The Fifth Army of the Imperial Forces was the longest-lived unit of the Uzdumalian military; although several units predated the Fifth Army's formation (the First Navy, the Marine Irregulars, the First and Third Armies) and survived until the Later Empire, their organizational structures changed repeatedly over the centuries. The Fifth Army, however, retained both its command structure (a Sky Admiral reporting to both the Grand General of the Armies and the Imperial War Minister) and its main functions -- aerial observation of battlefields; deployment of airborne troops; and aerial bombardment of enemy positions -- from its founding until its dissolution in 668.

The founder of the Fifth Army was "Bloody" Hungu Jaakaani, a voivode and officer in the then-extent Second Army; faced with ruinous losses generated by a three-week binge of gaming and licentiousness in the Houses of Khlam, he applied for honorable execution and cancellation of his debts via the Weighted Drown. He survived, and felt that the Great God had given him a signal to press his luck. However, due to his failures at the table and pit, the Khlamese masters were unwilling to extend him further credit. Instead, Jaakaani volunteered for a suicide mission during the Battle of Thum Hill and succeeded brilliantly. A native of South Uzdu, Jaakaani had piloted balloons while surveying his father's lands; when Leontalos was planning the actions of the Second Army during the Battle of Thum, Jaakaani offered to attempt to infiltrate enemy lines by the air and distrupt the Kreyintine command. He did this brilliantly, firebombing two command tents, shooting a Kreyintine general (the first recorded aerial kill in the Fifth Army's history), and leading much of Kreyintine army on a merry chase around Thum Hill while Leontalos maneuvered artillery into position. The battle marked the high point of Kreyintine resistance; Jaakaani was given war spoils (used to repay his debts) and created a baron, and he and Leontalos began discussing means in which balloons (and later powered airships) could be used in future battles.

Jaakaani's escapades set into place several traditions that lasted for several hundred years -- the association between gaming and the Fifth Army's pilots (since the Army could not recruit based on the results of the wrackers, success in the pits was often used as a marker of likely success within the Fifth); the presumption of willingness on the part of those pilots to fly on death-defying missions; the embrace of novel tactics; and a willingness to "seize upperness", as Baron Jaakaani's grammatically questionable house motto put it. The last was perhaps most controversial throughout the lifetime of the Fifth Army. From reports that the Intimidator-class airship Orchids Blossoming at Night fired on surrendering soldiers during the Four-Week War of 571 to the controversial, sternly protested, and winkingly condemned aerial deployment of mines on commercial sea routes by the "Sky Devils" of the Twelfth Division during the inconclusive blockade of the Orinese port of Sinon, the Fifth Army became famous throughout the Empire (and infamous elsewhere) for their willingness to flout not just convention but the rules of warcraft.

The Fifth Army was formally headquarted at the Air-Palace of Leontalos, and this facility was historically used to train pilots and those soldiers looking to earn their coveted "hawk wings" by transferring into the Fifth Army as paratroopers. The simultaneous use of the Air-Palace by the Imperial Messenger Service and other elements of the air corps occasionally led to conflict, as institutionally the Fifth Army viewed the Air Corps as rakish dilettantes and the Air Corps viewed the Fifth Army as bloodthirsty thugs lacking the virtues of either restraint and temperament. Nonetheless, the two groups collaborated well, and the groups were duly impressed by each others' bravery and feats of aerial legerdemain. (The series races between Erikoinen Kervovasdottir and Captain Fruzdig Lens-Bearer are perhaps the best-known and certainly the most widely-adapted of the occasional competitions between the two groups to settle the question of whose pilots were superior.) The training facilities for mechanics and electricians, as well as the service bays where airships were constructed, were based in Jyorn, in the southeastern Empire.

The end of the Fifth Army followed the reported discovery of a conspiracy between Col. Haandi Ox-Whisperer, the divisional commander of the Fifth Army's Third Division (the "Liontamers") and elements of the air corps to assassinate Devon-Lars IV. The politically-motivated purge that followed led to the Sky Admiral's death by Pleasure Choke and the Fifth's incorporation into the Second Army, the Second Navy, and the Air Corps. Historians have largely dismissed the claims of Haandi's involvement with the supposed conspiracy, despite Devon-Lars IV's assassination the following year, based on his reputation as personally disliked by his supposed co-conspirator Tomar Csillag and the dubious provenance of the evidence introduced against Haandi during his court martial, although opinions differ about who may have forged evidence against him.

See Also:

Erikoinen Kervovasdottir

Execution

General Leontalos

Khlam