The Peacoot War
Neras (Novageon) was first settled by a mix of independent families, Unitas business interests, and Pact cooperatives. Tensions quickly arose over perceived encroachments, legitimate or otherwise. Spot wars flared up and died off, leaving alliances in their wake until, after a century, the planet was divided mostly between two blocs—Unitas and Pact—with some independent holdouts still defending their claims in places.
At first a fragile and uneasy stability was held in place by a network of interdependent hair-trigger mutual-defense agreements. This fraught peace lasted 12 years before a hapless young GuardCorps trooper’s pet peacoot—a flightless bird indigenous to Neras—slipped its leash and ran into the heavily monitored no man’s land between its owner’s GuardCorps border encampment and Boudreaux, a Pact-affiliated spotter village. The trooper was shot and killed.
This event triggered a cascading activation of mutual-defense agreements on both sides, drawing Neras into a global conflict—colloquially known as “The Peacoot War” for the last 27 years. The war is perpetuated by endless tit-for-tat exchanges which have drawn in three generations of combatants, with neither side willing to forgive the other for any number of historical offenses.
