Second Corpse War
Introduction
The Second Corpse War also known as the War of Death Everlasting, War of Six Chariots, and the War of New Death, was one of the largest political conflicts in Serkosian history, spanning from 16,911 to 18,779, lasting slightly under 1868 pulses. The war was the progenitor event of the Kaiser War, First Crownclasm, and Second Crownclasm, and is often considered the war that brought Crown dominance of Serkosian space to a close. The war is responsible for the implosion of the worldly states of the Gyolos, Aeylri, Colossi, and Principians, the true inauguration of the Visborne into the political stage, the collapse of the influence empires of the Theos primordials, the disappearance of Temple Cognia, the destruction of patron-based Auctorate factions, and the nigh-extinction of the Arqala Chimera.
Classification & Structure
The Second Corpse War is so large it is often considered the prime example of a super war, and the subwars of this war are often considered the blowout of multiple political dynamics that had built over the course of thousands of pulses by this time. The reason it is often seen as a super war is because it has over five primary subwars, and has the unique ability to retain a relative structure of opposition while still producing considerable evolution of the political stage based solely on its own consequences. In other words, by a far enough point into the Second Corpse War, a large amount of the factional conflict was based solely on grievances and events which happened within the war itself; This conflict was a self-fueled machine of death.
Continuing from that, there exists a hierarchy of warfare, namely, the hierarchy of proximity to Nicoraqel's emergence. Nicoraqel was largely a shadowy unknown in the earliest days of the war, and upon its emergence it was a capricious, unpredictable force which could not be measured in strength, for better or worse. This changed following the First Battle of The Deal?, in 17,203. This battle led to the hierarchy collapse of Laecanth, and the proper emergence of Calaxoth. Calaxoth's reign over the hybrid changed not just the dynamic of the being or the dynamic of the army, it changed the dynamic of war itself. After Calaxoth, Nicoraqel became much more predictable, but predictable does not always align with manageable. What was predictable about the Calaxoth hierarchy is that whenever Nicoraqel appeared, everything that fought it was inevitably going to die. This feeling would only worsen as the hierarchies switched and more of the Nicora Army reared its head. Only by the late Cadaver Subwar was the full might of the army known, and by that point, no longer were the means nor the might present to even fight back. This is the progression of the Death Bloom, and the growing presence of Nicoraqel. The evolution of this being drove every major change in the war, and is the definitive entity for the entire conflict's start and end.
This war is also often considered the "tying of loose ends" within Serkos' awakening stage. The Second Corpse War, as mentioned before, was the resultant of numerous past cataclysms and schismatic events. This includes the Auctoral Schisms and Auctorate War, the ambitions of the Sarzola Regime, the third abandonment of Kaiser, the Serkos Game and mythologization of Serkos which by this point was in and of itself capable of crippling the Regime, the meddling of primordials, the return of the ancient Tarivinius and the birth of the new Nicovis, the longstanding presence of the Omnis Cognis, the spilling of Arqala affairs into Serkosia, and the tensions of Worldly affairs leading up to the Giant's War.
Necessitation & Context
First Corpse War
Auctorate War
Giant's War
Chronos-Nil Cycle
History
Early Arqala Subwar (16,911 - 16,966)
Nicora Civil War
Mid Arqala Subwar
Theos Subwar
Cognia Subwar
Cadaver Subwar
Second Auctorate War
Dark Takeovers
Return of Serkos and Closure
Cultural Impact
The cultural impact of the Second Corpse War can hardly be understated or overestimated. The scale and intensity of the Second Corpse War was so violently unique in the political stage, that multiple unique circumstances and cultural elements arose from the persistence of the war itself.
Of course, many new cultural references to Nicoraqel appeared, with practically all of them painting Nicoraqel as a deity of death. Nicoraqel's might was so pervasive it lead to multiple fanatical factions arising in its honor, such as the Nicora Auctorates, which largely formed as a tumorous organization off the back of the Serkosian Auctorates, and a multitude of legacies as well.
Beyond this, the rules of space changed almost overnight, it went from a generally violent space with potential for amicability and diplomacy, to "If you don't recognize that face, run, fight, or die." Furthermore, the existing species of space, such as the Gyolos, Principians, and Ambrosians saw a level of cohabitation once thought impossible due to the common threat of the Nicora Army. Due to the entire open range of space essentially turning into hunting grounds for Nicoraqel, the unity between these worldly species reached an unprecedented high, and even saw the incorporation and cooperation of terrospecies in operations against Nicoraqel out of sheer desperation. This effect would however reverse in the later stages of the war, as the death toll became so high that even banding together created the following problem of being targeted by any number of horrors in the Nicora Army.
This latter effect would result in low visibility settlements designed specifically to be compact, reflect low light, and exist away from major sources of light in order to attract very little attention. Spatial sink pocket settlements also became quite hard to detect and made for a very good permanent solution to the wrath of Nicoraqel. This type of settlement become one of the most important humanitarian efforts of Temple Cognia and the greater Histor's Order via their capabilities in spatial manipulation.
The development of carnage constellations also reached a degree unseen before the war, to the point where the term itself actually derives from this war. Carnage constellations refers to trails of ruined cities with such a noticeable path of destruction that it essentially traces a constellation in space with the destroyed cities in an army's path. The largest of these, the Scorpion Carnage, trails from the far XY-north Cymos territory, all the way to the far XY-south of Uon-Principia and curls back in on itself. The Scorpion Carnage includes eight of the most major cities in political history, and thousands more minor, unenumerated settlements.
In art and literature, there was a movement called "The Blackening" which included a notable shift towards far darker themes, nihilism, and themes of death and finality.