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The Nycero Gazette
"The War in Ruvelka: Dispatch One"
By Luis Miguel Castejón
4 July, 2009
The highway out of Kaposvár would normally be teeming with thousands of cars and trucks as Ruvelkan tourists, eager to enjoy their summer away from the frigid mountains of the Kurillas, piled on to a mass exodus of summer getaways along the northern Ruvelkan coast. The beaches of northern Ruvelka are usually outshined by their cousins in neighboring Syara, too many of them studded with rocky outcroppings where Ruvelka’s central highlands finally meet the sea. They have a special charm to them however, a homely sense of comfort you rarely get on the swarmed beaches of Makedon to the west.
The roads are still packed, clogged even, with lorries, trucks, and automobiles. But instead of glinting under the summer sun, they smolder and smoke with the remnants of fires. Scorch marks cover the land, asphalt lies in chunks where coherent roads used to be, and the acrid smell of burning rubber throws pillars of ugly and thick black smoke into the air. As we walk between the columns of scorched steel and aluminum, bodies occasionally appear. Some are burnt to a crisp, scarcely recognizable as human. Others are surprisingly devoid of wounds, but the empty lidless eyes staring into the beyond give them away as corpses.
The Syaran soldiers nearby shuffle amid the ruin, picking at the occasional carcass, both metal and flesh, for anything of note. Some are looking for trophies, personal artifacts like watches, buckles, jewelry. Most are looking for something more useful; ammunition from the various Ruvelkan weapons that fire similar cartridges of Syaran guns, tools, and other equipment. Rations are passed over unceremoniously; the Syarans seem to be of a universal opinion that Ruvelkan food is poor in quality and vastly inferior to their own.
Less than 36 hours ago we were wide awake in our tent, the booming sounds of artillery crashing in the distance. Kaposvár burned like a massive bonfire, entire city blocks collapsing like liquid under the shattering shells of Syaran artillery. The Syarans in the north of Ruvelka were evidently unwilling to go through the urban slog that their brothers further south had experienced in Sagerejo. The Syaran commanders I tried speaking with were obviously tight-lipped about their plans, but they did admit they had the city encircled and were tightening the noose. Every now and then there would be the distant boom of a howitzer, but no explosion followed; leaflets urging the garrison to surrender instead fluttered softly to the ground.
The Ruvelkans swore they would defend Kaposvár to the last bullet. Based on all the casings we found they either did so or got pretty close. We awoke in the early morning to a slight breeze and the marching of thousands of Ruvelkan prisoners-of-war back west to holding camps behind the front lines. The Ruvelkans looked exhausted, their boots caked with mud and their uniforms damp with sweat, blood, and oil. What photos we took captured either young men and women who were barely able to fill out their uniforms or middle-aged conscripts who looked like they were scarcely able to carry a rifle.
The Syarans, many of them young boys who seem to be in the same age range as many of the Ruvelkan troops, don’t sneer but look down on the Ruvelkans as they march by. A few make comments here and there, but for the most part the marching columns pass without incident. Victories like these used to be marked by celebrations, like the hoisting of the Syaran colors over Sarud and Balatonalmád, but now the scene is more muted. A year of war has dulled the spirits of the Syarans, who now meander about their newly conquered city, silently observing the destruction their weapons have brought. From what we can tell Kaposvár isn’t as badly hit as Sagerejo was, where less than a third of the original structures still stand. But Kaposvár is still in ruin; many old and famous buildings and monuments are now rubble, and bodies litter the streets where the Ruvelkans decided they would rather die than cede ground. The Syarans have done a good job removing their own bodies from the scene, but the burned out hulls of their trucks and armored vehicles are a reminder that their victory cost them.
Gálvez brews us coffee near our tent, nestled in the small suburb of Töröktarcsa. Töröktarcsa is relatively unharmed. Rows of houses and streets filled with small shops still stand, though many boarded up from when the Ruvelkans first evacuated the city. The monument in the town square says that Töröktarcsa was an important site for the Imperial Separatist capture of Kaposvár during the Ruvelkan Civil War, but today’s Ruvelkans decided it was not necessary for fighting the Syarans. If the Ruvelkans are ever able to return home, the people of Töröktarcsa can take some small comfort in that the most they will have to deal with is layers of dust.
A few thousand Ruvelkans remain, mostly the elderly or those unable to evacuate. Szűts Viktória, a 76 year old grandmother whose grandchildren were evacuated east of the Kurillas nine months ago, serves us tea and biscuits. It’s the last of her supply, she tells us, and now that the city is under Syaran control she’s not sure when she’ll next be able to serve. The old woman doesn’t seem to be perturbed by the events surrounding her, despite the slight sadness in her eyes from not seeing her family.
“One day we’ll be together again.” She tells me with a sad smile. “One day.”
Taking care of the local populace in occupied Ruvelka is a burden that has largely fallen into the lap of international aid organizations, one of the few things left to salvage Syara’s international reputation. A truck carrying Delkoran decals drives through in the afternoon containing care packages for the civilian populace; mostly dried foods and canned goods, and of course bottled water. Young mothers with even younger children and the elderly gather to receive the supplies.
No one here is well fed, but starvation is fortunately a ways away. There are no military aged men or women in good health around to be soon. The closest we see is a young man in a wheelchair being pushed by his much older father. It’s clear that, despite the constant threat of Ruvelkan infiltrators, the Syarans don’t see these people as a threat. And despite the general apathy the Syarans have to their newly-found `citizens’, the Ruvelkans are quick to make themselves scarce when a Syaran armored car passes through, avoiding eye contact with the squad of Syaran soldiers riding atop.
The Syarans put on a front of not fearing the Ruvelkans, but whispers of “sniper” and “Fusilier” are enough to send them scrambling for cover. We hear their chants and early morning prayers just as dawn approaches, but these would-be zealots appear more exhausted than fervent. It’s clear that the summer fighting, the fiercest the war has seen thus far, has taken its toll on them. The casualty figures have not been released yet, but it’s clear that the offensives have incurred tremendous loss of life. That the Ruvelkans appear to have suffered more is not much respite for a Syaran army that appears increasingly unable to make good on its losses.
Despite living near them for a few months now, telling them apart is still difficult. The Syarans insist it's easy; the Makedonians are the tall and arrogant, the Galanians the big and slow, the Scitarians the small and sly, and the Hayren short and stocky. The lattermost have led to some mumbling of a “Hayren civil war”; Ruvelka employs as many ethnic Hayren soldiers in their ranks as the Syarans do, but the Syaran Hayren we spoke to recognize no such thing. Faith, they say, matters far more than anything else.
The Syaran government, no doubt wary of problematic implications of such a term, have denounced any claims of the struggle being a “holy war”, but it hasn’t escaped usage by some Syarans. It’s hard to find a Syaran soldier who doesn’t invoke the name of his All-Mother, the Titan Gaia, in some form or another. Even the most coarse and disconcerting can’t seem to shake the Zobethos faith they were raised in. Faith had shined through the war in some surprising cases. In the weeks before the fall of Kaposvár the bodies of fallen Ruvelkans could be used to define the ever shrinking circle of control the Principality held over the city. Yet every night unarmed Ruvelkans would slink from their trenches and fox holes to recover the bodies of their comrades. Syaran soldiers, sometimes just a few meters away, would watch and do nothing, unwilling to break the Syaran customs of the dead deserving a proper burial. The Syarans have no problem breaking homes and bodies, but they won’t break taboos.
“War crimes” have become a common topic on talk shows and round tables across the region. At night we sit around the radio and what televisions remain operational to listen to foreigners discuss reports of atrocities and criminal acts. Both belligerents, of course, paint the same picture. The other side is committing horrendous acts of violence and violating international law. The Sarrista Accords, they say, are under constant attack by the other side.
The truth is less alarmist, but not completely clean, as we have seen first hand. Ruvelkan women raped by Syaran troops, Syaran prisoners summarily executed by Ruvelkan soldiers. Both sides try to clamp down; the Ruvelkans arrest anyone they find executing POWs and the Syarans shoot their rapists in uniform. But this is a war of millions of people. Some things will inevitably slip through the cracks.
The more troublesome are the acts that blur the line between criminal and unsettling. In Aszód the Syarans run power cables through the canals and rivers near the city, electrocuting Ruvelkan saboteurs and infiltrators trying to sneak through the lines of the siege. Ruvelkan Fusiliers drag back wounded Syarans who scream for help from comrades who rush forward, only to be gunned down in the resulting ambush. Syaran guns shell without concern as to whether the ones on the receiving end are active combatants or wounded lying in field hospitals. Ruvelkan special forces poison water and food supplies leading Syaran troops to die vomiting up their own blood.
War can make you sick. A few years ago Gertrude Burkhart, Erica Hartmann, Shirley Hunter, Fracesca Lucchini, Mio Sakamoto, and Minna Dietlinde Wilcke highlighted the harsh reality of war; you may be fighting for a just cause, but in the end you kill people. You end lives that were nurtured to existence by a loving family, and deny them a chance to grow old. Both the Syarans and Ruvelkans will say that their actions are justified in light of the struggle they are facing. Who knows what will be said when there is finally peace, and we have proper time to reflect on what went down in western Ruvelka in what people have taken to calling “the Zemplen War”.
by Knichus » Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:00 am
The Nycero Gazette
"The War in Ruvelka: Dispatch Two"
By Luis Miguel Castejón
5 July, 2009
The satellite television in our van lets us home in on what the rest of the world is saying. The more distant the nation from the war the more matter of fact the reporting is. The Quenminese news anchor chatters away without much notice, a curious sincere falsetto in her voice as she lists the increasing number of Ruvelkan urban areas that have fallen under Syaran control. The Ossorian reporter, talking from Zovahr, speaks plainly and without much detail. Our own Knichan news reporters make mention of certain specifics without much additional information.
The tune and tone change the closer you get. The Acrean newsman speaks in a grim tone while the Æþurheim reporter gleefully lists off statistics and names. Then the Ruvelkan Chancellor, Edviná Molnár, takes up our screen. Her still firm and determined tone can almost cover up the exhaustion in her eyes as she reiterates her willingness to fight until Ruvelkan soil is cleared of invaders. Almost, but the occasional blink or pause reveals that the Molnár is, on some level, very tired of this war.
She’s not alone. The Syaran soldiers that wander around the ruins of Kaposvár are tired too. Tired of fighting, and worried of the prospect of another bitter winter that seems to come far sooner here than in their native land. They want to go home, to their wives, wines, and villas. Hundreds of years of ethnic blood feuding can’t seem to keep pace with the meat grinder of mechanized warfare.
Some readers back home question how we can so easily filter through the front lines, walk around a war zone and not constantly be stopped and interrogated. With so many reports of saboteurs, infiltrations, and special forces it may seem insane, but it’s not that surprising. We look nothing like either Ruvelkans or Syarans, who know each other too well to confuse either Condottieri or Sadi with one another. Even if we weren’t wearing our press badges and insignias, it’d be obvious we weren’t from here. That has its perks.
The Syaran soldiers are never short of opinions or too shy to share them. They talk a lot in an almost sing-song tone that clashes somewhat with their constantly rolling Rs, same length vowels, and clustered consonants, and they march in song and step that seems to belie the stereotype of fatalist religious fanatics. But it bleeds through elsewhere; Syaran discipline is almost draconian and deviance is punished harshly. The Syarans don’t suffer discontent within their ranks lightly.
The Ruvelkans appear a more disciplined lot, though in truth they’re just more quiet in general. Every Ruvelkan we talk to seems reserved and shy, and their voices can be as soft as the snowfall that blankets their country every winter. Some would interpret this as a quiet confidence in themselves and their cause, but it just seems to be their natural temperament. They are not an outspoken people and it shows in our interactions with them. The reception is not quite chilly as many foreign writers sometimes portray it as but coaxing a conversation out of a Ruvelkan can be troublesome. But once you get them speaking, they can go on and on and on.
You’d be hard pressed to find a Ruvelkan who does not know someone who has already been killed or wounded. It’d be even harder to find someone who hasn’t had a family member conscripted or evacuated. By some accounts, some 40 million Ruvelkans have been evacuated east of the Kurillas, living in tent cities and fed by foreign supplies of food and medicine. Most of Ruvelka’s farmland has either been overrun or bombed, and the rugged country simply can’t support its native population any longer. Not while so much soil is under Syaran control.
Ruvelka is a big country and overpopulated to a degree. The density per square kilometer doesn’t tell the whole story; huge chunks of the population are crowded into a handful of urban areas. Ruvelka’s vast forests and mountain ranges may make for scenic escapes and monuments to the world’s natural beauty, but they leave little room for the growing of crops. During peace Ruvelka can grow just enough to sustain her populace, but during war time its proven impossible. Much has been made about the threat of a Syaran capture of Mátészalka, but the threat of Syara securing the Kenderes steppe and cutting off Ruvelka from shipments of Mansuri grains and foodstuffs are equally terrifying to the poor souls in Debrecen tasked with feeding Ruvelka’s displaced population.
It’s hard to hate the Ruvelkans. They’re too quiet, isolated, and often overshadowed by their loud and boisterous neighbors around them, but deep within their national spirit is a desire to simply live their lives, tucked away from the rest of the world in their snowy mountain kingdom. The mountains that according to the ancient Makedonians once spawned the Ruvelkan people onto the world now stand as snow capped sentinels, bulwarks against Syara’s hordes that spill across the flatter plains and thick forests of western Ruvelka. Somewhere amid the mountain peaks and valleys lay Debrecen, where the Ruvelkan government presumably plots the recapture of their territory.
We bundle everything we have, sleeping bags, notepads, small parcels of food and clothes, and pile into our van. There are enough side roads and local pathways that we can manage to find a way through the urban buildup around Kaposvár and Kunhegyes, though it takes us over three hours. We siphon fuel from abandoned Ruvelkan cars along the way, some of them abandoned in a rush and others that have clearly been sitting there for months. You’d be surprised how often we’ve been able to survive on that.
So we head east for the Ruvelkan lines. Popular media portrays the front lines of the war as static positions marked by barbed wire and miles of trenches. While you can find that in some places, here where the battles are more recent and the gains/losses more fresh, neither side has had ample time to dig in. Large tracts of land look largely unmarked from the scars of war, only to be punctuated by a column of tanks and trucks, turrets sometimes tracking us as we drive past. The large words printed on our van may not stop bullets, but at least it seems to steady some trigger fingers.
After hours on the backroads, we come to a checkpoint manned by Syaran troops. They’ve dug their tank into the dirt so only the turret and cannon are visible, pointed eastward towards some unseen enemy, and right where we’re heading. They stare at us like we’re from another world, and in many ways we are. They search our vehicle but spare us any overt acts of thievery. The officer in charge asks where we’re going, and I say we’re looking for Ruvelkans.
He laughs. “Us too. If you see any, let us know.”
He points towards the end of his tank barrel. “That’s as far as the Commonality goes. Beyond there is flanker land.”
Flanker, or “krilo” is the Syaran nickname for Ruvelkans, or at least one of the less crude ones. Two thousand years ago Ruvelkans guarded the flanks of Syaran phalanxes, an arrangement that carried the Makedonians from the Sanguine Sea to the sands of my native Knichus. The Empire that spawned such a situation is long gone, but some things remain. For a country that has long existed under Syaran dominion, it is a slightly bitter reminder. The Ruvelkans, for their own part, label the Syarans “farkasok”, wolves. It’s not a coincidence that in many Ruvelkan fairy tales and children’s stories, the wolf is a symbol of malice and cruelty.
We drive on for another forty minutes before we are stopped along an empty road by a single Ruvelkan soldier with a raised clenched fist. A dozen more appear out of the woodwork after we come to a stop; had they not revealed themselves we probably would have never known they were there. They inspect our van, our equipment, our clothes and insignias, then send us on our way with few words. One might wonder how people can move so freely with a war going on, but it’s surprisingly simple. The Ruvelkans and Syarans have been blood enemies for too long to mistake foreigners for each other.
We’re not exactly close to Soltvadkert but the signs of battle are spread out enough that we can see its aftermath. Reports of what happened are sketchy, but there was a big battle that saw the Ruvelkans hold off a Syaran attack, after which the Syarans withdrew back west and besieged the Ruvelkan twin cities of Kaposvár and Kunhegyes. Here and there we see some small indications of the fighting; scorch marks and craters, abandoned trucks and personal equipment.
We pass by a relative rarity; an Acrean truck, riddled with bullets and tires punctured, but otherwise alright. No sign of a serious battle or firefight, leaving us to speculate what happened. Friendly fire? A roving patrol of Syarans? Who knows. There’s no blood to be found, so whoever was involved was either lucky or had cleaning supplies on hand. A mystery for another time.
Much has been made of the involvement of the Eracuran rivals in the war. The more alarmist warnings of a next Great War breaking out have thankfully fallen silent, but every now and then they grab all the media attention. If anything they have been overstated. Most estimates place the amount of Nordic soldiers involved in the fighting at half a million. For comparison, there are nine million Syaran and Ruvelkan soldiers fighting and dying. While in some sectors you can find plenty of them, the Nordics are significantly outnumbered.
They leave their marks in other ways. The Ruvelkans don’t say much even when we ask them about their Acrean allies and Æþurian enemies. They’re happy for the help and don’t seem to care whether or not the Æþurians are present. Ruvelkans aren’t bloodthirsty enough to say, “They all bleed the same '', but you can guess that’s somewhere close to the vicinity of how they feel. The Ruvelkans are too utilitarian for that. They’re more thankful for the supplies and fuel the Acreans provide, and the other forms of aid that go not to Ruvelkan units but to their camps and tent cities further east.
The Syarans don’t have a high opinion of the Eracuran soldiers in general. The Nordics are too blunt and uncreative for their tastes. We asked the Syaran troops their opinion of their Æþurian comrades and the response was likening them to sledgehammers; powerful and dangerous, but quite literally only capable of one action: Slamming into the enemy with immense power and strength. The Acreans are skilled, and their weaponry is powerful, but they rely on finesse and technology to fight their battles. The Syarans are being braggadocious when they say they run circles around the Acrean troops, but at Soltvadkert it was the Acrean armor that had to fall back to avoid being outflanked. The Acreans are saying it was the Ruvelkans who gave ground too quickly, and the Ruvelkans say the Acreans were too one dimensional. And of course, the Syarans say they beat them because they’re better. If that was true, one would think that Soltvadkert would have fallen to the Syarans.
Neither Syarans nor Ruvelkans seem to have an affinity for the Eracurans. The Ruvelkans mostly keep quiet, but the Syarans aren’t afraid to voice their opinions. Apart from the Svinians, whom some Syarans consider related owing to their shared language family, and their Æþurian allies, most Syarans we spoke don’t have much to say about the northern continent. They lack the disdain for the Shalumites that the Æþurians share, and recognize the Ossorians for their spirits and sailing, though the latter doesn’t seem to impress them; “Sailors are weak men.”
For some, there is no world outside the war. As we pass through the Ruvelkan lines we can see that their victory here hasn’t done much to improve their spirits. Many of them have homes further west, including the cities that now are under Syaran control. The bloodletting of the previous three months may have stopped for now, but there is now time to mourn and think of their friends that have passed on to another life. Here and there are hastily dug graves and impromptu memorials dedicated to comrades that have lost their lives in defense of the Grand Principality. Empty helmets along grave markers sometimes follow us down the road for miles.
We come across a field hospital set up in an empty field near what we presume used to be warehouses. We can’t find the town name, but Gálvez theorizes that this close to Mátészalka we must be near a transportation hub where trucks and trains carrying offloaded cargo from the ports stop over before heading onward to the rest of Ruvelka. The stench from the hospital and the screaming keeps us away from the goriest of scenes, so we settle for the secondary set of tents where the recovering lay. Uniforms lay in tatters among rows of cots, some slick and some dirty. The bodies that fill them out are paler than normal and look exhausted, but at least they’re alive. The same mixture of old and young greet us with wide open and lidded eyes.
We’re in luck. Sitting on one of her cots, calf bandaged several times and awake enough to carry on a conversation is Hajnalka Juhász, a helicopter pilot. Not an attack helicopter, but a utility, an ARH8. She relays to us that she was shot down a few weeks prior, managed to escape back to friendly lines but lost track of her copilot while being transferred from casualty care to hospital. Despite the fact that much of the tissue on her left leg has been burned away, she wants to get back to flying as soon as possible.
There’s an eagerness behind her eyes, but it's nearly covered by the exhaustion that radiates from her body. Most of the Ruvelkan soldiers we encounter are thin and look almost sickly. It’s not any actual disease or malnutrition, but the war has taken its toll. Spirits have been weighed down by months of bloody and seemingly futile fighting. Many of their friends are gone or irrecoverably scarred. Hajnalka speaks of her determination to get back in the fight, and it carries with it a sense of strong emotional weight. Her two children are currently sleeping in a tent outside Zalaegerszeg, eating by the spoonful out of cans from across Tyran. Her husband, unable to serve because of a bad set of lungs, writes to her with photos of their children attached. Her most prized possession is a small photo of her family from before war, something she prioritized saving from the wreckage of her helo above her pistol. It’s clear she’s not scared of dying; she’s scared of never seeing her children again.
We could talk to Hajnalka for hours about her perspective, but our Sadi companion Darweshi urges us to move on. “Let the poor woman rest”, he says, in a baritone that makes it hard to argue with. We pass through the rest of the hospital collecting snippets here and there. To boast is alien to the introverted Ruvelkans, but there’s a quiet resolve to their spirits. They will keep fighting, and keep dying, to keep their country free. It’s hard not to root for them on some level.
We pack up by the evening and head east, looking for the refugee camps that will give us a truly humane look into this conflict. Not 20 minutes later we have to stop to let an extended convoy of Acrean vehicles drive past us. It’s a rare treat, though to our slight disappointment it’s a supply column of trucks rather than a convoy of tanks and howitzers. It’s clear from the pristine shape of their vehicles that this is a new deployment of troops, sent to relieve the Acrean soldiers currently fighting along the front line.
The Acreans have a shield of professionalism that means they’re never eager to speak with us, but they’re not unfriendly. If anything they’re confused, wondering who let us wander around the rear echelons. Occasional side glances wondering if we’re perhaps Syaran infiltrators remind us that while the Acreans may be fighting here, this is not truly their war. It’s easy to tell them apart from the Ruvelkans; each Acrean soldier seems to carry a collage of equipment and pieces of kit on their body, giving them an almost bulky outward appearance.
These are clearly fresh troops who have not been rotated through before. Apart from the pristine and neat appearance of their uniforms and weapons, the wide eyes they give each wreckage and crater they pass give it away. At one point when the convoy stops, some pile out to investigate a burned out Syaran personnel carrier, a few even snap photos. They quietly and quickly pile back into their trucks when they stumble upon the charred remains of the crew laying nearby.
Welcome to the Zemplen War. They’ll learn soon enough, either from the Ruvelkans or their fellow comrades already in country. Everyone’s baptism of fire comes soon enough. As the convoy finally passes, we wonder which one of them will never return home. Acrean casualties have not been that heavy, but whenever they do die it tends to make the news. On some level that seems almost insulting to the Ruvelkans who had died en masse since the war started, or even to the Syarans. Then again, to many of them the war has become their world. The occasional Eracuran death is a reminder that there is indeed something beyond the confines of this conflict.
The question is who will leave to see it.
by Acrea » Mon Nov 08, 2021 6:49 pm
by Gylias » Sun May 22, 2022 2:23 am
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