Contact War

Contact War
Date: 2439 - 2449
Location: Moghes
Result: Hegemony Victory Dissolution of the Traditionalist Coalition Creation of the Wasteland
Belligerents
Izweski Hegemony	Traditionalist Coalition
Commanders and leaders
Hegemon S'kresti Izweski	King Don'zai Azarak Various Coalition nation leaders
Strength
Approx. 1.4 million professional soldiers Unknown number of levied forces	Approx. 1.8 million professional soldiers Unknown number of levied forces
Casualties and losses
Approx. 600 million combined civilian and military	Approx. 1.3 billion combined civilian and military

Overview

The Contact War was a global conflict on Moghes which took place from 2438-2449. The war was fought between the Izweski Hegemony and a coalition of independent nations, primarily referred to as the Traditionalist Coalition. The war escalated into a nuclear exchange which devastated large swathes of Moghes, and created the barren and desolate Wasteland which now scars the planet.

The Izweski Hegemony had a long history of condescending and patronizing attitudes towards its neighbors. As a global superpower it regularly and eagerly intervened in the affairs of other clans and kingdoms outside its borders. Many, even within the Hegemony, felt the Izweski were naked despots who would sacrifice any form of honor code or creed in the name of solidifying their own power.

When humanity and the Skrell made first contact with the Unathi, diplomacy was conducted near-exclusively through the Izweski, who worked to ensure a monopoly on trade with alien powers. The nations of the Coalition came to fear a future where the Hegemony would rise as an interstellar empire, and the other nations of Moghes would either be crushed effortlessly or left to fade into irrelevance.

Background

First Contact

In 2403, a human exploration team discovered Moghes. Shortly aftewards, first contact was made. Traders and scientists from the Solarian Alliance and Nralakk Federation flocked to Moghes, living under very careful observation and guard in Izweski cities. Skalamar, the capital of the Hegemony, became the first Unathi city to have a spaceport constructed. Built by Einstein Engines and opened in 2405, it served to transport people to and from the planet’s surface.

The Izweski claimed to speak for Moghes, and the difficulties in the early days of human xenolinguistics had Solarian and Skrell scientists taking the concept of the "Hegemony" extremely literally when first contact was made, believing initially that the Izweski ruled uncontested over Moghes. Hegemon S’kresti initially kept alien presence restricted and under watch, with human vessels only being permitted to trade in Skalamar and on Ouerea - all in order to prevent rival nations from gaining access to advanced technology.

"The New Moghes"

Shrewd political maneuvering by the Izweski Clan saw the introduction of the Extranet to Skalamar by 2406, though access was extraordinarily stratified to the upper echelons of the Hegemonic government, which reflected the massive economic disparity between the upper and lower classes of the Izweski Nation. With the unprecedented access to the sum collection of all human and Skrell knowledge at the time the Izweski were able to begin reverse-engineering alien technology based on information gained via the Extranet, or otherwise gained in-depth as a result of various treaties or trade deals between them and interstellar powers.

By 2410 this resulted in the first fusion power plant being opened in Skalamar by Junzi Electric - the dominant guild of the Izweski energy market. The Yuiztiz Fusion Plant had a capacity of 30,000MW of electricity, compared to most Moghean natural gas power plants that had a capacity of 5,500MW.

Needless to say, the global energy market collapsed as energy Guilds began to realize they would become irrelevant within a decade at most. Ironically the price of electricity skyrocketed across Moghes for years as fusion power became a reality and utility Guilds went under, whereas after a brief few months of fluctuations the Izweski found themselves achieving full energy independence until the conclusion of the Contact War.

The Uezwik Incident

As soon as diplomatic channels were opened with alien life, the Hegemony prioritized its offworld expansion, investing enormously into its fledgling colony on Ouerea and increasing funding to the space program. As Ouerea became increasingly self-sufficient, Hegemony scientists turned their efforts towards expanding beyond Uueoa-Esa. The Hegemony possessed some warp-capable ships, purchased from human corporations - but Hegemon S’kresti did not wish to remain reliant on alien assistance forever. In collaboration with Solarian and Nralakk scientists, the Izweski Space Program began studying the science of warp travel. Their efforts finally bore fruit in 2437, with the creation of the first Unathi-manufactured FTL-capable spacecraft - the HRV Uezwik’s Hope, named for the project’s lead scientist.

The Uezwik’s Hope was scheduled to depart Uueoa-Esa on July 18th, 2437, making a warp jump to a neighboring star system - but disaster struck. A minor unnoticed error in the calculations of the researchers led to the vessel drifting outside of the charted warp lane, diverting it from its planned course. The vessel rematerialized in the correct system, but the malfunction led to a high-speed impact on the surface of a barren dwarf planet. Solarian and Nralakk vessels searched for the Uezwik’s Hope for several days before locating the wreckage - with no survivors.

The loss of the vessel was regarded as a great tragedy across Moghes, with some anti-Hegemony figures claiming it as a testament to Izweski wickedness, accusing the Hegemon of having thrown away the lives of its crew out of his own hunger for power. Though it was considered a tragic loss of life, there was little international anger until November 3rd, 2437- when the HRV Uezwik’s Memory successfully completed the same warp jump that its predecessor had failed. The Izweski were now an interstellar nation in truth, and to many of the other nations of Moghes this was a sign that they would soon be powerless before the Hegemony’s strength.

The Firebrand Summit

After the Uezwik’s Memory made its successful warp jump, the nations of Moghes were in a state of uncertainty. In January of 2438, the Azarak Kingdom - the largest and most powerful of the non-Hegemonic nations - called a summit in the city of Darakath, inviting the leaders of nearly every nation on Moghes. Over a hundred world leaders attended the summit, alongside observers from the Sol Alliance and Nralakk Federation, to discuss the growing power of the Izweski and concerns about the future of Moghes.

King Don’zai Azarak opened the summit with his now-infamous “Broken Oaths speech, decrying the Izweski as honorless and brutal conquerors, who sought to use alien technology to bring all of Moghes under their rule and bring about a single global government firmly under Izweski control. King Don’zai famously ended his speech by declaring that “The Izweski founded their Hegemony on broken oaths! Will we allow them to break us like they broke the bodies of the Sarakus? They come with arms outstretched in friendship, but their intention is to reach out and snap our necks!”

Some nations chose to stay neutral, or believed that aligning themselves against the Hegemony could only end in devastation. However, many of the independent nations of Moghes - and nearly all of the ones with the capacity to threaten the Hegemony - found reason in King Don’zai’s words, believing that the only way to stop the Izweski from conquering all of Moghes was to strike first and defeat them before their designs could be realized. When the summit was over, these nations planned a grand alliance - one intended to crush the Izweski swiftly and force a surrender.

Fighting Begins

On February 6th, 2438, the first shots of the Contact War were fired, with a massive force from several kingdoms assaulting the cities of the Zazalai Mountains - the eastern border of the Hegemony. Though their forces broke upon the walls of Mudki, Traditionalist forces were able to capture the city of Bahard and march through into the Southlands, though they were met in battle by the assembled armies of Overlord Miazso and driven back towards the mountains.

In the west, the forces of the Kopesk States and the Tza Kingdom fared better, with the former’s navy disrupting Izweski control of the Moghresian Sea and the latter’s soldiers seizing large swathes of land in the northern Hegemony, though unable to penetrate the well-defended borders of the Heartland. The fighting would continue for several months - but the Coalition’s forces were steadily repelled by the Izweski, having lost the element of surprise. When the eastern front was pushed back past the Zazalais, the nations of the Coalition had realized that they were doomed to defeat - and that their fears of an Izweski-dominated Moghes would come to pass.

The forces of the Kazhkz Kingdom, a small yet powerful nation from the western Coalition, sought to end the war in a bold and decisive stroke - using purchased alien shuttles to launch a spaceborne assault on Skalamar and capture the Hegemon himself, forcing an unconditional surrender. The assault failed, driving the Kazhkz and their Han’san allies from Moghes and into a life of piracy, which would eventually lead them to their current position in the Empire of Dominia.

A New Model Army

The Hegemony had not faced a true threat in war since the War of the Honored Alliance - and with access to alien technology, they had the most advanced military force that Moghes had ever seen. Hegemony-made ballistic weapons were increasingly phased out, replaced with alien-imported and later Unathi-manufactured laser weaponry and energy blades. The first prototypes of the breacher suits were designed and fielded, rendering an Izweski soldier nearly immune to small-arms fire from enemy forces.

The forces of the Coalition were far more varied in their equipment - though the Azarak and a few other nations possessed weapons and technology nearly on par with that of the Izweski pre-Contact, many of the poorer and less advanced nations of the Coalition were forced to make do with ancient and outdated equipment - levied troops wielding rifles that would not have looked out of place centuries ago, hastily-converted guild vehicles acting as makeshift armor, and the looted aircraft of Izweski nobility being used for crude air support all being common sights among these nations. Many of these nations were unable to resist the Izweski counterattack at all, with Traditionalist military strategy coming to rely on the better-trained and equipped forces of the wealthier kingdoms.

The Izweski Nation finds itself struggling to accommodate refugees trying to escape the growing Wasteland.

A New Model War

The Contact War was a war unlike any fought on Moghes before - one where ideas of honor, valor and tradition steadily vanished from both sides, replaced with the sole goal of survival. Battles grew more vicious, negotiation between the two sides became increasingly rare, and all of Moghes drifted closer and closer to total annihilation. The world was locked in a total war, one which both sides knew could only end in victory or death.

The Contact War saw little in the way of naval combat - the fleets of the Kopesk States providing the main engagement in the Moghresian Sea. In 2439, Kopesk vessels attempted to capture several Izweski nuclear facilities on islands in the Moghresian Sea, in the hope of forcing a surrender. Though the Kopesk sailors possessed far more experience at sea than most Izweski forces deployed, and they were able to win several victories, they were eventually cornered and destroyed off the southern coast by a joint force of the Sarnac and Eizde clans.

As the war dragged on, the Coalition’s ground forces increasingly proved a poor match for the Izweski, with more advanced technology making its way to the Hegemony’s front lines such as the breacher suits. In response, the Coalition began practicing increasingly indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombardment of losing positions, which Izweski lords were slow to respond to. Though the nations of the Coalition were immensely varied in their tactics, their doctrine came to favor swift and vicious offensives, in the hopes of forcing a decisive victory.

The Izweski mounted an effective defense, but encountered difficulties in advancing into Coalition territory. Issues of communication through such a large and inefficiently managed army, as well as a focus on infantry warfare, led to the Izweski army being both nearly-unstoppable and incredibly slow to advance.

Reactions To The War

The war was portrayed in Izweski propaganda as a war against backward savages. Unathi from the Traditionalist Coalition were treated as savages railing against progress, and portrayed as barely Sinta at all. Many Izweski Unathi feared that the Traditionalists wanted to destroy modern society itself.

The Izweski were portrayed by the Traditionalists' propaganda as vicious imperialists - and later, as alien collaborators. The Izweski were painted to be oppressive puppets to the humans and Skrell, seeking to conquer all of Moghes and sell it off to alien powers for the benefit of the Izweski and their allies. Many sincerely believed that the Hegemony was threatening the very foundation of what it meant to be Unathi, shaming their ancestors or having lost the favor of the Great Spirit.

The Nralakk Federation found itself shocked by the violence unfolding on Moghes. They dispatched a cruiser to orbit over the planet, and transported a peace delegation to the city of Darakath, in the hopes of negotiating a peaceful end to the war. The shuttle was shot down by Azarak anti-air weapons, killing everyone on board. Outraged at the murder of a diplomatic delegation, the Skrell moved their cruiser in the system to the orbit of Ouerea, pledging to never again provide assistance to Moghes - all the while human megacorporations continued to do just that with the sale of weapons and technology to the Hegemony.

Though the threat of nuclear war was a constant one, its outbreak had been kept in check by the promise of mutually assured destruction - an idea which vanished quickly as the war continued.

The Atomic Exchange

After vicious fighting, primarily in the Zazalai Mountains and the borders of Traditionalist kingdoms, the Coalition realised they lacked the ability to breach the Hegemony’s borders in conventional battle. On September 6th 2439, a Traditionalist atomic bomb was dropped on the Izweski city of Da’ha’den, nearly completely obliterating the city.

The Traditionalist Coalition’s use of nuclear weapons came as a surprise - though the Azarak and a few other kingdoms did possess nuclear weapons, the Coalition used them in enormous numbers, almost comparable to the Izweski’s. To this day, the question is often raised when discussing the Contact War - how did they get so many nuclear weapons, and how did the Izweski not know about it? Theories range wildly, with some suspecting a decades-long plan for a global war from the Azarak - discreetly arming their fellow independent kingdoms for when the time came to strike the Izweski. This is a fringe theory, however, with the more commonly accepted belief being that the kingdoms of the Coalition received aid from Izweski scientists and rapidly began the production of nuclear weapons in the hopes of providing a deterrent against Izweski power when it became clear that the Traditionalists would not be able to win the Contact War conventionally. When the first nuclear weapons were fired, however, the idea of mutually assured destruction vanished - and all of Moghes would pay the price for it.

Though some of the wealthier and more powerful kingdoms of the Coalition possessed atomic weapons, the Izweski were unprepared for their use in such numbers, with both sides beginning a continued nuclear exchange - launching hundreds of nuclear weapons. It is reported that observing alien vessels had their viewing shutters lowered constantly to prevent eye damage to the crew, as Moghes burned below them. The nuclear exchange lasted for one week. By its conclusion, nearly two billion Unathi were dead, and over sixty percent of the planet’s surface was rendered uninhabitable wasteland.

The Aftermath

Nuclear warfare devastated Moghes, rendering nearly two-thirds of the planet’s surface an uninhabitable wasteland. Despite this, the violence continued as the war devolved into a desperate struggle for survival - with both the Hegemony and Coalition knowing that defeat would mean extinction.

As Moghes burned and the war raged on, the Izweski began to gain an unmistakable upper hand, capturing several of the most powerful nations of the Coalition and forcing a surrender. Though it would not end the war, many historians say that the outcome was decided in 2446 - when the previous king of the Tza Prairie perished, and his son Azui Hutay’zai ascended to the throne. The new King Hutay’zai’s reign would be short, as he decided to preserve his lands from the madness engulfing the world - surrendering his crown and swearing his fealty to the Izweski Hegemony. With one of the Coalition’s most influential states having defected, the lands to the east of the Zazalais began to increasingly fall under Hegemony control - with some particularly pro-Izweski accounts claiming that Traditionalist forces fired nuclear missiles at their own lands as they retreated to slow the Hegemony advance, though this is viewed with skepticism at best by modern historians.

The Fall of Darakath

The Contact War finally ended on December 4th, 2449, when Izweski forces captured the Azarak capital of Darakath. Azarak air defenses had protected the region from nuclear strikes, leading to a ground invasion by Hegemony armed forces under the personal command of Hegemon S’kresti. The Azarak forces fought viciously, but the city soon fell, marking an end to eleven years of bitter war. The entire Azarak clan was sentenced to death for their role in the war and the devastation of the nuclear exchange, and many of their vassals chose to face execution rather than bow to the Izweski.

With the war over, Moghes was changed forever - billions had perished in the war, and nearly two thirds of the planet’s surface had been transformed into the lawless and barely-habitable Wasteland that still plagues Moghes today. The population of Moghes prior to the war was approximately eight billion - today, decades after the war, it stands at around 6.4 billion.