The Oases Revolts

The Oases Revolts were a series of violent armed battles fought at the Kagat and Koroz oases between the denizens of the Northcentral Galeric oases, armed cadres of the Dune Shadow Ranger enclave, and several centuries of Salameeri Stillscale warriors, against contractors, prospectors, transit authorities and railway security agents of the Northern Galeric and the Union Approciffic Rail Baronies.

The Conflict

Prelude

Vastly expanded construction of the northern Salt Highways in the late 8th and early 9th century brought turmoil almost immediately to denizens of The Grand Saltflat. As more and more rails were installed further and further south, contracted prospectors working with the Northern Galeric Rail Barony began establishing staging camps and weigh stations just outside of the Kaggat and Korrez oases, ostensibly as reasonable midway points for foot prospectors between the rails and the ancient ruins they combed in the Kadachi lowlands. As the prospector encampments grew in size, they began to directly abutt the sacred watering holes. Water consumption spiked, and estimated upper aquifer reserves plummeted. Eventually more side rails were constructed, connecting the Oases with the newly expanded Northern Highway system- and thus inviting even more traffic, and water usage. As surface water disappeared and whole groves of date palms and fig trees began to die, the caretaker denizens of the Oases, mostly composed of Zamandri herdsmen, beseeched the Prince Ruevirg of Von Prociff for relief, to no avail. Isolated incidents of individual violence, most often of prospectors attacking the local herdsmen and grove farmers, were reported with increasing frequency.

The Dune Shadow Ranger enclave responded to the incident, with its close connections to the ruling Volksa council of the Free City of Salameer, and their regiment dispatched dozens of armed Rangers to the Oases. The prospectors responded by arming their labor crews, establishing "builder's rights" over the oases, and supplicated the Rail Baronies they held contract with for support for their business ventures. As a result, the Free City of Salameer dispatched three centuries of their Stillscale special infantry to keep the peace over the oases while negotiations could be conducted. The presence of third parties, also with interest in the oases, only further angered and emboldened the prospectors and other contractors toward violence. As Dune Shadow justice was first meted out to those prospectors that attacked oases denizens with impugnity, the contractors soon gained the aid of Rail Security forces and sailtrain battalions, composed of mercenaries outfitted as Rail-infantry.

Deployment

The arrival of the Dune Shadow Rangers meant the initial removal of the prospectors from the oases themselves. Oasis denizens cooperated with the rangers in arming, training, and the construction of defensive positions in the event armed conflict would occur, but the Dune Shadows were certain cooler heads would prevail once meaningful negotiations could take place when a higher level executive from the Northern Galeric Rail Barony's Rail Transit Authority arrived ("a head counter"). The assumption of most within the oases was that the situation would be resolved peacefully, thus the Dune Shadows chose not to maintain the deputized herdsmen and farmer denizens in active defensive posture after the initial tension and animus of the prospector's ejection from the oasis had cooled. The Dune shadows and Stillscale centuries maintained their own defiladed positions on the perimeter of each oasis. The Dune Shadows protected the Kagat Oasis; the Stillscales defended the Koroz oasis. Each force had individual defensive positions in three concentric rings, with ~20 meter gaps between positions. Most Dune Shadows carried scimitars and longbows, while the Stillscales carried a variety of spears, swords, bows, crossbows, shields, blunderbusses and arquebusses. Herdsmen and farmers had been armed by the professional infantry they were allied with, but most carried simple spears.

On the opposing sides, contractors and prospectors were armed with crossbows, arquebusses, maces, picks, hammers, and handaxes. The RailSec battalion of the Northern Galeric Rail Barony's Rail Security Authority brought two heavy Sailtrains with four battle carriages and equipped with rail-mounted mangonels, ballistae, skorpions, cannonade, and a then-newly fielded Pax mortar, manned by Company mercenaries outfitted as heavy rail-infantry. They mustered forces a half kilometer from the Kagat Oasis at KadPro Camp West off the #4 Low Line, where they gathered contractors and prospectors in armed platoons, and awaited final word from the Office of the Rail Baron whether to unleash the laborers upon the locals and shower the oases with missiles. Forces from the Union Approciffic Rail Barony mustered forces around MinePro camp #2 three quarters a kilometer from the Koroz Oasis.

Battlefield

Kagat Oasis

The Kagat Oasis had natural defensive structures in the form of rock formations lining it north, east and west sides, and extensive tree cover from fig, date, and citron palm groves along its southern and eastern borders. The saltflatland to the north and east, which saw fighting following the initial routing of prospector attacks, had few natural sources of defilade. Unnatural ones included the raised causeways upon with the sidetrack to the Oases had been built, as well as the Sailtrains the prospectors deployed from. The attacking rail barony forces were supplied by the Northern Galeric Rail Barony.

Koroz Oasis

The Koroz Oasis had less extensive rock formations surrounding its reservoir, but had an even larger grove of fig and citrus palm trees across its northern, western, and northwestern faces. The surrounding saltflatland had little cover, but the newly constructed sidetrack, further away from the oasis in a quartz-maentium outcropping, was a strong defensive position for deployment for the Rail Barony forces. Rail Barony forces were supplied initially by the Union Approciffic Rail Barony, with later reinforcements supplied by the Northern Galeric Rail Barony

The Engagement

Kagat Oasis

After receiving word from the Office of The Rail Baron of Northern Galeric, Rail Barony forces began their assault before dawn on 11 Sandfell. The offensive began with sending five platoons of prospectors to attack the Kagat oasis from the north and east. Almost immediately, the exposed advancing Barony forces began to fall under intensely accurate arrow loosing on part of the Dune Shadow Rangers. Heavy casualties forced the prospectors to fall back before they reached the palm groves at the outskirts, where most Dune Shadows had been in defilade to deliver consistent bowshot.

Northern' Galeric's RailSec cadres regrouped and reinforced the contractors (mostly with Sailtrain Battalion mercenaries) for a second wave, by which time the Dune Shadows had gathered and deployed the local denizens under their command to more defensive positions. Second and third waves were equally unsuccessful, forcing prospectors back to the cover of the Quartz outcrop. By the fourth assault, the Rail Barony committed the entirety of their available forces, sending a dozen platoons to assault from the northeast, east, and southeast. Personal accounts report the Barony commanders had grown relentless in advancing their forces toward the oasis, caring little or not at all about their own dead and wounded. Casualties amongst the Dune Shadows and the locals began to mount, despite earlier success, as the Baronies' tactic of overwhelming numbers began to wear down the Kagat defenders. Even so, Dune Shadows shored up their defensive positions, using their lines in depth to move and displace during combat as necessary, killing or wounding scores of prospectors and mercenaries. Fighting persisted for two days straight with little pause until dawn of the third day, when Northern Galeric decided to withdraw and reconsolidate its badly diminished forces behind the Kadpro camps in preparation of arrival of further reinforcements.

The Rail Baronies called up additional professional rail-infantry to supplement their mercenaries (whom, while employing similar tactics and arms, were universally considered to be of lower quality), and more newly contracted prospectors arrived to take the spots of those who had fallen. They also began installing temp track that would allow them to pull up rail frigates and sailtrains equipped with heavy armament. At the end of the ninth day, negotiations between Northern Galeric and the Volksa council broke down again. Upon the dawn of 20 Sandfell, RailSec launched a combined arms assault that included rail-infantry squads supporting prospectors in the vanguard as well as rail-mounted heavy weaponry. The Dune shadows held positions as long as they could, but increasingly intense missile bombardments from arbalists and rail weapons became too much to defend against. The Dune Shadows and the local denizens also started to suffer severe arrow, bolt and quarrel shortages, making it harder and harder to repel the attackers without engaging in mutually deadly close quarters combat. The Rangers and the remaining locals fell back to their final line of defense by evening of the 11th day, after Barony forces had successfully destroyed the defenders' primary and secondary defiladed positions with cannonade fire and Evokers. RailSec also deployed Evoker mages that succeeded in razing the centuries-old fig groves which framed the oasis.

By midday 22 Sandfell, agreements about defensive posture between locals and Dune Shadow Rangers withered. Some insisted on retreating to Koroz Oasis to the west while there was still an opportunity to escape; others insisted on surrender, and some few demanded on standing their ground and dying to the last warrior. That night, as bombardement from the rail cannonade continued to pepper the oasis and surrounding outcroppings, over three-quarters of the local denizens and nearly all of the surviving Dune Shadow Rangers set out under cover of darkness for the other oasis several kilometers to the west. The next morning, the denizens too exhausted or despondent to fight or retreat walked out and surrendered to the Rail Baronies, who had been preparing an assault and nearly massacred the defeated defenders. The remaining Dune Shadows made elaborate hiding places in the inner canyons of the Oasis interior, and awaited the Barony's final assault.

Details of events during the final hours of fighting at the Kagat Oasis are sketchy and inconsistent. Official Northern Galeric Rail Barony records state the Oasis was secured by RailSec and contractor forces with minimal casualties, but with no mention on the nature of resistance or prisioners taken. No known record from the Dune Shadows who remained has ever been recovered, and it's popularly accepted that the Rangers who stayed all perished. However, unofficial contractor accounts reveal contradictory details. According to one pax prospector, "the Shadows fought as if possessed by demons, and it took hours and over a hundred more casualties to smoke them out of those rocks." Further accounts detail that the Rangers made ambush positions throughout the maze of rock formations in the Oasis' interior, and negated the Baronies' numerical advantage by forcing fights in short narrow slots formed by the stone outcroppings. One account contends that, due to the time and body count it took to finally seize the oasis (exacerbated by the final handful of Dune Shadows reeking bloody havoc on their forces), pockets of infighting between RailSec and prospector forces broke out; in the commotion, several Dune Shadows were reported to flee the oasis and head south. Conventional knowledge of the event contends this is unlikely to have actually happened, but it hasn't stopped many rural denizens of Galeria to claim that these final defiant Dune Shadows were the first to form the Dune Ronen.

Koroz Oasis

Exact details about the defense of the Koroz Oasis aren't as well known, since Salameeri stillscales don't publicize their battles, and many of the Records kept by the Union Approciffic Rail Barony of the initial assaults upon the Oasis by their forces have been sealed or even burned; indeed very few prospectors or rail-infantry survived to describe what exacty occurred. The few accounts that do exist vary but key details remain consistent: Union Approciffic RailSec authorities were extraordinarily optimistic of their prospects, they had sorely underestimated the effectiveness of the Stillscales, and the assaults were largely disorganized to the advantage of the Salameeri special infantry. This resulted in attacks by masses of largely untrained, lightly armed and lightly armored prospectors charging heavily armored, defiladed, camouflaged, highly trained professional soldiers. The Stillscale centuries used the terrain and the oasis features to their advantage, and used shield walls to plug bottlenecks in the oasis, negating the barony's numerical advantage, and then slaughter ensued.

By the time the Dune Shadow Rangers and Kagat denizen survivors had arrived at Korroz oasis on or about 22 Sandfell, fighting had halted into a tense, unofficial ceasefire, while the Union Approciffic rail barony supplicated their larger partner, Norther' Galeric, for reinforcement. None of it has entered official records, but its said that Northern Galeric RailSec commanders were so disgusted by the leadership displayed by their Union Approciffic counterparts that the latter were relieved of their command, and Norther Galeric's forces took over command of taking the oasis.


Fighting ceased for 10 days while the Free City of Salameer and Northern Galeric continued negotiations in order to avoid having to declare war on one another. This was avoided narrowly by Northern Galeric's concession of trade rights and dues, and dubious promises to both rehabilitate the oases and provide retribution to the surviving displaced oases denizens and their families (neither of which happened). On 5 Ergshine the Free City of Salameer Volksa council sent messengers to the Koroz Oasis ordering their Stillscale centuries to return to the polis at once. Two of the three centuries departed immediately, while the lead century remained ostensibly to aid the retreat of the remaining denizens and Dune Shadow Rangers.


Officially the Free City of Salameer's position was that the remaining forces there were renegades likely looking to profit from the battle; Norther Galeric's records merely lists them all as "varietous dissidents." But Dune Shadow accounts detail a remarkable act on part of the remaining defenders. The Dune Shadows refused to retreat again, and the Stillscale centuries refused to leave the glory to them. Knowing they could not remain within the Oasis once Norther' Galeric moved in a Rail Titan and began showering them with Pax Mortar fire, a counterattack plan was devised.


In the predawn of 8 Ergshine, 95 Salameeri Stillscales and 60 Dune Shadow Rangers and some 100 denizens of Koroz and Kagat crept out of the oasis under the dark of a new moon and launched a sneak attack en masse on the mostly sleeping forces of contractors and rail-infantry bivouaced around MinePro camp #1. Its said the Rail Barony lost over a hundred men within the first moments of battle. The counterattackers successfully routed those that could scramble from their bedrolls and moved onto assaulting the sail-train battalions on the Rail Lines themselves. Remaining details are sketchy but most claim the counterattackers were successfully halted and routed by concentrated rail-cannonade fire.

Conflict Type

Siege

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

On or about 10-11 Sandfell 815 ME

Ending Date

8 Ergshine 815 ME

Location

The Northcentral Galeric Oases