Corsair Queen Atalanta´s War
The Conflict
Prelude
The short lived Pirate Freehold of Queen Atalanta has its origins in Elesh culture, inside the household of the Tolemenaic family. There, after a famine and a war, almost the entire family of sailors and ship masters died. Some lost in the sea forever, and others dying of hunger.
The father of Atalanta, the last surviving member of the family, had a cursed end. He was the patriarch of the family after all, and now his children were dead, too young or lost in the sea to inherit his triremes, and the only one available for inheritance was Atalanta, the unmarried daughter that lost her virtue to an anonymous pirate years ago.
And so, in his last words he cursed his daughter after giving her the five triremes that the family owned. And so, Atalanta set sails away from the city of Runnpolis, sell two from the five ships and amassed a pirate and mercenaries crew.
And so, captain Atalanta became a little known pirate at the age of 16, with some respectable wealth to her name after his father cursed her, because the gods were cruel to let a woman inherit all his possessions.
She went into a tour visiting countless country’s and distant lands, learning all what there was to learn, gaining the trust of governments to issue letters of marque and reprisal to hunt pirates, learning how to fight thanks to Republic Knights, changing her religion from the Golden Path Gods to the Arms of Kali, enlisting the help of followers of the goddess to have more manpower in the ships against pirates.
She endured rape, beatings, mutiny, ship breaks, deadly diseases, fought against small clusters of Edekhan knights, enlisted Hrismarian mercenaries, and lived a full life as a fully fledge privateer and mercenaries. She had a career spanning twenty years of service aiding Edekhan nobles, Elesh freeholders, even keldoren sea lords.
She became a very known and wealthy pirate, but she wanted more.
Atalanta wanted to spit in the grave of his father, challenge the conceptions of womanhood of Elesh culture, were women weren’t considered citizens, were women were expected to live in the household and be a baby making machine. After years of being a pirate woman the other pirates respected her, not following her only for the money, but for the leadership qualities that she had and the fierce way I that she followed her prey. She wasn’t a particularly good fighter, but still a capable sea commander. And so, she was determined to carved out a kingdom for herself.
Deployment
The Northern Baktrian Chiefdom was a shadow of the years of Malador The Builder, it was more of a loose coalition of familial minoic tribes that sometimes got together and form alliances, now only dominating the lands south of the Shields and the small island to the east called Hornwood Point. The minotaur’s as a race were known to be shit shipbuilders and marines, and so they always resorted to copy styles of ships from the Elesh like the triremes and buy mercenaries and privateers to man the ships wen sailing for war. Atalanta knew this since she learned to tie a knot, and used this for her advantage.
She gathered some Sea Lords, merchants, pirates and mercenaries from her years of service. The most prominent figures were: Sigurd Black Eyes, a mercenaries and unlanded jarl, captain of his own company called “Freya´s Cat”; the twins Fiore and Mihaly de Elentres, Keldoren merchants and Sea Lords who had a respectable fleet of keldoren swan ships and archers; Saeleras of Leng, an Asatite Green Girl captain, a devout of the Goddess Kali and trainer of a military order of warrior women devout to the goddess that fight against the oppression of woman’s in the world; The mercenaries company of minotaur’s called “The Fiery Groove” and finally the aid of at least thirteen individual pirate ships along with their crew and captains.
Together they formed a corsair coalition, not the first coalition of common folk to rise against the established order to carve out a piece of world for themselves using brute force. Atalanta was, in fact, a common answer to the shift in power after the devastation caused by the Shattering War. The Old Powers dying, and the balance of power shifting to private entrepreneurs, merchants, the new bourgeois, land owners and mercenaries.
The Engagement
The first encounter of the Corsair Coalition against the forces of the Northern Baktrarian Chiefdom was at the Siege of Felorese.
The main corsair force at sea splinted in two groups, one would invade the island and the other would raid the coast and destroy enemy vessels to stop any counter attack. And so, a group of pirate ships, mercenary’s drakkars and keldoren ships launched against the city of Felorese. The pirates strike out against the ships stationed at the port, burned it all and siege for four days the city and took a big ransom out of it. With the gold they persuaded the privateer ships contracted to help the counter attack. And so, the generals were cut off from a quick retaliation.
The clans were on high alert, and so the corsair army quickly sailed far from Felorese to raid more shipwrights to stop the forces into coming to the island, and in a matter of two weeks the island was cut out from the mainland far from reinforcements and supply’s while the corsairs had unlimited amount of resources and had established a supply route from the nearby keldoren colonies.
The second group had less ships, but the most warriors were in them, with most capable of fighting ships out in the group raiding, and here most ships capable of holding a large amount of people. They established a beach head at a small pirate den in the south of the island, gathering the aid of local bands of pirates and bandits that roamed in the zone. The fought for fourteen days a guerrilla warfare against the minoic clans, meeting against the Blood Horns at the Battle of Green Leaf, were the Green Girls of Kali sacrificed themselves to save the army. Being defeated in a fair battle they decided to stop using normal tactics, and so they started harassing local caravans and raiding towns to starve the defenders of the island.
They surrendered after one year of battles, and with no help from the mainland thanks to the corsair fleet.
Outcome
The local feudal lords, clan leaders, and other Old Powers hold their breath at the victories of the Corsair Coalition, being slow to fight against the privateers in their own place of birth, the sea. And with the surrender of Clan Miñoka, the zone was turned into a Corsair Nation, with the tribal zones now under the control of the privateers, mercenaries and merchants that helped Atalanta to conquer the island.
The now corsair rulers of Atalanta´s Island gathered and branded her as the first Corsair Queen, with a crown made of iron with green jewels, symbolizing the iron will of the pirates and corsair, the life on the sea, and the goddess Kali.
Aftermath
The petty Corsair Kingdom of Atalanta was created after the defeat of the Northren Baktrarian Chiefdom, with a treaty recognizing Atalanta as the de facto ruler of the island. The treaty was signed after a year of fighting inside the island, and at least three failed maritime offensives from the chiefdom. They swallowed their pride and granted the lordship of the island, being unable to stop her from ruling it nonetheless. After that, the chiefdom started to fund rebel groups inside the island but to no avail.
Atalanta started to destroy the temples of the Minoan Pantheon, and started to build temples for the goddess Kali, bringing immigrants from other parts of the world that adhere to the goddess religion and started constructing cities for them. Besides, a large amount of Elesh settlers started to flood to the island. Finally, she outlaw slavery, waging a series of wars against slavers and other Edekhan ventures, inciting the rage of the empire that later helped the Northenr Baktrarian Chiefdom to oust the queen.
The Slavers Wars resulted from this, with Corsair Queen Atalanta ending slavery and destroying pirate dens in the Edric Sea. She wanted a legitimate rulership, but this could not be achieve thanks to her pirate associates, and so many leave her side after the Slavers Wars.
She wanted to replace the populace of minotaur’s with other races and cultures that saw her rulership as legitimate, and so laws that strip from taxation other religions besides the minotaur pantheon were created, and immigration was encouraged. The minotaur population started to rebel, and the Fire Ladys and Lords of the nearby Albaqir city-states started to help the Chiefdom to fund rebel groups.
After a couple years a large civil war erupted, when the migrants started to become the majority, after a surge of minotaurs leaving the island. The different religions and cultures of the migrants could not let the queen form a cohesive force against the natives, and so after two more years the Corsair Queen was overthrown by a combine force of Albaqir and minotaur warriors that invaded the island in defense of the natives.
Most of the pirates and mercenaries leave the side of the queen after the Slavers Wars, and when she radicalize the religion of Kali most of her remaining allies saw her as nothing more than a puppet from a foreign religion. And so, alone she was left to collect taxes until they ousted her, and later killed her.
One hundred years later, the culture of the island is still untouched. The minotaur’s of the zone adopted the religion of Kali, the Elesh settlers grew into forming at least two city states, and the island was separated into two, one a buffer zone against pirates that where still loyal to the queen and the other a tributary state that shielded the chiefdom against the Albaqir city states. And so, the culture of the island was changed forever, being a combination of Elesh, Minoian and pirate culture, with the Kali religion.
Historical Significance
Legacy
Belligerents
Corsair Coalition
Northern Baktrian Chiefdom
Strength
Atalanta´s personal retinue of pirate ships consisting of ten triremes and at least one quinquerreme being the flagship, called “Artemis Bow”. A total of 400 pirates armed with small buckles and knifes, 10 tusken hoplites, at least two republic knigths, lizardfolk step warriors, and others.
The Fiery Groove consisted of at least 1500 heavy minoic warriors, armed with long maces, wood and leather armor made for beings with incredible strength and other kinds of heavy weapons. At least one trebuchet.
Freya’s Cat Company was numbering the 2500 warriors, some were marine archers trained in pelting enemy vessels with arrows from a safe distance, but they could fight in land, others were raiders with hauberks and dane axes, sometimes spears, always fighting in the shield wall formation.
The Keldoren Twins brought the most marine firepower to the table. They lend at least 50% of the garrison of their cities to the cause, and conscripted merchant ships to aid in the invasion. In total, they had 5000 keldoren warriors, fighting using turtle shells as shields and tridents as spears. The Keldoren warriors were known to be as good hand to hand fighters as the minotaur’s were in ships, but their prowess with the bow was the stuff of legends. And so, the large number of keldoren archers, numbering in the 2000 of those 5000 were a great aid. And all of them, on top of 45 swan ships, with large towers for the archers to pelt from a distance.
The Green Girls were the police force of the temples of Kali. They were never meant to fight in an army, but Atalanta promised to convert the people from the island to the religion of the goddess Kali if the church helped her with money and troops for the war. And so, they gave her 300 zealous warriors armed with spears, obsidian daggers, some horses and eleven more pirate ships to break havoc.
9000 heavy minotaurs, figthing in a similar maner to the Fiery Groove
A coalition of at least three Fire Ladys from the lands of the Albaqir, consisting of 6000 skirmishers, ligth cavalry and warrior womens
150 triremes and 25 merchant ships
Casualties
Objectives
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