Force
* Privateers

The **Frontier War** was a large-scale war that was fought in the Tantalus Cluster between the Centrum Assembly and the Frontier Union from 0290 PCU to 0300 PCU. Begun after the Frontier Union declared independence from the Centrum Assembly, the war was the largest and deadliest conflict in Human history, claiming the lives of over ten million people in direct combat alone. The war ended with the Frontier Union having failed to decisively defeat the Centrum Assembly, but the new state successfully retained its independence. The war drastically intensified the Great Famine, pushing the Tantalus Cluster closer to near-total economic and societal collapse.

## Prelude

In the early 3rd century PCU, the Centrum Assembly began an experiment in settling the four Frontier systems of Atamara Crossroads, Teldrin, Dalstaff, and Maiala's Rest. Many of their planets required terraforming to become even barely-habitable to Humans, and the extreme conditions on the planets meant that they were intensely dependent on external aid.

By the 0270s PCU, a combination of overpopulation and resource mismanagement provoked a Cluster-wide food and resource crisis known as the Great Famine. The increasing scarcity of resources, coupled with piracy, supply mismanagement, and the Assembly's apparent over-focus on the new Firewatch colony, provoked intense resentment and civil unrest in the four Frontier systems. With the Frontier's MPs frequently marginalised in the Centran Parliament, discontent found its expression in violence, such as the bombing of the *Wanderer* in orbit of Firewatch in 0277 PCU. Revolutionaries such as Kaito Hakim, leader of the Red Bannerets, led rallies demanding the Frontier's independence from Centrum. Hakim established contacts with figures such as Arcelia Abescal, the so-called "Pirate Queen of Atamara" and leader of the Paleborn pirate group, waiting for an incident that would provoke the Frontier's secession from the Assembly. Militia-led violence, such as the bombing of the Tordesh Distribution Centre on Maiala's Rest, became a fact of life in the years preceding the Frontier War.

Events came to a head in the *Primrose* Incident of 0290 PCU, when an altercation between Militia forces and a Centran humanitarian aid vessel turned violent. Kaito Hakim then led the Red Bannerets in storming Assembly buildings in Maialan capital of Second Landing, killing Centran government staff and broadcasting the coup to his contacts across the Frontier, calling for an uprising. In the following days, violence spread from Maiala's Rest to the three other Frontier systems of Teldrin, Dalstaff, and Atamara. Kaito Hakim appeared on Teldrin, and together with Henrik Debaan, Grand Selectman of Teldrin, and Tacito Lemaire, Freewarden of Dalstaff, proclaimed the independence of the four Frontier systems from the Assembly as the Frontier Union. Before the day ended, the fourth member of the newly-convened Union Council, Arcelia Abescal, led a combined pirate fleet into the Axius System, beginning the Frontier War.

## Course of the war

### The First Battle of Axius

The Union Council agreed to a two-pronged strategy to maintain the Union's independence: a coordinated piracy campaign against the Assembly to seize vital goods and supplies, combined with a strategy of bold power projection to encircle the Centrum System through the Axius and Valeria Sibus Systems, intended to force the Centrum Assembly to seek terms and secure more favourable treatment for the people of the Frontier. Abescal's invasion of the Axius System, however, was agreed unilaterally between her and Kaito Hakim: Tacito Lemaire and Fleet Leader Devin Tandil opposed Abescal's involvement, fearing that her reputation for brutality would undermine support in the Assembly for the Union's independence, and were furious when they learned that the attack had been planned between her and Hakim prior to the Union's declaration of independence. While he likely expected these protests, Hakim always maintained that he was motivated solely by the needed to maintain the element of surprise over Centrum.

In the ensuing First Battle of Axius, Abescal's forces attacked the planet of Fairfax, striking the two stations of Fort Weaver and Fairfax Ravelin Wharf, inflicting brutal casualties on the unsuspecting Centran defenders. Given Fairfax's position as a major recruiting world for the Centran Defence Force, many of the dead were cadets and junior officers. Abescal personally led numerous boarding actions, and withdrew from the system with 30% more ships than she had arrived with. The brutality of Abescal's attack, however, ended any hopes of a negotiated settlement to the crisis and ensured that Centrum would see total victory over the Union as the only acceptable outcome of the Frontier War.

### The Tandil Rush

Having not fought a major conflict for well over a century, the Centrum Assembly was unprepared for the scale of the rebellion: the Centran Defence Force had become optimised for policing and counter-piracy duties and lacked much in the way of large combatants. The Frontier, on the other hand, had been anticipating the outbreak of hostilities for sometime and at the outset of the conflict held the initiative over the Assembly.

Determined to maintain the initiative for as long as possible, a plan was devised early in the war by Fleet Leader Devin Tandil to go on the offensive against the Centrum Assembly: the Frontier Union Militia's outriders - improvised warships converted from former Centran coastal defence vessels - surged into Centran territory in an offensive that became known as the Tandil Rush. The Frontier Union Militia attacked out of the Atamara Crossroads System towards the Axius and Seravis Major systems. The swift, non-stop movement of the Tandil Rush was able to overwhelm much Southern Tantalus, and the Assembly was forced to concede the Seravis Major and Cardeus Brink systems to the Union.

### The Southwestern Front

Despite these early successes, the Union offensive stalled in the Valeria Sibus System. This system became known as the Southwestern Front of the war, and would see near-constant actions, such as the Battle of Validar II, as the Frontier Union attempted to secure a staging ground from which to strike at the Centrum System itself. The failure to achieve a quick victory over the Centrum Assembly bogged the Frontier Union down into a war of attrition for which it was unprepared.

### The Southeastern Front

The Axius System, which controlled the Drift Lane from the Atamara Crossroads System into the heart of the Centrum Assembly, was the site of a bloody stalemate that last for most of the war. The Assembly's defences in the system became known as the Axius Blockade, and the Frontier Union Militia made no fewer than four attempts to break into the system.

### The End of the War

In the penultimate year of the war, the Frontier Union made its fourth and final attempt to seize the Axius System: the Fourth Battle of Axius saw the commitment of the *Arashi-Sakara*, the only dreadnought built by the Frontier Union during the war, but ended in the Union's defeat despite inflicting heavy losses on the Centran defenders.

After failing to defeat the Centran Defence Force at the Fourth Battle of Axius, it was increasingly clear that the Frontier Union would lose the war. As the Union began surrender negotiations with the Centrum Assembly, embittered elements of the Frontier Union Militia went rogue and resolved to seize a Drift Gate in the Atamara Crossroads System. In a last-ditch attempt to win the war, they planned to accelerate an asteroid to relativistic speeds and attack Centrum itself, causing an extinction-level event. The Battle of the Atamara Crossroads was an especially brutal engagement, fought over three days and in nearly total darkness. The Centran Defence Force ultimately defeated the rogue Unioner force and thwarted their plans.

## Aftermath

In the aftermath of the Battle of the Atamara Crossroads, the Frontier Union offered an unconditional surrender to the Centrum Assembly. The four Union systems nevertheless retained their independence. The war formally concluded in 0300 PCU.

The Great Famine was drastically exacerbated by the conflict: after ten years of fighting, the situation in the Tantalus Cluster appeared virtually irrecoverable. The year 0300 PCU became known as the Black Centenary, when the Famine combined with the effects of of the Frontier War to provoke a near-collapse of civilisation in the Tantalus Cluster. Food scarcity affected even the richest worlds of Tantalus, with scientists predicting that the Famine had escalated from a serious crisis to an extinction-level event. Many worlds were subject to pirate raids, and many government functions effectively ceased as politicians and bureaucrats gave into despair and chose to spend what they believed to be their final days with their families.

In 0301 PCU however, the Carina Observatory in the Cardeus Brink System identified a new nebula, classified as CDC-41-Gamma, which had apparently manifested almost instantly around 3,000 years ago. The astrophysicist Doctor Sadavar Edric identified several potentially-habitable exoplanets and resource-rich systems across the nebula. This provided a new source of hope and inspiration to the people of the Tantalus Cluster, and the governments of the Centrum Assembly, Frontier Union, and Merician Freehold jointly agreed to pool their resources to create an expedition of unprecedented range to explore CDC-41-G. The Avalon Expedition Fleet deployed through Edric's Gate in 0304 PCU, hoping to return with resources for Humanity.

## Known battles

* First Battle of Axius
* Tandil Rush
	+ Battle of Seravis Major
* Battle of Validar II
* Fourth Battle of Axius
* Battle of the Atamara Crossroads

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 *The Sojourn Visual Dictionary - Edition One*
2. ↑ *Bright Promise*
3. ↑ *Beneath The Banner*
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Maiala's Rest | Worlds of Tantalus | The Sojourn
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 First Battle of Axius | Official Lore Short | The Sojourn
6. ↑ The Primrose Incident | Official Lore Short | The Sojourn
7. ↑ The Sojourn: Worlds of Tantalus: The Centrum Assembly
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Sojourn: Drift and Drift Gates - Avalon Archives
9. ↑ The Black Centenary | Official Lore Short | The Sojourn
10. ↑ *The Cold Divide*

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