Assault on the Imperial Guilds

Assault on the Imperial Guilds (帝国遊撃士協会支部連続襲撃事件) was a series of consecutive attacks by the Jester jaeger corps on Bracer Guilds in Erebonia in S.1202.

Background
The goal of the assaults was to lure S-rank bracer Cassius Bright out of Liberl in preparation for the Gospel Plan. The assault was orchestrated by Campanella, to whom the Jesters were merely a catspaw, and briefly trained by Enforcer Leonhardt under his alias "Lorence Belgar" to better maximise their utility. To ensure Bright would be requested for support, Enforcer Sharon Kreuger was tasked with stalling imperial A-rank bracer Sara Valestein in North Ambria.

Attack
At dawn, powerful explosives set directly below the buildings in the city's underground waterways completely destroyed guild houses of the Bracer Guild in Heimdallr. The Intelligence Division of the Imperial Army of Erebonia soon arrested a member of the Jester jaeger corps suspected of entering Erebonia illegally. Erebonian Bracer Guild was unable to contact the bracers charged with overseeing them. A-rank bracer Sara Valestein, affiliated with the imperial guild, was stalled in North Ambria by Sharon Kreuger, unable to help out in Erebonia. The Erebonian Bracer Guild then contacted the Grancel Branch in Liberl directly, requesting aid of high-ranking bracers. Two days after the outbreak of the attacks, guilds in six imperial cities had been attacked and the Bracer Guild was beginning to struggle to function. That day, S-rank bracer Cassius Bright arrived in Heimdallr. As provisional representative of the imperial guilds, he assessed the damage done and gathered the bracers present outside the city walls.

He ordered to halt all orbal communication to prevent enemy interception. The imperial army was slow to grant support to the branches that had not yet been attacked. Having deduced that the enemy would have had to build a base inside Erebonia due to the empire's strict border control, he dispatched six bracers familiar with the area to locate the enemy's base.

Counterattack
These six bracers successfully located and assaulted the jaegers' base and apprehended the members, identified as the Jesters. Following the bracer's assault, the jaegers' movements slowed down and both sides entered a stalemate that would last for two months.

During this time, Bright devised a clever strategy. After making contact with the Intelligence Division, he handed them two messages: one plain message and one encoded. The plain message specified a date and time where the division would meet again with Bright. The encoded message contained a detail plan in which the Imperial Army would defeat the jaegers after they had been lured out by the false information in the plain message. The General Staff Office agreed to the proposed plan.

The jaegers had indeed intercepted the message and gathered to assassinate Bright. Instead they found themselves surrounded and forced to surrender. The arrested members spilled the locations of their other bases. The plan was believed to have completely dismantled the Jesters.

Aftermath
From the moment Bright's arrival was expected, the Intelligence Division requested the General Staff Office to pursue and put him under strict surveillance upon arrival. The file on Bright in the Intelligence Division's database had him listed as a L4 threat for commanding the counteroffensive against the Imperial Army during the Hundred Days War and is therefore considered a potential threat to national security. They failed to track Bright's whereabouts until he himself reached out to the Intelligence Division.

After Bright's successful strategy to disband the Jesters, the Intelligence Division reported to the General Staff Office that Bright's threat level would be immediately raised to L5, a severe threat to national security and must be placed under strict surveillance if he ever enters the country again. Even after Bright's departure, the General Staff Office's Special Investigative Department reported to Chancellor Giliath Osborne that although Bright has not shown any suspicious behaviours nor at that point has had contained with Olivert Reise Arnor, they will continue to track their movements.

After the situation was resolved, the Bracer Guilds in Erebonia were successively locked down under governmental and provincial pressure. Sara Valestein is offered a job at Thors Military Academy and Wenzel transfers to the Crossbell Branch. Toval Randonneur continued to work as a bracer, alternating between the Legram Branch and Alster Branch.

Ever since the lockdowns, the imperial government and the Bracer Guild have been at odds. After the annexation of Crossbell, governor-general Rufus Albarea shut down the Crossbell Branch in the fall of S.1205. In S.1206, the Bracer Guild dispatches Scherazard Harvey and Agate Crosner from Liberl to Erebonia. In July that year, the imperial government even issues a collaborative defense between Thors Military Academy, the Bracer Guild and Courageous during the Summer Festival in Heimdallr, acknowledging the re-establishment of the Bracer Guild in Erebonia. After the collaborative effort to track down the Hercules special ops from Calvard on July 16, the government declares Martial Law the next day and shuts down the guild houses in Heimdallr once again.

Trivia

 * It is unknown which six cities exactly had their guild houses attacked.Assault on the Imperial Guilds 3 - Visual (The 3rd).png The background visual with an Intelligence Division file lists the following branch names: "Wrest rhea", "Erepaus", "Megiporig", "Lapappa", "Ajapar" and "Manchester". It is difficult to make out which names were listed for each of these branches, but names include (approximations of) "George Santoroba", "Jack Daniels", "Gram Crowd Gundam", "Johnny debu"and "Jeian Kingdom".