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Post by Lorn on Aug 26, 2015 4:41:44 GMT -6
Continuing my Bavandid Zoroastrian Restoration campaign from the old thread:  After a great holy war, Shahanshah Salman 'The Terrible' conquered the entirety of the Sultanate of Africa from the Shia Caliph and vassalizing him. Unfortunately, the Sunni Caliph instantly launched a counter Jihad against Salman, and Salman died under great stress shortly after. Edit: Some more backstory on Salman, Salman was the firstborn son of Shahanshah Khosrau III 'The Cruel', and he shared his father's infamous cruelty and eventual madness. Both of them proved quite effective at stifling the rights of the nobility, and establishing the dominance of the Persian Empire. His son Shahanshah Khosrau would lead a valiant defense of Africa, but he and his younger brother Ardeshir were slain in the battle of Tunis which ended the Jihad. This left Khosrau's sister-wife Javaneh, and last living child of Salman, as the ruler of the vast Persian Empire. Unfortunately, Javaneh was not great at diplomacy and she lacked the martial abilities of her brothers, which caused her rule to be quickly challenged by her vassals. Her kinsmen, the Viceroys of Arabia, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, as well as the Viceroy of Khiva and the Satr-apies of Azrebaijan and Tabriz. She gave in to their demands to lower crown authority in order to avoid a civil war, but unfortunately civil war broke out anyways. The five Viceroys then decided that they were strong enough to become independent of the Persian Empire and instantly launched their plan into motion. The bloodiest civil war in the history of the Bavandid rule of Persia had begun. The war began with a string of defeats for the Empress' forces. The Bavandid cavalry retinue was ambushed and obliterated in the county of Nishapur, while the Light Bringers, the personal guard and main fighting force of the Shaoshyant and his descendants, were forced into a string of running retreats throughout the Shahdom of Khiva. The Light Bringers force of eleven thousand men were constantly harrased during the retreat by the fifty thousand strong rebel army. Confident in their eventual victory, the rebels split their army into three groups. A sixteen thousand strong army under control of the elderly Viceroy Parviz of Arabia would continue pursuit of the Light Bringers, while the other armies would attempt to achieve a quick victory by taking the Bavandid capital of Esfahan. This would turn out to be a very costly mistake by the rebels. On May 23, 1158 Viceroy Parviz's forces finally caught up to the Light Bringers in the county of Mandesh, Afghanistan. After a four days of fighting the Viceroy lay dead on fields of battle and his army was in tatters, but only nine hundred of the Light Bringers remained. Meanwhile in Esfahan, Shahzada-Consort Mleh (chosen mostly for the name) and Marshal of the Bavandid Empire came up with a cunning plan involving Twenty Good Men™ that would destroy the supplies of the remaining rebel army (in reality it was actually a plague of typhoid that erupted in the SaHoley of Khorason). During the night of August 13, 1158 Mleh and his Twenty Good Men™ miraculously sneaked into the rebel armies camp in Qohistan, and set fire to all of their supplies while escaping entirely undetected. The rebel army now in complete disarray was easily dealt with by the remaining loyal vassals of the Empress. This army would later go on to fully siege Khiva, the capital of the rebellion after a two year siege. If it had not been for Marshal Mleh and his Twenty Good Men™ the Bavandid Independence Civil War would have ended a lot differently. |
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