You'd hardly believe that the plains kingdoms went to war, nowadays. What with the free passage between territories and all. But it hasn't always been this peaceful. And it falls to someone to remember what happened. Right now, that person is me. In time, it will be you.
The Conflict
Prelude
The Agriwrit War was begun after the San kingdom developed a new form of spellwrit known as an agriwrit. This form of spellwrit was able to accelerate crop growth impressively, and was also able to protect crops from disease or insect invasions by creatures such as aphids or locusts. Although the writ became widely used in the San kingdom, San officials made sure to keep the use of the technology within their borders. Within only a few months, San harvests were outperforming those of the other plains kingdoms immensely, so much so that any trade between those kingdoms and other nations was brought almost to a halt. Seeing that this technology would ruin their export economies, the Tolos and Therran Kingdoms first requested that the San kingdom moderate their use. When they received no official response, they began martialling for war.
The mobilisation of the Tolos and Therran forces came to a head at the town of Lask, in the Therran kingdom. Over a few weeks, the combined armies traveled to the town, which rapidly became a hive of activity. Previously a sleepy town somewhat back from the border of Therran territory, Lask's population nearly tripled by the time that the armies arrived.
The San forces were slower to mobilise, and in fact were deliberately left demobilised for a long period of time, San officials not wishing to alarm the populace. By the time that they were mobilised and a state of war was officially declared, the San had no time to advance to an aggressive position and instead deployed along their borders defensively as best possible.
After their defeat just outside
Sanine, the San kingdom surrendered and Tolos and Therran forces occupied the city for several weeks. Although there was pillaging and looting in some of the outer areas of the city, the inner areas particularly pencrafter lane and the royal palace were left intact. Tolos and Therran forces made exhaustive searches of the San kingdom's farms and publishing houses, destroying agriwrit copies wherever they were found through the use of conscripted
Censars.
After occupying multiple San kingdom settlements for multiple weeks, the Tolos and Therran kingdoms withdrew their forces, mostly due to the lack of funds for their upkeep and a growing resistance from the local populations to their presence. The San kingdom's industries were heavily impacted after the occupation, and their local economies entered a slump that it would take a decade to fully recover from. Additionally, the many pieces of infrastructure that had been built as a response to the development of agriwrits were rendered obsolete or unnecessary, meaning that large investments were now worthless.
Historical Significance
Before removing their forces, the Tolos and Therran kingdoms extracted several lasting concessions from the San kingdom. Firstly, they declared that any new spellwrit types introduced by any of the plains kingdoms were to be reviewed by the other two and distributed throughout the plains to avoid such an incident happening again. Secondly, it was decided that the power of the agriwrits was not one that would end up improving the quality of life of the plains kingdoms - either it would ruin much of their export trade, being the breadbasket of Mythia, or it would cause an invasion by the other nations and city-states similar to that by the Tolos and Therran kingdoms of San. Therefore, their use throughout the plains kingdoms was banned, and all surviving copies that were found during the occupation were destroyed. Today, the punishment for producing or using an agriwrit is either mutilation, typically the removal of a hand, or death.
I can see why the other nations went to war, and I'm not surprise the outcome was to ban the agriwits. Really interesting conflict.