Within a handful of months, Theril was reduced to rubble – overwhelmed by far-superior numbers, and with no quick reprieve from across the desert.
The Kahn was outraged – as much as to his own underestimations as to the Halite atrocities. Halite emissaries were given a simple option: Surrender and serve under the Khan, or return to their civilization to warn of their imminent annihilation. Their numbers were mixed, as many staying as leaving. On the heels of those that returned to their homes rode an ever-increasing army of Gaian cavalry, the elite of whom had adopted iron plate armor and practiced swordsmanship over javelin throwing.
These Knights were constantly reinforced by Catapults and new recruits from across the desert, thanks to a new highway originally begun to link Juna with the city of Theril. Arranged so, the Halite forces fell quickly, and two more cities lay in ruins. New Theril was constructed on the ruins of the old, and heavily reinforced as a forward staging post against the Halites, and large armies massed there in readiness, waiting for the signal to move South.
The reason they were waiting, of course, was for Gaian forces to also skirt the desert to the East, approaching the Halites at a flanking angle. To further doom the arrogant civilization, the Prasians too had had about enough of their impertinence, and started to invade them from the North. Not perfectly arranged, the Khan took the opportunity regardless, setting the Gaian forces in motion.
Half of the forces at New Theril advanced East, joining with the secondary armies moving in down the coast before drilling South into the Halite territory. The other primary forces swept West along the Halite border to provide relief to hard-pressed Prasian forces. A formal alliance was brokered and the armies of two cultures brought arms to bear against the Halite, driving ruthlessly Southward, reducing cities to ruins, until finally they joined with the secondary armies again, collectively resting before resuming their drive toward the Halite capital.
Reinforced with increasing desperation as the implacable Gaians continued to advance, still in alliance with the Prasians, walls thickened and strengthened, Catapults dotting the battlements; the city of Halit itself was a formidable stronghold indeed. But it wasn't enough. Gaian ships had transported dozens of more advanced Trebuchets, which devastated the defenses of Halit from outside their Catapults' range.
The surrounding fields swarmed with armor-clad Knights, their polished armor reflecting sunlight as efficiently as they did the Halite arrows, seeming as rivers of light cutting swathes through Halite infantry trying to fracture their lines. Stones flew from Halit defenses, impact craters dotting the soft soil as the engineers futilely tried to smash a nimble column of Prasian light cavalry, while immense boulders were hurled by Gaian Trebuchets in reply, oft destroying entire sections of wall in addition to the Catapults sitting atop them.
Civilians escaping the carnage, surrendering to the attackers, were welcomed and directed to nearby Gaian encampments, or to the ships returning to the Northern cities. The Kahn, who had rode with the primary armies from the outset, steadfastly maintained throughout the campaign that their battle was with the Halite ruler and those loyal to him, not the citizenry; being an autocratic Monarch, the Halite ruler more often than not took what action he best preferred, with or without the support of the people he supposedly represented.
Only a few days after the allies began their bombardment the Catapults were neutralized, and the next phase of the operation began. Unlike most of the Halite cities encountered previously, the walls were too high to scale, and too thick to knock down – from the outside that is. As soon as the danger of their destruction was reduced, the Trebuchets were wheeled closer to the city so that the immense boulders the slung impacted instead against the inside of walls further around – not something they were designed to withstand. By concentrating bombardment on key areas, the effect was maximized, and it was only a matter of hours before the targeted sections collapsed outward.
In an unanticipated move, a large portion of the desperate Halite armies stormed awaiting Gaian infantry out of the gate as the wall was breached in a bid for escape. Gaian Knights stormed the city through the gaps opened in the walls, while Prasian cavalry, untrained in municipal combat and thus held in reserve, rode swiftly in defense of their allies, catching their foes unawares as they thundered around the base of the wall, cutting directly through the Halite column gushing from the city like pus from a wound.
Surprised soldiers cast their weapons down in surrender, others made a run for it and were summarily rounded up and captured, while the more foolhardy turned to face this new threat, and were cut down by archers amid the Gaian infantry. The Prasian commander who ordered this response was later granted by the Kahn the Delphi Cross, for outstanding initiative in battle.
The bulk of the Halite defenders, however, were still resisting within the city, and the pacifying of the city took as long again as the siege to gain entrance. Finally, with only a few pockets of resistance confined to isolated sections of the outlying city, it was time to make a try at the final objective – the independently defended palace enclosure. While siege engines were again wheeled into position, the Kahn and elite regiments of soldiers gain entrance by way of escape passages from outside the city, revealed by the architect, who had sought the Kahn out purposefully after fleeing the city days before the main siege.
Caught by surprise, the guards of the sanctum where the passage originated were able to be taken down without alerting the other defending forces, and the Kahn made his way to the Halite throne room with his personal guard, where the Halite King defiantly, not to mention foolishly, declared that he would remain on the throne until he died, and would relinquish it to no other.
The Gaian Kahn replied matter-of-factly that he already had a far superior throne, so such an arrangement was perfectly acceptable. Thus he instructed his Guard Captain bind the King to his throne, and they abducted him by means of the same tunnel they had gained entrance by. Remaining Halite forces capitulated when they realized they were no longer defending anything worthwhile. The war was over.
In acquiescence with the Halite King's request, he was still strapped into his throne when it was fired into the ocean by a Gaian Trebuchet. The city of Halit, like many others, was rebuilt, except for the palace compound, which became the Kahn's second residence. The adjoining secondary palace, originally housing the Halite King's many concubines, was converted and gifted to the Prasian King in gratitude for his alliance.
The Kahn was noted for saying "One wife is enough for any man, but one can never have too many friends."
Scot Smithson, having delivered his message to the Juna garrison, was inducted to serve directly under the Kahn in his Royal Guard when the ruler passed through to command the armies. Serving with great distinction, he was injured in the final battle for Halit, but survived, and took the hand in marriage of Cloud Pilat shortly after.
The tale of Karl Pilat's last charge was brought to light by one of Old Theril's common soldiers, who had managed to escape the Halite patrols and live in the ruins of the city until the Gaian armies arrived and rebuilt. He told of how the remaining defenders split up and crept silently throughout the city, ambushing patrols in order to sow terror within Halite ranks.
When presented at the court of the Kahn in Gaia, he immediately presented himself to Cloud, giving her news of her father's death – the soldier had seen it himself.
"He was stalking a Halite patrol – merely four men – when another patrol happened upon him. I ran to his aid at once, but he was surrounded. He was in an alleyway, so they could fight only two abreast wither side, and the first two pairs fell swiftly to his sword. I cut down the two closest to me – they had not noticed my presence – but Karl's fourth opponent had left his mark, weakening him, and he fell prey to the last pair of enemies. I struck them down, and knelt at his side, but there was naught I could do. He bade me survive, and bring this tale to you, my lady."
And she wept for the tale of her father, although she had known in her heart all along that he could not have survived. The Kahn rose, and commanded his minstrel to immortalize the tale in verse – an epic tragedy. "Such a great man should not be forgotten. Let his tale be heard down the ages, so that younger generations may benefit from Karl's heroic sacrifice."
It was in the years of the Theril Retaliation, as it came to be known, that the benefits of a predominantly agnostic society came to be seen. In an expansive scientific collaboration, the intellectual elite set their minds to the refinement of the Gaian war effort. The Trebuchets were their first major success in the earlier years, and the armour worn by Knights in the field was under constant revision for effectiveness. Mail shirts was substituted by full plating for better protection against stabbing attacks – at what was deemed to be an acceptable loss of agility.
Ranged weapons were constantly under refinement also; short bows being engineered with longer limbs, then specialised for use on horse-back, then complemented with the crossbow for greater power and less reliance on trajectory. This led a small group of scientists down the path of speculating how else to propel a projectile at speed. Pitch and Naptha had been used to enhance Catapult and Trebuchet shots, and it was theorised whether the qualities that made them inflammable could be implemented in other directions – namely, propulsion. Basic explosives were engineered, until one of the scientists – a young man named Petre – chose to investigate in other directions.
Resurrecting ancient ideas, he experimented with flint, making sparks – and failed miserably. Until one day sparks fell on a nearby rock, dusted with a sort of powder – being near the sea, he'd mistaken it for salt left from evaporation. The rock burst into flame briefly, then stopped just as quickly. Looking around, he came across more of the substance, which was to be named in his honour as Petre-salt, or Saltpetre as it later became known as.
This discovery came too late in the war to be of use, but the theory behind it was what interested the scientists more, and work continued. The powder was refined somewhat, after extensive experimentation, and the result was a design based on a crossbow, sans the limbs now that a bow was no longer required. The first test proved successful, exploding the bolt along the track of the device at great speed, burying it deep in a metal wall.
But Petre was not content; the device was too inefficient. By enclosing the track and combustion chamber, he was able to focus the explosive propulsion into forward motion – literally, the projectile would have nowhere else to go but forward. This also greatly increased accuracy – travelling along the enclosed pipe, the bolt – or bullet as it became after reconstruction to be stronger – would be more likely to fire straight. Further tests penetrated the metal wall entirely.
Having fired infantry combat into the future, he then turned his mind to mass-bombardment – the Trebuchet was a tremendous achievement, but required too many materials to build and a trained engineer to operate. What he was after was a weapon that would canonise the battlefield and cut the time needed to bring down the walls of a besieged city.
Starting simple, he engineered a larger version of his infantry weapon – simply, a small combustion chamber with a fuse to light extending into a long metal pipe. His first test was to fire a stone, just as a Trebuchet, but he'd underestimated the power of the explosion – the only result was a large cloud of dust and stone chunks being exploded hundreds of metres away. It was dismissed by many as a failure, as it didn't achieve what he'd set out to do, but he disagreed – such a flak device would decimate infantry. But they were correct in a way – he hadn't completed his objective.
Contracting the blacksmith that had engineered his bullets, he loaded his pipe with a precisely measured metal ball in place of a stone. Upon firing, the ball flew at tremendous velocity, obliterating the simple wall of stones he'd erected in the field. By experimenting with raised angles, differently shaped charges, denser construction and more explosives, Petre succeeded in far exceeding the range and destructive potential of a Trebuchet.
The blacksmith also had his own ideas – engineering a round that exploded upon impact, and due to the speed the round was inevitably travelling at the point of impact, it actually penetrated the target before exploding, creating a significant dent in even reinforced walls, or a whole group of infantry on the field. Petre had finally created his Cannon.
After the Theril Retaliation, minds were set off military matters to a degree, and much was theorised in practical directions. Ships of the day were still of a wooden superstructure; stout galleys that were risky at best to sail in rougher seas. Experiments with Iron frames were successful, creating stronger hulls for ocean-going vessels, but there was still the problem of Navigation.
When transporting armies into Halite territory, the helmsman had known the direction in which they must travel, and had steered accordingly by the placing of the sun by day, and by certain easily recognisable star formations by night. This was successful, to a point, but very imprecise, not to mention very prone to error.
Magnetism, a long known quality of lodestones, was studied more thoroughly. It had long been the subject of discussion that a lodestone, left without interference, would align itself almost unerringly pointing North-South. Exploiting this fact, scientists designed the compass; a device that contained a free-floating magnetic lodestone that would always point North, with an adjustable dial on the top to display one's corresponding direction.
But this was not enough for the Kahn to be content to condone extensive naval activity. Iron ships, he pointed out, were strong enough for ocean-faring, but were heavy, and thus slow, and had a bad habit of rusting. Wood was not as subject to corrosion, once treated against rot, but could not practically withstand the pressures the open seas placed on it.
The answer came from the blacksmiths. For the processing of Iron, a smith forged Iron Ore with charcoal, then pounded out impurities. But occasionally the Iron would somehow gain more of something from the charcoal, and would be stronger even than basic Iron, and more resistant to corrosion. They had tried multiple times, with various success, to purposefully create this effect, as swords produced in such a way were much more effective on the field.
The quandary then was to isolate just what happened to the Iron Ore for it to become this other metal, named Steel – either because of the ringing it produced when struck, or since many tried to make off with it. Chemists devoted themselves to the problem, and came back with the theory that it was something to do with the levels of carbon – the black stuff – within the charcoal.
A fresh derivative of coal was engineered, called coke, that produced steel when blown through molten iron, and mass forges in shipyards were produced for such an effect. The qualities of steel meant that rust was no longer such an issue with vessels, and since it was stronger than Iron, less had to be used in the frame, and the ship was then lighter, and thus faster.
The Kahn promoted use of these ships simply as a means of naval exploration, but was then approached by a discerning young visitor to the court.