Canonical History of Greater Dienstad
 | Canonical history is a record of roleplayed history reconciled by The Macabees. Any additions that are not reconciled will be removed. The dates in the canonical history may not reflect the dates set by the individual contributors to the lore. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. |
The canonical history of Greater Dienstad starts on the eve of the 21st century, when it was still known as Imperial Armies. Dominated then by the Right Wing Collective, this coexistence of conservative states soon gave way to internal disagreements and growing international political tensions as the region changed its focus from international to regional politics. As the inter-regional order of big alliances gave way to a more fractured, fluid, and competitive state of affairs, worsening relations between Greater Díenstad foreshadowed great conflict. These spiraling tensions between former allies ultimately led to the War of Golden Succession, which would eventually reshape the region and cause a severe instability that persists to this day.
Post-war collapses across the region, and political upheavals caused by sudden regime changes — such as events in Dukopolious —, created a vacuum that was soon filled by imperialism. Much of eastern Greater Díenstad was eventually colonized by Stevid, Morrdh, Lyras, and others, leading to conflict between competing powers and growing uneasiness among independent nations in the east. This culminated with the Great Dienstadi War, which involved most of the Greater Díenstadi powers and ultimately came to encompass much of the central and eastern areas of the region.
The war did not settle the question of imperialism, for Greater Dienstad's history continues to revolve around it. Macabéan and Ordenite aggression within central Greater Díenstad have led to three wars in Krasnova and a war over Holy Panooly, as well as to the occupation of much of the former states within the sector. Conflict brews in the west as slave states grow in prominence, even as the Golden Throne invades the great slave state that is the Scandinvan Empire in Gholgoth.
Imperial Armies
Greater Díenstad was first known to the world as Imperial Armies, a region led by Holy Panooly and Guffingford, and populated by large conservative nations like The Macabees, Huzen Hagen, and Tir. At the turn of the 21st century, Imperial Armies' rich, and often violent, history was closely tied to the Right Wing Collective (RWC), an alliance co-founded by Holy Panooly and The Macabees. This was a formative era for the region and events that took place then would play a large role in determining the geopolitical situation that would eventually lead to the War of Golden Succession.
Historiography of this period has proven to be especially difficult due to the large-scale loss of written records. This tragedy is largely inexplicable, in that the question of why most manuscripts were not heavily propagated and reproduced has largely gone without an answer.
What we know is that war, fascism, and political collapse led to the destruction of a great deal of evidence of these years.
By the end of the 20th century, Holy Panooly was the predominant power in Imperial Armies. Strong, highly authoritative, and genocidal under the brutal regime of Dominic Templeton, the country was on the center stage of the world. Amidst book burnings and the indiscriminate oppression, and murder, of its indigenous peoples, the white-dominated dictatorship quickly earned global attention.
Here begins the story of the region's modern-day instability, for it was not long before the first foreign and extra-regional coalitions came to liberate the Panooly people from tyranny. First through the Austar Union and Credonia, then again through an alliance of communist governments led by ViZion, and a third time by a Sarzonia-led amphibious invasion. The first two ended before their threatened invasions, although for reasons that are unknown to us now. We can only speculate that internal divisions or sudden geopolitical distractions caused the interventions to fail prematurely. Sarzonia's invasion, joined by the Austar Union and Axis Nova, was the first to reach the shores of Holy Panooly. The Coalition's war effort stumbled from the beginning, with the heavy loss of warships and embarrassing mistakes caused by the lack of military intelligence, and the invasion ultimately petered out as it slowed in the harsh, humid Panooly jungles.
If the interventionists had intended to squash fascism in Imperial Armies, their efforts would turn out to be counterproductive. Threatened and pressured, the region's strong conservative governments soon banded together under the Right Wing Collectve, an alliance that would come to dominate international politics for many years.
Founded by Holy Panooly and the Golden Throne, and joined by powerful states like Unified Sith, Nazguul, and Huzen Hagen, the alliance could count on its over 50 members at its height. With an aggressive member base, the alliance began fighting a string of wars and other conflicts against rivals in NATO and the New World Order. Under the alliance's leadership, the region began to look outward and the wars were pushed to far away territories, against powers like Celack, Sigmus Octavius, and Credonia. It was a period of rising prosperity, political stability, and — ironic and significant — growing cosmopolitanism.
There are three major forces of change known to us that would soon cause Imperial Armies to reach a tipping point.
The Fall of the Big Alliances
The conflict between RWC and NATO culminated into Operation Brimstone, an audacious NATO offensive to invade and destroy the members of the Right Wing Collective.
While the forces arrayed were massive and bold, the war began to slow almost immediately. Clashes were often chaotic and losses were heavy. While the Right Wing Collective can hardly claim to have won anything from the conflict, NATO suffered mixed results and the war ultimately came to take a toll on both of the aggressors.
Indeed, it was soon thereafter that the Right Wing Collective and NATO broke apart. There was never a formal end. No celebration. No remembrance. They simply fizzled, as member nations began to lose interest in the almost constant warring and in the anxiety of perpetually tense diplomacy. The Golden Throne, one of the Collective's founders, soon joined its former enemy, New World Order. Even this venture ended fruitlessly with a decomposition of that alliance. Subsequent efforts to unify the region failed similarly, a phenomenon that persists to this day.
As the focus moved away from large foreign wars, Greater Díenstadi states began to look inwards.
The Deterioration of Guffingfordi–Stevidian Relations
Stevid and Guffingford enjoyed a warming relation early-on during the fallout of the Panooly Wars. While diplomacy was often combative and tense, communication between the two powers was at least steady and constructive. The two governments enjoyed a common enemy, Credonia, and early on they also benefited from highly aligned foreign policies. Together, they warred against Credonia, and when Holy Panooly fell into civil war following the Sarzonian invasion, it was Stevidian troops who crushed the rebellion. Together with Holy Panooly, the three of them constituted perhaps the most important internal power bloc of Imperial Armies. With the end of the Right Wing Collective, soon came a long period of cooling. An economic boom in Guffingford went to modernizing and expanding the country's armed forces, including its naval forces. The strengthened Guffingfordi navy changed the power of balance between the two countries in the sea between them, prompting the Stevidian Crown to respond with its own aggressive naval program.
The situation escalated when large deposits of crude oil were found in the southern zones of Otium Aqua.
Large and relatively easy-to-access, its discovery invited early heavy investment from Stevidian companies thirsty for economic opportunity. Guffingford responded aggressively and soon moved forcefully into neutral waters to claim those wells as their own. Diplomacy was tense and inadequate. The two powers had become rivals in the quest for sea power, something that for Stevid — an island nation — was non-negotiable, and it seemed as if the two nations were destined for a confrontation. And so it did, when Stevid dispatched a naval task force to pressure the Guffingfordis to withdraw.
Events elsewhere soon compelled them to war. To the west, the Golden Throne burned in a civil war. Guffingford, an ally of Fedala, remained loyal to her oldest friend. The Stevidians, determined to support their allies in Zarbia and Safehaven, declared war on Guffingford and the Throne.
And so began the War of Golden Succession.
Rise of the Golden Throne
Until 2004, the lands of the modern-day provinces of the Golden Throne were occupied by a number of independent states that had been fighting intermittent wars against each other following the collapse of the First Empire of the Golden Throne in 1898. Of these, only the Kingdom of Macabea, the Kingdom of Beda Fromm, and the Republic of Targul Frumos had any international prominence at all, and if that only for their trade.
It would be the Kingdom of Macabea that reunited the empire, finishing this in May 2004 with the fall of Beda Fromm. Under its first emperor, Jonak I, the Second Empire of the Golden Throne quickly took a leadership position in the events that followed Sarzonian intervention in Holy Panooly. With the founding of the Right Wing Collective came a strengthening of ties with Guffingford, Holy Panooly, and Stevid. Thanks to the alliance's aggressive leadership, it also served to bring the newly born empire international attention, including an important growth in trade. There were, of course, fractures beneath the mask of Greater Díenstadi unity.
First, although nominal allies, Stevid and the Golden Throne rarely partook in any direct diplomatic negotiations, meaning the two governments had never established a strong rapport. This became especially evident when Fedala chose a position of neutrality rather than one of mediation during the Stevidian–Guffingfordi escalation. This would come to matter soon, upon the death of Jonak I in 2016.
Second, the empire's neighbors had grown weary of its aggressive foreign policy. In 2007, the Golden Throne went to war with the Swedish Dominions over the Fugue Straits, an island chain well outside the region. The islands were eventually annexed by the empire. Similar actions were fought elsewhere, including against NATO forces. With no big alliances to check each other into inaction, the region's governments began to fear that this aggression would turn inward. By the second decade of the 21st century, relations with Zarbia and Safehaven had begun to go lukewarm.
On 13 May 2016, Jonak I died. His testament left the throne to his grandson, Fedor, rather than to his son, Heinrik. This sparked a succession crisis when Heinrik rallied the nobility to depose the more inexperienced son. It would be the Golden Throne's inability to solidify its friendships with its neighbors that would come to define this conflict.
War of Golden Succession
Prince Heinrik fled to the province of Weigar as soon after his father's will was read and before Fedor's coronation. There, he met with the Weigari aristocracy and quickly mobilized an army. Several imperial units defected to him, all which had at one time or another been under the prince's command during his tenure as a military commander. Most Weigari military units also defected. Hailandkill, a long-time ally of the empire, quickly deployed a reaction force to bolster imperial defenses of its capital city against growing rebel forces.
An early assassination attempt against Heinrik failed to end the revolt quickly. Imperial special forces were inserted into Weigar, the capital which shared its name with the province, but came up empty-handed when it was discovered that the rebellious prince was already on his way to Fedala at the head of a large, veteran army. Fedor and Heinrik clashed at the First Battle of Mons Dei in late May 2016, where an elite imperial division was encircled and destroyed. In early June, the three-month-long Battle of the River Nestor, which hosted the capital of Fedala along its winding banks, began along with the Second Battle of Mons Dei.
Under the pretext of opposition to disproportionate aggression, Safehaven invaded the Golden Throne in early June. Imperial defenses collapsed and withdrew to a line that ran the length of the River Styx, which cuts the southern province of Ruska in half from east to west. By mid-June, the pivotal battles of Mosnoi Bor and Aurillac had begun. In the west, Malatose sent its fleet to intimidate the Golden Throne but was discouraged after facing an initial setback at the Raid of Feathermore Trench. In the northeast, Sarcanza rebelled as well, taking the major city of Prokhorovka by late May and besieging the provincial capital of Marsa Bruth in June.
Guffingford joined the war on its ally's, the Golden Throne's side, prompting Stevid to enter in aid of Safehaven. Guffingford and Stevid are divided by the naturally tranquil Sea of Otium Aqua, which soon fell to the Stevidians when a Guffingfordi military coup overthrew the government and forced its withdrawal from the war. The Guffingfordi navy was routed. This prompted the Golden Throne to sail a fleet into Otium Aqua to gain control of it and threaten the Stevidian home isles with direct invasion. The initial attack defeated defending Stevidian naval forces but was later repulsed in a second engagement with a combined Stevidian and Independent hitmen fleet. Otium Aqua would remain the focus of the conflict between the Macabéan Empire and Stevid.
A Macabéan counteroffensive in the spring of 2017 repulsed Havenic forces along the Ruskan front and pushed them into northern Safehaven, culminating with the Battle of Ishme-Dagan in October 2017. The battle was a strategic success for the Golden Throne, which renewed its offensive in the spring of 2018. That year also witnessed a nuclear escalation between the Golden Throne and Stevid, when the Macabéan Fuermak used nuclear-tipped missiles on the harbored Stevidian fleet and Stevid retaliated with a nuclear attack on the Kríermada outside of Macabea. Out of fear of further nuclear strikes, the two countries agreed to peace talks, which would eventually lead to a cessation of military actions between the major warring parties.
The insurgency in Sarcanza continued until 2022, and the Macabéan war against Zarbia would not end until the latter's annexation in 2026.
Post-War Instability and the Great Díenstadi War
By the end of the War of Golden Succession, the governments of Guffingford, Monzarc, and Indras had collapsed. Months later, New Empire fell into civil war. Guffingford was partitioned while Monzarc and Indras recessed into civil violence. A coup in Safehaven ended the previous democratic government in 2019 and a similar event threw Zarbia into civil war in 2020. While the Golden Throne ended the war territorially enlarged, it was embroiled in conflicts within, along, and outside of its borders. The years between 2019–25 saw an important shift in political influence from the center of Greater Díenstad to the east.
In 2019, the Golden Throne invaded and annexed Theohaunacu. It would prove a long conquest, with recurring rebellions among the southeastern pirate cities focused on Tlaloc, Tiwanaku, and Palenque. Burdened with heavy war debts, the Macabéan economy entered a depression in the first quarter of 2022. It did not meaningfully recover until 2025, and together with the conflicts in Theohuanacu, Zarbia, and Sarcanza, the Golden Throne slowly disappeared from international politics. In September 2020, a communist coup forced a regime change within Dukopolious, a country that had already begun to annex territories along and inside the New Imperial border. Stevid and Matthew Islands suspended relations days later. For reasons still debated by scholars today, Dukopolious attacked a flotilla of Matthew Islands warships, provoking the formation of a coalition that, between 2020–21, would restore the country's former government and end its communist experiment.
Taking advantage of the chaos surrounding Dukopolious, Stevid occupied South Greal in late 2021. By mid-2023, a weakened Dukopolious and much of the war-torn countries around it had fallen to a growing Lyran state. Lyras would soon come to dominate northeast Greater Díenstad, encroaching well into former New Empire and as far south as Greal. New Empire itself was partitioned between Stevidian, Imbrinumian, and Morridane peacekeeping forces between 2022–26. Morrdh occupied New Garrack between 2021–22 and The People's Freedom collapsed into civil war the year after. Growing tensions between the imperialist powers would lead to what Greater Díenstadi historians call the Great Dienstadi War, fought between an Imbrinumian–Lyran-led coalition and Stevid.
Spurred by rapid Lyran expansion in the east, Stevid began to reinforce its colony of South Greal as early as 2022. As its cold war with the Golden Throne stagnated around the Guffingfordi Frontier, Stevid deployed over a million men to its easternmost holding. Counter-mobilizations affected much of the region, driving budgetary increases in most nations' militaries. Growing tensions culminated with Imbrinumian submarine patrols along Stevidian coastal waters, considered to be a clear breach of sovereignty by the Stevidian imperial monarchy.
In 2023, Stevid sunk five patrolling Imbrinumian submarines in a series of attacks. Imbrinium responded with a counter-attack against the Stevidian 2nd Splinter Fleet in Otium Aqua, igniting a war that would come to define Greater Díenstad for the next three years. In the eastern theater of the region, Imbrinium began an assault on the island of Arastonia to use it as a base of operations in its invasion of Stevidian South Greal. This soon prompted Malgrave to enter the war on Stevid's side, intending to liberate Arastonia in an effort to reverse Imbrinumian imperialism. Stevid launched Operation Thunder Hammer in mid-2023, an invasion of Arastonia with intent to drive the Imbrinumian garrison out. Imbrinium would attack Malgrave with biological weapons in the ensuing conflict surrounding Arastonia, leading to the latter's withdrawal from the war and later political collapse.
In early 2024, the apartheid state of Wanderjar, which shared a partial border with South Greal, launched an invasion of the latter. Almost simultaneously, Greal mobilized along its northern border to support Stevidian operations around Arastonia, prompting Lyras to launch a sudden invasion of Greal in support of its Bredubar Covenant ally Imbrinium. Lyras launched a simultaneous surprise attack on the Stevidian 5th Splinter Fleet, sinking much of the fleet. And in north-central Greater Díenstad, Morrdh crossed the border into Imbrinium-held eastern Mordent, escalating the conflict into a truly trans-regional war.
Consolidation and the End of the Great Díenstadi War
In central Greater Díenstad, the Macabéan annexation of Theohuanacu began in 2019 and ended by 2021. It was almost immediately followed by a trio of pirate wars fought between the free cities of southeastern Theohuanacu and the Golden Throne. These led to the gradual direct integration of the area into its empire, finalizing with the end of the Third Theohuanacu Pirate War in July 2025. These events, together with the end of the Sarcanzan insurgency in 2022 and the emergence of stability in the Havenic territories acquired from Safehaven, allowed the Macabéan empire to look outward again.
In February 2026, it escalated its ongoing border conflict with Zarbia and fully annexed the country. Between May and June of the same year, as the Great Díenstadi War raged on to the east, the Golden Throne annexed the northern half of the island of Indras. It met its only international resistance from Lamoni, which annexed southern Indras in response. The Golden Throne signed the Treaty of Hoogensbosch with Stevid in July, providing a framework for peace and cooperation between the two rivals. The treaty also partitioned much of central Greater Díenstad into two zones of influences and established a mutual defense agreement with the intention of enforcing this new status quo, known as the Hoogensbosch Doctrine. As part of the treaty, Stevid ceded its Guffingfordi territories in exchange for the occupied island of Vasozia, a strategically valuable stepping stone between the two empires just north of Otium Aqua.
It was the Hoogensbosch Doctrine that the Macabees invoked to occupy Holy Panooly and New Empire in late 2026. Taking advantage of the political turmoil that was distracting most of the regional powers, the Macabéan construction giant Navitek hired a small army of military contractors out of Tarn and annexed the southern half of the Jumanota Isthmus which connects Holy Panooly and Adaptes Astrates. It invited the United World Order, a newly emerging power within Greater Díenstad that had recently partitioned former Red Star Union with Mokastana, to annex the southern half of Holy Panooly and pin down Panooly defenses as Navitek's invasion spread into the north. To further destabilize the country, the firm ordered the execution of Panooly dictator Dominic Templeton, having him killed by a cruise missile. This prompted the Golden Throne to invoke the Hoogensbosch Doctrine to occupy northern Holy Panooly. The country was then partitioned, the two halves becoming vassal states of their respective occupiers. Holy Panooly is considered one of the worst humanitarian crises in Greater Díenstadi history, with over 270 million civilian deaths from disease, war, and oppression between mid-2026 and late 2027.
In New Empire, the Golden Throne quietly negotiated with the three peacekeeping powers in the former country, replacing these forces with their own. By mid-September, a reunited New Imperial senatorial government was propped in power in exchange for a relationship of vassalage to the Macabéan empire.
As the Macabees strengthened its position in central Greater Díenstad, the war in the east slowly came to an end. Conflict expanded to waters near Indras and even off the Macabéan mainland, while in Stevidian Greal the Wanderjarian offensive had stalled and the Imbrinumians simply laid waste to the land. There, the war came to an end with much of the pre-war status quote still in place. Even in Mordent, the conflict continued only until a nuclear exchange prompted Lyras to intervene and force a peace agreement, threatening to otherwise occupy both states by means of "peace invasion."
Thus ended an epoch of Greater Díenstadi history that, like the one before it, would define the next.
Fascist and Slaver Wars
Theohuanacu erupted in rebellion again in August 2026 with funding and military aid from the Scandinvan Empire in Gholgoth. The Scandinvans sought to monopolize the central Greater Díenstadi slave trade that had peaked by the mid-20s, agreeing to feed the rebellion in return for monopsony privileges over the slave market. It was the pirates who revealed the Gothic power's role in the rebellion, hoping to draw the Macabéan empire into a two-front war. It accomplished this goal when the Golden Throne declared war on the Scandinvan Empire in September of that year.
While the Macabéans undertook possibly one of the greatest mobilizations in Greater Díenstadi history, preparing an invasion army to cross the ocean to Gholgoth, instabilities began to arise in Krasnova and Holy Panooly. Krasnova, formerly known as Red star union under a Slavic-dominant communist regime, was partitioned with Mokastana after the communist government collapsed to a right-wing military uprising. Continued tensions between Mokastana and United World Order were not abated by a Macabéan attempt to enforce peace by offering the Mokans collateral against the risk of an Ordenite war of aggression on the island. It was the Mokans, ironically, who struck first, attacking the Ordenite Wehrmacht and Krasnovan army along the border in May 2027. The Mokans, with the help of a growing coalition of nations that included Stevid, Morrdh, and Holy Marsh, would eventually evict the Ordenites out of the country.
While the war in Krasnova raged, the security of Ordenite-held South Panooly became a concern to the Golden Throne. The war powers were threatening the Ordenites in an area of the region that the Golden Throne considered its backyard, escalating tensions along the Panooly Frontier. Expecting a Macabéan entry into the war, United World Order's Wehrmacht launched an invasion of North Panooly in late July, starting a war known as the War of Panooly Reunification. A week-long offensive would almost succeed in surrounding the capital, Panooly City, and eliminating the majority of the Macabéan garrison before the Golden Throne could reinforce their position. The invasion was thwarted only due to a tenacious defense by the small imperial garrison and an emergency amphibious operation to strike along the southwestern and, later, southeastern coastlines.
The Ordenite garrison in South Panooly surrendered in mid-December 2027. In Krasnova, the war ended in February 2028 after a nuclear exchange. The Ordenites agreed to abandon their conquest of the country, although the independent state of Krasnova retained its independence from the socialist, Mokan-propped UESS of the east. This state of affairs proved to be short-lived when Mokans elected a more isolationist government that eventually withdrew from the island entirely. The Ordenites returned to Krasnova in late July 2029, outright annexing its former vassal and soon thereafter occupying the entirety of UESS.
The Macabees first arrived in Gholgoth with an advanced guard of its fleet in August 2027. By the beginning of 2028, the entirety of the imperial invasion fleet and its Imbrinumian allies had assembled in southern Gholgoth, sweeping the seas south of the Scandinvan mainland of Drana. Framing the conflict as a war against slavery, the Golden Throne escalated in late 2027 by invading Nicaro, which was being used by pirate forces to import Scandinvan military and civilian aid and smuggle it into a blockaded southeastern Theohuanacu. And in May 2028, the Macabéan invasion of Drana began – the first invasion of a Gothic power by a Greater Díenstadi nation in history. The war would ultimately end in mid-2030, when the Scandinvan port city of Drasdag fell and the two agreed to a bilateral peace treaty.
Although the Gothic War is often portrayed as an anti-slavery military campaign, historians sharply debate this. There is a strong academic consensus that the Golden Throne launched its invasion as a show of force and to warn local regional powers that the Macabéan empire would respond forcefully to encroachments within its area of influence. Likewise, in many ways the war helped to strengthen slavery in the region's far west, where the slave states of Potthan and Ralkovia joined in a loose mutual defense agreement. Ralkovia garrisoned northern Potthan in 2027 to control the mouth of the great river that feeds into the Bay of Chains, prompting the Golden Throne to prop up the neighboring democracy of Barjaanistan in an effort to establish a foothold it could later exploit.
This is the situation that Greater Díenstad finds itself in now.