Tardy War
The Tardy War is the concept of wars between northeastern Outer Joriscian powers from the 16th to 19th centuries as a series of extended, expansive, and interconnected political struggles, originating with disputes over Vaestism in the Aborovid Confederacy and ultimately developing the Lutoborsk into a Vaestic power dominating the area.
Background
After the fall of the Undughu Empire, the Lutoborovid Confederacy, to end Neghay League khaa raiding, re-established a loose political unity over the northeastern Joriscian seaboard through installing the Prince of the Khuikhs in the Khuikh War of 1172–8. Though the Prince was reduced to being effectively ambassadorial, further integration of the Khuikh Quests into a system centred on the Dovhyi Tableland took place gradually through the establishment of Lutoborovid nobles as Quest-lords with ties to the south. This first era of Secotised integration climaxed during the Izyamirovid Wars from 1310 to 1354 where a Khuikh federation was established under the Izyamirovids to fight the Aborovid Confederacy, but the War of Appanage in 1367–9 secured the independence of Mesudachy and the Khuikhs further north from Aborovid control and thus Tableland affairs. However, from the Investing Movement in the 15th century, elite networks stretching across the modern Lutoborsk were again established through the movement of personnel and organisations from south to north, in conjunction with attempts by Aborovid kings to re-assert their power, and their opponents to mobilise everything they could to prevent that.
Events
Beginning with the Urban Persecutions in the 1500s, the management of allies among Khuikh appanages and apprenticeships acquired a sense of strategic urgency in Unscany, and became geared towards cultivating vassals as reinforcements to Aborovid political disputes. As Vaestism's spread northwards caused similar tensions, the northern commanders could consolidate Sirian exclusivism with more zeal and purity than intrigues in the south could have allowed for there, promoting the rise of the Khuikh Compact, though it was still divergent from both Messenian and Doyotian Siriash. By confiscating or absorbing the property and influence of heathen temples or errant lamnearies, these princes also gained the prerequisite leverage to centralise power and establish states with themselves at the helm. Remade along these lines into a united power, the Severnyy Kingdom spectacularly intervened in the Unjust War (1593–9) and assisted in defeating Yarodar the Martyr. Alongside Severnyye, increasingly powerful Khuikh princes made appearances in the Great War of Enlightenment and the Wars of the Exiles.
With the failure of these engagements and the War of the Shackles in the 1650s, Polcovodate Lutoborsk had been firmly established, but so were ignorant states that saw their very mission as the preservation of Siriash, and so continued interventions into the Lutoborsk with all they could muster. State formation in relation to the Aborovid wars fully fruited in the 17th century, with the establishment of the Komandje Kingdom in 1667 and the Kadalkhian Confederacy in 1681, though not without bloody overtures such as the War for Ruda. It even spread to Kiy, where the Uniformity Covenant of 1680 established a state led by Critics. Alongside Steppe polities, these new 'Mustered States' (as they were akin to armies belatedly mustered to join in the Aborovid wars) would consistently intervene in wars against the nascent Vesnite state, although against a Polcovodate backed by Great Neritsia and Agamar, they were unable to meaningfully undermine or set back Vesnite rule, and these interventions functioned more to preempt and deter Lutoborian expansion. The Mustered States also fought frequently between themselves. Their efforts were the most successful in the early 18th century: during the Chidi revolt of the 1710s and the First Peridot War of 1723–30 anti-Lutoborian coalitions and their allies came close to fully deposing the vozhds, but even then they were ultimately defeated.
After the War of the Banner, the accession of Vladibor the Great and a halt to Lutoborian internal conflict spelt the beginning of the end for the Mustered States. Domestically, the First Peridot War caused considerable loss of confidence in Khuikh Siriash, and popular 'semi-Vesnite' interpretations stirred up unrest that severely divided if not weakened the Khuikh states. The Second (1745–48) and Third Peridot Wars (1753–56) saw the Lutoborsk take over Severnyye and Komandje, spectacularly bringing Vaestdom's frontiers hundreds of miles north. Politically, however, it merely amounted to the installation of Captains as new management over otherwise largely independent and intact Khuikh society, and the conquest was more akin to the creation of a personal union with the vozhd. During the Imperial War Kiy and Kadalkhia allied with Lacre to attack Vladibor and restore the kingdoms in 1772, but were disastrously repulsed, even causing a civil war in Kiy despite Lacre's ultimate victory. This debacle was the last offensive action taken by the coalition or what was left of it, due to internal conflicts, war-weariness, the demonstrated superiority of Vesnite armies, and agreements with the new rulers installed in Khuikhland.
In the 19th century, Vladibor the Conqueror and his followers relentlessly pursued the conquest and annexation of Kadalkhia, finishing the long advance through Khuikhland. While Kiy was able to resist an invasion in 1812, a backwards Kadalkhia could only yield, and with the March to Foshky of 1831–3 the Lutoborsk as a Vaestic empire had brought all the lands that associated with the Aborovid galactic polity under its Banner, ending what may have been essentially a sprawling centuries-long civil war. Nevertheless, the absorption of Khuikhland into the Lutoborsk was not as total as Vaestopolitics would usually conceive in the period, instead continuing to be shaped by the confederal lines of Aborovid custom. The rise of a powerful knyazchik gentry in the conquests, who took even apportation into their own hands with the Garden Lectures and secured numerous other exemptions from imperial policy with Flank State privileges, contributed to the rise of the Plinth State, and the wider political climate of Presidency Lutoborsk.