Lore: The One Day's War of 3523, aka 'Banshi's Folly' (Patreon)

NOTE: This is an excerpt from my worldbuilding doc. I wrote this mainly for myself, to help flesh out the world before I started outlining. It's unedited and has no relevance to the current plot. It's just background lore. Thought I'd post it in case you found it interesting. I have a few more of these I'll sprinkle as we go on. The end of book one felt like a fitting place for it.

I should also mention that I signed Ashborn Primordial today with a publisher. That doesn't impact patreon in any way, but it'll eventually be getting paperback, audiobook, and ebook versions. I will likely make some minor plot edits for the pubbed version, so if you have any feedback for me, hit me up!

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The mighty Kin’jal Empire set their sights on the Altani Citadel of Alt Siya, after having unsuccessfully attempted to steal the Altani’s magical secrets for decades. It was thought that if the Kin’jal Empire possessed the Altani’s magic, combined with their vastly larger military, they would become an unstoppable force in the Known World.

The Kin’jal Empire’s goal was nothing short of world domination. To start, they would destroy The Altani, first by taking over Alt Siya to strongarm their magical inscriptionists and dig through documents there. Once understood, the Kin’jal would begin mass producing magic on par with The Altani. With help from Hiranya, their co-conspirator at that time, who would provide youths with magical talent, the Kin’jal Empire would build itself a buffer against Sai to the north, leaving only Matali and Rani to deal with.

Kin’jal expected little resistance from the Matali, whose military power was primarily focused on defending against the Ash’s expanse. Rani could pose a threat, but Imperator Atnu Kin’jal believed that the Rani Queendom’s history of non-aggression would keep them on the sidelines of the war until later. By then, the Kin’jal, armed with Altani magic, would be so overwhelmingly

superior that war would not be an option for the Rani.

With this plan, Imperator Atnu’s chief strategist Banshi developed an ingenious plan for their first attack — the seizing of Alt Siya.

Being an Altani Citadel city, Alt Siya had numerous magical siege emplacements all along its ramparts, along with a wide moat that prevented offensive magical fire while allowing their own mages to hurl destruction from the safety of the city walls. It wasn’t a question of numbers — The Kin’jal empire simply had no means of taking the city with conventional tactics.

Thus, strategist Banshi took advantage of the fact that Alt Siya is, and has always been, a city of commerce and immigration — the gateway to The Altani. As such, its gates were open to all. Over the course of an entire decade, the Kin’jal Empire sent undercover operatives to immigrate to The Altani, and settle in Alt Siya. They assumed the roles of blacksmiths, merchants, weaponsmiths, and anything else they could find. The fall of Alt Siya would come from within.

Leading up to the battle, Kin’jal covertly staged troops at Bram in Hiranya and Adrisa in Kin’jal. When the day finally came, Kin’jal military rode their Ashva across the border from both Bram and Hiranya in a coordinated strike.

Altani scouts immediately saw the army and ordered the gates to Alt Siya shut tight and the drawbridges raised. This was the signal for the undercover operatives to finally act.

Except, when the 100,000 strong Kin’jal military stood at the moat outside Alt Siya, the drawbridges were still up. Believing it to only be a matter of time, the army waited, expecting the bridge to drop at any minute, allowing them to flood in. This was Banshi’s plan — no matter how strong Altani defenses were, they’d be useless once the Kin’jal military was inside their walls. And with such a long, drawn out infiltration scheme, there was no way the Altani would know.

Or so he thought. In reality, the Altani had become aware of the Kin’jal’s infiltration several years prior, when several Kin’jal warriors defected to The Altani after experiencing the incredible nation firsthand. Promised asylum for themselves and their families, they gave away the entire plan.

The Altani aggressively pursued the remaining undercover operatives, and those they couldn’t convert, they killed secretly. Their undercover nature meant that the Kin’jal were none the wiser. Thus, on the fateful day, the Kin’jal had no allies inside Alt Siya. This was their first mistake.

Their second mistake was in believing in their safety, given that they’d halted their army well outside the range of Alt Siya’s defense artillery. But they were wrong on two fronts — given that they’d never actually seen Alt Siya’s artillery fire, they made educated guesses and halted at an extremely conservative distance — one mile away from the city. The city was barely visible at this distance.

Yet the military soon found  themselves pounded by enormous balls of fire falling out of the sky, fired with pinpoint, each destroying a hundred men at once. Kin’jal’s barriers winked out of existence one by one, until their commander ordered a fallback to an even farther location.

But their woes were not over. During their tactical retreat, the Kin’jal military were attacked by a weapon they had never seen — fast attack airships. Airships were, while not common, certainly a valuable military asset. But they were slow and hard to control, requiring several mages operating wind magic, directed through pipes angled downward to keep the ship in the air. Dozens of orbs needed to be used to accurately control the power. The ships, while useful, flew at a crawl.

These ships, however, flew almost as fast as the rare Acira aerial beasts. From high above, they fired magical attack after magical attack with impunity, chasing and pelting the army all the way back to Adrisa as they routed.

100,000 soldiers left Adrisa. Only 15,000 returned. The Altani’s swift, devastating attack left zero losses on their side, and Kin’jal’s crushing defeat canceled all of the mighty war plans they had, almost before they’d even begun. As a direct result of this battle, not one nation has dared to engage The Altani(always written with a capital ‘The’) in open warfare.

What's more, Kin'jals defeat lost them not only their troops and their image, but also their ally.

Long since tired of being under Kin'jal's thumb, Hiranya seized Kin'jal's loss to defect to the Altani, forging an alliance that has persisted even to this day.