The War in the West

This battle has been raging for nearly 200 years, and despite all of its military power and all of its religious fervor, the Khazigiri Empire is slowly but surely losing this fight.

The Conflict

Prelude

The widespread infection of the slave population of Kylma by highly contagious and aggressive lycanthropes, especially wererats, werewolves, and werepanthers, leading a bloody and violent slave revolt that rapidly became a war of aggression against neighbor nations. These nations, unprepared and unequipped for major military conflict against significant opponents, begged for help for their survival from the Autarch Irena VII, who resisted for several years before committing significant troops to a far-flung war on the other side of the continent.

Deployment

The initial commitment was no more than 10% of the Khazigiri land and sea military forces; in short order it became apparent that the main issue was not the military power but the supply line resilience, as the logistics involved in moving and controlling troops at such a distance required significant personnel, material, and magic, which ultimately all equal money. For a while it was relatively easy to secure volunteers and contributions from the Imperial population centers, as the Kylmen did, and do, pose a real and existential threat to the Empire; but at such a distance, the general feeling is that the threat is not as immediate as the need to feed oneself and protect one's own family, especially as the years became decades and the decades are now approaching two centuries of mostly stalemate, interjected with occasional embarrasing defeats.

Battlefield

The battle lines have pushed far southward into Central Pannychis, with the nation of Utheria all but lost. The Pilaani navy has been able to secure most of the coastal edges of Utheria with the Empire but the nature of the Lycanthropic enemy is insidious, and what may have taken months to gain can be lost overnight when the population has turned into the enemy.

Conditions

Lines are very fluid as a result, paranoia runs high, and innocents suffer to an even higher extent than normal under these conditions. Fighting is sometimes a traditional clash of two armies on a field, but more often than not it is guerrilla operations against enemy strongholds in urban centers or treks through ancient Cumaean ruins to eliminate magical sources of power used by the Kylmen to organize and command their troops. What they lack in viciousness, the Khazigiri make up for in experience, and the Khazigiri Tiger veterans are among the most effective troops the world has ever seen. There simply aren't enough of them to hold back the tide for very long.

Outcome

The allocation of so much infantry, navy and logistics to a protracted war over such a great distance has had severely debilitating effects on Imperial power, making it largely ineffective in its other military engagements closer to home. As such, it has great motivation to stay out of an open conflict with its more traditional and far more proximate enemies in the caliphate of Toz, a short distance across the Triad sea.

Aftermath

As the Lycanthrope army grows larger the longer the conflict goes on, as the disease spreads exponentially, the stalemate is in fact a victory for the Kylmen over the long term. Worse still, if the empire is unable to restrain these armies, they will swallow what's left of Utheria, and the more economically relevant Pannychis, and spill through the mountain gap into Ysont, possibly to the region of the Minonoise war against Mlastina. This would create cataclysmically devastating conditions for a quarter of the population of the planet. At the same time, there are some who feel that only the antediluvian power of a being like Abaia can actually stop the Kylmen; there is little doubt that the lycanthropic armies would meet their match in Mlastina proper. But any hope of brokering an alliance with those dark forces is out of the question until Minon and Ysont can be brought to a truce with Mlastina. For their part, they are only refraining from attacking the Empire because the Empire supports them in their cause against Mlastina.

Historical Significance

Legacy

Generations have been brought up to accept that this perpetual war exists and will continue to exist; that the war is necessary but possibly/probably unwinnable. The weakness at the heart of the Imperial military is becoming more and more obvious to its many enemies around the world.

Conflict Type

War

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

11889

Conflict Result

Stalemate; the War in the West is considered a perpetual conflict.