History and Timeline:The Fraternal War
The war did start on Ktah, and lasted for a few years, but in 3 distinct phases. Preliminary activity centered on Ktah, with assorted skirmishes elsewhere in uninhabited or newly inhabited areas. Without existing infrastructure in the system, and with a lengthy resupply route, a significant portion of the Andolian fleet had to be kept at and along the route to Ktah to support the safety of the Ktah restoration efforts. Once the situation in space and on the ground at Ktah stabilized, the war moved in a new direction, with Andolian forces taking much more aggressive stances, and heavily raiding Light-Bearer colonies and pushing the lines of battle back into Light-Bearer space. The political climate among the other human meme-groups became much more volatile at this point, as what had previously seemed, if unpleasantly violent, something that could be rationalized as merely a logical extension of the previous era's border conflicts was turning into something more disturbing. However, it was at this juncture that the Space-Born were revealed by successful raiding parties, thus considerably disrupting the political will of third parties for mediation. Throughout this phase of the war, the Andolians seemed to be winning, so to speak, but only by attrition. However, the Andolians were in fact committing only those forces necessary to continue to make minimal progress while holding back (and physically concealing) the rest of their production (greatly misjudged in quantity by Light-Bearer intelligence when on full war-time resource allocation), especially of next-generation vessels, for a reserve strike force.
The third, and final phase of the war came swiftly (and not far ahead of renewed stirrings of calls for peace), with massive Andolian strike fleets taking Light-Bearer defenders by surprise in simultaneous attacks on five of their core worlds. Further complicating matters for the defenders was the supposition that, as had happened with Ktah, the Andolians would invest significant time and resources in asserting control over a populated planet. Instead, the Andolians mostly bypassed the planets after securing orbital superiority, completing initial planetary bombardment, and beginning kinetic bombardment operations. The infrastructure of the Light-Bearer core worlds was destroyed in a matter of days, as the Andolian fleets marched relentlessly on. The smaller Light-Bearer outpost worlds actually fared better, as they were deemed small enough to manage through more traditional means.
The planetary meteor bombardments were unexpected in scope, and utterly devastating, lasting, in the case of Cradle, the most developed of the colonies, continuously for well over two weeks. Bombardments did not cease until both sufficient debris was present in the atmosphere to make unsupported existence on the surface short-term untenable and all detectable planetary infrastructure had been damaged beyond likely ability to provide support. Third party media, when reporting on the aftereffects, would come to call the practice "Dusting a World" and frequent comparisons were made to the salting of Carthage, among many other more horrific comparisons, depending upon the political alignment of the media in question.
