Aludra might not even exist as a nation today, but for the efforts of Her Imperial Majesty Fiol dio Alud.

Fiol was the daughter of the celebrated military commander Viola sen Fai and Empress Shri dio Alud. Shri wanted her to be skilled in the arts of battle, something Shri had never had any taste for, and so she spent a lot of time with Viola supervising campaigns against Linthe insurgents trying to take more from Aludra's northern borderlands. Traditionally, at least one of the Imperial family supervised actions by the army, and that led to an event that most believe made Fiol who she was.

While commanding her troops at the Battle of Callahan Pass when Fiol was ten years old, Viola was hit by a stray rifle bullet; Fiol always said she died instantly, but Fiol also created the first military where every soldier was trained in basic first aid, and most make an obvious conclusion from this. Fiol's instructors in the military arts following that day declared her a poor student, with little interest in the Basram-derived principles of chivalry that had largely ruled military thinking among the continental powers; Basram and Aludra both thought of Etrusea's massive Army Air Force as uncivilised. Only one, an Oryx from Garam, thought much of her ideas; today, her early writings are thought of as the first steps towards modern combined arms doctrine.

Shri proved her worth at statecraft, but the military devolved into inter-service rivalry without Viola's hand to guide it. The Navy usually won out, with the prestigious new Dreadnoughts winning more and more of the military budget, at the expense of an increasingly inadequate Army with inexperienced and underpaid officers, and a virtually nonexistent Army Flight Corps consisting of a handful of armed spotting planes. Erosion of the Northern border was a constant problem in the seven years leading up to the Battle of Laurent Abyss.

The loss of most of the Aludran fleet at Laurent Abyss to the previously unknown power from further west was devastating both to Aludran military strength and to national morale; twenty-five thousand sailors went down with their ships, including most of the senior staff of the Aludran navy. The colossal depth of the Abyss made recovery out of the question. The fleet was simply gone.

The incredible superiority of the ships from Chira, at the time incorrectly known as Shirai, was an even harder blow to the notion of Aludran naval supremacy. Shri was inconsolable, and eventually chose to retire to a manor house in the countryside, stating she had spent too long in the company of sorrow. Fiol's coronation as Empress took place a week later.

She inherited a state that had lost its pride and almost all of its military strength. In addition, due to Etrusea's refusal to hand over the ten Chiran ships docked in Vermillion City following the near-miraculous sinking of the Chiran fleet carrier Alana by Etrusean heavy bombers, they had severed all diplomatic ties with one of their most important allies. Linthan government figures openly joked about her mother's abdication, and attacks on the border intensified. These forces were alleged to be "citizen militias" by Linthe and were not officially part of the Linthan military; no formal state of war existed between the two nations.

Fiol's first act as Empress was to settle one of the most painful issues her nation had ever faced, how to grieve for those who would never return. She ordered the creation of the cemetery known as the Empty Field, the endless rows of headstones placed around a statue of Lady Freedom kneeling in tears with both hands holding up a tattered flag, bearing the words "When they ask you why you fight, witness to them the names of the twenty-five thousand who are not buried here." In dedicating the memorial to the tragic past, she promised her people a bright future.

Fiol wanted nothing less than to restore Aludra to its old borders, and the first step was retaking Linthe; Linthe's vast reserves of iron ore and the Aludran-built Kellis Steel Mill, at the time the largest in the world, would be vital if the fleet was ever to be rebuilt. While Linthe was allied with Etrusea, the Etruseans were by that point committed to Operation High Bridge, and cutting off their lifeline to Chira after the sacrifices they had made to create it would be unthinkable.

Fiol considered the Laws and Acts of Chivalry one of the key weaknesses of her nation; she admired foreign methods and the increasing abandonment of line infantry tactics in the wars further east, and was fascinated by use of early tracked vehicles in Garam and Doras. She called a few select generals to her chambers for a meeting, holding up the signed and sealed treaty as she spoke. Long ago, the Empress who had signed the Laws and Acts had declared it highest Kythen to break them; as she cast the treaty into the fireplace, Fiol said that the Chirans had built a great nation without valuing those principles. She always had the utmost respect for their achievements, and believed that by studying them, Aludra could become a power equal to them in time.

The plan she outlined was a strategy unlike any war the continent had seen before; rather than declaring her intent and meeting the opponent's army in open field, she planned to immediately seize the Linthan capital, using the rail lines that Aludra itself had laid there. While relations between the two nations were cold, they had never grown too cold for grudging trade, each dealing with private rail companies so as not to address the other directly.

Her trump card would be the armoured siege train Kulas. Already the Kulas had shown her worth in protecting critical rail lines in the North; now, heavy with additional armour from three scrapped cruisers, she would carry the newly-formed Sixth Shock Army into the heart of Gollande.

Aludrans will proudly say that the policies that were introduced to pay for restructuring the military would have destroyed a lesser country, but when Fiol spoke of making Aludra whole again she made them believe it was possible. A combination of shortages of dyes and Fiol's unusual disdain for ornamentation led to the adoption of a grey uniform ("field grey") over the old red, and the removal of the bright colour schemes and embellishments from military vehicles, in favour of increasing the weight of their functional components.

The battles on the northern border were fought as holding actions; the Linthan "militias" began to notice their enemies seemed oddly more determined, and the early gains bogged down into a stalemate, not helped by the increasingly aggressive deployments of the Kulas along the northern railroads. They reported their lack of progress to their superiors, but were simply ordered to push harder, for Aludra would soon fall in the hands of a child.

The war began on a bitterly cold winter morning with Aludran-trained partisans seizing track signals and cutting telegraph wires along the main rail line into Gollande to secure a route for the Kulas: while these attacks were noticed and in some cases even responded to, the Linthan government was not informed; it was thought to be simple sabotage by malcontents. Nobody noticed the points had all been jammed to create a line from Aludra to the capital.

Gollande was typical of the garrisoned cities of the time, a multi-layered walled fortress centred on a large citadel that acted as the national capitol, surrounded by smaller forts and a triple outer wall with cannon batteries; with almost eight hundred modern guns, the city was thought to be practically unassailable. However, its status as a key junction in the Aludran continental rail network had necessitated breaches be opened in the walls, and there was never any adequate effort made to secure these. It was assumed that the convoluted process of declaring war described in the Laws and Acts would leave time to dynamite the rails; little thought had been given to defending against an enemy who decided to simply attack.

The sight of the massive Kulas pulling into Gollande Central Station was certainly unusual, but it was assumed to be some kind of diplomatic visit; the handful of times Shri had travelled to Gollande had been by armoured train. It was not until Kulas began to train her siege battery on the capitol that the local captain of the watch raised the alarm, and by the time it had sounded incendiary shells were already striking Gollande Citadel.

Fiol had taken the step of visiting her nation's prisons, promising letters of pardon to gangsters and bank robbers if they would share the methods they had used in their exploits, ostensibly so the police could better combat them in future. In reality, she and the tacticians she worked with were assembling the first training programs dedicated to city combat. And so, when the Kulas' cars opened, they revealed soldiers armed not with rifles, but sawed-off shotguns and early submachine guns. Along with them were Alcacians in heavy armour, easily able to carry the two-hundred-pound wireless sets of the time to communicate orders from the officers still on board the Kulas, she in turn using her new command car to send and receive word from the War Council and the Empress herself back in Aludra.

The rifle companies of the city garrison, trained primarily in traditional line infantry tactics, were totally unprepared for an attack from within Gollande itself. As the capitol burned and the Kulas began to fire on their barracks, they massed in orderly units and attempted to engage the attackers in parks and open spaces, only to be driven back into the winding streets and alleys by small, elusive groups who seemed to know their every move. None realised the giant armoured periscopes raised from the Kulas were being used to relay their positions to the infantry, or that their enemies had trained in painstakingly accurate replicas of the areas they now fought in. Rifle fire was answered not just with bullets, but grenades and the dreaded and long-forbidden flamethrower. Many, finding themselves surrounded, surrendered, and sat in lines under the watchful eyes of their enemies as the battle raged on into the night; by dawn, the city had fallen. The survivors of the inferno in the capitol building who had mocked Shri dio Alud's abdication were summarily executed, while the remainder were spared to stand trial in Aludra.

As the population of the city emerged fearfully from cellars and boltholes, expecting to meet an army drunk on victory and intent on plunder, they instead found a highly disciplined force led by Commander Tani di Alud, a former chief of Alurna's police known as the one-eyed lioness.

News of this shattering victory let to triumphant displays in Alurna, and support for the war soared. The morning bought one of the most ferocious artillery bombardments in history on the Linthan lines at the northern border, followed by a full-scale breakout by Aludran forces aimed at seizing and fortifying the rail line to Gollande. Aludran aircraft harassed Etrusean planes straying too close to the battle lines, a pattern that would repeat throughout the war; not realising what was happening, the Etruseans put this down to an attempt to interfere with High Bridge out of spite.

The operation to secure the rail lines and subsequent construction of fortifications gave the remaining cities some time to organise; with the Council of Ministers either dead or captive, overall leadership eventually fell to General Isadora Rhiel, the fortress-city of Janek serving as her new capital. While Rhiel had only scattered reports of what had happened in Gollande, her first order was to dynamite all rail lines leading to the remaining cities from the capital.

It was almost a week before the Aludran offensive began in earnest with an attack on the trench lines that had been constructed south of the city of Lons, centred on a line of lumbering tanks the Aludrans had secretly purchased from Garam and supported by all seven of Aludra's Air Destroyers. While the Lons garrison and elements of the Linthan army sent to reinforce them managed to knock out three of the tanks and another six broke down before reaching the trench line, their line was broken and they were forced to withdraw in the face of a massive advance by Aludran infantry and cavalry.

A very well-known propaganda postcard from this time shows a dramatic image of General Keri di Alud on a rearing horse on a hilltop with her sabre raised, ordering the Fourth Guards Cavalry forward with the Air Destroyer Perkunas behind her. An Air Destroyer supporting a cavalry charge was unheard of at the time.

Perkunas was instrumental in the attack on Lons fortress; the giant Air Destroyer, twice the size of the others, had been rebuilt to carry bombs, with her dorsal armament for fighting other Air Destroyers completely removed and her elegantly carved exterior changed to slab-sided armour plates. The use of Air Destroyers for ground attack was common in the east, but Perkunas was the first to be built exclusively for such missions.

Rhiel was soon faced with news that Lons had fallen and the critical city of Hanet had surrendered without a fight. She toured the remaining cities to give speeches, still limping from a failed assassination attempt by increasingly bold Aludran loyalists, and had Janek's heavy artillery redistributed to the Southern cities, forming a fortified line twenty-eight miles wide to meet the Aludran advance. Though a skilled commander, she was a notoriously poor diplomat, and was angered as the surrounding former Aludran states ignored her statements that they would surely be next if Linthe was to fall and refused to assist in the defence of Janek.

The Aludran advance flowed outwards, taking the now isolated fortress of Kessel and forming a continuous front that reached from the western border all the way to Gollande; ferocious battles took place in the towns along the eastern edge as Rhiel struggled to prevent the Aludran forces encircling and attacking Janek from the undefended north. She won a brief respite when a group of saboteurs managed to severely damage the Perkunas with demolition charges while she was fuelling at Hanet, delaying the Aludran advance long enough for Rhiel's troops to destroy the bridges over the Vamar river. This would force the Aludrans to meet her defence line head on, or risk a suicidal fording of Vamar while it was in full flood.

Fiol sent a party of negotiators to Janek to speak with Rhiel; ostensibly to discuss terms for a ceasefire, though in reality the Empress was more interested in finding out about her opponent. Rhiel, sensing a ruse, ordered that the party be blindfolded to prevent them examining the defence lines; they reported back that she seemed to have little plan beyond holding the city. In all of history, no attacker had ever breached the fortress of Janek, and it was said the citadel itself was impregnable.

The Janek Offensive began a month later, and was one of the bloodiest battles to date, Rhiel proving once again to be a skilled and tenacious leader. For the first time, fixed-wing aircraft participated in the fighting, rooting out Linthan positions as the Aludran army advanced under cover of some two thousand artillery guns. The battle raged for six weeks, finally ending in vicious hand-to-hand combat inside Citadel Janek itself, breached by the wreckage of the Perkunas which had been shot down four days earlier.

Though run through with a cutlass, Isadora Rhiel survived the battle; she was taken to a hospital in Gollande. She would claim for the rest of her life that she signed the authorisation of surrender while delirious, but most believe the Aludran account that she did so upon seeing the people of Gollande thriving under Aludran rule; this certainly matches pre-war accounts of her animosity toward the Linthan government, her position in Janek being closer to exile than promotion. Rhiel ultimately accepted a position as governess of Gollande, with Tani di Alud as the commander of her city guard, and later also her wife.

News of the fall of Janek spread across the other territories, most of which quickly accepted Aludran rule and were incorporated into the empire; within four years, Mihas in the north had been taken back from Garam, and Aludra's borders spread as they had in the Golden Age. Rationing in Alurna had long ended, and Aludra's first new battleship, Empress Viola, was launched six days after the campaign concluded. Fiol, however, was already looking west, desiring to retake the Strait of Huron from the Chirans.

The Aludran Reformation War is regarded as the first truly modern war fought by the continental powers. The technology of destruction surged forward; telegraph lines, wireless radio, railways, mass production and new weapons and tactics were all put to the test, and the great fortresses of old were shown once and for all to be obsolete.

Some had questioned the account of Fiol's tactical genius, arguing that it obscured the works of the many who had advised her and contributed to her strategies and campaigns, to create a myth. Almost a century later when the Aludran throne was being refurbished, a secret compartment was found beneath the seat containing an engraved steel plate. Written on it were the names, engraved as signatures with seals, of the tacticians and advisors Fiol had worked with, certifying their acceptance of obscurity for the good of Aludra. On the other side were Fiol's requests to her descendants, to witness these names to the people, "Look over my city and my land, and the wonders I know you have added to it, and tell them of these patriots who, in their unbounded nobility, accepted that history not know them until today."

Like the Great Urukan of Garam, the name of Fiol dio Alud brings forth many feelings today; she represented the death of what some considered a more civilised age, and her ruthlessness made her easy for history to judge as cruel. Her refusal to sack conquered cities and the discipline of her forces earned her grudging respect even among her enemies. But to Aludrans, she is and probably always will be celebrated as one of the greatest leaders who ever lived, and as someone who in Aludra's darkest hour believed in a country that had almost forgotten how to believe in itself.

Glossary

Air Destroyer: General term used for any military Leviship, though sometimes "Air Cruiser" is used for smaller vessels.

Alcacia (Alcacian Isles): Relatively small nation of giant horse-people (a two-sex species) averaging eleven to fifteen feet tall, located across the ocean south of Etrusea, within the Sea of Clouds. The term "Alcacian" is generally used as a species name, regardless of the ethnicity of the people in question. Aludra and Etrusea both have substantial Alcacian populations. Aludra's are mainly descended from the mercenary company led by Skadi Skuldsdottir who fought in the battles that bought the entire territory of modern Aludra under the control of the House of Alud and ended the Aludran Dark Age. Alcacia has little interest in continental politics, and is allied to Etrusea.

Aludra (Aludran Empire): Medium-sized nation predominantly of cats (an all-female species) between Basram to the east, Garam to the north and the great forests surrounding the Chiran Shield Wall to the west. Aludra is a monarchy, and for centuries has been led by the noble House of Alud, a line of white Persians; prior to being the name of the country, it was the name of the city-state they ruled. The capital is Alurna.

Basram (Grand Duchy of Basram): Medium-sized nation predominantly of dogs (a two-sex species) and squirrels (an all-female species) between Aludra to the west, Garam to the north and Etrusea to the east. Basram maintains its ancient codes of knightly honour as a key part of its society; the old knightly orders survived by investing much of their wealth in the industrial revolution, becoming entities similar to corporations in the process.

Chira (Chiran Dominion): Large nation to the far west of the continent of many connected islands surrounded by a ring-shaped crater boundary known as the Shield Wall that isolated it for much of history. Primarily consists of roughly equal numbers of three all-female species; genets, lemurs and red pandas. In Fiol's time, the Chirans were enormously technically advanced compared to the continental powers. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Continental powers: Term understood to include the major powers west of Namir, with the exception of Dion and Chira, which are both isolated by geographical features.

di: Diminutive form of the old Aludran word "of," best translated as "belonging to." Nobles who swear an oath of loyalty to the House of Alud replace their family name with "di Alud." Multiple people with the same first name usually result in some epithet or title being added after their first name to distinguish them.

dio: Superior "of" in old Aludran which is close to the normal meaning of the word. "dio Alud" is the title of those who are related to the House of Alud by blood or marriage.

Dion (Kingdom of Dion, pronounced de-own): Moderately sized nation of many all-female species to the far north. Primarily located within a colossal ring-shaped mountain range averaging seven miles high known as the World's Edge, formed by a circular deposit of Levistone. The source of most of the Levistone used by the continental powers, which primarily drifts towards Etrusea. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Delfi (Delfi Commonwealth): Tiny nation east of Etrusea consisting almost exclusively of raccoons (a two-sex species); in some countries "Delfi" is used as the species term for raccoons, though this is rare. Effectively a part of Etrusea for its entire existence, it is officially a protectorate.

Doras (Doran Alliance): Medium-sized nation primarily of lizards (an all-female species) south of Garam and some distance east of Etrusea. Briefly part of Etrusea during the Etrusean War of Unification, but broke away almost immediately.

East: In almost all documents related to continental history, the term "east" stops at the western border of Namir, with "far east" referring to the nations south of it. At the time, Rucelia, on the other side of Namir, was only known from stories by travelling merchants and Kosmaril refugees, very few of which were taken particularly seriously.

Etrusea (Etrusean Federal Commonwealth): Large and extremely diverse nation located on the Lorna River between Basram to the west, Garam to the north, Brecht to the northeast and Delfi to the east, with no majority species. Formerly a monarchy ruled by an Empress, when the last Empress died leaving no heir it became the world's only democracy. The capital, Vermillion City, is an enormous agglomeration of many urban areas created largely for political reasons at a time when there was a threat of civil war. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Garam (Unified Territories of Garam): Immense and constantly shifting territory of many cultures and peoples, the area called Garam has historically been many countries; in Fiol's time, however, it was remarkably close to its modern borders, reaching from the edge of Namir up over Brecht to cover the land between Basram and Aludra and the World's Edge. Often joked to be ruled by a principle of "democratic apathy" wherein the government survives by not offending any one group sufficiently for them to overthrow it.

It: Entity in ancient Aludran mythology which bought suffering into the world. It is never shown as anything but a mass of darkness, and has no name. It was killed by the hunt goddess Alysa and It's body fell upon the mortal world, spreading darkness and the chill of winter across it. Modern scholars generally hold this to be an ancient verbal account based on the impact of the comet Nemesis eighteen thousand years ago.

Kulas: Sun goddess in ancient Aludran mythology who spread light across the darkened world after It had been slain.

Kythen: Ancient Aludran word meaning "forbidden." The Kythen Order, the world's oldest legal document, is a diagram of crimes, dividing them into ten by severity; slight (two types), transgression (one type), forgivable crime (three types), unforgivable crime (three types) and finally the highest Kythen, "abomination," which regards the perpetrator as not even a thinking being.

Lady Freedom: Depiction of the Aludran ideal of a free nation. She is usually shown as a middle-aged white Persian in a flowing dress, breastplate and a tall military cap with a feather, holding a flag in one hand and an anchor in the other, with a sheathed sword at her side.

Laurent Abyss: Oceanic trench south of Aludra and Basram, averaging over three miles in depth and including some of the deepest known parts of the ocean.

Linthe (Republic of Linthe, pronounced lin-thay): Breakaway state that seceded from Aludra following the Eight Year War. Diverse population, including many from both Basram and Aludra.

Namir: Vast expanse of poisonous black sand dividing the single main continent in two, created by the impact of the comet Nemesis. Once home to the ancient empire known as Mir (the world), "na" is a generic modifier in that language, making the name "the altered world." The former extent of Mir is shown by the fact that the desert is also called Namir in Rucelia.

Operation High Bridge: Etrusean airlift operation to Chira following a massive tidal wave that cut off Western Chira; it cemented diplomatic relations between the one-time enemies, and led to the founding of the Triple Alliance.

Perkunas: Mighty goddess of the sky in ancient Aludran mythology; also referenced as a similar male deity in Basram pagan beliefs. It is unclear which came first.

Rucelia (Rucelian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics): Gigantic nation accounting for over half the world's population on the eastern side of Namir, diverse but with large populations of rats (a two-sex species) and mice (an all-female species). Unknown in Fiol's time save from stories, due to the near-impossibility of crossing Namir or navigating the Sea of Clouds, though refugees from the war that created the Rucelian Union are present in most nations.

sen: Modern Aludran "of," used by other noble families to replicate the oath-swearing originally popularised by the House of Alud during the Aludran Dark Age.

Shirai: Chiran term for the gates through which souls are believed to pass between worlds, also used to refer to the nine states of the Chiran Dominion, eight of which contain Shirai. This term was mistakenly believed to be the name of their country for a time by the continental powers.

Strait of Huron: Critical shipping lane between Chira and Etrusea, bordered to the south and west by the Sea of Clouds, a great expanse of never-shifting mist created by undersea vents charging water with Levistone. Defined by the Karwen and Lahayat isles, home to civilisations of all-female otters. Following Fiol's time, almost constantly contested by the Chiran and Aludran navies, leading to an unprecedented naval arms race.

Urukan: Religious figure among the nomadic tribes of Garam, once a mighty leader of them, and believed to be reincarnated each generation.