Legacy War/Session 1

State of the war:

* Orcish Directorate and Thalranese Marches—are also at war with us
	+ Thalranese are the last major resistance to Fialta empire
* Despotate of Alusia—we’re invading their shipyards
* The Shantine Empire and Aeldrum invading us via Korinth (kind of... Shantine are opportunists, like France after WWI—bore the brunt of the fighting, lost lots of men, really didn’t want to join the war until Aeldrum looked strong enough. We can probably slow them down / scare them off relatively easily)
* Fialta Imperium’s being attacked on 3 sides by a collection of nations w 1.5x total our output (bigger than us, but less organized)
* outnumbered, and we need to mobilize faster, slow them down, and/or remove or turn their allies
* Aeldrum government is hurting their war effort, not helping it
* Serene Duchy has manpower, but not conscription. professional standing forces, but when those are knocked out,
	+ time is on our side; they need to win it fast
* Shantine: can raise lots of troops, but haven’t committed them yet
* Nippon States: our best likely allies
* Aeldrum's war department took Fialta prisoners and sold them as slaves—made it look like the Nippon states were buying them
* Emperor is willing to give higher ranks, etc to those who recruit others

Invasion:

* Thalranese Marches & Orcish Directorate deeply mistrust each other (can’t even fight in the same theater), and probably Aeldrum too
	+ Orcish Directorate really just want to be a country
	+ Orcs don’t directly neighbor us; they don’t care about losing personnel, so they get paid in loot & tech from major empire for fighting for glory somewhere that doesn’t threaten their home world (big win)
	+ Thalranese Marches's big fear was orcs and Aeldrum invading them on both sides
	+ Aeldrum: had to deal with misgivings about how many troops would be fielded at a time, to avoid public panic among Thalranese
* Once we took Korinth, the Shantines sued for peace with us, so while they’re fighting against us now, if we really slaughter a lot of Shantines (or otherwise make it look like fighting us is pointless & Aeldrum are using them for cannon fodder), they’ll probably back out again
* Aeldrum’s rep: detached, puppetmaster kind of empire—intimidated locals into accepting protectorate
	+ They won the empire by fighting lots of small, inferior foes piecemeal
* Only Aeldrum & Fialta are fielding things like dreadnought-style battleships
* Aeldrum haven’t lost any major offensives (because they’re all just killing each other)
	+ Marivan = their next likely target

What to do?

* Octavo working on tech to slow them down: closing gates
	+ Pie in the sky research—scramble gates (100 years out)
* Titus making overtures to the Nipponese, who don’t like Aeldrum because they held out and fought against the Naga; the Naga now have a Mind Virus and have collapsed
	+ Nipponese want [some of] Celestial Space & Naga Space for themselves–Aeldrum Trade Company always ends up snapping it up when free. With us distracting Aeldrum, they’ve got an opportunity to slowly claim more space
	+ Won’t accept Imperial (Fialta) ships in celestial space
	+ Maybe blockade the Pin Jump (after letting them know) to block baddies approaching Nippon states or us
* Aeldrum communicating transport commands: Octavo might be able to scramble this
* We have a fate point that we can collectively spend to decide a convenient fact about the outcome of the treaty between Orcish and Thalranese
* Need to win over Orcs, but not by making them an empire—they want to be a respected people / peer nation.
	+ They’ve done all kinds of stuff to their own people to win this respect
* We show the orcs the backdoors that Aeldrum built into the inferior weapons they provided
* Thalranese "organically discover" that ATC was hiding fact from them that orcs were getting Fialta weaponry
* Aeldrum set up observers as security (on ship). Observer could not stop this.
* Border patrol, do well
* Kristen’s Orc guys approach border too early. Orcish ship wait for Thalranese ships and turn around. >> no “smoking gun” to turn Orcs against them, but undermined trust. Military mobilization frozen
* To convince Orcs at Harwel
* Orcs will land troops when we breach the gate. Were not able to breach.

Public treaty getting Orcs and Thalranese into Aeldrum alliance: Treaty of Aeldrum