The British are Coming | Summoning the UK.

CHP5 - Just War Theory.

"As speech separates humans from apes, so morality separates civilization from the barbarians." - Emmanuel Goldstein, Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Gim Township, Principality-Louria Border Region

War was messy, it always had been and it always would be. Confusion reigned, friendlies would fire on one another without realizing it, troops would give into their hatred of the enemy, executing their prisoners and civilians would be forced from their homes as basic utilities collapsed.

But those facts didn't automatically render any efforts to mitigate their proliferation futile.

For the ancient Romans war was considered nefas ("wrong, forbidden") and the Ius Gentium ("Law of Nations") was conceptualized to afford soldiers and civilians alike some basic protections seen as universal to human beings in a bid to better regulate the conduct of war. Today, it is often seen as a simplistic precursor to modern international law.

With the precedent set, almost two thousand years later, the nations of Europe would come together to draft the first Geneva Conventions, a formalized document considered legally binding by the governments which signed it. In the year 2022, just prior to its summoning, the United Kingdom was a signatory to the first and three other subsequent Geneva Conventions.

In this new world, however, the rules of war were winner takes all.

In this new world, the Louria Kingdom held no concerns for matters of ethics and morality.

Captain Moiji's forces would fight valiantly at Fort Mohan, managing to defend their position for over an hour in spite of the Lourians quickly establishing air supremacy, but the point remained that infantry were little more than target practice for any experienced Wyvern knight, and as a result Moiji and his men all perished that night in the Battle of Fort Mohan.

Not a single man surrendered, or even fled.

Upon the total disintegration of the defending Qua-Toynian force, the vanguard troops of the Lourian Eastern Subjugation Army set fire to what was left of the Principality's border fortifications before making their advance onto the town of Gim proper.

Though most of the town's population had been evacuated in the days prior to the invasion, and still more had been able to flee even after due to Moiji's sacrifice, Gim was a large town with a storied history, and many of its vulnerable or stubborn residents had either chosen to remain or been unable to leave until it was too late.

It was a slaughter.

To prevent anymore Qua-Toynians from eluding their grasp, and without any opposing ground forces to dissuade them, the Lourian vanguard split into two halves, with each going around opposite sides of Gim's outskirts before encircling it entirely, cutting off all avenues of escape.

General Adem, the notoriously sadistic commanding officer of the Eastern Subjugation Army had given his troops free reign to do as they wished to the town and what remained of its inhabitants, with the exception that they were to let 100 townsfolk flee in the aftermath, so that they might spread word of the atrocities committed in Gim to the rest of the Principality.

His intent was to wage a war of fear before a war of swords.

Looting, raping, arson and mass executions proliferated throughout the town as the Lourians swarmed it, anyone healthy enough to work was put in shackles to be sent to mines and farms in Louria, while any woman attractive enough was 'requisitioned' by the army's wealthier officers to either sell to their friends back home, or to keep for themselves.

Then, once their blood lust had finally been satisfied, the Lourians set fire to Gim just as they had Fort Mohan, with the thirty-thousand strong vanguard force continuing their advance eastward into Qua-Toyne, while the main force, numbering over two hundred thousand strong finally begun to cross the border behind them.