Elysian Conflict

"The Elysians had always been resisting our domination. We just never took them for an actual threat. Now that they have guns, ships, and Xanus knows how many allies all over the damn place, we've finally got to do something about it."

- Xavier Madora

The Elysian Conflict is a major ongoing conflict between the Xai Ascendancy and its tributary vassal states, and the forces of the Novus League, led by the rebellious Elysian Federation and the remnants of its allies, with heavy support from the Izanagi Empire. The Xai enslaved the race known as the Elysians some 450 years prior to the start of the conflict, but permitted them to maintain their culture, technology, and spaceships for economic purposes and to relieve the stress on the Obsidian Guard of defending the territories during on-going conflicts elsewhere. The Elysians took advantage of the lax oversight, and have since been fighting for their freedom for centuries, but only until now have they actively begun a military campaign of resistance and liberation against the Ascendancy.

The conflict is currently the largest active war in the galaxy, with the Xai Ascendancy and its subjugated vassals and allied powers seeking to crush the rebellious Elysians, along with their supporters from the currently unconquered Izanagi Empire, and the resistance groups of the Draconians and Tarapi, who escaped bondage at the hands of the Xai, and avoided the fate of their fellow peoples who are now gene-coded to willingly obey their Xai masters. Unlike other uprisings, the Elysian Conflict is the first of its kind to see members of races currently enslaved by the Xai, to actively launch offensives into Xai space, a major failing on the Xai's part. The first true defeat of the Xai and their failure to stop the Elysian advances, encouraged other species enslaved by the race to support the Elysians.

The Elysians were quick to take advantage of Xyon's weakened state following the Xyon Civil War, which did much to sap the military strength of the Xai. With a weakened Ascendancy, the Elysians exploited the advantage, and have been able to liberate a handful of worlds once controlled by the Xai, though their homeworld, Elysia, remained under Xai occupation. Following the Battle of n/a, the conflict has come to a draw, with the Xai military overstretched, fighting insurgency across its territories, and the Elysian-led coalition too few in numbers and outclassed technologically, to launch another major offensive like that at the start of the conflict, especially since the Obsidian Guard recouped its losses and have established a strong anti-insurgency force tailor-made to counter the rebel forces.

Background
"How did we miss all the signs? We didn't miss any signs. We were making them."

- Two Xai generals speaking of the Elysian Conflict

The origins of the Elysian Conflict can be traced back to the first contact between the Xai and the Elysians in n/a AXU. The Xai came into contact with the Elysians when a survey vessel from the Obsidian Navy discovered the planet of Skye, which had been colonized by the Elysians two hundred years prior to the contact. As per Xai military regulations, a probe team was sent down to the planet to investigate the technological, economical, and military capacity of the Elysians, and to begin first contact once the operation was complete. The team found that the Elysians were five thousand years old, and have only began to colonize the worlds around them. The military of the Elysian Federation was found to be much smaller than the Obsidian Guard, and far less advanced, possessing few dedicated warships and little knowledge of actual interstellar conflict. Thus, the Elysians were marked for enslavement rather than subjugation, as they possess a number of worlds, but not the strength to hold them all.

The Elysians were quickly conquered during the Invasion of Elysia in n/a AXU, and more than six billion Elysians, along with the quarter of a billion Elysians found in the colonies. The Elysians were successfully enslaved as a species, though several million escaped Xai conquest, establishing outposts far beyond the reach of the Xai. Many of these Elysians were members of the shattered military force that had escaped the crippling defeat over Elysia, and after observing the tactics of the Xai, built a military force that was better equipped to fight them in the future. This was done with the support of the Izanagi Empire to the galactic south of the Xai Ascendancy, an empire that had successfully defeated a Xai invasion in 2103 AXU. The Izanagi supplied the Elysians with safe zones and building materials within their empire, and hid their activities from the Xai.

Following the Xyon Civil War in 2157 AXU, the Elysians, with Izanagi military advice, invaded Xai-occupied Elysian space, and liberated many of their worlds and freeing tens of millions of Elysians. However, once the Xai rebuilt and reorganized their forces, especially once they incorporated the recently developed Devastators into their arsenal, the Xai waged the Devastator War on the planet of Elysia. The Xai defeated any attempts by the Elysians to liberate the planet, but failed to prevent the re-establishment of the Elysian Federation when the leader of Elysia was freed from her bonds, and escaped the Xai military forces following the war. With the first true failure of the Xai military against another species, other groups representing enslaved races joined the fight against the Xai with the Elysians leading the charge. For the last five hundred years, the Xai fought a low-intensity conflict with the Elysian-led Novus League, but only recently have major battles begun to take place.