The Harvest War

The Conflict

Prelude

Nobody saw it coming, but maybe they should have. There had been a lot of fights among neighbors in the previous year, after all.
The farm lands had expanded into the forest for way too long and the wood trading guilds reaction was more and more aggressive each time.
The sea had become too shallow to navigate, leaving lots of people unemployed, trying to start over on land, where half of them had no useful skills.
There was violence between farmers, who fought over the production or the land, and they would blame each other for the poor results. The sister queens didn't know how many, because the first times their soldiers had ended the fight by taking the production in discord as tribute and now nobody would talk to them about it. What they knew was that the tribute was low, but they thought people were lying about their harvest.
The local traders were the first to notice, and the vast majority adapted to survive or moved to the other areas. Only a few of the merchants hoarded the production, but that was enough to make the situation worst for the queendom and neighboring tribes.
Some of the farmers tried to find out a solution for their own lands but that only caused the jealously of their neighbors. The clan of Jabier focused in trying to find out what was reducing the production and killing the sea, but they got little support from the other wood traders until it was too late.

Deployment

Some historians consider that the war started in 901, in the very beginning of the Harvest season, with the murder of a family of farmers. Others claim that if that was the case, they should take in account the sabotages to the irrigation systems during the previous seasons that should have been rainy but weren't.
Most history books will mark the start of the war with the skirmish between farmers and the trader tribe of Quizad, right in the middle of the Harvest season. The skirmish lasted hours and was stopped by the arrival of the leader of the tribe, who ordered his people to retreat. They mounted a camp in the desert and waited to talk with the sister queens but that meeting never took place. Not having anything to offer, the queens kept delaying it. Then the great invasion and the subsequent skirmishes happened and the oldest of the rulers was executed by their own people due to unclear reasons.
Several percipients and readers of Auburn Folios agreed that it was the result of mass hysteria triggered by a well intended attempt to demand the help of the rulers in a dark time.
In that time, the murder was attributed to the invading tribes, but the remaining queen gave them the chance to leave in peace, arguing that she wasn't sure which tribe was to blame, but mostly because she didn't have the resources for a war.
Some of the tribes left, but only because the Harvest was over. Several of them stayed around, acting as bandits of one kind or another, or working as guards for the queen or for the farmers that could pay to be protected from their own jealous neighbors.
When things seemed to have calmed down, several farmers were murdered while the cutting trees to prepare terrain to sow for the next cycle.
Ironically, it was only then when people started calling it a war. It became the war of the harvest during that season on the next year, when the skirmishes and thievery became normalcy all over the desert and the queen formed and army that was meant to restore order but resulted in even more deaths.
Everyone was forced to choose a side. The queen, who serve her people only an represented order, or the few traders that supported taking lands and goods by force to make sure that at least the strong survived the drought.
And yet, Quizad remained neutral. One third of his people abandoned him to join some of the "strong" tribes or traders. But the rest helped him in his crusade to find common ground between both sides. Among the chaos it wasn't exactly easy, but they found the support of the wood trading guilds. They introduced Quizad to Solda, who had become a leader of the farmers and those too weak to survive.
Solda had been focused in building a network that help them to get help when they were being robbed, but was also trying to establish a truce between the farmers and wood traders. With her help and the resources of wood traders, Quizad found the way to design a plan to bring peace. Solda arranged a meeting with the queen who made several changes to the treaty before helping to make it a reality.

Battlefield

Every farm, every house, the forest and each family table, hosted different battles.
The queen was doing her best to prevent another killing like those that happened when she first formed an army, and now both sides would try to avoid violence. Some would steal to those that knew they were to weak to try to fight back, and the queen's soldiers would show up to chase them away.
While there were several murderers, and even some actual fights, most of the deaths happened due to hunger and sickness.

Outcome

The truce terms designed by the queen, the tribes, and most of the involved guilds, were based in the old laws of the south cold desert kingdom and several of the nomad tribes, but included extreme measures required to survive with little resources.
Everyone knew it wouldn't last long, unless they fix the original problem.
Queen Naya, the leaders of several trading guilds, Quizad, and Solda in representation of the farmers, started to work in the solution to the lack of resources. At first they thought the key were the traders, and they convinced that they could grant the survival of everyone, if the work together. Quizad lead the traders that had been working to help, unifying their efforts, and organizing the society of All the Traders, which back then become a strong trading guild that eventually ruled all the commerce in the the south desert.

Aftermath

Once the pressure of lack of resources was reduced, other short term details of the truce become permanent without the need of discussing it, like the invasion of the forest, which would never occur again in the history of Ogha.
Other matters took several decades of active work. The restoration of the sea required centuries, actually. It turned out that the farmers had always had the brain required to save the sea, but they had been to busy fighting and trying to find life in dying soil, and it required the effort of everyone and lots of time. Magic was used to survive the first half or that wait.
Two generations would never see a ship navigating in Laku but, once the war was over, Solda dedicated her life to pass the ways of the sea, and a whole order of seafarers was funded on her effort. Her hard work to talk for the farmers first and gave them the courage and tricks to speak for themselves after, was the start of a deep friend between their guilds that last to this day.

Historical Significance

Legacy

The terms of the original truce were amended several times to rule the interaction between people in the desert and with their environment.
A couple of millenniums later, the rest of the world had adopted those rules. Ogha had never been easy to live in, and it would never be as it had been before, but it would remain inhabitable. That was the beginning of the currents laws of Ogha.

Location

Laku. and the south cold desert.

Conflict Type

Skirmish

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

3rd Ka BD
Year 901
Mid Harvest season

Ending Date

3rd Ka BD
Year 904
End of Rainbow season

Conflict Result

The wood trading guilds came to an agreement among themselves, and with the Tribe of Quizad, starting a movement that would eventually involve the farmers and the crown and lead to a truce.

Sides

The Queendom of the south desert

Armies controlled by Queen Naya, and the people she protected

The "Strong"

Tribes and merchants, lead by a few traders and trading guilds

The neutrals

A few groups that were trying to stay out of the war. Lead by Quizad and Solda, they became the solution of the conflict

Maps

• 

  Ogha

  Planet

  Fifth

  Layer

  Immemorial Plane

  Status

  Enlightened

  
  Map designed by Escritora Novata, using Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator.

It's not that we needed two years to write the truce terms, you know? It was difficult, but not that difficult. It's just that we could barely write a sentence between one skirmish and the next. It became easier once we some of the "strong" on the boat.

— Solda, interviewed by a group of students that visited in the forest

I kept wondering how those guys could destroy so much in so little time. They were supposed to be starving!

— Quizad. Hopefully he's being sarcastic.