Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War
| Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Vask Authority frigates down an Imperial Novan destroyer at the Battle of Asteri | |||||||
| |||||||
| Participants | |||||||
 Republic of Carthage | (material aid, minimal direct involvement) | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
|
171685 warship blocks lost
|
91819 warship blocks lost
| ||||||
The Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War was a major military conflict on Horizon's End fought between the forces of the Ilios Alliance and the Republic of Carthage against the pirating nation of Vask Authority, which was materially supported by Vega, in the summer of 2024.
This war was the first conflict in Horizon's End history to see the use of supercapital warships in combat, and established the dominance of starfighters and 500-block gunships in the starship combat meta. It is the most recent major war in server history, and the progenitor to the current Long Peace.
History
Prelude
Andurian Federation
Following the conclusion of the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War on 8 January 2024, RentDueYesterday, a major pirating nation led by FellOffBridge, was re-formed by pqio into the Andurian Federation. Unlike its predecessor or successor, the Andurian Federation presented itself as a respectable participant in server politics, and did not allow its members to engage in unrestrained piracy.
From 11 February 2024, the Andurian Federation engaged in a military conflict with Arimfea, with Imperial Nova intervening on behalf of Arimfea on 26 February. This war ended on 18 April 2024 with a white peace, leaving the Andurian Federation's combat-inclined player-base without anyone to fight.
Three weeks later, on 3 May 2024, pqio formally handed control of the Andurian Federtion back to FellOffBridge, who renamed it first to "HorsemenOfTheVegapocalypse", before settling on "Vask Authority" the following day.
Vask Authority
Under FellOffBridge's leadership, Vask Authority took a more hostile stance towards the rest of the server, adopting a policy of allowing its members to pirate other players on the server as they wished. This was first realized when z4nityy began pirating server-wide on 13 May, followed up soon thereafter by DearGhost doing the same.
As the largest colonist and privateer alliance on the server, the Ilios Alliance served as the primary responders to Vask Authority piracy. Seeking to avoid sparking an all-out war with the whole of Vask Authority, the Alliance settled on a policy of attacking members of Vask Authority only when they were engaging in acts of piracy, seeking to detract from their ability to cause mayhem on the server in this way.
Additionally, on account of a convergence of interests in anti-piracy activity, and viewing the prospect of all-out war with Vask Authority as an increasingly inevitable one, the Ilios Alliance admitted the nations of Imperial Nova and Arimfea as associate members of the alliance on 10 June 2024. This brought the two nations, who had already been combating Vask Authority piracy on their own, under the Ilios Alliance's mutual-defense umbrella, and facilitated coordinated fleet actions between all five alliance members.
11 June Incident
On 11 June 2024, at 12:15PM EDT, DearGhost attacked SammaSystem, then a member of Imperial Nova, at her space station in Regulus, killing her in PvP. Novan forces scrambled to hunt down DearGhost in retribution (in accordance with Alliance policy); however, DearGhost quickly fled south to Vask Authority's shielded main space station, Apollyon, and sought refuge inside the structure. Vask Authority leadership _Clone1137 and FellOffBridge had previously declared Apollyon to be off-limits to non-members of Vask Authority, and declared that DearGhost was under Vask Authority protection while inside the station, regardless of the act of piracy he had committed minutes earlier.
The Novan response force elected to assault Apollyon regardless, prompting a fleet battle in which Vask Authority forces directly engaged Ilios Alliance ones. This event is broadly considered to be the start of the Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War.