The Battle of the Aurora Sea
The legendary assault on the Migrant Fleet by the forces of the dead and damned
The Conflict
Prelude
The Battle of the Aurora Sea began much like any one of the many dozen other naval conflicts that The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet had and continues to engage in with the forces of The Ramshackle - initially, what would become the battle of legend started with a sighting of a small picket fleet flying the banner of The Ramshackle approaching the Northern Armada of the Migrant Fleet. Initially only recorded as a half-dozen ships, this initial sighting that has since been classified as one part purposeful misdirection on the part of The Ramshackle and willful negligence by the spotters on sight for The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet that day has been recorded in history as the first mistake in a series of underestimations, misidentifications, and errors that would allow The Ramshackle to make a dedicated assault on the Migrant Fleet's capital ship itself. Thanks largely in part to this combination of negligence by the spotters for The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet and the confusion sowed by what would later be uncovered as undead seeded amongst the ships of the fleet months prior who, secretely loyal to The Ramshackle, sounded fake sightings and false alarms that greatly lowered the effectiveness of the response to the incoming Battle Cluster, The Ramshackle managed to get incredibly close to the Northern Armada of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet and bypass most of their exterior pickets and early warning systems to strike at the heart of the armada.
Deployment
Though the Northern Armada of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet that was thousands of ships(barely half of which were battle-ready) strong had technically come under attack by the forces of The Ramshackle, it was only their capital, the superdreadnought Bushūbunáo, Capital of the Migrant Fleet, and the ninety-some odd ships assigned to it as protection, escorts, and companions that ended up actually participating in the battle - thanks to excellent subterfuge by The Ramshackle, they were able to bypass much of the Northern Armada's outer defensive walls and early warning systems, starting the battle in the heart of the Armada.
Attacking the heart of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet and the ninety odd ships surrounding it was The Ramshackle's legendary Battle Cluster Alpha, a fleet of ships crewed by the dead and damned that numbered nearly two hundred strong - more than double the number of Migrant Fleet ships that were enduring their assault.
Leading this Battle Cluster were an unprecedent Four Ramshackle Flagships, which served as command and control nodes for the insanely enormous armada of the damned they commanded, directing and spearheading efforts across the Battle Cluster - nothing less than The Sovereign, The H.H.V Grammaton, The Gunvaldarinn, and The Wulfitz lead the legendary Battle Cluster Alpha, each spearheading a fleet of the dead 50 ships strong(For more information on the individual flagships, please see The Ramshackle) as they led the most concentrated and premeditated attack on The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet in all of Zheng-Kitaran History.
Battlefield
The setpiece for the Battle of the Aurora Sea was, as one might expect, the Aurora Sea - the northern sea that lays in the far north of the continent and the world at large where ice flows and glowing Auroras plague the seas and skies. It is here that the Northern Armada of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet sailed beneath the banner of the Bushūbunáo, Capital of the Migrant Fleet, commanded by decorated Admiral Mishil Hong and home to the Fleet's overall leader, The High Admiral.
It was here amidst the ice flows of the north where only the strongest ships could crack the ice and carve a path that The Ramshackle met and engaged the Northern Armada, where their ships that could crack the ice with little issue thanks to undead resilience outwitted and outmaneuvered the more mortally limited ships of the Migrant Fleet, whom could only navigate among the ice already cracked by the mighty Bushūbunáo, The Salvaged Supercarrier, as well as the other few metallic ships and peripheral icebreaker ships the Fleet possessed.
Conditions
On top of the extremely limiting conditions of the extraordinarily thick iceflows that covered the Aurora Seas, the frigid and biting cold was also another limiting and terrible factor for the battle - so cold that traditionally, the Northern Armada had long since discounted the possibility of actual attack as, in some places, the temperature got so low that moisture froze in mere seconds, and exposed flesh would freeze solid in a matter of an hour or less - making it incredibly hard to fend off The Ramshackle, who ignored both the thick ice flows and the biting cold that could even freeze the flaming arrows normally used to ward off the smaller pickets of The Ramshackle the Migrant Fleet had become used to dealing with in previous years and encounters.
The Engagement
Starting off the battle, The Ramshackle announced its arrival by taking the entire core of the Northern Armada entirely by surprise - it was not until The H.H.V Grammaton, the enormous metal supercarrier, was both spotted piercing the innermost defensive lines of the Migrant Fleet and firing off its legendary and since-feared Information Superweapon that began to slowly wipe the Bushūbunáo, The Salvaged Supercarrier from history that the Migrant Fleet even knew the attack had begun as the entire Battle Cluster Alpha of The Ramshackle emerged from beneath the waves to take the Migrant Fleet by surprise.
Ambushed by four Flagships and a force of ships two-hundred strong, the Migrant Fleet was caught wholly unprepared and unawares by the attack of The Ramshackle, and it is thanks largely in part to the genius of Admiral Mishil Hong that the Northern Armada was able to weather the blistering initial salvo from the Battle Cluster. Using the enormous bulk of the Migrant Fleet's capital the Bushūbunáo, The Salvaged Supercarrier, Admiral Mishil Hong turned the enormous metal supership into the storm of fire that flew at the Northern Armada, betting everything on the durability of the Bushūbunáo as he used its enormous, mile-long hull to shield its escorts from harm, though even the hull of the mighty Bushūbunáo cracked and groaned under the stress of enduring the initial salvo. Thankfully the bet paid off, and after turning to broadsides to block the initial salvo the Bushūbunáo headed straight into the approaching Battle Cluster in a daring move that paid even more dividends, as the Bushūbunáo's enormous bulk shattered The Sovereign into splinters, head Flagship of the Ramshackle's Battle Cluster and taking the unsinkable flagship off the field for most of the first day of the battle. Thanks to this quick thinking from Admiral Mishil Hong and after a panicked initial response the Northern Armada was able to muster and recall its outermost defensive lines back to the core of the Armada and scrape together a frantic defense to hold off the forces of The Ramshackle by the time the outer lines arrived towards the start of the second day.
However, it was not without losses even in that first day - though the Bushūbunáo was able and often did use its bulk to shield the other ninety odd ships escorting it to the best of its ability, the forces of The Ramshackle were legion - and thanks to the initial ambush, the core of the Northern Armada had been completely surrounded by the forces of The Ramshackle barely halfway through the first day. Pounded and obliterated on all sides by ships crewed by the dead and damned, the men and women of the Northern Armada proved their worth a thousand times over that day as they fought in those hellish conditions, sometimes freezing to death on the deck of the ships they served mid-battle from the soul-numbing cold that plagued the Aurora Seas. The first day was one of blood, where the ice stained red with gore and viscera as the Northern Armada only endured thanks to the complete and total sacrifice of the defense pickets charged with protecting the Northern Armada's Core - the brave ships and sailors who willingly fought to the bitter, freezing end to buy their capital and noncombatants time until reinforcements arrived. Crews were shot to pieces, ships were cracked in half, entire crews were yanked off the decks and drowned in the freezing waters of the Aurora Seas, and The Ramshackle's flagships wreaked absolute havoc through the defensive pickets that gave their lives that day.
On the second day, things became even more dire for The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet - though their outermost defensive lines had successfully returned from far afield, they were blocked from meeting up with the fleet's core due to both the ice flows that they had previously relied on the now-sunken Icecracker ships to navigate through safely, as well as the complete encirclement of the fleet's core and the blockading of the existing icecracker lanes by The Ramshackle. Caught up in a desperate battle to pierce the encirclement of the dead and relieve the beleaguered forces of the Core Armada, the outer defensive lines were soon joined by the rest of the Northern Armada's battle ready Military Cladeships, who fought a furious battle led by Hiiro Hong, son of Mishil Hong and head of the reinforcement efforts.
Inside the encirclement, however, things were incredibly dire - the informational superweapon deployed by The Ramshackle Flagship The H.H.V Grammaton had begun to slowly wipe the Bushūbunáo from history, and the ship was losing cohesion by the hour - slowly becoming more and more transparent as it began to vanish from history and time itself. It was thanks in large part to the tactical genius of Admiral Mishil Hong as well as the suprising but much-welcomed assistance of the Bushūbunáo's guardian spirit Father Ferrolis that the capital ship was able to hold on - though, by midday of the second day, almost all other vessels of the Core Armada had been torn to bloody ribbons at the hands of the Ramshackle. The few ships that survived were organized and led by the then-Commander Haru Yoshinaga, who had rallied and taken control of the remaining Core Defenders despite her low rank after all other ranking officers had been slain by the rampaging forces of The Ramshackle - despite her status as a woman, she took command of the last defensive forces and browbeat them into line, single-handedly preventing a total rout and leading the last elements of the resistance against The Ramshackle flagship The Gunvaldarinn, holding the invincible behemoth at bay long enough to score a critical victory by allowing the screaming demon of the Bushūbunáo, Father Ferrolis, to blast a hole clean through its hull and sink the behemoth once and for all.
With this first and major victory for the beleagured forces of the Core Armada's defense, morale soared as the sailors of the Migrant Fleet fought tooth and nail to defend their livelihood, going without sleep for over a day and a half in near-inhospitable conditions as the battle entered the evening of the second day - though things looked increasingly dire for the Bushūbunáo, who was nearly nonexistent by the eve of the second day. However, around precisely midnight of the second day, the forces of the Migrant Fleet scored another critical victory in the battle as the relief forces under Lord Commander Hiiro Hong executed a suicidal firestorm assault, detonating two dozen Migrant Fleet ships against the unbreakable wall of The Ramshackle - giving his own life in the process to punch a hole in the encirclement to allow reinforcements to reach the rapidly dwindling forces of the Core Armada under Haru Yoshinaga.
Meeting up with the reinforcements, the Northern Armada's defensive forces went into full assault against the lingering forces of the Ramshackle as the battle entered the earliest hours of the third day - and, as if to serve as the final nail in the coffin of the Battle Cluster's assault, the Bushūbunáo broke free of the Informational Superweapon and returned to reality in a thunderous flash, charging headlong back into the material like a rampaging god of war into the drifting inferno mines laid by the fearsome flagship The Wulfitz, who had thus far been wholly untouched during the battle and had been in large part responsible for the rapidly dwindling numbers of Haru Yoshinaga's defensive forces, sending the flagship up in a hail of hellfire that melted the entire back half of the Bushūbunáo's superstructure into smoking slag as Admiral Mishil Hong set off the inferno minefield early in a grandiose display of fireworks.
Though the Bushūbunáo was barely operational after over two days of brutal fighting in the world's deadliest conditions, the Battle Cluster of The Ramshackle sounded a clear and total retreat, fleeing the battlefield after losing two of its most powerful Flagships to the defensive forces of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet. By midday of the third day, the remnants of Battle Cluster Alpha had scattered into the icy seas and left the remnants of the Northern Armada to tend to its wounds, desperately taking count of the dead and dying and sending aid and relief efforts to the wounded and damaged ships.
The battle had been won, but at enormous cost - fully half of the Northern Armada's battle-ready vessels had been wrecked by the assault of the Battle Cluster, and the once-thought unsinkable Bushūbunáo had been nearly melted into slag and destroyed by the fierce and vicious attack - to say nothing of the hundred thousand civilians trapped inside the metal capital ship as its heating systems deactivated, causing tens of thousands to freeze to death in its metal interior as it viciously fought against the weapons that looked to erase it.
Outcome
Having broke the back of The Battle Cluster Alpha sent by The Ramshackle, The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet ensured that The Ramshackle would not pose a threat to most anyone across Zheng-Kitar for years as it rebuilt its forces and licked its wounds.
However, the Northern Armada of The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet had been completely ruined - over half of its battle-ready sailors and ships had been sent to a freezing, watery grave by the Battle Cluster's assault - leaving the Northern Fleet with a scar that it would not recover from for decades.
Finally, for her role in the heroic defense of the Bushūbunáo and her critical role in the defense of the Migrant Fleet, Commander Haru Yoshinaga was given Admiralty over the entirety of the Eastern Fleets by the High Admiral, who gave her such a promotion against the protests of all his admirals who disliked the idea of a female leading a fleet.
Aftermath
In the long term, the Battle of the Aurora Sea would seem to, as of the modern day, dissuaded The Ramshackle from organizing such Battle Clusters and forced it to stick to its previous tactics of small-unit warfare and fleet assaults. Never again would The Ramshackle have more than one flagship in a fleet at one time, outside of extremely special circumstances - the defeat they had suffered changed their tactics irrevocably for decades to come.
To the Migrant Fleet, the battle reminded them of the power of the Ramshackle, long thought to be incapable of posing an organized and large-scale threat, and showed glaring gaps in the early-warning systems and defensive organizations of the Migrant Fleet - leading to a massive restructuring of the Northern Armada and a push towards equality among the genders in the fleet, as the brave men and women who had desperately fought and died as brothers and sisters in arms more than proved their bravery in the battle.
Historical Significance
In Literature
After the battle, many books would be published on the orders of the High Admiral detailing the tactics used by both sides in the engagement - it has been long since pointed to as the greatest example of massive scale naval warfare in the world and in living memory, and is studied the world over by historians and sailors and admirals both for practical and historical value.
Conflict Type
Battle
Battlefield Type
Naval
Start Date
9th of Lihua, 4487 ASK
Ending Date
11th of Lihua, 4487 ASK
Conflict Result
The Northern Armada emerged victorious, but badly beaten and barely intact.
Belligerents
The Northern Armada
Battle Cluster Alpha
Strength
(Core Armada)
Bushūbunáo, The Salvaged Supercarrier, 76 Battle-ready warships(various make and origin), 12 Life-Ships/Civilian Vessels, 4 Icecracker dreadnoughts
Four Flagships: The Sovereign, The H.H.V Grammaton, The Gunvaldarinn, and The Wulfitz
Making up the rest of the battle cluster was 198 vessels crewed by the dead and damned and empowered by necromantic energy, each vessel more than twice as dangerous and mighty as a mortal, living counterpart.
Casualties
The loss of every single ship in the Core Armada save the Bushūbunáo, The Salvaged Supercarrier and 3 Warships.
Several Hundred Vessels were sacrificed and lost with all hands in the attempts by the reinforcements to pierce the encirclement efforts of The Ramshackle and relieve the battered Core Armada. A vast majority of the Migrant Fleet's most skilled sailors and commanders were lost in the defense, as was the son of Admiral Mishil Hong - a great blow to the Migrant Fleet felt for decades afterwards.
The flagships The Gunvaldarinn and The Wulfitz were lost with all hands and destroyed by the Migrant Fleet's defenders.
131 of the Battle Cluster's vessels aside from the Flagships were sunken without any possibility of repair.
43 of the Battle Cluster's vessels were damaged in some way and limped off the field.
The remaining ships were sunken by were later raised back into service by the undead powers of The Ramshackle.
Objectives
To survive and weather the assault of the Battle Cluster.
To destroy the Bushūbunáo, Capital of the Migrant Fleet, and completely obliterate the heart of the The Gāngtao Migrant Fleet and its Northern Armada.
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