Forge: The Crossing at Sosaaz

[Target entity — the current file, to be filled]
{
 "aliases": [
  "Tin'Sosaaz",
  "The Red Shallows"
 ],
 "content": {
  "consequence": "Sosaaz is the decision point of the entire war. Having lost four Juns in a day, the Zegtuzsos leadership concluded that they could not meet the Grand Army in open ground and withdrew into the fens and the cliff country. Everything that made the next thirty-five years slow follows from a battle that took less than a day.",
  "engagement": "Revakgol crossed on a broad front rather than a narrow one, accepting higher losses in the water in exchange for denying the defenders a point to concentrate against. Kori-duelists went across first and held the far bank while the fording columns came over behind them. The Zegtuzsos committed their reserve early against what they read as the main thrust and found it was one of five.",
  "overview": "A year after Vekh'Zural, the main body of the Grand Army forced the Medestul at a fording point below the confluence. Four Juns contested the crossing under a Mulaagjun of the river clans. They were broken inside a day.\n\nImperial doctrine treats Sosaaz as the model river assault and it is the first action in every Saarotsos officer's training.",
  "two_names": "The Red Shallows is not a poetic name. The Zegtuzsos who recorded it were counting bodies in water shallow enough to walk."
 },
 "id": "military_conflicts.crossing_at_sosaaz",
 "meta": {
  "notes": "PROPOSAL, not canon. 'Sosaaz' is a generate_names candidate (sigtaara). Tin = river, stream, current.",
  "status": "proposed"
 },
 "name": "The Crossing at Sosaaz",
 "native": "Tin'Sosaaz",
 "relations": {
  "belligerents": [
   "The Grand Army",
   "Coalition of Tribes"
  ],
  "location": [
   "The Medestul"
  ],
  "parent_conflict": [
   "Great Wyrm War",
   "history.events.the_great_wyrm_war"
  ]
 },
 "sources": {},
 "subtype": null,
 "summary": "First pitched engagement of the Great Wyrm War, 1270 AZN. A contested river assault below the Medestul confluence that the Zegtuzsos lost badly enough to abandon open battle for the rest of the war.",
 "tags": [
  "great_wyrm_war",
  "third_age"
 ],
 "timeline": {
  "year_end_AZN": 1270,
  "year_end_MV": 5870,
  "year_start_AZN": 1270,
  "year_start_MV": 5870
 },
 "type": "military_conflict"
}

[Schema template & register reference — The Burning of Vekh'Zural (military-conflicts-burning-of-vekh-zural). Match its SHAPE and VOICE; do not mirror its content.]
{
 "aliases": [
  "The First Light",
  "The Night of Smoke"
 ],
 "aliases_note": null,
 "content": {
  "engagement": "There was almost no fighting. The posts held between four and nine wardens each and were built to see, not to hold. Where resistance occurred it lasted minutes. Imperial accounts record fourteen Revakgol dead across the entire march.\n\nWhat the burning achieved was not military but temporal: it cost the Zegtuzsos the interval between detection and invasion that their whole northern defensive doctrine assumed they would have.",
  "overview": "Not a battle. Vekh'Zural was a warden-march of roughly thirty watch-posts strung along the north bank of the Medestul, garrisoned by signalmen rather than soldiers. On a single night in 1269 AZN, advance columns of the Grand Army crossed in darkness at multiple points and fired the posts before their wardens could pass a warning north.\n\nThe Paathur learned of the invasion from the fires themselves.",
  "two_names": "The Saarotsos call it the First Light and teach it as the model opening operation - surprise, dispersal, simultaneity. The Zegtuzsos call it the Night of Smoke and do not teach it at all. It appears in clutch songs as a list of thirty names in fixed order, which is the order the posts burned.",
  "vital_statistics": {
   "outcome": "The Grand Clutch is called. Twelve Mulaagjuns answer. The war begins with the Zegtuzsos already reacting rather than positioning.",
   "result": "Revakgol success; Zegtuzsos northern watch destroyed",
   "type": "Raid / opening operation"
  }
 },
 "id": "military_conflicts.burning_of_vekh_zural",
 "meta": {
  "notes": "PROPOSAL, not canon. Vekh'Zural is a canon name; its character as a signal-chain rather than a garrison is proposed here.",
  "status": "proposed"
 },
 "name": "The Burning of Vekh'Zural",
 "native": null,
 "relations": {
  "belligerents": [
   "The Grand Army",
   "Coalition of Tribes"
  ],
  "location": [
   "Vekh'Zural"
  ],
  "parent_conflict": [
   "Great Wyrm War",
   "history.events.the_great_wyrm_war"
  ]
 },
 "sources": {},
 "subtype": null,
 "summary": "The opening act of the Great Wyrm War: a Zegtuzsos signal-chain fired in a single night by Revakgol advance columns, 1269 AZN.",
 "tags": [
  "great_wyrm_war",
  "third_age"
 ],
 "timeline": {
  "year_end_AZN": 1269,
  "year_end_MV": 5869,
  "year_start_AZN": 1269,
  "year_start_MV": 5869
 },
 "type": "military_conflict"
}

[Related canon (summaries)]
### The Great Wyrm War  (event · third_age, canon id: history-events-the-great-wyrm-war)
Imperial Consolidation and Administrative Expansion

Following the final surrender in 1305 AZN, the Empire of Revakgol entered a period of rapid imperial consolidation, known in Saarotsos records as the “Era of Gilded Flame.”

[ul]
- Provincial Integration: The northeast was divided into five new imperial provinces, each governed by a Tufae-appointed Saarotsos overseer, working alongside a native Zegtuzsos Paathur or Mulaagjun. This bicameral rule allowed efficiency without erasing local legitimacy.
- Rise of the Kovahiil Bureaucracy: The Kovahiil, spiritual interpreters of the Kori, evolved …

### The Medestul  (location · river, canon id: locations-the-medestul)
Fordable at perhaps a dozen points in the dry season and at none in the wet. The Zegtuzsos watch-system at Vekh'Zural existed because of it: the river bought them the time to concentrate, and the fords told them where concentration would be needed. A broad, slow river running west to east across northeastern Silgolt, forming the border the Empire of Revakgol crossed in 1269 AZN.

REVIEWER NOTE: canon says only that Revakgol 'crossed the Medestul's northern border'. This entity reads the Medestul as a river. It could equally be a province, a march, or a people, in which case this record should …

### Vekh'Zural / Vekh'Zural  (location · warden-march, canon id: locations-vekh-zural)
The posts were built of stone below and timber above, the timber specifically so that a post could be fired by its own wardens as a signal of last resort. In 1269 this worked against them: Revakgol fired the posts themselves, and the pattern of burning that reached the Paathur was indistinguishable from a general alarm with no information in it. The thirty post-names survive in Zegtuzsos clutch songs as a fixed-order list. The order is the order in which they burned. Nothing was rebuilt; the march is ruin and the imperial road runs past it. Not a settlement and not a fortress line. Vekh'Zural …