War of the Empires

The War of the Empires was a continent-spanning conflict fought roughly 300 cycles ago between the United Empire of Directionland and the Southern Federation of Kingdoms (SFK). The war began after a prolonged period of diplomatic breakdown and border militarization and culminated in a Directian counteroffensive that destroyed the Federation’s core and dissolved the SFK after eight cycles of fighting. It is widely remembered as the most devastating war of the recorded era on Mundus.

Background and prelude

Southern consolidation and the Kingsvalley ultimatum

In the south, the kingdoms of Jalbarra and Yaxton and the Grand Duchy of Greater Urq opened talks to federate—initially framed as a response to border disputes with Ruulran and years of pressure along Directionland’s southern marches. The process produced the Southern Federation of Kingdoms, a centralized military coalition under a “King-Emperor.”

Directionland was thrown into crisis when the Federation’s first missive to the Directian embassy in Jalbarra asserted a historic claim on Kingsvalley and demanded an immediate Directian military withdrawal from the border. A commonly cited paraphrase from the embassy file reads:

“Kingsvalley rests upon lands pledged to the Southern Crown; withdraw your banners and yield the valley, or we shall take what is owed.”

In St. Stylinson, the warning accelerated negotiations already underway among Directionland’s cities, duchies, and kingdoms. Less than a cycle later, financial backing from St. Stylinson, Gandry, Simonville, and St. Niam helped finalize the Great Unification, electing King Ethian IV as the first Emperor of Directionland and establishing a bicameral government.

A “cold war” on the marches

For roughly 150 cycles, the frontier resembled a cold war: SFK patrols massed along the line, posturing and trading insults, while Directionland fortified crossings and urged de-escalation. Ruulran, historically friendly with Directionland, watched uneasily and declined to mediate.

Parliamentary diaries describe the breaking point in plain terms. One afternoon, as the Imperial Parliament sat in Ironwood, a dust-covered courier forced his way to the floor and delivered the message that would echo through every account of the age:

“Federation forces have engaged the Imperial Army—we are at war!”

Opening moves: the triple stroke

Feint at Kingsvalley

The SFK struck first at Kingsvalley, brushing aside local militia and drawing Directionland’s nearby field forces toward St. Stylinson, the nearest major stronghold and the empire’s former de facto capital. Contemporary analysts long treated the Kingsvalley push as the main blow; post-war staff studies call it what it was—a feint.

The Grand Sanctum of Alessa burning - despite efforts to save the scrolls from the burning building, very few were recovered as the parchment was highly flammable.

Amphibious strike on Grelian

While Directian columns re-concentrated in the center, an SFK task force sailed up the western shore and launched a surprise assault on Grelian. With only city guards to resist, Grelian fell quickly, and Gandry’s command staff—then guarding Directionland’s eastern frontier—hurried their entire field army west to relieve the desert settlement.

The blow in the east: Gandry overrun

The third stroke followed at once. A larger SFK army, hidden for weeks in the mountains, descended into Gandry. With Gandry’s soldiers committed to Grelian, the kingdom could not recover: the Grand Sanctum of Alessa burned, foundational archives were lost, and Grand King Ultimer III and his family were killed in the sack of the royal seat. By the end of the campaign’s opening phase, Kingsvalley, Grelian, and Gandry were under occupation—and Directionland faced invasion from south, west, and east.

“Dear Theodren, King—

War consumes my realm. The Federation profanes our sanctums and makes orphans of our children. Our banners falter; our people are afraid. Gandry is fallen—Ultimer and his line are ash upon the stone—and the enemy’s arrows point now to Ironwood.

You have sat at my table and met my sons and daughters. That table is covered in maps—our lands crossed in red. I ask you, as friend and sovereign, stand with us. Help drive back this fire before it leaps your border—because if we fall, it will come for you.

In faith and desperation,

Farrion III, Emperor of Directionland.”

—From the Imperial Archives, letter of Emperor Farrion III to King Theodren II of Ruulran (standardized orthography).

Envoys report that no reply ever came. Later chronicles mark the episode as the moment Directionland’s trust in Ruulran shattered.

Occupation, devastation, and stalemate (Years 1–7)

St. Niam was hit hard during the war when SFK forces pushed through from occupied Grelian. St. Niam never fell, but experienced heavy losses.

Under SFK occupation, Gandry suffered systematic destruction and subsequent agricultural collapse. The burning of the Grand Sanctum of Alessa erased swathes of religious and civic memory—including the scaffolding scholars once used to group saints in Triads of Stewardship—and fueled a refugee wave that reshaped settlement patterns for generations. Raven’s Nest, for example, remembers its founding as a wartime refuge bound to the cult of Saint Nerva. Across seven grinding cycles, neither side achieved a decisive breakthrough.

The Niamite breakthrough (Year 7)

After years of deadlock, Imperial Engineers from St. Niam unveiled the TNT trebuchet, a revolutionary siege weapon. Its rapid deployment collapsed entrenched SFK positions; within weeks the strategic picture inverted, opening the way for a general Directionlandic advance.

Fall of the Federation and end of the war (Year 8)

Pursuit operations carried Directian armies into the Federation’s heartlands, which were put to the torch while most civilians were spared and allowed to flee. With its political core wrecked and armies disintegrating, the Southern Federation of Kingdoms dissolved at the end of the eighth cycle.

Belligerents

• United Empire of Directionland — Centralized empire (capital Ironwood) with a professional army and a growing engineering corps centered on St. Niam.
• Southern Federation of Kingdoms — Coalition ruled in wartime by King-Emperor Larsi.

(Ruulran, though a historic partner of Directionland, refused to intervene—a decision that permanently chilled relations between the realms.)

Tactics and technology

• Deception and maneuver: The SFK’s triple-stroke opening—Kingsvalley feint, Grelian amphibious strike, Gandry mountain thrust—exploited terrain, sea lines, and Directionland’s centralized redeployments. (Directian sources of the period record the occupations of Grelian and Gandry and the feint’s effect on Imperial dispositions.)
• Siege innovation: The TNT trebuchet ended the stalemate and is routinely taught as the conflict’s decisive technological pivot.
• Regional doctrine: Pre-war Gandry cultivated war-wolves and a proud martial tradition—undone by the occupation and subsequent collapse.

Civilian impact, religion, and culture

The war depopulated swathes of the map and erased archives foundational to Aetherian scholarship. The destruction of Alessa’s Grand Sanctum left only scorched marginalia for later clerics to reconstruct saint-lists; regional cults (e.g., Saint Nerva at Raven’s Nest) preserved fragments of older practice. Collective memory in Directionland binds the war to themes of loss, exile, and the danger of coalition warfare.