Blood Diamond Dance

A hundred thousand men gone. All for stinking piece of jewlery. Man has searched for God since ages past, but tonight it is certain that in Albion he is not.

— Mary-Ann Richards, Arcadian Writer and Nurse (1601-1667 IE)

Most conflicts have two sides to them. Two interpretations that change depending on who is asked. Just and unjust, aggressor and defender, victor and defeated, they all tend to be debated even in seemingly clear cut situations. In the whole history of Aeteria there is only a single exception to this rule. For the Blood Diamond Dance has no defenders. Only those still scared by its excess over a century later.

Promised Kingdom

The origins of calamity are ironically found in the most prosperous period of Albian history. With the fall of Deira in 1489 IE, the whole of the Albian Archipelago was united under the Pendragon High Monarchy. With it came the manifold of different colonies that the Albian powers had established throughout the Cloud Ocean over the centuries. It was here that the new realm focused most of its energies in an attempt to bridge internal differences through success abroad. An unprecedented age of colonial expansion followed.
Nowhere was this more apparant than in the far southeastern regions of Bharani and Aryavana. From a varied mix of outposts and stations emerged the Eastern Saharani Trading Company, a fusion of private enterprise and royal comission. Through diplomacy, deceit, force, and honest trade, the company gew to encompass much of the area on a line near 6,000 miles long. By 1610 IE, it controlled nearly ten percent of Aeteria's landmass, goods like diamons, sugar, coffee, and spices ensuring that the monarchy remained awash in money.
Rajas, Sultans and Directors
On the political side, the company was represented by the Royal Administration of Colonial Saharan, a strange mix of royal governates, independent native realms, and various smaller Albian trading companies. At its head, stood a president elected by the company board and confirmed by the king. Their mission was two-fold:

Profit

First and foremost, the company president was to ensure that goods and cash flowed back on toward Albion. Resources had to be extracted, vast plantations managed, the slave trade regulated, in essence everything need to make sure that both shareholders and nobles, often one and the same, got their piece of the pie.

Stability

For money to flow, stability was essential. The president needed to keep the region calm. Not an easy task considering they were responsible for over one hundred million people of hundreds, divided into hundreds of different ethnicities, dozens of colonies and realms, and at least four major religions.

Neither task would have been easy on its own, even with a private army and navy, but under increasing pressure from both monarchy and company, the presidents of the ESTC were forced to press more and more from the natives. Unrest began to mount.

A powderkeg waiting to explode. Funny how we only had to dig deep enough to find the spark. What a cursed joke of fate.

— Anthony Eden, ESTC President (1616-1636 IE)

A Scarlet Star Rises

by Samuel PIRLOT - PETROFF

In 1622 IE, during a visit by then High King Arthur V., miners in central Bharan would stumble upon a diamond like no other. As large as a human head and a dark scarlet in colour, the Blood Star was quickly identified as possibly the most valuable diamond to ever be discovered. Arthur, who upon hearing news of the find had decided to see what curiosity had been uncovered, took one look upon it and near instantly became obsessed. Within a day, he demanded the stone be delivered to him once worked from the stone.
It was a demand then president Anthony Eden was hesitant to agree to. The discovery of the stone had brought waves of unrest, seen by many of the native Sindhara people as a holy symbol. And while Eden himself was no friend of the natives, at most one willing to lessen their burden somewhat to ensure calm, he knew that simply removing the diamond like that would cause even more waves.
He pleaded with the royal court to let the stone remain in its homeland, but Arthur was in no mood to grant such a request. In mid-spring 1628 IE, he sent another demand for the stone. This one backed by an elite regiment of the royal Wyvern Guard.

Expecting a king to listen...Might as well ask the sun not to sink below the horizon.

— Erik Dastarn, Teutan Revolutionary (1691-1743 IE)

Storm Across the South

The expedition was an abject disaster. It caused anti-Albian resentiments to reach a fever pitch, the guard treating local leaders and people as less than dirt. When Presiden Eden, increasingly convinced that the diamond's removal would cause rebellion, ordered company militia to block the guard from escaping with the stone, the result was an all-out fire fight with the guard.
Arthur V. decided that enough was enough. He had waited six years for the stone and would wait no longer. On the 3rd of April 1628 IE, he declared Eden a traitor and ordered preparations for an all-out invasion of the region.

The High Monarchy

Arthur V. Pendragon - The Mad King

~ 570.000 Soldiers

~ 400 Airships

Retrieve the Blood Star.

~ 125.000 - 220.000 killed

Factions

Leaders


Total Strength



Goal

Casualties

ESTC Rebellion

Company President Anthony Eden

~ 735.000 Soldiers

~ 110 Airships

No overall goal established.

Unknown but Heavy.

Despite the skirmish at the Dangali airport, neither Eden nor the company considered themselves at war. Sheer distance meant that news took over three months to reach them and when it did, it came in the form of royal airships bombing company facilities across [Bharan's](location:fdf3b0a1-c750-4178-ad92-70a2bb30890c) western reaches. Wyvern Guard paratroopers descended upon the ESTC headquarters at Nova Alba in an attempt to decapitate the company's leadership. Eden barely escaped.

A Blade under every speck of Dirt

King Arthur may have seen a quick end to the war by mid-1628 IE, if not for a series of miscalculations and outside circumstances.

Native Rebellion

Within weeks of the assault, royal forces faced increasing resistance by Sindhara forces. From peasant rebels simply seeking better conditions to religious fanatics seeking to protect the stone, thousands of natives rose up against Albian aggression. The cities and forts taken by the royal army quickly turned into islands in a roiling sea.

Company Busting

Eden and other company officials may have surrendered had Arthur V. not decided to dissolve the ESTC in late summer of 1628 IE. Seeking to be the only one controlling the vast wealth of the southeast, he had officials and property seized all across the Albian world. Faced with utter economic ruin, most ESTC governors still at large took up arms against him.

Albian Arrogance

Neither natives nor company might have posed as much a challenge, had the royal court and army command sought the help of Bharan's various rulers. These men and women, part of the company yet still independent to various degrees, could have helped crush the uprising with their own forces. Royal arrogance, however, ensured their neutrality.

The result was a war where a hundred thousand royal and colonial troops faced millions of oppenents. From unorganised guerillias that bloodied Albian attacks in jungles, deserts and the white forests of northern Guarat, to veteran company soldiers that could contend with royal forces on the open battlefield, the diversity in tactics and armament was simply overwhelming.
While the royal army could brush aside any enemy in a concentrated effort, it was often enough merely burning a precarious corridor through hostile lands. Every small floating rock, every village, every tree seemed to hide yet more blades and guns. Worse yet, the Blood Star remained elusive, smuggled away by Eden's personal agents.

by Teodor Dimitrov

High King Arthur was not content to leave the conflict in the hands of his generals, regularly replacing those he found too passive. The result was a revolving door of commanders and officers. No real strategy was ever established.
Royal airships aimlessly sailed the skies to bomb whatever target had been designated on that specific day. Armies marched across the conglomeration of floating earth, burning villages on orders that had long since been rescinded.

Tarangana and Kolikat changed the war. Even Arthur knew it. Could hear the roar of an entire Swarm Formation waking up to fight.

— Gen. Major Tom Alden

Endless War

The chaotic bloodletting across Bharan would continue for roughly five years, royal forces able to take company forts and rebel cities, but never make it beyond a string of precariously connected regions. But in 1634 IE, a series of rash decisions would push things forward once again.

Siege of Kolikat

Rumours that the Blood Star had been brought to the city of Kolikat, capital of the then neutral Rajana Shahdom, made an overeager royal general, Roland Stern, lay siege to it. The city last barely three weeks, unprepared as it had been, and the resulting sack was so savage that it saw the streets stained crimson. The diamond was nowhere to be found.

Rebellion of the Princes

The sack of Kolikat turned the tides. Several princes of Bharan, previously uninterested in the conflict, decided that Arthur's savage campaign had to end before it could hit them as well. Many threw their lot in with the ESTC, whose armies were no reeinforced by many thousand veteran soldiers. Within a day, half the continent had turned against Alba.

Muddy Hell
Within the span of two years, the High Monarchy lost most of its gains in the region. Air dominance proved of little effect when nearly every single island in your vicinity was hostile. By early 1637 IE, the royal high command, presented Arthur with a choice. He would either have to give up or put more troops into the field. The current forces were simply not enough to stem the tide.
Arthur predictably chose the latter option and by mid-1637, almost three-hundred-thousand royal soldiers launched an offensive against the core rebel territories. For four months, company and principal forces were pushed back by the juggernaught until the whole campaign ground to a halt around Rudhrapur. Battles were fought across a hundred monsoon-drenched islands, the land turning into a muddy hell that would consume hundreds of thousands.
Six weeks of fighting broke the royal army which would never regain the initiative from then on. Another defeat near Alianta half a year later would destroy the last great royal field army in the region.

With but a whimper

by Alexandra Roslik

By 1640 IE, the High Monarchy held only a few forts and cities on the outer edges of the Swarm Formation. The company had long since ceased to exist, President Eden having been assassinated by an unknown assailant in 1636. Princes, company officials and rebels turned on each other as the region descended into chaos.
A prime opportunity for a counter-attack, but the royal army could only aimlessly bomb the land and strike at isolated regions. No more reeinforcements were coming. The High Monarchy had gone bankrupt. Supplying hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of airships across thousands of miles, and over a decade of fighting had proven too much.
Wihout the ESTC, the High Monarchy had to drain its treasury before turning to colonies such as Arcadia and Venghana for more resources. But neither colonials nor those at home in Albion were willing to finance their mad king's adventure any longer. Popular unrest erupted into rebellion, and the colonial army in Bharan signed a peace treaty with what remained of the rebel forces.
When Arthur himself was killed in a military coup in late 1642 IE, the mad quest for the Blood Star was finally at an end. Neither his dynasty nor his realm would survive him by much. And the scarlet stone that had been at the core of it all? It vanished into the depths of Bharan, never to be seen again.

Perhaps the earth itself swallowed it again. Good ridance for man cannot be trusted around it.

— Rajam Sinh, Sultan of Adanahore (1634-1682 IE)

Part of
Collapse of the Old Order
Duration
03.04.1628 - 16.10.1642 Imperial Era
Location
Most of the Bharani Provinces and Aryavana Archipelago.
Result
Albian defeat. Downfall of the High Monarchy begins. Collapse of the RACS and increasing independence for the Sindhara people.
Important Battles
Siege of Kolikat
Mud Hell Massacre
Battle of Alianta

by Gwen Bassett

House Pendragon
Unifiers of Albion and conquerors of much of the world, House Pendragon used to be a name associated with wealth, power and glory. Rising from obscure origins to first become rulers of the Kingdom of Dumnonia, they conquered the remaining Albian realms one by one to unite the region for the first time since the early 1200s IE.
Their reign, lasting from 1460 to 1644 IE, saw unprecedented growth for trade and colonisation. Albion's wings, it was said, spread from one end of Aeteria to the other. But greed had always been a main driver of the dynasty's acts and Arthur V. and his wife Guinevere were no different. Obsessed with the Blood Star, they pushed the realm to ruin.
Arthur V. died in 1642, his wife was killed by her mad lover a year later, and their son, the sometimes bastard Uther III. was to fall together with the rest of the family in the civil war that engulfed the High Kingdom in the aftermath. Albion broke apart, the High Monarchy abolished in 1651 IE, and has remained broken ever since.

by Darek Zabrocki

Land of the Sindhara
The regions inhabited by the Sindhara stretch in a long bow across the southeast of the world. A chain of mid-sized swarm formations, it is mostly centered on the Tropical Belt which creates islands full of lush jungles. However, parts of it drift through higher and lower parts of the atmosphere and anything from cold tundra to temperate zones and scorching deserts may also be found.
It is also one of few formations to actively rotate, meaning what is now its far eastern shore will be its far western one one day. These cycles last roughly five hundred years, the rise and fall of civilisations following it step by step.
The Sindhara themselves are far from a united group, mostly grouped together by Albian scholars because of their range of brown skintones. Currently, the region sees a renaissance of native rule thanks to the collapse of the High Monarchy over 140 years ago. However, efforts by Albians and other powers to re-build their colonial empires have increased in recent decades.

It is punishment. A piece of that primeval malice which sits at the he heart of our broken world. Anyone who beholds it shall fall prey to its hate and hunger.

— Samhrit Para, Viltra Guru (1755-Today IE)

Faiths of the South
One major problem posed by the Blood Star was its religious significance. Diamonds of this type are not unheard of in this region, although none of the others ever even approached the size of the one desired by the Mad King, and several of its faiths deal in part with their existence.
Among Vliatrans they are seen as seeds of evil, anchors with which a primordial evil can strengthen its presence in the Cloud Ocean. Their destruction is a holy duty. Many Vliatrans would fight both royal forces and rebels to gain control of the stone.
Shulvites see them as the pillars which keep the land of Sindhara floating in the skies, seeds planted by the gods in old times to save at least part of the world. Should one be removed parts of the region would collapse down into the abyss.
When the Blood Star was prepared to be moved, hundreds of thousands of Shulvites began to agitate against it. Their resistance was among the main reasons for Anthony Eden's fateful hesitance in 1628 IE. After war had broken out, they rallied to the company's side by the thousands, forming the backbone of their newly recruited militia regiments.

by Eddie Bennun

Modern War
When the war known as the Blood Diamond Dance broke out, warfare was undergoing a revolution. Airships had long been a staple of Aeterian warfare, but with the invention of Henderson Reflection in the 1570s IE, a whole series of new weapons entered the battlefield: Flash Grenades, Fisher Lamps, and, most famously, the Light Musket.
The light musket especially, although still relatively primitive in those years, gave royal forces an advantage over their enemies who still relied on blackpowder muskets. Another advancement came in the field of aeroplane design. Lighter models entered mass production, allowing for easier reconaissance.

Company at War
On paper, the ESTC was a powerful foe for any realm on Aeteria. Vast resources and a private army that ranked 7th in the world in terms of size made any conflict a foregone conclusion. But the rebellion launched in 1628 IE was neither planned nor a true company-wide endeavour.
Anthony Eden may have been president, but his control over the many governors across the region was brittle. Some remained neutral throughout the conflict, and attempted to create their own fiefs in its aftermath, others remained loyal to the crown. Of those joining the war on Eden's side, many acted on their own, contributing to the chaotic nature of the first few years.

by Karl Ehrnström