The Centralian Alliance

Structure

The Centralian Alliance was a group of countries that actually had very little in common except a will to resist the expansionist powers around them such as The North, Verdon, and Vammheim. Mostly the nations were kingdoms and cooperated by pooling the resources of their armies and navies. They selected a single admiral and general to lead their joint forces and this allowed them to nimbly confront the challenges they faced as well as gave them a common rallying symbol, at least for a time.

History

Centralia was, for thousands of years, a geographical area rather than a political power of any kind. While Verdon was busying itself with conquering the south part of the continent and while the North repeatedly attempted and failed to unify, Centralia was simply the area around the edge of the Placid sea. Home to a diverse group of nations and cultures, ranging from the control-obsessed expansionists of Verdon to the freewheeling merchants of Iskander to the reclusive miners of Gerduff.
This would all begin to change in the early 3rd century, where a military and political power finally began to expand in the region. The small region of Vannheim began expanding its territory in the East before butting up against the Wastelands, then consuming several small kingdoms to the West and South between 390 and 374.
Things came to a head when a succession crisis in the kingdom of Licthen, itself formidably sized as far as a Centralian nation, was resolved with the heir to Vannheim's throne as the heir apparent. The prospect of a personal union between Lichten and Vannheim set off alarm bells across the region.
Three nations along the coast of the Placid sea, plus the exclave of Pinault which bordered Lichten, decided to form an alliance in 341. Their rivals, perhaps at the urging of Vannheim diplomats and spies, declared war to curtail the Centralian Alliance's growing power in 274, and the Alliance beat back their invasions and annexed their territory in a five year war.
Not to be outdone, Vannheim allied with a few countries bordering the placid sea and annexed four countries to their west and south, linking Vannheim and Lichten by 255. The rest of Centralia began to align itself with the either the Centralian Alliance or the North later that year.

The inevitable happened in 249, when a brutal 11 year war broke out between the allies and Vannheim. Vannheim had experienced troops and innovative tactics, but Centralia was able to achieve naval superiority. This allowed them to shuttle supplies and reinforcements around the Placid Sea, allowing them to break sieges and reinforce cut supply lines.
Ultimately, Vanmheim gave out, and Centralia liberated their 255 conquests, adding them to the Alliance either by relegitimizing regimes that agreed to alliance terms or setting up puppet regimes in places that did not.
Only 17 years of peace elapsed before Vannheim leveraged significant political and economic ties with the North to bring some Northern kingdoms and several nearby North-aligned countries into a war against Centralia In 221.
The war could not have gone better for Centralia, and would ultimately serve as the wake-up call that would inspire the The Third Northern Federation. Despite early victories by Vannheim, the Pan-Centralians were able to leverage superior maneuverability and a naval advantage into a total victory, even invading the North with devastating results, and force the North into a treaty giving the Centralian Alliance and its client states all the territory below the 27th North Parallel and the Reach in 202.
Most of the nobility of Vannheim would take refuge in the North. There they maintained a government-in-exile, holding on to claims on Vannheim’s 255 extent.
From here, Centralia entered an age of peace and unity. For about 150 years their cities grew in size and their people created art and architecture that would be renowned by all of Granmor. This growth was interrupted only by an epidemic in 102 PE that ultimately ended up weakening their Northern enemy more than themselves. The disparate countries of the Centralia region (especially the coast) grew closer together and signed more and more treaties that gave up pieces of their sovereignty for economic gains and mutual self defense.
However, the North did not forget their humiliating loss at Centralia’s hands. Border tensions and Centralian emigration to the North kept this animosity for the interceding century and the Third Northern Federation was resolved to liberate the Northern-Aligned lands and Vannheim. 17 years before the foundation of the Empire, the North declared war on Centralia, each side now more or less a unified nation.

Disbandment

Despite fighting well and holding its own against a geographically much larger opponent, Centralia began to show signs of weakening around 9 years Pre-Empire. Famines and other shortages caused large scale rebellions and the Alliance began to fray. Nonetheless, the Centralian powers persisted in their fight, convinced that the harsh winters and plague suffered by the North that same year would tip the war in their favor.
Instead, the conflict continued at a stalemate. When the Verdonese declared war in 7 PE, a mistranslation (some say the language was purposefully ambiguous) caused the weary powers to believe that the Verdonese had allied with the North. Consequently, they did not sue for peace until two years later. By this time the Verdonese had fought their way past the Wastelands into the Centralian Heartland. Despite a valiant effort, the last Centralian holdouts fell in 1 PE.
The newly founded Empire of Verdon immediately leveraged the divided history of Centralia and the war-weariness of its population to create stability and strong government in the region. Verdon restored the nobility of Vannheim and Lichten, as well as any other nobles who would kowtow to the Empire for a continuation of their personal power. In the end the diversity of Centralia made its conquest simpler for the Verdonese and the legacy of its brief two centuries of unity were reduced to ashes.

DISBANDED/DISSOLVED

10/4 341 PE - 10/4 1 PE

Type

Alliance, Generic

Alternative Names

Centralia

Demonym

Centralian