Goran-Circle Genocide Campaigns

*"It's all senseless, everything we've done. It's all just pointless. I can't go on."* -Technocrat suicide note

The Goran-Circle Genocide Campaigns were the most intense, heated, brutal, and hateful conflict between the people of the Circle and the Goran. The Goran campaigns began when the Goran, in response to the accidental burning of the Great Library, crossed the mountains, separating the nations in full force and began destroying everything in their path and killing indiscriminately. Those ended with the Dust marches, where the defending forces used massive amounts of chemical weapons to push them out before they could completely annihilate them and spill over into the rest of the eastern block. The Technocracy then responded with their own genocide campaign, masked by, and even encouraging the CorpseBloom epidemic which had sprung up there, while attempting to permanently cripple the population of the tactician and technologist castes of the Goran.

Overall, millions died in the slaughters.

## Background

Near the end of the Syndicate Campaign, the Technocracy attempted to end the bloodshed outright by cutting off the supplies of the offending nation. This, unfortunately, required them to aggress against the Family Hearth . The resulting covert operation failed when the Woag operatives with them turned on them and set fire to the ancient library where the Family Hearth kept all of their records dating back to their establishment. The Technocracy was quick to offer any sort of aid possible in order to save what was left of the relics, but the Family Hearth knew that they were the ones behind the attack. From that point forward the Circle realized the vindictiveness of a wrong Immortal.

In response, Elbon Metals the 8th seat Wise Master appealed the Goran citing the oaths they took to defend each other. He asked the Goran people to join them on their march on the Circle to deliver revenge on the Circle. The Goran, of course, came to take this to mean "everyone living under the Technocracy's influence".

Meanwhile, the bulk of the Technocracy's military force was embroiled in the final stages of the Syndicate Campaign, and could not respond in time to bolster the remaining forces until most of them were dead. This was the result of a fatal miscalculation on the part of the Technocracy, who did not believe the Goran would attack them in such large numbers when they were already dealing with two other fronts. This mistake would nearly cost them their entire population.

## The Purge by Fire

As the Goran entrenched themselves on Encircled soil, they became more and more aggressive in their task, and less aware of differentiation. Soon, seeing the Circle and the Technocracy as a single unit which, like themselves, did not have a non-military class, they began to indiscriminately hunt down everyone in their path. A new, unintended sub-group of Goran culture was developed in the former Circle territory, based entirely around the extermination of the Encircled. As the years went on, ground was taken, and remembrance degraded, this became more and more vague, until the Goran horde which had crossed the mountains were killing everyone they came across.

This was devastating to the population of the Circle, and within a few decades, nearly four fifths of the population had been killed. On top of this, cities and buildings which had existed since the Dawn Era were completely destroyed, including some of the earliest texts on the planet.

The Technocracy tried nearly everything they could to push back the Goran, beginning with outright combat in the campaign known as Operation: Weedwhacker, while civilians were evacuated from the front lines. When this failed due to the vastly superior numbers of trained warriors, they attempted to cut their lines at the source, attacking the Goran moving over the mountain. This also failed when the Goran overwhelmed their forces there. The numbers too great to hold off in any real effort, the Technocracy found itself entirely on the defensive, slowly losing ground in what was half-sarcastically dubbed Operation: Holdout.

When news came that the Northern Kushani Wall had fallen, and that the Broken Kingdom would be unable to send reinforcements any time soon, the Technocracy was forced to consider the only option they had for victory.

## The Dust Marches

As the Goran were reaching what is now the southern border of the Inner Circle, the Technocracy unveiled the most destructive weapons of mass killing the planet has ever seen. The most well-known of these weapons is the mysterious Dust, a slow-degrading chemical compound said to melt human flesh on contact. Technocracy forces riding in insulated vehicles poured this compound upon the Goran as fast as it could reach them, in amounts that couldn't possibly have been manufactured in such a short period of time.

The Dust burned through the Goran infestation, and within two years, the defending forces had forced the invaders into a retreat, at the cost of their own soil. To this day, some of the battle-sites of the Dust marches are still there, though they are walled and guarded. Once the Technocracy's army had reached Mother's Gate, they demanded that any Kushani who didn't want to be slaughtered by the Goran join them. After being seemingly abandoned by the rest of Kushan for three years, and occupied and developed by the Technocracy as their southern base of operations for the two decades it took them to fully root the Goran out, the people of Mother's Gate renounced their allegiance to Kushan to join the Encircled.

The Dust forced the bulk of the Goran into a retreat across the mountains, and killed any who stayed. The Encircled forces pursued in force until reaching the Goran Nation's border on the other side of the mountain. At that point, the Technocracy had deemed the Goran a problem to be solved once and for all.

## Operation: Final Solution

*"As usual, the world had a problem, and we solved it. You're welcome."* -The Philosopher King

The Technocracy's solution to the Goran problem was perhaps the most ruthless decision in their history, the eradication of as many Goran strains as possible at the source. Hundreds of the remaining Unbounded operatives were sent on voluntary suicide missions to sneak into the Goran population centers and use various methods, including poison and explosives, to kill as many Goran of the target strains as possible. For the first and last time in the history of the Circle, the Technocracy did not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants; all Goran were part of the enemy war-machine, and should be treated as such.

Thousands of non-combatant Goran were killed in these attacks, and the Leadership and Research castes were genetically crippled to the point of near-extinction. When the Corpsebloom epidemic hit the areas which were overrun, the Unbounded purposefully spread it through the population centers, which eventually proved fatal to them once the areas were overrun.

Afterwards, while the world abroad was embroiled in the Corpsebloom epidemic, other nations got word of the now-ended operations, and the Technocracy was accused of breaking the Barren Soil treaty, as several types of warfare allegedly used in their counter-genocide were banned by it. The Technocracy only gave the petulant reply of "Our agreement with you Immortals, who have done an excellent job in your self-styled positions as 'gods' by the way, was that we would only use those weapons to defend our people's lives from you. We haven't used them for anything else, just as you've clearly done a perfect job of showing us the outcome of Immortal rule."

## The Wall, the Exodus, and the Curtain

After the Goran had been pushed back, the Technocracy began to pour all available resources into largest mega-structure on the planet: The Eastern Mountaintop First Line Fortification System, known more colloquially as the Wall. Previous policy with the Goran, defending against their attacks with early warning and fast response, had proved to be completely ineffective. The Wall was the most extreme measure in case the Final Solution failed. The defensive structure was made to be the new first, and ideally last line of defense against future Goran invasions, and would prevent the Goran from crossing their own western border and into the mountains without Technocracy response.

During their attacks on the Goran homeland, the Technocracy made it clear to all non-Goran living west of the mountains that they were going to cut off all travel between the two, and that anyone who wanted to immigrate out of the Goran lands had to leave before the gate was closed. Many of the locals did not fully understand what this meant however, until it was too late.

After the completion of the Wall and the cessation of military movements across the mountains, all gates were closed. No one was allowed to cross the wall, and any group seen approaching through the Dead Zone was attacked on sight assuming the remaining Dust didn't kill them.

## Aftermath

The Genocide Campaigns were one of the bloodiest wastes of life in the history of Soi, and were a horrible ordeal for everyone involved.

### Friendly Losses

"*The debt is not yet repayed."* -A merchant dying in the Dust march

The Friendlies were the hardest hit by the genocides, as they lost four fifths of their population, as well as many of their records and buildings dating back to the Dawn Era. Several ethnicities were wiped out in the genocide.

### Goran Losses

The Goran nearly lost two of their castes, and these may never fully recover. On top of that, 90% of the warriors which crossed the mountains were killed, and it took several generations to rebuild the numbers.

### Kushani Losses

Though they were not the direct target of the genocide campaign, the Kushani were considered to be an enemy by the Goran. When the North Wall came down, they didn't work as hard to chase civilians, but destroyed infrastructure and killed anyone who got in the way.

### Eastern Block Losses

The eastern block outside of the Circle also suffered heavy losses, despite those nations' lack of involvement. To this day, the cultures still talk of the ruthlessness of all the parties involved in these events.

### The Family Hearth Losses

> *"You were playing with fire; you should have expected to get burned."* -Philosopher King in a report on casualties to the new Wise Masters
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Despite being the spark of the initial genocide campaign, the Family Hearth suffered heavy losses of both manpower and wealth, due partly to their role as both the supply line and transportation for the Goran's advance to the Technocracy-controlled land. As the war dragged on, however, more and more merchants became a target of ambushes by the Unbounded Forces. These constant attacks plagued the Family Hearth travels. However with every loss of life their rage continued to boil, and with each attack they endured their prisoners became fewer and fewer. In a similar fashion to the Burning of the Great Library, the leader of the attacks was forced to watch and write about each death in a report of their failure to the Technocracy.

This march though the Technocracy-controlled lands not only cost the Family Hearth manpower, but a vast amount of money as well. With the Family Hearth sinking closer and closer to the red, to the point of near bankruptcy, they opted to throw more and more support they had on the Goran. This worked in the short term giving a slight edge. However, the chemical weapons the Circle used completely blindsided both the Family Hearth and the Gorans. Unable to combat the chemical weapons it turned the tides of the war towards the Technocracy favor in a instant.

At the same time, members of the Technocracy smuggled themselves into the Goran nation and began to preform suicide bombings of the tactician and technologist caste systems. Though the bombings massive numbers of members of both the Family Hearth and the Gorans was killed.

At the end of it of the ordeal, the Family Hearth lost a significant number of traders and nearly bankrupted themselves by their own vindictive nature. As the Philosopher King pointed out in the end of a long, painfully accurate report on this sent to the "so-called Wise Masters and the people who follow them" detailing the ruin their reckless response had wrought them, "If you set the world on fire, it may make you rich, but then you'll have no one to spend it on," and got a reply from Elbon Metals, the newly appointed Wise Master of the 8th seat, stating, "Gold can be gained again, but never forget your pride and reputation is all you have in this world, and, with one action you just lost both."