Battle of Gantu

The Battle of Gantu was the climax of the wars between settlers and native Tantaari on Daispin in the. Dictator Genera Seithe was defeated by a Tantaari army led by his defecting daughter, Aria Nikina.

Background
Seithe had been persecuting the Tantaari for his nearly forty-year reign, and he had chivvied the remaining Tantaari holdouts and resistance fighters into a corner of Daispin's main continent. He saw an opportunity to finish the conquest for good and all, and staged his army near Gantu in the northeast. Though he had delegated field command to his sons and other generals in the latter part of his reign, he took to the field personally to complete his conquests.

Seithe brought his four surviving children—his Human sons Tristan, Zavio, and Kiryn, and his hybrid daughter Tristaria—to Gantu as well. Tristan was Genera's aide-de-camp, while Zavio and Kiryn had major commands and Tristaria the vanguard. Genera was optimistic that Aria could break the front ranks of the Tantaari, though he privately would have been just as happy to see her die and be rid of her forever.

The flaw in the plan
Tristaria led the charge on the Tantaari, moving with to outdistance her own troops. When she arrived, however, she rallied the Tantaari behind her and turned right around to assail her father's forces. Some of Tristaria's Human forces joined in with her, while other Human troops turned on Seithe simply out of revulsion for his dictatorship. Tristaria killed all three of her half-brothers in the battle, which caused further confusion.

The fighting was hard—though emboldened by Aria's defection, the Tantaari were still badly outgunned and outnumbered—but the command structure disintegrated entirely when Tristaria captured her father. With all four male Seithes dead, the army fell apart, and many units surrendered en masse.

Aftermath
Tristaria—now adopting for herself the regnal name "Aria Nikina"—led her new army back to Enkhara Na'wen, picking up Tantaari loyalists and sympathetic Humans on the way and defeating pockets of her father's loyalists. She cut off her father's hands; killed his closest retainers, sycophants, and lovers; and sent him into permanent exile. In the wake of her string of victories, Aria—herself a descendant of the Tantaari royal Kazraiin dynasty through their Kazic cadet branch—became Queen of Daispin.

The Battle of Gantu was the largest engagement on Daispin since the Battle of Enkhara Na'wen some forty-four years earlier, and the largest until the Defense of Daispin thirteen years later.