The Great Furball

The Great Furball was a massive, lengthy aerial dogfight that took place over the ocean north of Iapetus in 994. The resulting preventative measures to ensure something like it could never happen again led to the modernisation of several then-outdated world air forces, such as the RLAF, RAA, and KBS, and the creation of the Ossyran Unified Air Command as, before then, Ossyra had completely lacked any kind of air force since the mid-920s.

=Battle= The battle was inadvertently kicked off after an information broker belonging to the infamous Masquerade Ball, during the tenure of the Second Maskweaver tipped off a crime syndicate, 'The Blackhawks', that a rival gang, the 'Golden Hands', was moving the vast majority of their wealth, which they infamously kept 'physical' in gold bullion and thus owned a substantial chunk of the world's black-market gold, from one location to another after a recent operation by the Amnisian police, which had discovered it's location. The Hands were trying to move it before they could raid the place it had previously been stored, but due to the lack of time to prepare for such a massive undertaking, no terrestrial transportation method would have been fast enough, and so they were moving them using a fleet of transport helicopters. The Blackhawks, learning of this, hired a mercenary flight squad to intercept and capture them. Getting word of the inbound hitmen, the Golden Hands also contracted a mercenary squadron, who attempted a counter-intercept, but by the time they got there, the Blackhawk-hired team were already in defensive formation around the heliborne gold, trying to force it to land on threat of death. As those two squads began a dogfight, so great was the value of the gold that the Golden Hands, hearing their helicopters were in trouble and the mercs had already lost two aircraft, sent another team to reinforce the first. Then the Blackhawks did the same to back up their own vanguard, and thus, over the course of the next day, just about every combat-capable aircraft on that side of the world that didn't belong to a military was sent by one side or the other to the waters off the north coast of Iapetus for massive sums they intended to make back with the gold, leading to the greatest aerial battle in both scale and spectacle in Terran history. Official estimates are that anywhere from 70 to as many as 100 fighters took part over the course of the marathon 20-hour battle, some belonging to neither side and simply interjecting to try and take the gold for themselves, or hired by third parties. Some simply had grudges against other mercenaries, while others were drawn simply by the opportunity to go down in history. A news crew from Azur Limina had ben in the area near the coast doing a piece on a recently-rebuilt lighthouse that had been restored by just one man over the course of 20 years, and caught sight of the massive battle going on a few miles off-shore, and began rolling. The trails of missile exhaust looping and spiralling and hanging in the sky made the whole thing look like a fight from a children's cartoon - just smoke and flying limbs - from which the battle gained it's now-famous nickname; 'The Great Furball'.

In the end, the battle was ended the evening after the night it had begun, as a stray air-to-air missile blew one of the helicopters' tail rotors off, leading to it ditching in the sea, and then several hours later, around 11PM, the other ran out of fuel from hovering in place, unable to flee past the swarm of jets around it, and crashed as well. With that, deciding it was no longer worth staying, the surviving pilots scattered - but not before a Blackhawks-hired merc blew the ditched helicopters to pieces to deny the Golden Hands their precious cargo. Hearing of the massive battle from the news, an armada of civilian boats from all across the nearby coastlines sailed out and grabbed as much as they could carry before fleeing into the night. Finally, a response from a Terran government, armed boats belonging to the Amnisian police's coastal patrol unit, arrived to deter any attempts to recover the gold by either side that had been the catalysts for this massive battle at about 3AM, as well as to offer search and rescue - and a swift arrest - to any pilots who had survived via ejection and parachuted in the water.

=Aftermath= In the wake of the battle, the footage caught by the ALNN team was shown around the world - and more than one government began having immediate concerns over the sheer warfighting capability a unified mercenary force could hold if someone could get that much air power to co-operate. The RLAF, RAA and KBS all began immediate modernisation efforts, with business for aviation companies like Faber-Albani and AKB-Lugosi tripling overnight - as well as stocks in multiple Ossyran salvaging firms. Lasair already had one aircraft carrier in the wake of the 987 Bleed that led to the creation of the PAVISE Array, but work was immediately began on a second.

At the next meeting of the Ossyran Conference, which at the time was held in Azur Limina, Amnis brought along all of the gold that it's APD amphibious unit had recovered, and the haul was split evenly between the states of Ossyra under heavy guard. At the same Conference, the states unanimously agreed to the creation of the Ossyran Unified Air Command, and began forming the group into the air force it is known as today. Ironically, one of their own squadrons - Chimera Squadron - is formed exclusively from pilots who participated.

The two criminal syndicates that had started the Furball in the first place both fell apart in the wake of the battle, unable to pay their two legions of hired guns and unable to recover much in the way of their lost gold.

One of the helicopter pilots, Silverland-born Cyril Faulkner, survived, having abandoned his ditched helicopter before it's destruction, and was recused by the boats and arrested. After serving a seven-year sentence in a prison in his home state, Faulkner was released and promptly sold his account of the battle that raged around his helicopter to a movie producer in Amnis, from which the hit movie Golden Skies was created, with Cyril working directly alongside the screenplay team to ensure as much accuracy in the transpiration of events in the movie as possible.

Those who survived are regarded by their mercenarial peers as some of the greatest ace pilots to have ever flown the skies of Terra, and souvenirs - aircraft fragments, bullet casings, flight gear, pilot helmets - that saw action that day are highly sought-after in their circles. Intact aircraft that actually fully survived the dogfight, in particular, are the pride of more than one collection, both museum and private.