Sunrise War

The Sunrise War was the ten year military campaign headed by Estaria under King Eiknir the Great with an alliance of Prekha, Landren and Sadrove to eliminate the empire of Sura Pel, felling the once mighty empire in less than a decade of aggressive conquest.

Historical Context

By the time of the Sunrise War in the early eighteenth century, the empire of Sura Pel was in a slow decline from their height of power in the fifteenth century, brought about by internal political strife, slave rebellions, war with Landren, and the overwhelming weight of their own empire which had expanded too quickly and too far for their centralized, autocratic government to oversee. However, Sura Pel was still the most powerful single armed force in Vildrel, with holdings surrounding all sides of the Crescent Sea.

Sura Pel in the Seventeenth Century

During the War of the Gates, Sura Pel made multiple attempts at eastward expansion by taking advantage of the civil conflict. They skirmished with the Estarian Regency and conquered the county of Ceterfel in 1643 SE. Meanwhile, to the north, Sura Pel made a failed attempt to retake Heaven's Cove in 1652, and managed to regain some territory in Landren. By the time of King Eiknir's rise to power, Sura Pel's territory was the largest it had ever been.

Factors of Sura Pel's Unpopularity

By this time, Sura Pel was known and hated by all the other polities of Vildrel. Although the different empires that bordered them had disputes with one another, four unique aspects of Sura Pel's empire set it apart from the other kingdoms of man, making it easier to band against Sura Pel as a common enemy.

• First, Sura Pel's multi-cultural rule, which was key to its ability to take so much territory so quickly, also made it a target of propaganda, particularly because the humans of Sura Pel shared power with the Hodi Giants. Sura Pel was the only human empire with giants in their royal nobility.
• Second, Sura Pel's human slavery was seen as a furtherance of this treachery against their own race. By this time, all other empires had outlawed slavery of humans, and exclusively enslaved Chimera.
• Third, Sura Pel's tendency to absorb smaller city states rather than making allies of them had left it geopolitically isolated with no allies amongst its neighbors.
• Finally, Sura Pel's Schulanist religion left it with no cultural allies to the east as well, and they're practices were seen as heretical by the far larger Atovist church.

The Summit at Lepra

(main article: Summit at Lepra)
In Sol of 1714, King Eiknir of Estaria achieved an unprecidented diplomatic victory by calling a summit of representatives from Landren, Sadrove and Prekha to one location to discuss a military alliance. The summit was held in Lepra, Prekha's capital, and Eiknir himself was in attendance.
  Publically, the summit was reported as a defensive pact to stave off concerns of all-out war from the war-weary citizens of Estaria. In private, the leaders negotiated how they would carve up Sura Pel's territory between them and agreed on a plan of attack.