Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

====The War for Gollopo====
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The Imperium and the Tau did not often clash directly, prior to integration. A few flare-ups in the centuries after first contact, before the borders were finalized and diplomatic channels became well-established. Such clashes are not well remembered; both sides were usually half-hearted about the fighting, and after Integration the busy propagandists of the Administratum made sure such conflicts were consigned to the dustbin of history. 

A few battles refused to be erased quietly. One such was the battle of Gollopo. 
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The world Gollopo itself was a human world, settled in the Dark Age of Technology and forgotten in the Age of Strife. It was re-discovered almost simultaneously by both Tau and Imperium explorers. It was in the grey zone between the Tau and Imperium zones of control and near a strategic warp lane, meaning it was highly desirable to both sides. And- this is where the trouble really began- it was divided into nearly a hundred independent states, all of which had long and often nasty histories with each other. 

Both sides sent diplomatic teams. The debate over which superpower to join immediately polarized Gollopo's politics. Everyone believed that a nation without a protector would be carved apart by the ones that did, resulting in a mad rush for advantage. Long-standing alliance blocks broke up over the question; ancient enemies uneasily found themselves on the same side. When Prunzik started leaning towards the Tau, its long-time enemy Francha immediately started soliciting the Imperium, only to switch positions towards the Tau when Prunzik started leaning towards the Imperium. When the Inland Empire declared for the Imperium, its subject colonies along the North Shore immediately invited in the Tau in a bid for independence. The Sokhmar and Lankhmar immediately launched genocidal campaigns against each other in a desperate bid to settle their thousand-year grudge before either could secure the assistance of a galactic military. 

As the situation deteriorated, both diplomatic teams summoned military reinforcements. And then more. And then more. 

Things finally boiled over in the Saarland. A near-impotent buffer state between Prunzik and Francha, both its parliament and its population were almost evenly divided between pro-Tau and pro-Imperial factions... which also corresponded with long-standing pro-Francha and pro-Prunzik factions. Street fighting broke out, which soon descended into guerrilla war, with both Prunzik and Francha supporting their chosen sides. First with money, then with guns, then with 'observers' and 'advisors'... Finally, Francha declared that the Saarland was a failed state and sent an expeditionary force across the border to restore order. Lord General Six Serpent ordered the Imperial Guard to secure the pro-Imperial sections of the Saarland three days later, and Shas'O Vaina moved his cadres to intercept.
The war was on. 

The first clashes in the Saarland were dramatic, but ultimately inconclusive; the Imperial Guard was driven out of the Saarland by fast-moving Tau armor threatening to slice their columns into pieces, but Tau follow-up offensives were blocked by combined Prunzikan/Guard fortifications and careful deployment of the few Baneblades available. 

These would be the largest direct clashes of Tau and Imperial forces; any hope that the fighting could be confined to the Saarland died within days, as every nation on Gollopo plunged into war, every ancient grievance and modern ambition subsumed into the clash of galactic powers. (Although a few were not quite sure what side they were fighting on; the Federated Oskarrian States switched sides four times over the course of the war.) Guard and Fire Caste forces were divided among multiple theaters, fighting closely alongside the native armies. 

At the beginning, the Imperium held the advantage. Although less advanced than the off-worlders, the Golloponi armies could not simply be ignored. The Imperium had proven more effective at recruiting the local nations; their status as fellow humans, greater degree of local autonomy, and art-deco meshed better with Golloponi pride and aesthetic sense than the Tau's alien-ness, more invasive policies, and smoothly curving ceramics.

However, this advantage of numbers proved hard to leverage. The Tau could simply move and concentrate faster, and seized the operational initiative early. They kept the Imperium reacting to rapid-fire series of feints, diversions, raids, and genuine offensives, too off-balance to launch their own offensives. Morale began to decline, especially among the Imperium's local allies. To Golloponi sensibilities, the Tau war machines were frighteningly alien and incomprehensible, and local regiments were often routed by even a single Tau skimmer unless backed up by the Guard, while Tau-aligned forces were inspired to greater heights of courage by the alien powers of their allies. 

As the war dragged on, the momentum began to swing in the other direction. The Imperial-aligned armies grew accustomed to facing down the Tau, and attrition began to take its toll. The Tau required spare parts and ammunition from a supply chain stretching all the way from the Tau Empire itself; with the low speed and relatively smaller size of Tau ships, they were simply unable to sustain the operational tempo they had set early on once their stockpiles were exhausted. On the other hand, the Golloponi early-industrial tech base required only minor upgrading to start supplying spares and ammunition for the Guard. And the Tech-priests accompanying the expedition were well-versed in the procedures for such upgrades. 

While the Tau attempted to launch their own upgrade program, the Earth Caste engineers were less skilled in using limited resources; they knew how to make microchips, they knew how to train someone to make microchips, but they didn't know how to get to microchips starting from a coal-fired steel mill. The Mechanicus did. 

By the middle of the second year, the Imperium was able to launch a grand offensive, rolling back previous Tau gains. Committing their remaining reserves, the Tau fought a series of holding actions, buying time to consolidate a series of defensive lines. It worked, and the offensive ground to a halt outside the core territories of the Tau alliance block. 

With all room for subtlety gone, the war entered its bloodiest phase. The Tau did not have the reserves to launch any major offensives, especially once the Imperial block entrenched themselves in turn, but were able to shatter the spearheads of any offensive. Most of the dying was done by the Golloponi, as the Guard and Fire Caste husbanded their strength and looked for some decisive opportunity.

It never came. After three years and about twenty million deaths, the war was ended by a negotiated settlement. The nations that aligned themselves with the Imperium would become part of the Imperium; the nations that sided with the Tau would become part of the Tau Empire. Nations that had been split would either become neutral, their independence guaranteed by both sides, or be split into multiple nations, as determined by the locals themselves. 

Most Tau-Imperium conflicts were prosecuted halfheartedly, neither side really wanting to fight one of the few other true civilizations among the stars. Gollopo was not. There has been some debate as to why, but ultimately it has been ascribed to the influence of the Golloponi themselves. They regarded the war as 'the End of History'; although things would certainly keep happening, the history of Gollopo and its nations would be subsumed without a trace into the history of the Imperium and/or the tau Empire. A footnote, remembered only as a place where these two giants once fought. Thus they fought with incredible fervor, as their last chance to make a mark on history as independent nations. That fervor came to 'infect' the off-world forces they were allied with, the two working increasingly close together as the war dragged on. They fought together, bled together, died together, and came to regard the war in the same light. 
Or so the thinking goes.
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