Post by Admin on Mar 3, 2012 13:42:15 GMT -5
The Were War
When: 21 - 18 years ago.
Where: Yes. (No, seriously, it was in Alexandria.)
What: Civil/Terrorist War
History:
One generation ago, the full moon rose as it always did on Alexandria: large, bright, and compelling to all werecreatures not strong enough to resist its sway. As always, defensive forces prepared to handle any threat that approached too close to a residential area, as unlikely as it is.
Warnings of the imminent disaster came a little too late for Alexandria to fully deal with the scope of the first attack: packs of werecreatures running together and cutting a deadly swathe through the night. The death toll rose rapidly even as more police officers, mages and Dragon Knights were called in and dispatched to counter the threat.
An extremist group of werelords calling themselves the Free Pack claimed responsibility in the morning, stating their intentions to keep attacking Alexandrian citizens until the government released the weres held on the penal colony, Damian's Isle. The government refused. Hundreds of free-roaming weres would be just as bad, if not worse, than packs operating with the intention of mass murder.
The civil war - if it could be called a civil war, and many do not - lasted three years, every full moon. It was a difficult conflict, due in no small part to the strength of mages on both sides, the werecreatures' inherent strength and recovery, and the infectious nature of their attacks which replenished their numbers and drew more to their cause. While casualties were greatly lessened, the extended conflict still claimed many lives and infected many as well.
Outcome:
The leaders of the Free Pack were eventually either captured or killed over the course of the war. Without the leadership or the magical strength of the werelords, the rest of the "pack" dispersed and eventually gave up fighting. Because of how hard it is to identify a were while in their human form, not all the weres involved were ever caught or fully brought to justice for what is now considered more an act of terrorism.
The middle generation of Alexandrians still has bad memories of those years, and there were many more people left infected in its wake. There are more weres and those born of weres in this generation then there have been in a long time in Alexandria. While Alexandria officially retains its peaceable stance on the infected, the general population's negative opinion of weres still makes it very hard for any of them to get work. Some are outright unhirable.