Old and New Guard

The skies above the Kingdoms of Motzabili, during the Anglasecuarnian Wars. A pilot of the Imperial Calintropian Aviation Troops -Calintropische Kaiserliche Luftfahrtruppen-, piloting one of the new "Hunter" planes, encounters with a Gryph Wind Rider of the Calintropian Imperial Guard -Calintropische Kaiserlichen Garde-

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Due the presence of flying creatures -as dragons, gryphs, great eagles, hipogryphs and other flying creatures- and flying peoples –as Car’Haad, harpies and some kinds of demons, among others-, the importance of dominion over the skies was presented quite early in the history of Aiers.

However, often humanity overlooked this aspect of warfare, and while during the First War of the Power, the previous demonic-car’haad war had depleted the flyers of the Dark Legion, and they didn’t played an important role, the Dark Legion capitalized their superiority in the skies in the Second War of the Power, which made humans take conscience of the importance of the flyers, specially after they allied high elves used air mounted cavalry to scout movements of the armies of the dark legion, to deploy their forces.

Since then –and specially, after the Third War of the Power and the cataclysm-, all the main human armies tried to keep at least a small force of flying creatures in their service, to fulfill roles as explorers and messengers.

A problem for this was, however, that humans couldn’t fly: either they get for these roles flying allies –as Car’Haad-, or flying beasts to be mounted:

Humans didn’t trusted much Car’Haad, lower demons and Harpies...

But humans proved to have poor –terrible- results domesticating flying creatures: because of this, they had to rely, even against their wishes, to non-humans: elven beast masters, who could domesticate, and actually ride, the flying beasts.

These elves under human service crossing the skies, will become the Wind Riders.
Due the strategic and tactical advantages of sky observation, aside of better communications between distant armies, as said, all human armies tried to have flyers and Wind Raiders: However, not all of them could, as there where few flying creatures, and fewer riders of them, being the process of domestication and training, of flyers and riders, extremely slow and difficult. Because of this, the Wind Riders never became one of the divisions of the armed forces –navy and army-, and not even, a fraction of the armies –infantry, cavalry and artillery-.

For centuries, only the wind riders, riding their flying beasts, would dominate the skies.

At least, until some humans began to try to develop alternatives. The first attempts, of aerostatic balloons, where seen just as curious experiments: experiments that where, however, watched carefully by some nations who didn’t had access to their own Wind Riders.

Slowly, human flying devices would develop, but the superiority of the Wind Riders will be uncontested… at least, until the creation of the airplanes.

The first airplanes where slow and difficult to maneuver, and weren’t mechanically reliable: because of this, the wind riders laughed at the clumsy human attempts to reach the sky. As well, the traditionalists commanders of the armed forces of the firsts powers of Aiers, didn’t believed in these new experiments, useful only for a fair and an exposition of inventions, but not for war.

But then again, the nations who didn’t had flyers and wind riders, followed closely these developments. As well, while domesticating a flyer and training a wind rider could take decades, planes where easier and cheaper to build, and easier, to train the pilots.

Because of this economical and practical reason, even with the distrust of the high command, began to enter in service more and more airplanes. Clumsy and slow, they where no match for the majesty, speed and ability of the flyers and their Wind Riders.

But with the Anglasecuarnian Wars, once more time humans will take a technological leap, because of the attempts to make it easier to make humans kill other humans.

At the beginning of the Anglasecuarnian Wars, the use of air planes and wind riders was still limited to exploration roles –being much of their communication roles relegated, due the advances in communications-.

While the soldiers of the sky weren’t expected to fight, often the wind riders and pilots carried pistols and rifles. It was then during the early stages of the war, when Wind Riders decided to try to use their flyers more aggressively, to attack and destroy the enemy observation planes and globes, using the same flying beasts natural weapons –such as claws and teeth-, or the weapons carried by the Wind Riders.

As a response to these attacks, observation airplanes began to carry machineguns. However, against the flyers, was still not enough. Because of this, where later developed the “hunters” airplanes, for aerial combat against Wind Riders, rather than to serve as observation airplanes.
While the Hunter planes where too slow, easy to break and clumsy for the Wind Riders, As the war progressed, each loss of the Wind Riders was irreparable, meanwhile was easier to build airplanes and train pilots.

Slowly, one by one, the Wind Riders of both sides of the war began to fall in combat, and their numbers diminished: A clear sign of this, was the evolution of the hunter-planes, from a design to face Wind Riders, into fighter-planes, designed for aerial airplane-on-airplane combat.

It will still be needed years for the airplanes to be capable of even reaching the Wind Riders and their flyers maneuverability and speed… but what displaced them from the battlefield was in the end the costs.

Despise of this, several nations will keep still for decades their Wind Riders, but mostly in colonial scenarios, where the lack of mechanical spare parts, airfields or fuel made the use of airplanes less effective. Other units where only keep for their ceremonial value.

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Worked over a photo found on Google Images for the backgrounds -my own clouds looked horrible D:>