Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 14:43:25 GMT
In the weeks that passed after the last mission to diplomatically contact the Vaanitas Supremacy, the WRL’s nations looked at all information collected regarding the prior two encounters to ascertain what had gone wrong. While both meetings were not what one might call a disaster, they were hardly positive. From what was gleaned from the events that unfolded, it seemed that the Vaanitas Supremacy simply were not the best of neighbors and realistically they might be a threat to the stability of the western regions later on. Despite this and their noted belligerent attitude, it was decided that a third mission to the Vaanitas Supremacy territory would be attempted. The mission was timed to be just over two months after the Three Domains Alliance had visited the area. In theory this timing would allow tempers to cool and the new encounter could be completed with a level of ease not possible if the WRL paid an immediate visit after the last. There was one major difference this time in that finally the Dominion of Risallas got their way. Originally, it was the Dominion that advocated for a more aggressive encounter based on the recordings brought back by the Divine Davian Empire but the democratic process of the Western Regional League at the time favored another try at diplomacy. Approximately seventy-three days after the Three Domains Alliance had visited the Vaanitas Supremacy the Dominion of Risallas made their move with the blessings of the WRL governing council albeit with some conditions to the operation. The mission itself was very simple, the dominion assets were tasked with determining where the Vaanitas Supremacy’s borders lay so that trade lane traffic could be diverted away from any encounters with the belligerent nation. Additionally, it was determined that no crossing of the Supremacy’s borders could occur as this would make the WRL the aggressor. How this was to be accomplished however was left up to the commander in charge of the mission. The Dominion’s high command while considering the nature of the mission decided that they needed a commander of particular cunning to out maneuver the Vaanitas Supremacy. The Dominion arranged a taskforce of fifty warships to conduct the mission led by Captain Folami Khanaris a captain who was already known for his cunning nature, all that was left was to initiate the action.
Captain Folami’s approach was a simple one, the Dominion task force would emerge from faster-than-light speed just 9.3 AU off the borders of the Vaanitas’s known territory. Prior encounters by the TDA and Davians indicated roughly where the Supremacy’s borders were located but this only revealed the areas where the encounters happened which left the majority of their borders largely undefined. To close the distance, the Dominion task force approached the Vaanitas Supremacy’s known borders at high speed sub-light, the fifty-vessel task force was already organized into five-vessel groups consisting of a leading Ocean Class utility cruiser, a Gloucester class light cruiser a Mercer class destroyer and two Camden class marauder frigates. The groups first move was to approach in a way that indicated a lack of concern if the Supremacy’s military saw it coming or not. Was this an attack or something else the Supremacy certainly had the time to decide. Whilst it had been some time since the visit from the TDA, Kavaar had kept the system well manned and well defended. Whilst twenty-five ships had gone back to the home fleet that still left one hundred and twenty-five vessels and fifty monitors here as a fleet. The pair of star bases held station and all-around battle clusters of defense platforms held vigil, a total of fifteen clusters for forty-five platforms in all. All in all, when unknown signatures registered on extreme long-range sensors the Supremacy was ready. A red alert status sounded across the entire defense force and every gun in system prepared and began to target the distant unknown targets. “Admira-“ her second began. “I know, again, yet again an unknown fleet.” She spoke with none of the enthusiasm of previous encounters. “I want the following broadcast on all frequencies.” She ordered and stood. “This is Admiral Miria Kavaar of the Vaanitas supremacy. Unknown vessels identify yourselves or be fired upon. You will not be asked twice.” She spoke with authority. Captain Folami watched as the Vaanitas Supremacy’s border grew closer with every passing second, it was a form of waiting game really. Foremost on his mind was the calculations regarding their probable responses to a fast approach of foreign warships. From prior incidents they had been downright confrontational…but how would they respond to higher levels of aggression by a foreign power? As the high command described the mission the captain would be ‘seeing how they liked their own bitter medicine’. As such Captain Folami had arrayed his forces in a clearly aggressive echelon formation to rattle the saber so to speak. He knew that by now his force was likely in full sensor range of the Supremacy and that the normal sensor scattering hulls of dominion ships would give them nothing. Once the group had reached the range of eight astronomical units off the Supremacy’s known borders it became clear that the Supremacy had noticed. Off to one side one of the communications officers indicated a message from the Vaanitas, admittedly the Captain only barely listened to it as he fully expected them to make a demand and posture with a threat. It was after all what they did in both prior encounters so why would they change it up suddenly now that they were effectively being threatened? The Communications officer inquired as to how to respond and Captain Folami simply waved it off dismissing the communication outright. “Nothing yet, let’s make them wait for now, send the prepared message once we reach say four au off their border.” The only thing the Vaanitas got back was silence, and if they tried to scan the rapidly approaching vessels they would find the ships were blurry as if somehow scans could not get a firm purchase, null-IFF systems made identifying their nation of origin very difficult.
Kavaar waited for a response. “Fire a warning shot.” She ordered. These were unknown signatures and they were closing rapidly. One of the star bases large guns fired off a shot between the oncoming ships, in compliance with her orders. “All units prepare to fire, if they do not answer you are authorized to engage.” Kavaar spoke and the fleets weapons primed and began picking targets, tracking their incoming as best they could. She didn’t say any more and waited for their response to the warning shot. The shot was maneuvered around as the distance alone gave the dominion plenty of time to react. Though beyond maneuvering fluidly the approaching force did not fire in return. It was not an objective of the mission to shoot at the Supremacy unless absolutely necessary. Besides, this mission had very clear objectives and at least part of that had been accomplished by getting the Supremacy to fire first. Once the Dominion task force vessels reached the 4-astronomical unit range, a transmission was sent in reply to the message sent by the Supremacy but the nature of it was strange to say the least. The message was short and was comprised of snippets of prior communications sent by the Supremacy even dating back to when the Admiral held a lower rank. To make it even more strange if there had been video as part of the original messages then the replay contained that if it was only text or voice it remained untouched albeit edited. "immediately, Cease.. your attempt to.. Identify. You are, trivial...not worthy... your peoples Should, not interfere.” Mere seconds after the message was sent the fleet formation broke up into 5-vessel units that seemed to be bound for differing points on the Supremacy border, all begun utilizing high powered scans against everything they could reasonably reach. If a Supremacy vessel was anything less than 4 au in proximity it’s crew might actually physically feel the scan. Despite this the unknown vessels never crossed the border and maintained a 2 au distance on the known border at all times. It would not be out of question to assume that either this group was going to scan the entire border or they were fanning out possibly in preparation for attack. Neither option was likely to be very desirable as the implications were quite broad. Kavaar growled. “You will cease your scans at once or you will be fired upon!” she warned the invaders and weapons began powering across the fleet. The two stations became huge energy signatures as their myriad weapons began charging and the defense platforms were much the same. She gritted her teeth, whoever these invaders were, they had to be either brave or stupid…perhaps somewhere in between. “Raise interdiction” she ordered and the two stations activated their interdiction fields.
The powering up of star base weapons and the interdiction fields seemed to make no difference, the Dominion continued to do as they pleased clearly dismissing the Supremacy’s threats. This dismissal wasn’t for the obvious reason one might expect as intense preparation was made just for this mission. The Ocean class utility cruisers had been retrofitted with additional computer systems and sensors while the accompanying Gloucester’s had been modified in the same way. Jointly they had a much greater high-powered scan range than normal which allowed the Dominion groups to stay 2 AU (299,195,741 kilometers) away from the known Supremacy borders which lessened the ability of the Supremacy to hit anything with their big guns. None of this was coincidence, Captain Folami had thoroughly reviewed the information from both the TDA’s and Davians sensor logs and ascertained that keeping a distance of 2 AU (299,195,741 kilometers) would maximize the ability of the Dominion’s forces to antagonize the Supremacy in a way that made their military aggression ineffective unless they dared to pick a real fight outside the safety and security of their borders with minor at best support from their starbases. The scanning continued, but if the Supremacy commander was wise and observant she might note that the scans were not going absolutely to the core of supremacy space.
Meanwhile Kavaar’s patience had been tested enough. "You have failed to respond to warnings, I commit you to the void" she spoke. "Drop interdiction and fire!" she ordered. The fields dropped and from every vessel and each platform torpedoes fired and went to FTL, jumping straight to their targets, bypassing defenses. The rest of the fleet and defenses guns opened up, of note the spinal guns in the larger vessels and the much larger versions of said guns in the stations and platforms firing their rounds, these being the heavy hitters. While it wasn’t unexpected that the Supremacy would actually fire first the way they did; it was interesting to say the least. It was fortunate for the Dominion that interdiction fields immediately dissipated when turned off as opposed to having a lingering effect*. This aspect of field dynamics allowed the Dominion to anticipate when the Supremacy was going to take aggressive action, though when Kavaar made her void statement it was definitely clear she was going to fire what she had. Captain Folami had the advantage of having a few brief seconds while the Supremacy made their, threat to make his own move. Just about the same time as the Supremacy admiral said ‘void’ the captain gestured to the helm in the middle of the angry threat to signal his forces to maneuver as planned; across the taskforce Dominion ships overcharged their sub-light propulsion causing a rapid increase in speed along an evasive maneuver course. This would not evade everything as some of the torpedoes did hit but were found to have much-reduced effect against the heavily reinforced hulls of the dominion vessels. There was some damage but it wasn’t enough to stop the scanning and now the Dominion was actively evading fire at maximum sub-light speed. To make matters more confusing for the Supremacy, the Dominion began to deploy warship decoys and activated it’s point defense in area-burst fire mode. Despite all the shaking and jostling of the ship Captain Folami was undeterred by the Supremacy’s response as he watched the data stream in. While the Supremacy seemingly was careless in demonstrating their weapons capacities and their warship’s capabilities this information would prove quite useful later from a tactical perspective. The mapping of the border was nearly complete the Captain just needed to buy a little more time to finish the scans. “Keep firing!” Kavaar ordered sternly and another volley of faster-than-light torpedoes leapt off. Due to miscalculations some appeared a little way from their target and some within, always a boon and a curse with these weapons. The spinal guns began recharging and space was filled with flak as hundreds of guns across the fleet filled space with rounds and hardlight contained plasma. The stations and defense platforms were much faster to reload their powerful main guns and fired off a second salvo of those, using nova warheads this time. The moment the faster-than-light missiles began detonating interdiction was raised again, this time by the fleet itself. She would not let the invaders escape.
At the same time as Kavaar gave her order, the Dominion had completed the scan they had come here for. The borders of the Vaanitas Supremacy were now recorded for the purposes of Stellar cartography. While this meant that only 60% of the total area the Vaanitas supremacy occupied was charted leaving a dark space at the heart of their territory this meant the primary mission was successful. The results would be reported back to the WRL and adjustments to their maps would indicate the best courses to use to avoid direct contact with the Supremacy. Tactically this meant blockading the entire nation was now a possibility. For the Dominion though, being fired at and getting detailed scans of Supremacy military assets was tactically critical this information would be shared with the WRL as inevitably this encounter would lead to later conflict. The Dominion vessels had effectively completed their planned transit and were still under the accruing effects of positive gees and thus were rapidly accelerating away from the Vaanitas Supremacy’s territory. Decoys and short-life interdiction mines were dropped in the wake of the vessels to further deter pursuit; if the Vaanitas Supremacy really wanted to stop the Dominion that bad they’d have to leave their territory and actually chase the withdrawing assets. Almost all of the Dominion vessels had damage of some sort and yet none of it was truly debilitating. As if taunting on the way out a simple text only message was transmitted to the Admiral herself it read as follows. “Admiral Miria Kavaar of the Vaanitas supremacy. If we had desired to conquer you we could have done so and history have would speak of you in the terms of a cautionary tale. Pray you never become the focus of our attention again.” With that the Dominion fleet recoalesced and moved outside of the range of interdiction, the Supremacy had a window to do or say something, but it would not be long. Kavaar raised her hand and the guns fell silent. "If they will run then let them. Should they return they will not get another chance to do so." she spoke and whilst the fleet stayed at alert there was no further weapons fire. "Save anything we learned for later." she ordered before returning to the management of further defense construction.
Thus ended the first encounter between the Dominion of Risallas and the Vaanitas Supremacy. Galactic historians would not know for some time that it was the Risallas Dominion who had undertook the first raid on Vaanitas territory. At the time somehow it went largely unnoticed that there was suggestive evidence of WRL involvement due to the edited transmission sent purposefully to antagonize Admiral Miria Kavaar. Despite this, the Supremacy would effectively declare war on the unknown species for the raid even though the Supremacy had done all the shooting and the unknown fleet simply scanned Supremacy territory and moved on without firing a single shot. This would be the first of a number of encounters in which Captain Folami Khanaris would take point in leading Dominion forces against the Supremacy in a set of strategies that would be later known as “Nijara Jyusil Mekhizala” (Itanyi dialect) which when loosely translated to Galactic standard is “The means of least respect” which only served to demonstrate how little regard the Dominion had for the Supremacy. Historians would debate long after the conflict had ended why the Dominion had adopted a strategy that treated an foreign nation with none of the normal rules of civilized warfare.
* [Author’s Note: This part was edited to reflect an ANC admin Ruling regarding how fast interdiction fields dissipate when turned off. Originally there was sentence talking about field dynamics, but apparently when turned off interdiction effects instantly dissipate. ]
Captain Folami’s approach was a simple one, the Dominion task force would emerge from faster-than-light speed just 9.3 AU off the borders of the Vaanitas’s known territory. Prior encounters by the TDA and Davians indicated roughly where the Supremacy’s borders were located but this only revealed the areas where the encounters happened which left the majority of their borders largely undefined. To close the distance, the Dominion task force approached the Vaanitas Supremacy’s known borders at high speed sub-light, the fifty-vessel task force was already organized into five-vessel groups consisting of a leading Ocean Class utility cruiser, a Gloucester class light cruiser a Mercer class destroyer and two Camden class marauder frigates. The groups first move was to approach in a way that indicated a lack of concern if the Supremacy’s military saw it coming or not. Was this an attack or something else the Supremacy certainly had the time to decide. Whilst it had been some time since the visit from the TDA, Kavaar had kept the system well manned and well defended. Whilst twenty-five ships had gone back to the home fleet that still left one hundred and twenty-five vessels and fifty monitors here as a fleet. The pair of star bases held station and all-around battle clusters of defense platforms held vigil, a total of fifteen clusters for forty-five platforms in all. All in all, when unknown signatures registered on extreme long-range sensors the Supremacy was ready. A red alert status sounded across the entire defense force and every gun in system prepared and began to target the distant unknown targets. “Admira-“ her second began. “I know, again, yet again an unknown fleet.” She spoke with none of the enthusiasm of previous encounters. “I want the following broadcast on all frequencies.” She ordered and stood. “This is Admiral Miria Kavaar of the Vaanitas supremacy. Unknown vessels identify yourselves or be fired upon. You will not be asked twice.” She spoke with authority. Captain Folami watched as the Vaanitas Supremacy’s border grew closer with every passing second, it was a form of waiting game really. Foremost on his mind was the calculations regarding their probable responses to a fast approach of foreign warships. From prior incidents they had been downright confrontational…but how would they respond to higher levels of aggression by a foreign power? As the high command described the mission the captain would be ‘seeing how they liked their own bitter medicine’. As such Captain Folami had arrayed his forces in a clearly aggressive echelon formation to rattle the saber so to speak. He knew that by now his force was likely in full sensor range of the Supremacy and that the normal sensor scattering hulls of dominion ships would give them nothing. Once the group had reached the range of eight astronomical units off the Supremacy’s known borders it became clear that the Supremacy had noticed. Off to one side one of the communications officers indicated a message from the Vaanitas, admittedly the Captain only barely listened to it as he fully expected them to make a demand and posture with a threat. It was after all what they did in both prior encounters so why would they change it up suddenly now that they were effectively being threatened? The Communications officer inquired as to how to respond and Captain Folami simply waved it off dismissing the communication outright. “Nothing yet, let’s make them wait for now, send the prepared message once we reach say four au off their border.” The only thing the Vaanitas got back was silence, and if they tried to scan the rapidly approaching vessels they would find the ships were blurry as if somehow scans could not get a firm purchase, null-IFF systems made identifying their nation of origin very difficult.
Kavaar waited for a response. “Fire a warning shot.” She ordered. These were unknown signatures and they were closing rapidly. One of the star bases large guns fired off a shot between the oncoming ships, in compliance with her orders. “All units prepare to fire, if they do not answer you are authorized to engage.” Kavaar spoke and the fleets weapons primed and began picking targets, tracking their incoming as best they could. She didn’t say any more and waited for their response to the warning shot. The shot was maneuvered around as the distance alone gave the dominion plenty of time to react. Though beyond maneuvering fluidly the approaching force did not fire in return. It was not an objective of the mission to shoot at the Supremacy unless absolutely necessary. Besides, this mission had very clear objectives and at least part of that had been accomplished by getting the Supremacy to fire first. Once the Dominion task force vessels reached the 4-astronomical unit range, a transmission was sent in reply to the message sent by the Supremacy but the nature of it was strange to say the least. The message was short and was comprised of snippets of prior communications sent by the Supremacy even dating back to when the Admiral held a lower rank. To make it even more strange if there had been video as part of the original messages then the replay contained that if it was only text or voice it remained untouched albeit edited. "immediately, Cease.. your attempt to.. Identify. You are, trivial...not worthy... your peoples Should, not interfere.” Mere seconds after the message was sent the fleet formation broke up into 5-vessel units that seemed to be bound for differing points on the Supremacy border, all begun utilizing high powered scans against everything they could reasonably reach. If a Supremacy vessel was anything less than 4 au in proximity it’s crew might actually physically feel the scan. Despite this the unknown vessels never crossed the border and maintained a 2 au distance on the known border at all times. It would not be out of question to assume that either this group was going to scan the entire border or they were fanning out possibly in preparation for attack. Neither option was likely to be very desirable as the implications were quite broad. Kavaar growled. “You will cease your scans at once or you will be fired upon!” she warned the invaders and weapons began powering across the fleet. The two stations became huge energy signatures as their myriad weapons began charging and the defense platforms were much the same. She gritted her teeth, whoever these invaders were, they had to be either brave or stupid…perhaps somewhere in between. “Raise interdiction” she ordered and the two stations activated their interdiction fields.
The powering up of star base weapons and the interdiction fields seemed to make no difference, the Dominion continued to do as they pleased clearly dismissing the Supremacy’s threats. This dismissal wasn’t for the obvious reason one might expect as intense preparation was made just for this mission. The Ocean class utility cruisers had been retrofitted with additional computer systems and sensors while the accompanying Gloucester’s had been modified in the same way. Jointly they had a much greater high-powered scan range than normal which allowed the Dominion groups to stay 2 AU (299,195,741 kilometers) away from the known Supremacy borders which lessened the ability of the Supremacy to hit anything with their big guns. None of this was coincidence, Captain Folami had thoroughly reviewed the information from both the TDA’s and Davians sensor logs and ascertained that keeping a distance of 2 AU (299,195,741 kilometers) would maximize the ability of the Dominion’s forces to antagonize the Supremacy in a way that made their military aggression ineffective unless they dared to pick a real fight outside the safety and security of their borders with minor at best support from their starbases. The scanning continued, but if the Supremacy commander was wise and observant she might note that the scans were not going absolutely to the core of supremacy space.
Meanwhile Kavaar’s patience had been tested enough. "You have failed to respond to warnings, I commit you to the void" she spoke. "Drop interdiction and fire!" she ordered. The fields dropped and from every vessel and each platform torpedoes fired and went to FTL, jumping straight to their targets, bypassing defenses. The rest of the fleet and defenses guns opened up, of note the spinal guns in the larger vessels and the much larger versions of said guns in the stations and platforms firing their rounds, these being the heavy hitters. While it wasn’t unexpected that the Supremacy would actually fire first the way they did; it was interesting to say the least. It was fortunate for the Dominion that interdiction fields immediately dissipated when turned off as opposed to having a lingering effect*. This aspect of field dynamics allowed the Dominion to anticipate when the Supremacy was going to take aggressive action, though when Kavaar made her void statement it was definitely clear she was going to fire what she had. Captain Folami had the advantage of having a few brief seconds while the Supremacy made their, threat to make his own move. Just about the same time as the Supremacy admiral said ‘void’ the captain gestured to the helm in the middle of the angry threat to signal his forces to maneuver as planned; across the taskforce Dominion ships overcharged their sub-light propulsion causing a rapid increase in speed along an evasive maneuver course. This would not evade everything as some of the torpedoes did hit but were found to have much-reduced effect against the heavily reinforced hulls of the dominion vessels. There was some damage but it wasn’t enough to stop the scanning and now the Dominion was actively evading fire at maximum sub-light speed. To make matters more confusing for the Supremacy, the Dominion began to deploy warship decoys and activated it’s point defense in area-burst fire mode. Despite all the shaking and jostling of the ship Captain Folami was undeterred by the Supremacy’s response as he watched the data stream in. While the Supremacy seemingly was careless in demonstrating their weapons capacities and their warship’s capabilities this information would prove quite useful later from a tactical perspective. The mapping of the border was nearly complete the Captain just needed to buy a little more time to finish the scans. “Keep firing!” Kavaar ordered sternly and another volley of faster-than-light torpedoes leapt off. Due to miscalculations some appeared a little way from their target and some within, always a boon and a curse with these weapons. The spinal guns began recharging and space was filled with flak as hundreds of guns across the fleet filled space with rounds and hardlight contained plasma. The stations and defense platforms were much faster to reload their powerful main guns and fired off a second salvo of those, using nova warheads this time. The moment the faster-than-light missiles began detonating interdiction was raised again, this time by the fleet itself. She would not let the invaders escape.
At the same time as Kavaar gave her order, the Dominion had completed the scan they had come here for. The borders of the Vaanitas Supremacy were now recorded for the purposes of Stellar cartography. While this meant that only 60% of the total area the Vaanitas supremacy occupied was charted leaving a dark space at the heart of their territory this meant the primary mission was successful. The results would be reported back to the WRL and adjustments to their maps would indicate the best courses to use to avoid direct contact with the Supremacy. Tactically this meant blockading the entire nation was now a possibility. For the Dominion though, being fired at and getting detailed scans of Supremacy military assets was tactically critical this information would be shared with the WRL as inevitably this encounter would lead to later conflict. The Dominion vessels had effectively completed their planned transit and were still under the accruing effects of positive gees and thus were rapidly accelerating away from the Vaanitas Supremacy’s territory. Decoys and short-life interdiction mines were dropped in the wake of the vessels to further deter pursuit; if the Vaanitas Supremacy really wanted to stop the Dominion that bad they’d have to leave their territory and actually chase the withdrawing assets. Almost all of the Dominion vessels had damage of some sort and yet none of it was truly debilitating. As if taunting on the way out a simple text only message was transmitted to the Admiral herself it read as follows. “Admiral Miria Kavaar of the Vaanitas supremacy. If we had desired to conquer you we could have done so and history have would speak of you in the terms of a cautionary tale. Pray you never become the focus of our attention again.” With that the Dominion fleet recoalesced and moved outside of the range of interdiction, the Supremacy had a window to do or say something, but it would not be long. Kavaar raised her hand and the guns fell silent. "If they will run then let them. Should they return they will not get another chance to do so." she spoke and whilst the fleet stayed at alert there was no further weapons fire. "Save anything we learned for later." she ordered before returning to the management of further defense construction.
Thus ended the first encounter between the Dominion of Risallas and the Vaanitas Supremacy. Galactic historians would not know for some time that it was the Risallas Dominion who had undertook the first raid on Vaanitas territory. At the time somehow it went largely unnoticed that there was suggestive evidence of WRL involvement due to the edited transmission sent purposefully to antagonize Admiral Miria Kavaar. Despite this, the Supremacy would effectively declare war on the unknown species for the raid even though the Supremacy had done all the shooting and the unknown fleet simply scanned Supremacy territory and moved on without firing a single shot. This would be the first of a number of encounters in which Captain Folami Khanaris would take point in leading Dominion forces against the Supremacy in a set of strategies that would be later known as “Nijara Jyusil Mekhizala” (Itanyi dialect) which when loosely translated to Galactic standard is “The means of least respect” which only served to demonstrate how little regard the Dominion had for the Supremacy. Historians would debate long after the conflict had ended why the Dominion had adopted a strategy that treated an foreign nation with none of the normal rules of civilized warfare.
* [Author’s Note: This part was edited to reflect an ANC admin Ruling regarding how fast interdiction fields dissipate when turned off. Originally there was sentence talking about field dynamics, but apparently when turned off interdiction effects instantly dissipate. ]