Legends: Forlorn War

Legends: Forlorn War is an Anterra Legends universe that exists as a Kayan franchise of video games, manga, books, and anime series called Forlorn War in the canon universe. The series is military-themed, incorporating elements of and.

Plot
The year is 1937 and the world has been embroiled in an all encompassing global conflict. The world has been divided into two major blocs and with millions caught in between. Tens of millions have perished on the battlefields. What began as a resource war between the Industrialists and Ascended over a fantastical power source elektia has developed into an existential struggle for survival. The Industrialists, a loose coalition of heavily developed industry and their natural abundance of elektia, are on the defense against the Ascended, a confederation of mystic and autocratic states lacking any significant elektia deposits. Elektia was discovered in 1873 and fast became the world's most coveted power source, harnessed to power everything from street lights to tanks and hand grenades. Threatened by the Industrialist's rapid mechanization, the Ascended developed their own nefarious power source in secret to supplement their comparatively inferior coal and oil production. Although this new power rapidly propelled the Ascended's industry and military capacity, it was expensive to produce, unsustainable. To secure their future, the Ascended launched its offensive against the Industrialists in 1919 to seize their elektia mines and conquer their territory.

Ascended Confederacy
The Ascended Confederacy is a treaty confederation composed primarily of illiberal and autocratic states plagued with industries heavily reliant on coal or oil and very little in the way of elektia deposits. Some Ascended states are heavily invested in the occult and maintain regimes thought of as authoritarian, if not tyrannical in some cases, by the Industrialists. Considered to be the aggressor of the Forlorn War, the Ascended set out on a war of conquest against the Industrialists and unaligned nations to seize their elektia mining and refinement facilities. Widely seen as the power source of the future, powering everything in Industrialist society from power grids to train sets, the Ascended saw war as a forgone conclusion after imports of elektia from the Industrialists were cut off. Although forming around a core of autocracies, several nations joined the confederacy as the war progressed for various regions. Chief among these was the desire among nations without their own elektia deposits and well within the Ascended's sphere of influence for the power source, as well as heavy pressure from the Ascended themselves.

Elektia
Elektia is a type of charged naturally-occurring gemstone used as a highly dense power source replacing coal-fired power stations and internal combustion in countries where it is abundant. There are a number of theories on how Elektia formed. Some believe it to be concentrations of the world's internal heat, while others believe it to be the result of fossils of ancient animals crystallizing under high pressure.

Elektia-powered motors were miniaturized in the late 1890s and are now the primary fuel sources for motor vehicles. It was weaponized by the Industrialists for the first time in 1908 and Elektia warheads became common in hand grenades, mortars, and artillery shells. As the Forlorn War progressed, a weapons race over the weaponization of Elektia grew between the major powers. Limited experiments from both sides have net Elektia-powered railguns, failed attempts at power ballistic missiles, and other esoteric projects. Given its application as explosive, both sides have made great efforts at creating bombs that work off of a theoretical "Elektia-induced fission". Neither the Industrialists nor the Ascended have succeeded in achieving such a reaction, although it is thought that such a weapon could have the potential to end the war through mass destruction.

From 1926 to 1928, with war casualties mounting, both sides began experimenting with creating artificial soldiers to mitigate the massive population loss. The Industrialists opted to field automatons as soldiers on a mass scale, powered by and given essence by elektia. Meanwhile, the Ascended, with their supply of synthetic elektia, fielded both automatons and soldiers to make up for its heavy losses. Reanimation was a property unique to synthetic elektia — perhaps due to the nature of synthetic elektia's creation. Even so, the fielding of artificial soldiers was always on a more limited scale for the Ascended due to the higher cost and scarcity of synthetic elektia.

Use as controlled substance
A byproduct of the Elektia refinement process is trafficked as a controlled substance throughout the world, colloquially known as "Lumo" due to its natural luminescence. The drug is generally taken nasally, although intravenously available elektia and synthetic elektia became widely available through the black market as early as 1935. Lumo is a powerful central nervous system stimulant, producing feelings of euphoria that can last up to 12 hours. Although a controlled substance, its use a capital offense in countries such as Izeryk, it has been used in small doses by both sides as a stimulant ration for its soldiers. Izeryk priests in particular are known to ingest Lumo derived from synthetic elektia, which is purported to allow them to communicate with the dead, see (or hallucinate) the future, and aid them in reanimation and harvesting souls for synthetic elektia production.

Synthetic Elektia
To compensate for insignificant natural reserve of Elektia, the Ascended Confederacy set out to create a synthetic alternative in an attempt to recreate the power of the imbued mineral. Under an initiative headed by Izeryk, the Ascended created a substance in secret which would become known as synthetic elektia in 1926 after large stores of it were captured by Industrialist forces during the Forlorn War. Unlike elektia, synthetic elektia's structure is created in laboratory and it derives its power from souls artificially trapped in a process that had been discovered by Izeryk priests in the late 19th century. The new exploitation of synthetic elektia caused dramatic shifts in the Ascended. Capital punishment was reinstated in some countries and it would become common during wartime for convicts to receive death sentences for even minor offenses. In Izeryk, a large clandestine industry based on the breeding and slaughter of the nation's non-Izerfolk population to harvest for synthetic elektia production.

The invention of synthetic elektia was kept secret from the general public, used exclusively for war industry and weapons. When first encountered on the battlefield, it was thought that the Ascended had discovered its own natural elektia deposits. However, its existence was fully discovered by the Industrialists in 1926, and the gravity of Izeryk's atrocities were realized when a collection factory, or Samlingfabryk, was discovered by advanced Industralist forces in 1930. It was at this point that the Industrialist Pact's humanitarian aims materialized. Onward, the war would be seen not just as a war of survival for the Industrialists, but a liberation of the people of the Ascended. Thus, a key distinction is made between the periods of the war before and after 1930.