The Battle of New York

The battle that ended of the Age of Princes

This battle occurred in the year 973 PCE and was fought between Lord Fredrick Brasden's international coalition (known as the Delphi Pact) and the armies of the Four Princes.

On the eve of battle, Lord Fredrick addressed his cadre of battlelords upon the shores of the Hudson River.

The reign of a 600-year tyranny ends this day. Though I am not of your kin or nation today we will be brothers in arms, united by the common will to release all humankind from perpetual bondage, the deathless dominion of the Princes and their legions of quisling minions!

For generations our ancestors have fought wars instigated by the Tetrarchy, suffered pestilence and famine engineered by their backward perversions of Precursor myth-science.

Today we will fight for the Princes no more. Today we will fight for all the generations yet to be born and defeat the Princes in the shadow of the stairway fortress, their very own monument of pride and envy. When we win, and the glass tower falls, all peoples shall have empire of heart and mind. After six centuries of servitude, this seventh shall bring us the dawn of freedom!

— Fredrick Brasden

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The Conflict

Prelude

The era leading up to the Battle of New York was a time of chaos marked by a series of conflicts known as the Wars of Princes. Under the leadership of Lord Fredrick and his companions, many different factions and polities had begun to realize the true nature of the Princes and these realiztions resulted in a series of revolts. The last of these wars, known as the Retribution War was instigated by a terror campaign mounted by Jost Desaad and the rest of the Tetrarchs to take vengeance upon Fredrick and all the others who had opposed the Hidden Empire.

When Desaad conspired to murder Fredrick's own sister Leila, the Retribution War reached the crux of fate. At this point, Fredrick decided that the Hidden Empire could no longer be permitted to exist and decided to lead his forces to the west and invade Gamorod. After over two years of diplomacy and military campaigning, the Battle of New York was to be the decisive clash to resolve the fate of the Princes and all their subject nations.

Battlefield

Most of the fighting occurred on Manhattan Island, as they say, "in the shadow of the Stairway." On day one the most intense conflict took place on the shores of the Hudson River and on day two the fighting drew closer to the base of the tower itself. The landscape, a tangle of industrial machines and factory structures, soon became a toxic morass of shattered steel and concrete.

Conditions

The familiar acid rains of Gamorod fell for most of the first day whilst on the second a thick fog rose to blanket the battlefield in an obscuring mist. By the end of fighting on the third day the fog had lifted to reveal a clear blue sky.

The Engagement

The combination of rain and fog helped to obscure Alliance positions in the early stages of the battle which allowed their less numerous and more lightly equipped forces to gain tactical initiative. Superior planning and communications then permitted Marshall Leroux to execute a rapid assault plan that took advantage of the Alliance's tactical strengths in skirmish and cavalry engagement. The timely arrival of turncoat Archon Goland Revize, the traitor Prince, on the third day of fighting overwhelmed the Princes' mechanized legions during a critical assault on the Stairway citadel and allowed the Immortal 99 to breach the inner wall of the fortress and put the Empire's forces to rout.

Outcome

During the citadel breach on the third day, General Leroux accepted surrender from the Tetrarch known as Brother Paulings. Paulings had been styled "Grand Bishop" of the Gamorod state religious cult, the Church of the Exploding Eye.

When Paulings tried to preach his dogma among the troops assigned to guard him, General Leroux intervened to debate with the zealous Prince, who grew increasingly agitated when told that Lord Fredrick was preparing to enter the Stairway Tower. Producing a hidden blade, Paulings lashed out at the general, who defended himself and delivered a killing knife blow to the bishop's throat, which began smoking and sparking to reveal the Tetrarch had been a Synethode simulacra, a machine built to imitate human thought and behavior.

The apparent miracles ascribed to Paulings over the years were now revealed to be deceptive tricks produced by machine trickery. The revelation that the Exploding Eye faith had been promulgated by a fraud instantly broke the will of the Hidden Empire's remaining Pureborn loyalists.

The battle resulted in the immediate dissolution of the Gamorod technocratic slave-state and the founding of a new Merikan Republic among the majority of the Delphi Pact allies.

Aftermath

The Outlanders of Larada declined to join the new republic after being denied the right to settle on the lands reclaimed from Gamorod. This caused a schism between the Laradans and their Nehark brethren, who were granted the right to return to their ancestral homelands. This schism fuels the continuing conflict between the reformed republic, known as the Merikan Union, and the Laradan Free State.

Historical Significance

Technological Advancement

Most of the fighting was conducted using early industrial arms, including firearms, explosives, and chemical weapons. On the side of the Delphi Pact, these weapons were designed and crafted under the supervision of Manfred Klinnsman, the master Machinist.

On the second day of fighting, the Hidden Empire notably deployed a chlorine gas attack that settled in the rolling fog to create a veritable killing field to the west of the Stairway Tower. In response, Syllyndra Chastain led her Noirlan volunteers in a successful attack against the chemical deployment and thus rescued a significant portion of the alliance's forces. It is said that the Chastains employed ancient Precursor gas masks recovered from the Forbidden Zone during this engagement.

The principal combatants engaged at the citadel breach on day three employed a combination of industrial weaponry and augmented Precursor hand arms, which employed highly advanced and imperfectly understood myth science. These augmented melee weapons proved necessary to overcome the defensive energy screens deployed by XHAN's steel legions at the base of the Stairway Citadel.

Conflict Type

Battle

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

September 10, 973 PCE

Ending Date

September 12, 973 PCE

Conflict Result

The forces of the Delphi Pact won a decisive victory.

Belligerents

Delphi Pact

Hidden Empire

Strength

60,000 Merikan militia volunteers 30,000 Laradan warriors 20,000 Expeditionary regulars (Britannian, Capetian, Teuton, Pershahron, Indusan, Nippon)

80,000 thrall soldier infantry
50,000 steel legion elite
20,000 pureborn gene-spawn soldiers

Casualties

Objectives

All units under the command of Marshal Rollon Leroux (supreme commander of continental expeditionary forces)

All forces led by XHAN the Destroyer