*see also: [[History of Transelmany — Civil War (658-663 AL)]]* ## Overview --- ![[Transelman_Civil_War.png|375]] The Transelman Civil War was a multi-party civil war in [[Transelmany|the former territory of South Elmany]] fought from 659 AL until 663 AL (although most fighting stopped by the autumn of 662) ## Background --- It was [[History of Transelmany — Civil War (658-663 AL)|caused by]] a fracture in the Rebel Coalition of Bishops that had collectively taken control of South Elmany territories in the seven years preceding the Treaty of Haal. What began as unresolved tensions among allies devolved into open warfare over the future of the country. In theory, the Kingdom of Elmany had been peacefully bisected across the Elman Mountains and along the Voromir River by the Treaty of Haal, with all Elman territories south of the mountains and east of the river being ceded to the People’s Republic of Transelmany, that had been proclaimed almost 7 years earlier under Yemisi Fayowa’s leadership and now controlled the entire south. In practice, however, Fayowa’s network of apostles and deacons only controlled the northern areas of the new country, because she herself had delegated the construction of [[Hagioism|Hagioist]] dual power (i.e of workers councils called basilicas and collectivized agriculture) in the south to her fellow rebel Bishops years earlier. ![[TCW_control_659.png | 350]] In trying to enact policy intended to be nationwide from Transelmany central government’s authority in her northern headquarters of Karasili in the newly-created Church of Gravity, Fayowa ran into the problem of regional authorities in the southern areas having developed stronger relationships to the people and dual power having taken different forms than she imagined. Disagreements from Bishops Victoria Windsor and Leona Lumenosa were not trivial. The first signs that there would be a civil war in Transelmany were in the immediate aftermath of the negotiations between the rebel coalition and the Kingdom of Elmany concerning the Royal Academy. After Alastair and Fayowa made it clear to the Crown that control of the territory surrounding the Academy would not be handed over, all staff with Royal sympathies were purged from their positions. Rebel Bishop Victoria Windsor felt this was too harsh, since any royal sympathizers in the Academy would have no reason to undermine the new country. But Fayowa felt that having monarchists in positions of authority in higher education was counterrevolutionary. As a result, Alastair expelled both royalists and the provosts who support Victoria Windsor’s position. This greatly angered Windsor, and in retaliation she ordered all farmers in the Lake Region to halt all shipments of grain to the Altus until the provosts were reinstated. This revealed something Fayowa & Alastair had not anticipated in the years of undermining the royal authority: there were still unresolved ideological differences within their new [[Transelman Church of Saints]]. In essence, despite Fayowa being the new leader of Transelmany, she did not actually meaningfully control all of its territory, and she had now burnt a bridge with one of the Bishops who controlled a sizable portion of that territory. The situation worsened when the contingent of agriculture workers in the western regions along the Styx river bank— territory controlled by Rebel Bishop Leona Lumenosa’s network of apostles— refused to agree to Fayowa’s collective farming initiative. Lumenosa told Fayowa it was against Lumens’ original conception of hagioism (which Fayowa had of course iterated on and applied to the practical conditions of Elmany in Deadline to great success) for a Hagioist society to be led top-down by one central body instead of horizontally and by reaching consensus. If her farmers felt more comfortable in individual farms than as part of a larger state-run collective farm, then she had to honor that. To make matters worse for Fayowa, Victoria Windsor decided that her territory would also not agree to the collective farming, since she viewed it as a way to undermine her grain embargo of the Academy. Windsor tried to form an alliance with Lumenosa that may have been able to defeat Fayowa’s [[Voromiraka]] (though due to their mountainous location and highly-developed system of Hagioist power relative to the north, as well as the increased prevalence of dark alteration users amongst their apostles, this was still a steep prospect), but Lumenosa also told Windsor that her vision for Transelmany of a decentralized confederation too closely resembled Ankylosante, and also contradicted Lumen’s writings. The end result of was a three-way deadlock over the future of the country that could not be resolved peacefully. The Kingdom of [[Ciselmany|Ciselmany]] officially remained neutral during the war, but both they & Ankylosante secretly provided funding and logistical support to Victoria Windsor. The Velsh Republic, who themselves had deposed their monarchy two years earlier with assistance from Zainab Garba (an associate of Fayowa), supported Fayowa in kind. ### War --- At the start of the war, Bishop Windsor declared Fayowa an adventurist traitor to the rebellion, and the south territories as the new Transelman Federation, even stating that she would be open to a possible reunification with Ciselmany as an Elman Federation as long as Transelmany’s autonomy was respected. Bishop Lumenosa of course wanted no part of this, and despite her opposition to the uncompromising attitude of Fayowa’s policies, she still refused to enter into an alliance with Windsor, choosing instead to simply defend the voluntary associations in the country’s central regions that were sympathetic to her influence and under her control; as so-called Free Elmany. Fayowa approached the war with the uncompromising vision of uniting Transelmany. She believed that a peace involving constituent republics in the south would leave both they and the neutral Green vulnerable to attack from both the aggressive Ankylosante and a future Ciselman monarch who was more expansionist. She also did not want an outcome that would separate and marginalize the mountainous, isolated and sparsely populated north from the more prosperous southern regions. She saw a future where the excess of the bountiful south helped take care of the north, with all Transelmans benefiting. This message of unity and economic security for the north was very popular among the peasanty— urban & rural alike, and especially those with weaker flux who had suffered the most under the monarchy. It led to the formation of volunteer denominations of workers & peasants known as the Maroon Volunteers who were not officially apostles of the Transelman Church, but pledged to fight under Fayowa’s command and protect the territory she controlled, famous nationwide for their rallying cry ‘All Power to the Basilicas.’ #### Foreign involvement --- Foreign powers were highly invested in the war. Ankylosante saw resource-rich South Elmany as a highly profitable area for investment under a decentralized and open Sofiaraka government, while Queen Sofie was also supportive of Windsor’s vision for eventual reunification. The [[Velsh Union]], who as previously stated had just overthrown their own monarchy a few years earlier thanks in no small part to assistance from Fayowa and Bishop Zainab Garba, joined the war on their side, to make sure that another Hagioist project would not collapse so soon after its birth. #### Belligerents --- ![[TCW_vormr 1.jpeg | 300]] Fayowa’s forces were colloquially known as Voromiraka because the bases of their logistical operations were the former Royal Academy in Muntbatten and the Church of Gravity Headquarters at Kerasili, both cities situated on the east bank of the Voromir River. ![[TCW_sfrk.jpeg | 300]] Likewise, Windsor’s forces were colloquial known as the Sofiaraka because their base of operations was in the former Ministry of Agriculture building that was located close to Lake Sofia in the south Actual open fighting between the Voromiraka and Sofiaraka broke out in 659 AL, and most fighting would stop in 662 AL. The Velsh Republic’s arrival from the east in 661 AL turned the tide of battle in the Prairies, where frontal Voromiraka assaults from the north had seen their momentum slowed by the open, easily-defended grassland. The combined forces of the Velsh and Voromiraka were enough to take control of over 90% of the country by autumn of 662 AL. ![[TCW_control_662.png | 350]] Thanks to the support of Ankylosante, Fayowa’s forces never fully managed to take control of the easternmost regions from the sofiaraka. Likewise, the Lumenists had valiantly defended a sizable portion of their territory that bordered [[The Green|the Green]], which would not allow Fayowa apostles to conduct military operations on their sacred land. ### Peace Established --- Rebuffing pressure from the Ankylans to cede her territory to them, Windsor sued for peace with her old friend Fayowa in neutral Arcadia— Lumenist territory. And after agreements were made to preserve the territorial integrity of Transelmany, including concessions from Fayowa to reinstate the senior academy staff who demonstrated in support of Windsor, and to introduce the collective farms gradually and by making them voluntary, Windsor agreed to surrender and retake her position on the Council of Bishops. Once the matter of the voluntary co-operatives was settled and brought to Lumenosa’s attention, Fayowa and Windsor were finally able to convince her to rejoin Transelmany, promising in addition to preserve many of her existing organizational ideas in the future Church of Stone, with her as its Saint. The Lumenists, after all, had only ever sought to defend territory they already controlled from both Fayowa and Windsor. Once all parties were no longer in active combat, it was straightforward to rejoin the new nation. Unfortunately for Fayowa, the Ankylans had already occupied some areas of the Riverlands, and were refusing to leave citing the fact that the old King of Elmany had forcefully taken those regions in a past war. Impatient for lasting peace, Alastair convinced Fayowa to cede those territories to the Ankylans, as well as others like East Mitor on the other side of the continent that were no longer feasible to incorporate. There was one more peculiarity to the conflict, as while the Green was neutral, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by three powerful countries on all sides, with the future climate uncertain due to the fact that they were not signatories to the Treaty of Haal and their legal status was uncertain due to the cessation of all Elman territory in the south (which had historically included the Green) to Transelmany. Not wishing to bring the Green into Transelmany by force, Fayowa, Windsor, Alastair, Garba and Lumenosa traveled to Verdant Levin in person to appeal to Green Leader Qi’ra and inform her of the situation. Fayowa was finally able to fulfill her vision of a united Transelmany of the second day of the new year in 663 AL, when the Green Peace was signed and the Green formally entered Transelmany as the Church of the Green, with a limited but not insignificant level of autonomy in exchange for special dispensations. ### Aftermath --- After 3 years, the Transelman Civil War ended with a Voromiraka victory, and the official creation of the unified Transelman Church of Saints, which would be headquartered not in Fayowa’s northern Church of Gravity, but in a new southern diocese of Light (to be led by Marie in adulthood) with the southern Voromiraka stronghold of Sylens— famous in the time before the Haal as the first city to overthrew the royal authority and carry out Hagioist reorganization on their own without the help of Fayowa— as the new capital of both the diocese and the country. ![[TCW_infobox.png]] A new Headquarters for the Church of Saints called Lumen’s Crucible, and a new arena called Lumen’s Reach were built soon after, and now that the efforts of all Transelman apostles were united, the new capital rapidly developed, and almost 20,000 people moved there after the war. The city of Kerasili was renamed Yemisiilu in her honor by the Gravity Basilica, and the Royal Academy was renamed as the Space Institute, with royalist staff allowed to keep their posts after relinquishing authority to the Transelman Basilica. Having all been promoted to Archbishop at various points during the war, all members of the Council of Bishops are promoted to the rank of [[Saints of Transelmany|Saint]] by the delegates of the Transelman Basilica, disbanding the wartime Council of Bishops and replacing it with the new [[Rebel Bishops|Council of Saints]].