The Mating Game

The Mating Game was a "hot" war fought at the end of the age of the "cold" Trade Wars between the cities of Freewater and Allport on the World of the Long Sleep. It was a shocking transition into naked armed conflict, after many years of strategic shuffling and careful politics when rival alliances had struggled more peacably for control over the new opportunities brought by interstellar trade. Now matters were to be settled on the battlefield and when the war was over, a new age would be born.

The Conflict

Prelude

Antoine Lombois by DMFW with Art Breeder

Aaliyah Faizan by DMFW with Art Breeder

As the era of the Trade Wars drew towards what would become a catastrophic closing chapter, tensions between the Merchant Guild cities of Trass and the equatorial allies of Allport, Equatoria and Fereth had risen from simple disputes over specific cargoes and docking rights, into something uglier that was very close to piracy. The Allport League, led by Antoine Lombois, was always the stronger of the two powers, and had already made inroads into the trade on Trass when they established their trading base at Gantranne on Trasslow, but from 2203 AF and onwards, they sought to gain access to the mines in the south of Trass by attempting to turn the government of Freewater into a vassel state. Here, the League came up against the wily and obdurate ruler of the desert city, Aaliyah Faizan. The overtures and bribes offered to influential individuals by the Allport League were mockingly called "love tokens" by the local opposition and it was this terminology which would become an ironic metaphor that gave the war of the Mating Game its name.

Deployment

On the 6th of Lightgrow 2208, Antoine Lombois, finally growing tired of the lack of success in his attempts to buy his way into power, ordered his forces to begin an invasion aimed at overthrowing the leaders of Freewater and deposing Aaliyah Faizan so that he could install his own puppet government. The tools of mercanary threats balanced against the honied words of cunning traders had always gone hand in hand as fundamentals of Allport League politics, but they had never before initiated a military action on this scale. This initial assault was not successful, in large part because the slow build up, preceeded by the long attempted "seduction" of the city had tipped the hand of Allport and when the troops landed on the coast of Trass, they found a company of opposing soldiers ready to fight and defeat them.
After the first attempt to take Freewater failed, the war entered a long phase of feints, limited skirmishes at sea and minor incursions which would last until the final battle of Allport.

Battlefield

The Love Bombing of Allport, on 19th Whitestar, 2208 AF was the concluding decisive engagement which brought the war to an end. It was an aerial battle, fought over the islands of Allport, in which a force of mixed jet fighters and heavy bombers, launched from Trass, conducted a devastating bombing raid on the capital of the Allport League. The inadequate aerial defences had not been designed to withstand such a raid, since it was expected that Trass was simply too far to act as a base and that Allport League naval superiority would prevent the launch of seaborne aircraft before they could get close enough. This assumption proved fatally mistaken, since Freewater had purchased engineering innovations from the Suquedren, which allowed them to radically improve fuel efficiency and greatly increase the range of their strike aircraft.
Within half an hour, the Allport airforce was totally destroyed and the bombers released their special psychoactive weapons, the infamous "Love Bombs". The Love Bombs were a chemical and biological mixture of vibrantly coloured psychadelic smoke which contained carefully genetically tailored pheremones and fast acting neuro-stimulants. Their effect was to induce hallucinations, stimulate the libedo and remove all inhibitions. The residents of Allport were drugged and gased in a mental assault that ripped away the foundations of their ego and left them as little more than puppets, twitching on the strings of base fears and urges. After no more than an hour, they had all ceased to function as rational individuals and the island had become little more than an arena for wild orgies and catatonic victims, staring endlessly into the imaginary landscapes of their minds.

Outcome

After the war ended, the Merchants Guilds descended into a series of undignified squabbles as they scrapped for the supposed spoils which the demise of the Allport League had theoretically opened to them. In truth, the expertise of their traders, and physical network of their fleets and the contracts they had negotiated and fulfilled at Modyran, were not so easy to replace.
The Merchants Guilds had not made many friends amongst independent powers by the way they had brought the Mating Game to a close. The Love Bombing of Allport was universally looked at with revulsion and seen as a war crime.
In 2212, four years after the end of the war, Aaliyah Faizan was assassinated by an unknown killer whilst conducting negotiations amongst the feuding factions of the Merchants Guilds in a meeting at Monrith. Some think that this was a revenge attack for the deaths at Allport, whilst others believe it merely reflected the confusion and rivalry amongst the disturbed forces of the Merchant Guilds, following their suprising victory.

Historical Significance

In the long run, the victory of the Merchants Guilds, far from leading to them gaining power, only resulted in confusion and fear, when the stable and well managed city of Anoomenon was able to take advantge of the situation to smoothly assert its own authority. The rise of Anoomenon, over the following decades would lead the world into the age of the Long Northern Peace, an epoche of Earth's history now widely considered to be its greatest.

Legacy

Allport remains uninhabitable, due to the residues of the Love Bombs, even now, more than a thousand years later.

In Literature

More than three hundred years later, the events of the Mating Game would provide the source material for Taldyne Zinthrano's first play, "The Fall Of Allport"

Conflict Type

War

Battlefield Type

Air

Start Date

6th Lightgrow, 2206 AF

Ending Date

19th Whitestar, 2208 AF

Conflict Result

The Allport League was destroyed and Allport itself rendered uninhabitable.

Location

Allport

The Mating Game was an unusual and uniquely disturbing conflict, due to the contributions of alien technologies purchased by both sides. In many cases, soldiers were deployed with weaponry they hardly understood and this sometimes led to unfortunate accidents, such as the infamous "instinxtion event" on 12th Harvest, 2207 AF, in which an entire company of Allport League troops were lost due to an incorrectly primed sub-orbital bombard.
The Allport League had close connections with the Redrunners, a powerful Suquedren Syndicate, who supplied them with a variety of advanced weaponry, but the Merchants Guild was able to call on the support of another Suquedren Syndicate, the Deepseekers, to purchase countermeasures and offensive weaponry of their own. Then, too, they had contacts with Zodrul agents who provided specialist marine support, although little of this was ever used. There were also a number of advanced psychological and psychodynamic weapons that found their way onto Earth from who knows where and these added to the chaos.
It is hard to say how the Galactic Compact viewed the conflict, although clearly some of its members were happy to profit on both sides. Nevertheless, there must have been some alarm in the higher levels of Compact policy makers and Geigamon negotiators went so far as to descend from orbit on 8th Cooldark, 2207, by special authority of the local Storm Judges and the Compact, in an attempt to negotiate a settlement between the warring parties which ultimately came to nothing.

Belligerents

Allport Air Defence Force

Led by

• Antoine Lombois

Freewater Raiders

Strength

The Allport Air Defences were made up of twelve helium filled barrage balloons, which acted as spotters and firing platforms over the city and the more important islands. Ground batteries were stationed at all the major harbours and there was a small force of no more than fifteen lightly armed fighter planes.

A core force of ten heavy bombers was accompanied by a covering screen of twenty jet fighters, equiped with laser targetted guns and air to air missiles.

Casualties

The barrage balloons proved to be virtually useless and a completely inappropriate defence against the fighter jets of the Merchants Guild. All were shot down within fifteen minutes of the start of the engagement. The ground batteries fared somewhat better but once the effects of the Love Bombing began to take hold they were soon abandoned. The islands' fighter planes apparently performed heroically and succeeded in downing several of the invaders, but they were outmatched technologically and all were destroyed.

Two of the bombers were lost to ground batteries and three fighters were downed by enemy aircraft but the remainder of the force returned to Trass unharmed.

Objectives

The Allport Air Defence Force was designed to deter speculative air raids that might be launched from ship platforms. Since Freewater had no aircraft carriers and Allport was thought to be out of range of an air attack launched directly from Trass, it had never expected to face the forces that were sent against it.

Aaliyah Faizan had instructed her airforce to carpet bomb all the major islands of Allport with their special payload of Love Bombs. The mission was achieved and was even more successful than the planners had imagined.

The Mating Game : The Love Bombing of Allport 02 by DMFW with Midjourney

The Mating Game : The Love Bombing of Allport 03 by DMFW with Midjourney