EUC 9 CALRADIA 1817 Devblog: Lore

[Florian 66]

For centuries, the Swadian Empire was Calradia’s foremost power. At its zenith, the few territories it didn’t occupy were relegated to mere client state status. However, by the 1750s, it began to collapse under its own weight. Two new powers emerged - the Rhodok Republic and the Sarranid Sultanate, and they waited silently in the wings. By 1815, the Empire existed in name only, and the land which it occupied was a sprawl of feuding aristocrats and their city-states. The Rhodoks and Sarranids, both eager to replace Swadia as Calradia’s main power, fought a gruesome war.

 

 In a matter of weeks, the matchless Rhodok army had committed slaughter on a scale previously inconceivable by the minds of man.The Sarranid armies had been almost entirely annihilated, their lands ravaged, and Shariz reduced to a river of blood with banks of rubble. 

 

The green bear banner was no longer raised over just the southern mountains, but over the eastern deserts and the central plains and steppe, all the way to the frostbitten northern coasts. None dared to mount opposition, and many welcomed the sense of order and peace again. The rest begrudgingly accepted the inevitable. The Great Republic of Calradia ruled every Calradian settlement by 20 December 1815. To maintain the Republic’s rule, all cultures of Calradia were assimilated into the army, and a vast force of Rhodoks, Sarranids, Swadians, Nords, Vaegirs and Khergits was assembled, standing guard, ready to fight any enemy. 

 

Premier Consul Greaves was not merely an effective military commander - he assembled a continental government of frighteningly efficient ministers and provincial governors. Their high level of competence built, in less than two years, a state so sturdy that it felt like it could have existed for a hundred years prior. Moreover, they effectively exploited Calradia’s wealth of natural resources and industrial power. The Republic’s economic growth was astronomic, and economists projected that Calradia would be the world’s single economic centre within decades.

 

This drew the ire of two mighty foreign powers. To Calradia’s west was the Kingdom of Balion, an island nation, with the world’s largest colonial empire, who had enjoyed status as the world’s foremost economic power for nearly a century. Their ruthless subjugation of indigenous cultures and uncaring exploitation of natural resources around the world led their pitiless nobility to become the richest group of individuals on the planet. Kings of the sea, their armed forces were tried and tested, and no nation can yet boast a victory in war against Balionic soldiers. 

Balion was closely allied with the Geroian League, a confederation of merchant republics to the south of Calradia, across the sea from native Rhodok lands. Their capital, Zendar, was the banking capital of the world since medieval times. Though they were most skilled in trade, nefarious foreign actors had conspired to to conquer them and plunder their vast liquid wealth many times throughout the centuries, leading the League to field at all times a large and capable standing army. 

 

Fuelled by raw greed and fear for their wealth, the leaders of Balion and Geroia met during the Rhodok-Sarranid War of 1815. They pledged that no matter which side won, if they should come to threaten the combined power and wealth of Balion and Geroia, then they would smite the usurper nation with unrelenting spite, knowing that they had the funds to do so. In late 1816, they agreed the Calradian threat could not be allowed to grow any further, and they secretly declared the creation of a Grand Coalition. Led by the King of Balion, they vowed to use cold steel to castrate the Great Republic of Calradia’s economic power by conquering the continent’s economic centre. 

 

Not all in Calradia were content with their new government. While the Sarranids, Swadians and Khergits had assimilated easily, the Nords and Vaegirs, whose home formed the economic centre of the continent. Aside from the Rhodoks who had bled to build the Republic, those two cultures were the ones who had toiled the most in building the nation’s power. Their concerns were voiced most openly by the Prince of Rivacheg, whose father had been a beloved lord of the city in the Swadian Empire, and as a result their family was still massively influential along the northern coast.

 

Having heard about the Coalition’s creation, the King of Jumne, the ancestral homeland of Nords and many Vaegirs to the north, answered the clarion call of his cousins in Calradia by pledging his services to the Coalition. Jumne was not a major power like his Coalition partners, but by serving them, he hoped to increase his kingdom’s power and influence, and even install colonies in Calradia. As a friend and relative of the Prince of Rivacheg, he secured the Prince’s support - with the promise of great reward. The Prince would, on the day of the invasion, enable the Coalition to land a large force in Rivacheg with minimal local opposition. He offered Ragnarstad, the closest foreign port to Rivacheg, to be used as a staging area for the invasion, and sent his own son, the Crown Prince, to lead his men in combat. Just like the sea raiders of old, the Army of Jumne was ready once again to wreak havoc and violence on Calradia’s prosperous northern shores.

 

By June 1817, the Grand Coalition had mustered 100,000 soldiers for their initial invasion force, with tens of thousands more preparing to follow. Hundreds of ships listened for the Warhorn of Balion, for when it blows, they will descend upon North Calradia. Men will march out as conquerors, attended by Death. Their orders are to establish full military control over the continent’s economic centres by whatever means necessary. Providence alone knows whether the Grand Coalition Army have the fortitude and prowess to vanquish the all-feared Army of the Great Republic, unmatched in efficiency and ferocity. 

With cannon shot, musket ball, and deathly sharp steel, the leaders of Calradia and the Coalition would draw the oceans of blood with which they would pay the price of global economic hegemony.

[Bullet Magnet 27]

WE MAKING IT OUT OF JELKALA CASTLE WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥🥶