Player's Reference: Coalition Military History

The Coalition Navy: The Machine Starts (95-105 PA)
After a humiliating naval defeat in the Great Lakes in 94 PA, the Emperor established a Naval Advisory Council (NAC), which spent the period between appointment and July of 95 PA to generate one of the most ground-breaking reports in Coalition history. This report recommended the formation of a new military branch, distinct from the Army, capable of both blue- and brown-water operations. The Emperor enthusiastically endorsed it, and the NAC, also referred to as the Navy Boosters’ Club, began the process of transforming into a full-blown, seafaring navy.

This process began with the establishment of a Great Lakes Command, now known as the 1st Fleet. The Great Lakes fleet is one of the reasons the later New Kenora invasion succeeded, and why the Upper Peninsula kingdoms in Michigan became Coalition allies – Great Lakes piracy hurt all players in the region. It was, however, viewed as a threat by Quebec, which was the only state to maintain its own separate fleet. This became a key factor in Quebecois secession a decade later. The acquisition of the Quebec fleet by the CS Navy was viewed as unacceptable, and rather than hand the ships over, Quebec departed the Coalition.

Along the old Gulf of Mexico, the Coalition seized an isolated kingdom called Port Horus, beginning the emergency transformation of the city into a first-class naval facility. This facility, called Fort Pinnacle, would come fully on-line in 105, at which point the seagoing fleet was ready for it. This fleet was acquired by special contract from the arms firm Golden Age Weaponsmiths, which constructed the ships from plans found in an old American Empire facility along the old east coast of the United States. The fleet of three carriers and half a dozen cruisers represents the most powerful surface fleet in the world when it is fully concentrated; especially with the Containment Pact signed, however, most of the time the fleet is dispersed in anti-piracy patrols.

The Juicer Uprising: The Machine Backfires (105 PA)
In 105, the Coalition began seriously examining the Arkansas region for inclusion in the Coalition States. This was accelerated by the supposed revelation of a process that allowed Juicers to live essentially forever. The recruiting parties sent to Arkansas to collect on the Juicers gathered by this announcement into special service units for the Coalition were under-manned and over-extended. Juicers continent-wide wanted in on the Process; rioting ensued. The drug-fueled rampage resulted in an open war, which did little to help the Coalition’s image. This unexpected war in the forests of Arkansas, initially expected to be strictly a regional conflict, tied up troops for six months. Eventually, the Juicers rampaging through Arkansas’s fortified cities discovered that while the Process itself was a false hope, the Coalition had been duped just as badly. A cease-fire and amnesty was declared, and the Coalition began the painful business of cleaning up and restoring its new and largely unplanned acquisition.

The Juicers involved in the Uprising generally regarded the amnesty as a piece of propaganda, and post-Uprising clashes proved them right. The Juicer Army of Liberation, the prime organization of the Uprising, would later appear as one of the forces active in the Tolkeen area, though only peripherally.

The Seizure of New Kenora: The Machine Overhauled (105 PA)
In 105 PA, the Coalition Army seized the manufacturing town of New Kenora. This town, the home of Iron Heart Armaments (IHA), had been one of the prime manufacturers of military hardware in North America. IHA produced every kind of weapon from sidearm to nuclear-powered missile cruiser, and many enemies of the Coalition States bought first from IHA and second from any other vendor. In seizing the factories, the Coalition acquired an arms-manufacture facility of the highest quality, already active, with a considerable inventory already on hand.

The Coalition State of Iron Heart was the primary beneficiary of this acquisition; the State appointed a director for the factory facilities and immediately resumed production, spending only a short period re-tooling the lines for production of an upgraded line of equipment. This was the first significant overhaul of Coalition military equipment since before Karl Prosek came to power, and represented a massive step forward in the Coalition’s military thinking.

The Quebecois Secession: The Machine Sputters (105-106 PA)
Because of building pressure from Chi-Town to standardize their military, built in Quebecois mistrust of outsiders, and the covert war that some in the Coalition army had prosecuted against Quebec troops as part of an extensive equipment testing program, the former Coalition state of Free Quebec seceded from the Coalition States in the winter of 105 PA. Within months, troops were positioned on both sides of the border and a shooting war was inevitable. The Quebec front quickly stalemated, and cooler heads on both sides pointed out that skirmishing sharpened the Coalition war machine, but an assault on Quebec would both wreck that same machine, and inevitably result in the ruin of Quebec.

Southern Ontario became a maze of trenches and fortifications, a training ground for raiders and snipers, and an unintentional blueprint for the coming Tolkeen war. The best that could be said about it was that there were comparatively few casualties – fortification had, for the moment, defeated weapons.

The main effect of the Quebec war was to tie up resources that the Coalition had planned on committing to the already-moving Tolkeen war. The static front across old Ontario led to the formation of the first Security Forces units, releasing some of those divisions to the Tolkeen front during the dark days of 107 PA. One unexpected benefit was the further industrial expansion of Iron Heart, including the seizure of the Elliot Lake and Bancroft uranium mines - the latter especially is viewed as a direct threat by the free city of Lazlo.

Opening Moves (Summer-Fall, 106 PA)
In May of 106 PA, as some of his generals advised trying for a knockout blow against Quebec, Emperor Prosek instead sent the expected code word for the invasion of Tolkeen in south-central old American Minnesota. The Tolkeen buildup had been coming since 101 PA, so the invasion was hardly a surprise. Its extent, however, was. The initial artillery bombardment was so extensive, and so loud, that it could be heard a full hundred miles from the forwardmost Tolkeen settlements.

Coalition troops only had a hundred and fifty miles to advance from the broad arc of their positions along the southeastern portion of the front. At that point, the lines of advance converged on the city of Tolkeen itself. In the first two days, they advanced twenty-five miles – into a pre-planned magical killing field, extensively fortified and well-garrisoned. Coalition command of the skies faltered as aircraft were damaged and brought down for maintenance, and eventually gargoyles, dragons, and constructs dominated the air above the invasion zone. The Coalition stalemated here, too – the Minnesota winter stopped any attempts at further advance by the beginning of December. Coalition troops were shuttled from every corner of the union where they were not actively engaged in preparation for a flanking move to the west. It was not to be, though.

Counterattack (Winter 106-Spring 107 PA)
On 21 December 106 PA, the winter solstice, at the highest point of magical activity, Tolkeen’s defenders launched a counterattack. The ice itself rose up to attack the forwardmost troops, whose fortifications liquefied underneath them. Artillery parks were consumed whole by earthquakes. Communications were disrupted by electrical storms that grounded the few aircraft easily at hand. The environmental shocks of the winter offensive were palpable as far away as St. Louis, Missouri – for a short time, the Mississippi flowed backwards.

The offensive brought Tolkeen a breathing space. Allies flooded in from across North America, and along the Coalition’s frontiers, trouble flared up as reports of the disaster reached enemies of the States. Some were predicting that the city of Tolkeen could make terms with the Coalition. The council of mages that ruled the city welcomed the allies and the adulation, but more sober consideration showed that the situation was still essentially hopeless.

The problem with this offensive, horrific as it was, was that it lacked focus and discipline. The new allies brought in little food, there would be no planting in 107, and the Coalition could better absorb the blow. While the Tolkeen forces were now well behind the initial Coalition starting line, they could not hope to hold these positions. All of the reinforcements that Karl Prosek had rushed in for the next summer offensive were instead thrown into establishing new lines and squeezing.

The Slow Grind (107-109 PA)
Against this background, Minister of Information Joseph Prosek urgently suggested stripping some of the cities’ and states’ security forces and organizing them into combat units. With minimal training, these units were thrown into brigades and settled on the Quebec front. A handful of the security forces units made it to the Tolkeen front; the Army authorities there gladly used them as fortress-breaking units. These units were the later justification for expanding the security troops to divisional strength.For two years, the Coalition ground forward, gaining a quarter-mile a day on good days, but not retreating any significant distance. Thanks to longer-ranged anti-aircraft weapons, they eventually brought the skies back under control. By the end of 108, the lines had circumvallated Tolkeen itself, and the guns were firing into the city. The city’s magical barriers, ironically, failed on the day of the winter solstice, 108 PA – the energies that had fired them were spent, depleted by four years of constant tension. By noon on 22 December 108, the first rounds had begun to demolish the physical infrastructure of the city. Despite the brutal winter weather, the city was breached, sacked, and brought to the ground by March of 109. On 13 April 109, the victory celebrations for Tolkeen began. At the height of the ceremonies, the Emperor announced the signing of the Containment Pact, a triple alliance between Quebec, Germany, and the Coalition States, pledging mutual support in both aggressive and defensive wars, intelligence sharing, and open (though not free) trade. The following day, the great arms-manufacturing city-states of upper Michigan became signatories as well, though they did not announce the alliance until the celebrations were over. By the end of May, the small South American republics of Colombia and Cordoba had become signatories. Because of the wide dispersion of the nations that signed the Containment Pact, it remains largely symbolic, but represents a tremendous diplomatic leap over the previous state of affairs.

The Battle of Center Gear (November 108-March 109 PA)
By mid-108 PA, the writing was on the wall for the Kingdom of Tolkeen. They had sustained far heavier field casualties than they had anticipated during the early rush of their first counteroffensive, and the Coalition's willingness to engage in a protracted siege campaign led to a significant reduction in the effectiveness of Tolkeen's surprise raiding. In May of 108, the first artillery rounds were landing near the walls of Tolkeen and the city was under rationing pending the approaching siege.

Situated on a tributary of the Mississippi, Center Gear was the major arms factory and Techno-Wizard center of the Kingdom of Tolkeen; its reduction was a key point in the endgame plans for Tolkeen, and some of its industries could be converted to Coalition use. Similarly, Tolkeen saw Center Gear as the perfect place to hurt the Coalition. Both sides had, therefore, unconsciously agreed to turn Center Gear into a meat-grinder. In November, three divisions were detached from the Tolkeen siege force to take Center Gear. The Coalition moved first, sending scouts into the city's outskirts. They reported that the city was largely deserted, and continued forward. They first struck resistance around the TW factories near the center of the city, and a six-month game of raid and counter-raid from house to house began.

The battle was very similar to the pre-Rifts battle of Stalingrad; unlike Stalingrad, the outcome of Center Gear was never really in doubt. The forces sent into Center Gear were detached from forces already encircling Tolkeen, while the defenders were instructed only to bleed the Coalition as much as possible. There was no real chance for the defenders to escape, or to hold their positions; rather, they fought and died along the river. By the time they were finished, only about 5% of the factories - the ones the Coalition had seized earliest - were usable. The rest of the city was a vast ruin.

Major units of the Center Gear campaign include the Death's Head security forces regiment (attached to the 44th Infantry Division), the 3rd Engineer Brigade (Assault) from Chi-Town, and the 141st Infantry Regiment (Mobile), from Lone Star.

Center Gear was one of three cities (the other two being Tolkeen itself and the dragon city of Freehold) to receive a special sleeve badge, consisting of an eight-toothed gear in subdued gray (enlisted) or silver (officers) on a black disc. Anyone who was in the city operation area for more than thirty days, or received another award while in the area, was entitled to wear this sleeve badge.