The White Lion Armada are a vigilatne navy with the self-ordained mission to protect and maintain order in the Chimera Alliance. They see themselves as rivals and replacement for the Corsairs, hoping to replace them as an official navy of the alliance.
The Armada was founded by Prince
Lucas with the help and funding of his friends,
Oliver and
Thane Kestrel. By ignoring the Alliance's artifact restrictions they have outfitted their army with advanced weaponry taken from militaries across the spheres and history. They believe force is the only way to maintian order in the alliance, and are not above resorting to harming innocents to achieve their goals.
Formation
The White Lion Armada was originally conceived of by Prince
Lucas after Mong Bal left the alliance in the wake of
Nasser Graham's disappearence. After joining the Corsairs,
Lucas and his friends accompanied their leader
Jin Bei to Mong Bal in an effort to bring them back into the fold. Many nobles, mercenary companies, and even peasant militias clamored to join the Prince to take the planet back by force. But
Jin Bei taught
Lucas that such tactics were antithetical to his father's vision for the Alliance and the Corsairs.
Reports of what exactly happened on Mong Bal are sketchy, but the mission ended in catastrophic failure. While the crew escaped with their lives, Mong Bal remained well otuside the Alliance's reach. Some rumors from high level information brokers even hint at a doomed marriage between Prince
Lucas and a Mong Bal girl. Bitter and angry,
Lucas turned against
Jin Bei and vowed to return to Mong Bal, this time with the army at his back he could have brought before.
In addition to the Corsairs' failures on Mong Bal,
Lucas believed the White Lion Armada was necessary for an additional reason. The Chimera Alliance had discovered that Source had mysteriously stopped producing nectar. Since the Corsairs and the Chimera Alliance as a whole derived their authority by distributing nectar to the member nations,
Lucas saw military force as necessary to maintain order and prevent the member nations from going to war or for a single nation to dominate as the Koan Empire once had.
While
Jin Bei believed that
Nasser Graham's disappearence and search for the orphan sphere were connected to a way to solve the nectar crisis,
Lucas grew came to believe his father's disappearence was an act of cowardice, essentially giving up on the alliance rather than face its problems in the impending nectar crisis.
Lucas saw
Jin Bei's continued efforts to search for his missing father as focusing on a doomed treasure hunt when swift and decisive action was necessary to preserve the alliance.
Strategy
The White Lion Armada is founded on principles of pluralism and technological innovation. They draw from their ranks a wide range of allies across the spheres, often recruiting from groups who feel disenfranchised by the alliance's current power structure. As such, the rank and file soldiers of the white lion armada are often far more diverse than other navies in the systme. The armad is also not above fraternizing with criminal elements, forming an alliance to secure weapons and soldiers from the Rim's pirate government known as the Midnight Parliament.
By ignoring alliance artifact restrictions and reproducing ancient weapons on an industrial scale, the White Lion Armada has created a pipeline for studying and mass producing a selection of weapons from across time to outfit their solders. They take the same approach with combat techniques, taking disciplines from across history and modifying them to suit a modern military. The end result is an armada unlike anything the spheres have ever seen, that harnesses the best inventions and ideas from across history. One is likely to find everything from cybernetic stealth suits, to dream world occultists, to monster tamers within the Armada's ranks.
Organization
In keeping with their modern, disruptive approach to strategy, the White Lion Armada uses a decentralized structure. They do not have a central headquarters but instead divide their power between five impregnable forts scattered across the spheres. As such, the White Lion Armada has a nimbleness that allows it to pursue many objectives at once and mobilize their forces across the spheres with little warning.
At the top of the White Lion Armada's chain of command sits Prince
Lucas himself. His popularity across the alliance drives recruitment into their cause and deflects criticism from their illegal activity.
It is unclear how much actual power
Lucas exerts over the organization beyond his status as a figurehead, as he shares power with his friends and co-founders,
Oliver and
Thane Kestrel.
Oliver is a cold-hearted genius who oversees the organization's technological development and military strategy while
Thane is a self-aggrandizing socialite responsible for politicking and acquiring allies for their mission. The Kestrel Brothers are also responsible for providing most of the capital used to fund the Armada through their shipping company.
Beneath the organization's founders are five admirals, largely recruited from other dissaffected Corsairs. The White Lion Armada does not advertise the identity of its leaders nor the locations of its forts, but the Party has been able to discover some of them with the help of the Information Broker,
Clay:
--Rohan, the Iron Bison, is an Akota admiral with a grudge against the Io East Orbit Company that runs a fort called Purgamen's Lair, the domain of a fire breathing space serpent, on the moon
Skatho.
--Kraithe, the Damned Count, is a Homyn admiral with powerful gifts in the dream world who pursues forbidden rituals to bring back his deceased wife, and runs a fort out of his castle on the moon
Trys.
--Ballum, the Fallen Hunter, is a Koan Admiral who formerly served
The Undying Empress and uses powerful mutations to counteract his feebleness in old age, and runs a former village of leviathan hunters called Leviathan's Watch.
--Reyza is a former comrade of
Royce who was last seen on the Rim.
The Destruction of Aspidie
Prince
Lucas's feud with
Jin Bei came to a head on the Koan Moon, Aspidie, where
Jin Bei discovered the Prince had smuggled a world-destroying hyperion bomb onto the moon. A battle ensued that nearly killed
Jin Bei and resulted in the bomb being detonated.
The Party witnessed the event and provided testimony to the Chimera Council accusing Prince
Lucas of setting off the bomb. Despite providing daming evidence, as newcomers to Lion City politics accusing a well-loved Prince of genocide they faced mixed receptions. Some members of the council, including
Sena and the comatose
Jin Bei believed them, while others like Prince's own mother Queen Arkades and the Geit Chieftain Sigurd Vindcaller believed the White Lion Armada's story that the attack was perpetrated by the Mong Bal.
Nevertheless,
Lucas was still a Corsair, and none of the Alliance's nations had the authority to punish him no matter how heinous his actions. If
Lucas was to face punishment for his actions, it would need to be at the hands of those in the order that he foresook.
Homyn Recognition
The White Lion Armada's fortunes changed when the Moku rebelled and overthrew the Homyn government on the moon, Nimbus. Queen
Eleanor Arkades had hoped to use the Moku to bolster their ranks on Autumn and other moons occupied by Scalfi forces, and found her ranks undermanned in their absence.
She took the bold step of welcoming support from the White Lion Armada to combat the Scalfi, earning the organization a powerful endorsement as to its legitimacy by one of the spheres' most powerful governments.
The Invasion of Jotun
The White Lion Armada ruffled feathers again when its co-founder,
Thane Kestrel launched an invasion of Jotun. With the help of
Jorund Brighthoof's Clansmoot and the Party, the invasion was repelled, albeit at significant losses.
While the White Lion Armada had committed only a small portion of its forces to the effort, they faced greater harm from the public backlash of invading an alliance sphere. Prince
Lucas and
Oliver Kestrel, believing
Thane to have died in the battle, disavowed his actions and claimed he was sent on a peace keeping mission there to prevent two Geit Clans from going to war whereupon he tried to seize the planet for himself.
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