Hi all,

Came across this sub (why haven't I heard of it before? I'm disappointed in myself) and remembered an old creative writing project I had worked on more than a decade ago. I'm a big fan of narrative history, so I decided to write a narrative history about the opening months of a fictional conflict in a fantasy world. The concept was heavily inspired by The Guns of August, written by Barbara Tuchman. To this day it's still one of my favorite books.

I realized I still had the work on my PC so I figured I'd share the images I made for the book. They're directly inspired by topographic maps hand-drawn by military cartographers during World War 1. 

**The World**

There are ten kingdoms on the continent, with the central kingdom of Galstan being the most influential among them, kind of like how Austria once dominated the Holy Roman Empire.

Like the lead-up to WW1 in our world, the world of Valodan: The Great Continental War is fresh off a long period of relative peace and technological progress. In-universe, I used an "unobtainium" or "tiberium" style miracle mineral so that I could hand-wave away any technical inaccuracies. It's this mineral, called "geldite", that spurs the technological development and also sets the opposing factions on a collision course with one another. 

Since some kingdoms make better use of geldite than others, the traditional balance of power begins to shift both politically and culturally. Entrepreneurs and inventors begin to take power away from landed aristocracy, while the fortunes of entire kingdoms and societies fluctuate based on geldite-driven changes. Naturally, some kingdoms begin to resent the oversized influence of Galstan, viewing the kingdom as an outdated legacy. This was directly inspired by the tension between Prussia and Austria, and later Germany vs. the UK.

**The Conflict**

The Great Continental War, like WW1 again, is ultimately spurred by a sudden change in the balance of power on the continent of Valodan. Whereas in our world it was the unification of Germany and later the dreadnought race, on Valodan it is the ascension of a new bloodline onto the throne of a powerful nation, thus effectively unifying two of the most powerful and industrialized kingdoms on the continent under a single house. 

What follows is a brutal expy of WW1 in which new technology - in this case brought on by geldite - absolutely shreds people apart since nobody is really prepared for it.

The novel itself begins by covering the background and build-up of the war before getting into the meat of the book, which details the execution of the in-universe version of the Schlieffen Plan. The rapid war of movement and the impact of geldite-powered warfare is written out with as much purple prose as I could muster, and eventually ends once the opening moves of the war peter out and settle into the same style of attrition warfare WW1 did in real life.

The book is still available on Amazon if you're interested. I self-published it using Createspace and created my own cover for it in GIMP.

Valodan - The Great Continental War