Manifest destiny

[Rhodellia]

Manifest destiny

While most of Aurelia’s ex-colonial nations have long since reconciled with their indigenous populations, Native Aurelians never found such peace in Rhodellia. Rhodellia spent the entirety of its 428-year existence warring against hostile Native Aurelian neighbours and repressing those that resisted assimilation. 

Robbed of justice at every turn, and seeking the swiftest possible end to their peoples’ postcolonial suffering, the Native Aurelian tribes of Rhodellia’s Goldenthal Province banded together. They formed the ‘Native Aurelian Liberation Army’ from a rag-tag bunch of volunteer militias, community self-defence groups, and traditional warrior societies. The NALA spearheaded a popular rebellion known as the Gold Valley Uprising, driving the Rhodellian military out of Goldenthal after a decade of bloody civil war. And from the ashes rose the Native Aurelian Free State, a breakaway nation centred around Pan-Indigenous ideals and Anti-Colonial principles.

As of 2022, and Rhodellia and the NAFS have been locked in a bitter stalemate for 33 years. But with internal crises brewing within the NAFS, the development of new military technologies, and Greater Anglia’s aggressive expansionism and war-mongering siphoning the rest of the Wurld's attention, the Rhodellian government in Friedrichstadt may have finally found its chance to break the stalemate and win the war.

Whatever is going to happen,
The NAFS will not go down without a fight.

OOC: This is the designated RP thread depicting the Kingdom of Rhodellia's conflict and war preparations against the Native Aurelian Free State. Once new expansion guidelines are released at some point in Q1, I'll write a formal Land Expansion request for the NAFS's re-annexation. The resumption of high-intensity conflict with the NAFS is scheduled to canonically start in September 2022 and end in Late 2023. If you would like to get involved in the conflict in some way (e.g by deploying humanitarian aid workers, sending foreign volunteers, selling weapons, imposing economic sanctions, or actually engaging in interstate armed conflict against Rhodellia), feel free to post in this ebin thread. Coordinating our actions will take place on the Eurth discord, mostly in the #aurelia text channel.

Table of Contents

Prologue - Introduces Rhodellia's long-running conflict with its Native Aurelian populace and neighbours. Authored by @Rhodellia.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Rhodellia (see edit history)

[Rhodellia]

Prologue

When Aroman ships first landed in Aurelia almost two thousand years ago, the continent’s indigenous peoples faced an uphill battle against colonialism. Crippled by foreign diseases and politically divided, local indigenous tribes, kingdoms, and empires failed to drive out the Aroman settlers through military force. The Aromans then subjugated and supplanted the local Native Aurelian population through superior military might, political cunning, and economic control. During the Age of Discovery, newer colonial powers such as Dolchland and Lysia would repeat the same story, starting their own colonial ventures in other parts of Aurelia. Of these, Rhodellia, the unification of Dolchland’s colonies in the Gulf of Auriel, remains notorious for having perhaps the most brutal and bloody history regarding Native Aurelians.

While most of Aurelia’s ex-colonial nations have long since reconciled with their indigenous populations, Native Aurelians never found such peace in Rhodellia. Rhodellia spent the entirety of its 428-year existence warring against hostile Native Aurelian neighbours and violently repressing conquered peoples that resisted assimilation. It wiped out entire tribes through disease, famine, and massacres. It routinely displaced peoples from their ancestral homelands before resettling them with foreign colonists. It killed off entire cultures and language groups in boarding school classrooms, child removal programmes, and myriad other cultural assimilation projects. In the name of ‘Manifest destiny’ and its ‘civilising mission’, Rhodellia damaged practically every Native Aurelian community it ever touched beyond recovery. Native Aurelians are understandably embittered, especially since the political, economic, and cultural legacy of colonialism still haunts them into the present day.

Though discrimination based on race was always illegal in Rhodellia, its indigenous population still face a long list of problems. Native Aurelians have long protested about ignored land rights; demographic replacement; cultural erasure; wealth inequality; discrimination in recruitment and selection; police brutality; nonexistent political representation; and the general erosion of rights, liberty, and local autonomy under an increasingly authoritarian and centralised national government. But at every turn, their elected representatives in parliament (almost all of whom are of Dolchic descent) either ignore or downright rebuke their pleas, and fail to act on problems (if they even acknowledge that there even is an issue in the first place). Many Native Aurelians feel as if their government actually treats them like second-class citizens, as if they are screaming into a void, as if their country’s democratic process is actively failing them. At the same time, Rhodellia still officially fashions itself as the most democratic and progressive country in Aurelia.

Despite their history of suffering from abuse, most Native Aurelians still cling to the hope of a brighter future. They think that by making small steps here and there, through classic protest actions such as political demonstrations, labour strikes, affirmative action, direct appeals to politicians, and posting hashtags on Wittier, they can eventually achieve equality and social justice. But other, more disillusioned Native Aurelians feel that real progress is either too slow or non-existent. The most enraged among them demand a complete breakaway from Rhodellian (read: White Dolchic) society. So rather than civil resistance, these more radical sects of the Indigenous Justice movement resort to more extreme means of righting the wrongs of the past. And most of them involve violence.

When tyranny becomes law rebellion becomes duty, as is the time-honored tradition among Native Aurelians in Rhodellia. Throughout the forests, foothills, and mountains of rural Nordwalde Province, thousands of local Powanak people wage guerrilla war against security forces and pro-government militias. A bit further north, in former ‘Goldenthal Province’, local indigenous tribes united together and staged the ‘Gold Valley Uprising’, pushing the Rhodellian military to the South Bank of the Nordfluss River and establishing the Native Aurelian Free State. In other parts of Rhodellia, Native Aurelian radicals often engage in lone wolf attacks and shootouts against police and military personnel. More and more radicalised Native Aurelians are refusing to take their oppression lying down.

To the Native Aurelian separatist movement, the government establishment in Friedrichstadt must learn that their actions have consequences. And Rhodellia says ‘likewise’.

Violence is escalating as the Kingdom of Rhodellia strikes back on all fronts of its fourth-generation war against Native Aurelian separatism. Police and military reprisals are often swift and brutal. The military routinely deploys armoured fighting vehicles, combat drones, and even gunships and artillery against people who still count as Rhodellian citizens. People in many Native Aurelian-majority counties effectively live under martial law and military occupation. Indigenous Justice activists often suffer from harassment, surveillance, and even mass arrests. Rhodellia's actions to suppress internal dissent have garnered much international condemnation, but Prime Minister Philip ‘Phil’ Seymour insists that such drastic measures are 'necessary evils' to combat terrorism and restore peace to his war-torn country.

In the eyes of the Rhodellian government, the destruction of the Native Aurelian Free State remains a top priority. The NAFS actively destabilises the kingdom by stoking racial tensions, sponsoring separatist activity, and orchestrating terror attacks. The rebellious breakaway state continues to be a major thorn in the kingdom's side, and is becoming impossible to ignore as its power and influence grows. But two failed invasion attempts, tens of thousands of casualties, and over three decades of military stalemate later, destroying the Free State has proven to be easier said than done. However, in spite of its past failures, Rhodellia refuses to abandon its aspirations of reconquest; the war is still far from over.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Rhodellia (see edit history)