Although the empire’s collapse only really began in 972 with Wingbardy’s secession, imperial rule in South-Eastern Griffonia had been wavering ever since Grover IV. took the throne. By 930, the Prywhenian principalities were independent in all but name, Gryphus was only staying loyal to Griffenheim because of its trade relations with the rest of the empire, so was Sicameon and the Kingdom of Asterion was in a constant state of civil war as uprisings against the puppet government had become a national pastime. In all of South-Eastern Griffonia there was only a single bastion of imperial rule, the County of Cyanolisia.
In 932, seeking to reinforce the imperial presence in South-Eastern Griffonia, which traditionally was the third wealthiest part of the continent, Grover IV. massively expanded the Reichsarmee presence in the region. The local garrisons were reinforced by some 150.000 Herzlandic soldiers at great cost to the treasury. Additionally, the griffonisation of Cyanolisia was sped up by making it the primary penal colony of the empire, a role traditionally fulfilled by Nova Griffonia.
Grover’s reforms were successful in reinforcing the imperial rule and the region became dependent on the empire for protection and stability. This however had the effect that once the imperial collapse came in 972 and the revolution came in 978 the south-east suffered especially much.
The Imperial Collapse
Although Asterion had been fighting for its freedom pretty much ever since the empire showed up, their rebellions were always quickly put down by the large imperial garrison. This changed with the independence of Wingbardy as imperial rule collapsed like a house of cards. Imperial weakness emboldened the populace causing yet another wave of uprisings across the country. These were incredibly successful in liberating the countryside but failed to take control of the major population centers.
In 975 the various Asterionese guerilla armies and resistance groups formed a united front that coordinated the war effort. As the guerillas still were too weak to fight the imperials in open battle, they instead focused on luring out imperial units from the cities and then isolating them in the countryside where they could easily be cut off. Additionally supply lines to inline cities were attacked so as to cut off the imperial units stationed there. These tactics were incredibly successful in liberating the country, so much so that by 976 the imperials were banished from all but a few coastal towns.
The Asterionese advance was stalled in the coastal towns for two years since the Asterionese barely had any modern guns, much less the heavy artillery required to properly assault fortified positions. The coastal cities only fell in late 978 after imperial troops withdrew on orders from Griffonstone, but not before sacking Aster’s Landing and “evacuating” the Kingdom’s gold reserves.
The Withdrawal of the imperial garrison did not end the war as the Cyanolisian army stepped in to fill the gap and continued the war. With the empire out of the picture (and banished from the region for the time being) Macawia and Sicameon started supporting Asterion openly allowing for the Asterionese to liberate the rest of the Archipelago by 980. The next obvious step was liberating Kyanoia, but as the Cyanolisians had a fleet, one that had just been reinforced by many vessels from the Hochseeflotte, the Asterionese could not simply liberate it. Instead, they supported the mainland minotaurs through military aid and encouraged them to rise up for their freedom.
As soon as the imperial garrison of Gryphus left for Griffonstone, the country fell into revolution and counterrevolution. After a chaotic winter and spring, Gryphus had split into many small fiefdoms and republics that in the next three decades periodically fought wars to try and unify the country, although none of the belligerents in these wars ever came close to achieving their goals. Besides devastating the land these wars also saw the banishment of the Gryph-Süd GmbH from Gryphus. Much of the company either relocated to Cyanolisia, where they and the money they brought with them were greatly appreciated, or to Agradia where they built their own fiefdom.
In this time the Cyanolisian economy did not fare well, as the trade dependent nation saw its biggest trading partner, Gryphus, collapse, while all its other most important trade partners’ economies also faltered thanks to the imperial collapse. Industrialization was halted as the capital that had been abundant in the empire just a decade prior had disappeared, while the many refugees from Asterion and the émigres from Gryphus all needed to be housed, something that the state could not spare any resources to do, since the Cyanolisian State was busy trying to keep itself alive while threatened from within and without. Conequently, the Refugees simply ended up in slums and shantytowns on the outskirts of Thymíaustadt.
It was in these difficult times that the old Countess Emilia von Lívany, who had ruled Cyanolisia for five decades, died, leaving the troubled County to her granddaughter Taillow von Lívany.
The Cyanolisian Recovery
In the first few years of her reign Countess Taillow attempted to reconcile with the minotaurs, however these efforts did not bear fruits as centuries of occupation and colonization could not be undone by a few liberties here and there together with a handshake or two.
Although the war with Asterion had ended as both sides lost the ability to conduct offensive actions, that did not stop the Kyanoian Minotaurs from fighting their own war of independence against the Cyanolisians. The uprising was supported by Asterion, and thanks to that support and the weakness of Cyanolisia the rebelling Minotaurs liberated most of the outback, leaving only the urban centers under Cyanolisian control as they lacked the heavy equipment needed to attack them.
Still, Cyanolisia was at a low point having lost control of more than 70% of its nominal territory, leaving Taillow Sumpfkiel to choose between ignoring the uprising and continuing to try and negotiate her way out of this mess, which could cost Cyanolisia its very existence, or cracking down on the insurgency. She of course chose the latter, ordering the army to restore order in the outback. The crackdown was relatively effective, as it destroyed those rebel forces that could pose a serious threat to Cyanolisia, but it failed to restore control over the outback.
Due to the crackdown Taillow Sumpfkiel had also lost the little bid of good will she had with the minotaurs, and assassination attempts against her ramped up significantly. The failure of negotiations with the Minotaurs and all the attempts on her life hardened the countess' resolve, but for the time being she continued reforming Cyanolisia, if only for the good of her griffon subjects.
In 986 the countess' beloved husband Robert von Sumpfkiel was assassinated by an Asterionese nationalist. In the aftermath, the countess used her emergency powers to suspend the constitution that she had only signed a few years before and replaced civilian governance with a series of military governors so that all the power rested with her in Thymíaustadt. At the same time, she also ordered another crackdown on Minotaur resistance and the Minotaurs in general. Fueled by propaganda and the illusion of justified revenge, the army was sent into the outback where they brutally restored order and crushed most open resistance groups, but even as the crackdown was a success and Cyanolisia was in control of the outback, Cyanolisia still lacked the numbers to permanently control the outback without leaving other areas undefended.
To deal with the lack of numbers, the countess removed most restrictions from joining the military such as not being of Herzlandic descent and introduced conscription. Still, it was not sufficient, so the countess launched the Land for Service program in which foreign griffons were given land in exchange for them serving in the Cyanolisian army. At first the land given away was unoccupied land around Thymíaustadt but when there was no more of that tens of thousands of minotaurs were deported to Cannabia so as to make more space for settlers.
In order to remove the minotaurs who lived in the lands that were to be given away the Kommission für Minotaurische Gebiete und Landbeschaffung (Commission for Minotaur Territories and Land Acquisition), short KfMGuLb or “the Sfíka'' was formed. Besides managing deportations, the Sfíka also had the task of keeping the minotaurs living in the outback in check, primarily by terrorizing them and defeating any one warlord / group before they could pose a serious threat. The term “Sfika” originated with the minotaurs and later spread to the Cyanolisian griffons, then the world at large.
After the seizure of the JoJo islands in June of 987 the Cyanolisians finally had a good casus-belli to go to war with Sicameon, something which the Countess had wanted to do ever since they helped the Minotaurs in their war of liberation. Due to the Creeper and Arahno Mountains, the war had two fronts, one between Cyanolisia and Sicameon in the east and one between Falcor and Sicameon in the west.
With the Reichsarmee busy fighting Wingbardy and guarding the Angriver, Falcor’s army still recovering from the losses of 987 and much of the Cyanolisian forces guarding the coast and outback, nobody in the empire truly had the troops ready to fight this war. In total, Cyanolisia could only scrape together some 50.000 through almost completely pulling out of the outback and leaving many smaller coastal towns with only a few militiagriffs as defense. The Reichsarmee and Falcor had little more to offer, sending some 75.000 very exhausted Falcorian troops to guard their front from any attack, but as it stood these forces would not be able to conduct any offensives.
Luckily, Sicameon was similarly unprepared, only having a small professional army of 25.000. Their small army was supplemented by some additional 90.000 militia ready to be called up at any time, and some 200.000 trained militiagriffs who could be mobilized within three months. At the beginning of the war however, only the large towns in Sicameon were defended, either by the army or militias.
The Rotrankielfluss Offensive
The Cyanolisians started the war with a two pronged offensive- into the outback. Gen. von Botschaftstedt would lead the 1st and 2nd Seelandedivisions from Thymíaustadt up the Rotrankielfluss to attack Roca Leon, while Gen. von Thymíaushafen would lead the 7th & 8th Infantry Division as well as several brigades of knights with a strike towards the Snowtop Mountains.
Von Botschaftstedt’s push was a painful affair, the local minotaur populace constantly harassing his force, both militarily by shooting at them, and by being a pain, holding extra loud festivities wherever the expedition made camp for the night and being obnoxious in general. By the time his expedition had finally made it to the border he had already lost some 200 of his 20.000 to guerilla attacks and another 330 to disease. Once in Sicameon, the attacks by the Minotaurs stopped, replaced by local militiagriffs that used much of the same tactics. When, in late August, the expedition finally arrived at Roca Leon, the town was defended by a militia some 3.500 strong. Luckily, this militia proved not to be much of a challenge as his 19.000 veterans were better trained, coordinated and equipped. After surrounding the city, Gen. von Botschaftstedt ordered all his forces to charge into the city at once, overwhelming the militia within hours while taking some 2.000 casualties in the process, 10% of them deaths. After having taken the town, he left 5.000 of his troops stationed there under the command of Generalmajor Eggert Duskwing, while taking the rest of his force to meet up with Gen. von Thymíaushafen for a combined attack into Eritrocefalia.
Von Thymíaushafen had a much better time pushing up the border, taking minimal casualties in the process. After having secured the border, von Thymíaushafen simply dug in and waited for Gen. Botschaftstedt’s reinforcements.
The Sicameonese meanwhile were forced to just sit and let the Cynaolisians have the initiative, seeing as their militia that made up the vast majority of the army lacked any offensive capabilities, and their proper army was scarcely enough to win the war. Training up new troops took time and effort, but luckily they were assisted in this by the Macawians who sent advisers to train troops, equipment and even allowed theirs to volunteer in the Sicameonese army.
This motivated the Cyanolisians, under command of Admiral Scile von Sprache, to sail their fleet to Rio De Jandaia and pose an ultimatum - cease any support to all enemies of the empire or Rio De Jandaia will be flattened. Being completely unprepared the Macawian government caved in. The Macawian people however did not forget this humiliation turning the nation into even more of an enemy of the empire than it was before. Yet, for the time being Macawia was out of the picture. Of course this did not mean an end to the SIcameonese army improving, but it did significantly slow them down.
Besides threatening neutral nations the Cyanolisian / Imperial Fleet also blockaded Sicameon, devastating the already weakened trade dependent economy. As the Cyanolisian navy had a slight tendency to shoot on Asterionese shipping the war with Asterion also flared up again, although the Asterionese found themselves unable to do much in the war due to a Cyanolisian blockade.
By the time von Botschaftstedt’s force finally met up with Gen. von Botschaftsted’s main force in De Aguilar in November, the Sicameonese had already completed their mobilization, and the Cyanolisian force of 44.000 was opposed by almost 100.000 militiagriffs and 20.000 professional soldiers. Still, they decided to launch their planned attack into Eritrocefalia, hoping that naval bombardment and superior training would even the fight.
The Battle of Eritrocefalia
The battle of Eritrocefalia started with a devastating Cyanolisian naval bombardment carried out by three battleships, four battlecruisers, two heavy cruisers and several smaller vessels, totalling over one hundred guns. Next, the army launched its own much smaller bombardment by a total of 24 howitzers, 49 mortars and seven pieces of field artillery. Only then, after almost eight hours of bombardment, the army launched its attack across the river, supported by the navy landing the ‘Feuervogel’ Seelandebrigade south of the city.
While the initial attack across the river failed disastrously and resulted in over 1.000 of their own dead, the landing south of Eritrocefalia had caused sufficient chaos that a secondary attack by the local chapter of the Order of Eyr established a bridgehead across the river. From there, the Order of Arcturius managed its establish contact with the ‘Feuervogel’ Seelandebrigade, cutting of Eritrocefalia from the rest of Sicameon, and trapping some 30.000 militiagriffs in it.
This encirclement only lasted a few hours, as the Sicameonese army, led by Gen. Glacialez counterattacked and forced the Cyanolisians to consolidate their forces in a defensive perimeter around the bridgehead. Thus ended the first day of the battle.
On the morning of the 2nd day of the battle, Gen. von Thymíaushafen sent all his knights into the bridgehead, preparing to deal one devastating strike to cut off Eritrocefalia. In this, he was assisted by a naval bombardment, as well as the 2nd Seelandedivision that had also been deployed across the river. At first this attack was very successful, cutting deep into the Sicameonese line, but like on the day prior a counterattack by the proper army forced him back.
On the 3rd day of the battle, Cyanolisia had firmly lost the initiative to Sicameon. Gen. Glacialez used this to prepare one large attack to drive the Cynaolisians into the river and destroy their force, the preparations of which were ready by day 4. Said attack started with an assault of 15.000 militiamen to soften up the Cyanlisian defenses and detect weak spots in the line. While this attack didn’t inflict many casualties on the Cyanolisians and came at the devastating cost of 8.000 casualties, it did eat up a lot of Cyanolisian ammunition, which the Cyanolisians later lacked when the actual attack by the army came. This attack was much more successful, almost completely annihilating the bridgehead, were it not for the navy covering the cyanolisian retreat with an extensive naval bombardment.
At the end of the battle, the Cyanolisian force on the front was reduced to some 35.000, while the Sicameonese suffered some 25.000 casualties, a third of them from friendly fire on the chaotic first day. In Cyanolisia, Generalfeldmarschall Yohn Vogelbeck was left scrambling together whatever could be stripped from her other territories, managing to put together a new force of 10.000 slum dwellers equipped with flintlock rifles. In Sicameon, General Vallentin Glacialez’s aggressive, careless tactics made him incredibly unpopular with the people, and not much later he was relieved of his command and replaced by General Cipriano Garra, a much more cautious commander.
Mudbeak's Expedition
As both sides were licking their wounds, the front fell silent for the next few months. In this time, the Sicameonese Army was greatly expanded from 30.000 to 66.000. The Cyanolisians however, could not so easily expand their numbers. Instead, Countess Taillow was forced to grovel the empire for reinforcements. As the Archon still owed the house Lívany a favor for them aiding in the evacuation of the imperial garrison, he agreed to dispatch a force of 30.000 soldiers to Cyanolisia.
There was however the problem of getting these to Cyanolisia. They could not simply go by boat since Sudfolc, the only imperial port at the time, was blockaded thanks to the Jojo Islands’ occupation. This left only the land route across the Creeper Mountains, a treacherous route that would also take them through the jungles of Cannabia.
This expedition, led by Gen. Mudbeak, a veteran of the Bronzehill front, assembled in Blackhollow, from where it departed in April of 988. Once they made it to the Creeper Mountains they were constantly attacked by the local minotaurs, forced to fight themselves through mountain passes more than once they had a miserable time. Once they reached the griffon town of Höhehalle, the expedition restocked their supplies and rested for a few days, before continuing their crossing. After two more weeks of misery, the expedition finally reached the town of Gräfinbühl (formerly Limanioú). There they were awaited by a force of 3.000 Sfíka troops and a fleet of river boats. After resting again, the expedition began the hardest part of the journey, the crossing of the jungles.
While relatively short compared to the rest of the journey, only lasting a week, the expedition took the most casualties during its time in the jungle. Malaria, a lack of supplies, extreme heat and the dreaded minotaur tribes all collaborated to give the expedition as hard a time as possible, killing almost 3.000. Once the expedition finally reached Stierkopf (formerly Ekklisía) it was exhausted, demoralized and had lost almost a fifth of its equipment, courtesy one of the riverboats sinking. Still, the hard part of the journey was complete and what was left to be done was to hop on another boat headed to De Aguilar.
The Garra Offensive
The Sicameonese had not sat idly waiting for the expedition to arrive, and instead used the time to launch their own attack against Cyanolisia. Knowing that De Aguilar was defended by the best Cyanolisia had to offer, Gen. Garra decided it would be best to attack the weak force holding Roca Leon, from where there would be no force between them and Thymíaustadt.
In April, the offensive began with the Sicameonese encircling Roca Leon, using several unguarded mountainpasses to sneak several thousand behind the Cyanolisian line. Gen. Garra, cautious as he was, did not dare risk thousands in an assault on the town, but instead settled in for a siege. This siege would last three weeks before the defenders, who were already undersupplied before the siege had begun, surrendered.
From there, Gen. Garra marched his army down the Rotrankielfluss, the same one Gen. Botschaftstedt had sailed up a year prior, towards Thymíaustadt. The first serious resistance he faced was in Tarmuth, where local militiagriffs held him back for a day. More importantly, they also alerted Thymíaustadt that there was a hostile army a mere 20 km away.
Keeping a cool head even in this rather precarious situation, Generalfeldmarschall Yohn Vogelbeck quickly started organizing the city’s defenses, handing out weapons to sailors and loyal griffons, organizing for street barricades to be built, ordering Gen. Mudbeak’s expedition to depart for Thymíaustadt at once, and evacuating the government to Sankt Eyrsbrück (formerly Auropallieta).
Two days later, Gen. Garra reached the walls of Thymíaustadt, but ever cautious he did not immediately attack the fortified city, instead preparing a proper plan for the assault, to be carried out the next day. Meanwhile, Gen. von Botschaftstedt had secretly marched two divisions up to the Rotrankielfluss, effectively encircling Gen. Garra’s force, and slowly closed in on the SIcameonese army from behind. This however left De Aguilar very weakly defended, something that the Sicameonese forces on that front did not immediately exploit.
Once Garra began his attack on Thymíaushafen, he was met with stiff resistance. Given a bloody nose in the first attack, Garra put orders for the second attack on halt for two hours while reevaluating his plans. In these two hours, Gen. Mudbeak’s expedition finally arrived in Thymíaustadt, though they did not make it to the battlefield for another two hours.
The second assault into Thymíaustadt bore more fruit than the first, making it to within sight of the Countess’ palace, but was ultimately driven back by Mudbeak’s forces. Over the remaining hours of the day, Mudbeaks forces slowly drove Garra back from Thymíaustadt, who then retreated all the way to Tarmuth where he could consolidate his forces for a proper defense.
On the next day, Garra’s force awoke to the sight of being encircled tens of miles behind enemy lines by a force twice as large. Seeing that his situation was hopeless, Garra surrendered his 25.000 strong force.
The failure of Garra’s offensive had greatly changed the balance of power between Cyanolisia and Sicameon; whereas Sicameon had outnumbered Cyanolisia nearly 3:1 beforehand, their forces were now about equal in size, though the Cynaolisian force was of far better quality.
As the Wingbard War was wrapping up in the west, the Sicameonese knew they had to knock out Cyanolisia now or never. A total of 100.000 militiagriffs that had previously been stationed on the western front were reassigned to the east, and the 100.000 Sicameonese on the eastern front were ordered to launch an all out assault immediately.
At first, this desperate attempt to salvage the terrible situation Sicameon had found herself in actually went well. The weak Cyanolisian forces holding the border were easily forced into retreat, and only De Aguilar managed to hold out with its garrison of 20.000. Her fortunes changed as soon as the main Cyanolisian force came down onto the militiagriffs carrying out the attack. With the garrison of De Aguilar also staging a counterattack, the Sicameonese were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
In this now even more disastrous situation, the military was forced to reinstate General Vallentin Glacialez’s command over the army of the east, who managed to organize a retreat back to Eritrocefalia in time before all of the army was destroyed. There, he harshly restored order in the army, court martialing anyone who had retreated before the order to retreat was given, and also all those who had retreated after the deadline for the retreat was given.
As reinforcements from the west started pummeling in, Gen. Glacialez could continue holding Eritrocefalia for the time being, but any hope of winning the war had been crushed within only three weeks. Half her professional army had been captured, together with all of her best equipment, and a sixth of her militiagriffs lay dead in the green fields of Cyanolisia.
The Feveros Offensive
Nevertheless, there was hope in Sicameon that resisting enough could at least save the nation from complete annexation, leading her to fight on against the odds. For now though, the fronts remained silent as neither Cyanolisia nor Sicameon were willing to risk any offensives. In this time, the Sicameonese slowly moved more and more forces back west to prepare for the inevitable imperial attack.
This lull in fighting continued all the way until late 989, as the empire and Falcor still had to finish off Wingbardy, who held out until February of 989, and after that needed to give their armies some time to recover. By September, the empire and Falcor had amassed over half a million soldiers and 2.500 pieces of artillery on the border and finished preparations for the Feveros Offensive. On September 1st, the Reichsarmee and Falcorian Army descended upon Keowen, shredding any forces in the field into dust and completely breaking the Sicameonese line within hours. The advancing imperials were held at Keowen for three days, by far the longest time any Sicameonese force held out during the Feveros Offensive.
The eastern front was not faring much better, as a joint offensive by Mudbeak’s expedition and the Cyanolisian army broke through the Sicameonese lines and began rapidly advancing south.
The Aftermath of the War
With total defeat looming overhead, Sicameon finally came to the negotiating table, and a ceasefire was finally called, ending the war. The Countess called for the complete annexation of Sicameon, but the Empire proper and Falcor that had in the end done most of the fighting favored a more “lenient” peace that merely stripped Sicameon of its ability to fight another war against the empire. Thus, in may of 990 the empire and Sicameon signed the Treaty of Thymíaushafen, stripping Sicameon of her northern provinces; the Aranho Ridge and Keowen were ceded to Falcor and the Snowtop Mountains were ceded to Cyanolisia. Sicameon was further forced to pay hefty reparations to Cyanolisia.
Almost as soon as the Treaty went into effect and the empire withdrew from Sicameon, or what remained of it, Sicameon collapsed into anarchy and civil war. The weeks after the war ended were so chaotic that, in the time it took the diplomats that had signed the Treaty of Thymíaustadt to return to Midoria, the city had already switched hands four times, from the government to communist revolutionaries, to the army and then back to the communists, only for the city to be taken over by the nation’s navy, in the name of the civilian government.
This civil war lasted for years more and caused immense damage to the nation, and saw Sicameon also lose Scarlet Island to the Cyanolisians, who occupied it as a substitute for all those war preparations Sicameon never paid. It further caused the Pirate War thanks to the Sicameonese fleet falling into the claws of the infamous Sicameonese Corsairs. The civil war only ended in 995 with the return of the exiled civilian government, aided by Macawia.