In retrospect, there were omens, at least according to later Imperial court chroniclers.* The winter of 2353 was much colder than usual, but despite that, multiple bears, the holy symbol of California since time immemorial, were seen walking down from the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada down into the Valley. At their head, it was said, was a golden bear**, a creature mentioned often in folktales and identified completely with the land, but virtually never seen before. The animals lumbered down through the warring states of Newton, Sinclair, and Rubinstein, and where they went, battles ceased. The chroniclers report that no soldier dared fight while the bears marched, for fear of getting struck down by the divine powers incarnate in ursine garb.
The bears then proceeded down to Sacramento, in the state of Waters, eventually lumbering towards the entrance of King Gustavo Waters’ palace. The bears walked surprisingly delicately into the King’s great hall, where they supposedly bowed (as much as a bear can bow, one assumes)—but not to the King, to his loyal squire and retainer Elton Yudkow. The bears, the chroniclers report, withdrew as suddenly and silently as they came, leaving a baffled king and an even more baffled squire behind.
California at this point was a mess of warring states and pathetic warlords, though extensive consolidation had occurred when compared to the first post-Event century. The map above is in many ways a simplification and shows more than anything the states’ spheres of influence more than directly administered territory (with the exception of Chu, with its poor, mountainous land that was nonetheless completely centrally-administered). Nevertheless, even from the map and the geography that we have already discussed, the status of the states can be gleaned. The Imamite state of Abbas controlled the entirety of Socal and was interested in maintaining the chaotic state of affairs to the north and subjugating the independent warlords in the lower Valley. Hernandez and Rubinstein had joined forces to partition wealthy, dying Newton, though they would almost certainly eye each other uneasily when the job was done. Sinclair aimed to control the strategic-though harsh- terrain of the Sierra Nevada and break the power of the non-aligned warlords while all other powers were distracted, with an eye to seizing their own piece of Newton. Flores and Chu were united and preparing to go on the warpath.
The kings of Waters, while powerful in their own domains, had faced competent, organized noble revolts throughout the last century, giving up more and more power in the process. A series of Kings unable to meaningfully exert their authority outside their crownlands led to an isolated court with no friendships and many de facto independent vassals. King Tyrus Chu and Queen Drusilla Flores, both rulers in their own right, saw an opportunity to partition the crownlands and in April 2354 (and according to the chroniclers a year to the day exactly since the bears’ visit) sealed their alliance with a lavish wedding in Tyrus’ palace at Humboldt. They also hired an assassin to do away with the heirless King Gustavo. The chaos of the interregnum, they hoped, would cause Waters’ autonomous vassals to defect to them as the strongest nearby powers of their own accord, leaving room for an easy seizure and partition of the crownlands among themselves. Unfortunately for them, when Waters was killed while out riding in Napa, his body peppered with so many arrows he reportedly looked like a chicken, there was no interregnum, and as it turned out, Elton Yudkow would be far more of a challenge than they bargained for.
We do not know much about Elton’s origins. Even his name is suspicious. “Yudkow” is not a classically Californian name, nor is it particularly traceable to any other place or people. There are two schools of thought about it, one perhaps more credible than the other. Elton was, as even his Imperial chroniclers and followers acknowledged, a willful, proud man with a capricious sense of humor. It is very possible that it simply popped into his head one day and caught his fancy. Some more fringe scholars think that he came from a family who converted to Judaism who originally bore the surname Jock. In Hebrew, “Jock” would be rendered “ יך” or “ קי”, with the letters “Yud-Kuf” or “Yud-Kaf/Chaf”. This is an intriguing theory, and it makes a rough kind of sense on first glance. Unfortunately, there is no real evidence to support this. There were Jews, mostly of the Reform and Conservative schools, in the Valley, the warlord Rubinstein state being a particularly prominent example, but there is no evidence that there was any real conversion among the thin contemporary sources we have. Additionally, Elton’s philosophical writings feature no particularly exceptional knowledge about the tenets and observance of Judaism. ** It is a mystery, like almost all he touched. We know Elton lived, died, ruled, and wrote. What we do not truly have is Elton the man or Elton the child. There is a great ghost at the center of our portrait, and while we can shine light around the edges, we are ultimately left with a shadow.
Elton was almost certainly not sent to the Court of Waters by virtue of his family’s political connections, as many children were in those days. His actions as wartime ruler of Waters and Celestial Emperor suggest the picture of a striver, someone born with great intelligence and a chip on his shoulder (rather curious for the founder of a religion that highly values stillness, peace, and harmony with one’s self). This, and the fact that no records of any “Yudkows” owning land anywhere in the area, seems to indicate that he was either lowborn or of exceedingly minor nobility fallen on hard times and considered effectively no better than a peasant. More than likely, some minor functionary near his birthplace noted his intelligence as a child and thought to ask the royal court if they needed a position filled. The records of the old Castle Waters in Solano indicate that he was brought on board as a cook’s assistant, a terrible job involving immense time pressure, intense heat (so much so that there were admittedly infrequent reports of kitchen boys dying from heatstroke), and frequent hauling of heavy loads. The chief cooks also tended to the martinet at this time, at least if Martin Woolpacker’s contemporary satire
Thomas, or a Kitchen Tale provides an accurate picture. Its description of a “cook’s temper on blazing boil, for rewards so paltry, for endless toil” and a cycle of violence over the most trivial matters such as “heeding not the warning for salad dress’, nine strong punches ‘bout the chest” hint at the grim existence of a kitchen boy. We can well imagine that Elton would have sought any way out he could. Fortunately for him, at some point in 2251, he caught the attention of King Waters, for he was listed in that year’s records not as “Elton, kitchen boy”, but as “Elton, squire”.
According to Lucinda Bihari, the Early Imperial chronicler generally considered to be the most reliable, in the hour after the news of the King’s death reached the castle, Elton did five things. First, he went to speak to Waters’ wife, Queen Heather Tehama. Bihari does not report what he said or did in that meeting, but he emerged with the Queen half an hour later. In the hall, he gave an speech where he declared, in a voice that sounded “almost inhuman, impassioned, frenzied, unfamiliar as Elton to all who heard it”, that “Waters would be revivified, but under another’s name, and would rule all California”. Immediately after the speech, he and the Queen were married in front of the stunned courtiers, who were prevented from leaving the castle. He then went to the barracks to raise the castle guard and with their help rounded up a few of the King’s personal attendants who for a variety of reasons had not, as they normally did, go with the King on that fateful trip, executing them immediately. On the sixty-first minute after the news came to court, Elton formally declared war on the states of Chu and Flores.
The Northern War took six months. Two of those months were purely devoted to marshalling forces. There was a month of maneuvering and skirmish culminating in one battle, and then three months of siege warfare. Elton’s tactics were with a few exceptions fairly unremarkable (but competent), but his strategy was unparalleled.**** Mountainous terrain is not generally used for rapid aggressive warfare, but Elton’s strategy of pushing through the fortified mountain passes of Bragg and Mendocino no matter the cost gave him a crucial if costlu edge against Chu and Flores. Neither expected little Waters to go on the offensive and they could have never conceived it would happen so quickly. Additionally, because of Chu’s extreme centralization and its poor terrain, every one of the farms Elton’s soldiers burned hurt King Tyrus far more than it had any right to. By late June, Tyrus had to move or watch his kingdom be disintegrated in front of his eyes. They had been waiting for Queen Drusilla’s forces to make their way to Humboldt, but only a few had arrived. Tyrus decided to try and use Elton’s aggressive moves against him, chasing down small groups of soldiers and forage parties and striking larger forces at nightfall. But Elton had a trick up his sleeve. He had as many as 75% of his 3000 soldiers withdraw half a day’s ride away from the main force before the forces of Chu arrived and ordered the remaining soldiers to dirty their armor and act dispirited. The goal was to make King Tyrus reassess how badly their losses must have been when sacking those mountain castles. All the soldiers at the front needed to do was to last the assaults until they could be reinforced. It worked, and near the aptly-named castle of Fortuna, King Tyrus’ 5000-strong army was utterly wiped out at the cost of only 450 on Elton’s side and the King himself was killed leading from the front. In three months, the state of Chu had collapsed completely. Flores was now faced with a dilemma. There was a much stronger than anticipated enemy that had completely destroyed their ally and now faced their widely dispersed forces along a border they had not bothered to defend. Peaces were offered, even extravagant ones, including giving up half the state to Elton. None were accepted. Elton would accept nothing less than total surrender and absorption into his state. It only took three months, repeating many of the same aggressive raiding tactics as before, but this time, there was essentially no resistance. They swept through town after town, castle after castle, arriving after only a month at the Queen’s capital of Redding. It was the only significant pocket of resistance Elton would encounter, but after two months it too fell. Elton had consolidated the North at the cost of relatively few lives in just six months. His temporal power in the North was completely unquestioned now.
_______________________________________________________
*I’m diverging from the mod’s canon in this chapter to some extent, mostly because I thought a loose retread of the Warring States Period (incidentally, a period of which I know almost nothing, so I’m sure there are mistakes galore) was more interesting than what the title history says.
**In reality, the California Grizzly, the “golden bear”, has apparently been extinct since the 1920s, and is memorialized by California’s flag, sports teams, and military installations. Californian black bears are still around, though.
***The last name didn’t really make sense to me, so this was one of the actual possible explanations I came up with.
****When he died, he had 21 Martial, according to the history files, with no illness or anything that could have hurt those numbers. That pretty darn good but not-amazing stat, combined with the things he’s done, makes me think he wasn’t really a combat god but that he was very, very, good at one or two things. Also, probably because of CKII’s combat system, most AARs tend to feature tactical geniuses rather than strategic, so I thought it could be cool to change it up.
__________________________________________________________
Well, here it is. Hope you guys enjoy. I think it was kind of a problem that I have next to no familiarity with military history, so I hope I'm not
totally off-base with how a war could have worked.