The Subsidence Wars

The Subsidence Wars are a poor name for what happened between 2161 and 2167. They were not, in any single instance, wars; they were a long, intermittent dispute between several human enclaves over the rights to maintenance routes, communications cable, and the operational mandate of the Conservancy itself. Subsidence — geological and political both — is the word the period has been left with.

The casualties

Best counted in habitats rather than lives. Lethewards Drift was lost in 2163 and has not been resettled. Two smaller anchorages — neither catalogued in this archive — were abandoned and disassembled. The Boneward was, during this period, formally re-designated as a memorial; it had been a working settlement before and is no longer.

What the period was not

A war with the Pelagine. The Tyrian Court was not party to any dispute and, by accounts that have been confirmed since, considered the period an internal human matter. The Treaty of Marker I held throughout. Quarterly meetings continued, with two cancellations on the human side, both due to logistical failures in the disputed regions.

What ended it

The compromise of 2167 was, in the manner of such compromises, less a settlement than a fatigue. The disputants agreed on what they had, by then, all separately concluded — that the Conservancy's operational mandate would be honoured, that the cable would be maintained as a shared resource, and that the lost habitats would not be re-occupied. The agreement is the present working order.