Guild Wars

The Guild Wars were the economic and military conflict between the Kel-Morian Combine and the Terran Confederacy over control of the mineral wealth of the Koprulu sector. Fought across the late 2480s, the war pitted the Confederacy's superior weapons and equipment against the irregulars, pirates, and mercenaries of the Combine, and it ended in a Confederate victory that secured the Confederacy's dominance over the sector for the following decade. Its consequences reshaped terran politics, hardening resentment in the colonies and giving rise to the Umojan Protectorate.

Background#

The world of Moria possessed the largest resource mining operations in the Koprulu sector. When the Terran Confederacy was founded, the Morian Mining Coalition and the Kelanis Shipping Guild feared the new power might use its military strength to regulate their lucrative operations, and the two merged to form the Kel-Morian Combine, which pledged military aid to any mining guild threatened by Confederate policy.

Friction grew over the sector's richest deposits. Char was settled to exploit its reserves of heavy metals for the growing Confederate economy and became a source of conflict with the independent guilds of Moria, and disputes broke out over the mineral wealth of Redstone III. Before open war, the Confederacy systematically seized Kel-Morian mining claims, sending intelligence personnel to scout a claim, manufacturing a pretext such as a wanted criminal among the miners, and then attacking to "rectify the situation," after which the claim was handed to one of the Old Families and guarded by marines.

The war#

Open war was declared in 2485 after a clash at the Noranda Glacier vespene refinery on Onuru Sigma, where Confederate Alpha Squadron under Captain Edmund Duke and the 33rd Ground Assault Division under Captain Arcturus Mengsk advanced on a dilapidated complex only to fall into a Kel-Morian ambush. The vespene stored there had been contaminated with hydrogen sulfide, rendering it explosive, and the whole complex eventually burst into flame as Mengsk's forces escorted Duke's troops to safety.

The Confederacy generally held the advantage in weapons and equipment, while the Combine's forces were composed largely of irregulars, pirates, and mercenaries who often stripped captured Confederates of their armor and arms. Both sides deployed goliaths and the early siege tank, the latter originally conceived as a static defense cannon before mobility proved decisive. Battles were fought on Sonyan, where Horace Warfield led a charge that cleared a Kel-Morian bunker at the cost of three bullets in the shoulder, on Char, where volcanic activity and the unrestrained use of nuclear weapons created lethal radiation, on Dylar IV, and on the bloody focal point of Turaxis II, where a botched mission led Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay to go AWOL.

Outcome and legacy#

Impending Confederate victory became obvious long before the war formally ended. In April 2489, Confederate representatives agreed to discuss a ceasefire, and the war concluded with a skewed peace treaty in which the Kel-Morian Combine retained its autonomy but lost almost all of its affiliated mining guilds to Confederate appropriation. The Umojan Ruling Council, regarding the settlement as utterly abusive, held an emergency sitting and formed the Umojan Protectorate.

The Guild Wars assured Confederate supremacy in the sector, a dominance that would go unchallenged for the next decade until war came with the Sons of Korhal, the protoss, and the zerg. The Old Families of Tarsonis made enormous profits selling arms to the war effort, while the colonies bore rationing, raised taxes, and food shortages, and a scandal over uncensored war footage at the Universal News Network forced the resignation of the Confederate president. In time the conflict passed into legend, commemorated by veterans' charities and recorded in works such as the History of the Guild Wars.