Consider Phlebas

The war toed-and-froed for over thirty years, with many battles, pauses, attempts to promote peace by outsiders and the Homomda, great campaigns, successes, failures, famous victories, tragic mistakes, heroic actions, and the taking and retaking of huge volumes of space and numbers of stellar systems.

After three decades, however, the Homomda had had enough. The Idirans made as intransigent allies as they had obedient mercenaries, and the Culture ships were exacting too high a toll on the prized Homomdan space fleet. The Homomda requested and received certain guarantees from the Culture, and disengaged from the war.

From that point on, only the Idirans thought the eventual result much in question. The Culture had grown to enormous strength during the struggle, and accumulated sufficient experience in those thirty years (to add to all the vicarious experience it had collected over the previous few thousand) to rob the Idirans of any real or perceived advantage in cu

The war in space effectively ended in 1367, and the war on the thousands of planets left to the Idirans — conducted mostly with machines, on the Culture's side — officially terminated in 1375, though small, sporadic engagements on backwater planets, conducted by Idiran and medjel forces ignorant or scornful of the peace, continued for almost three centuries:

Idir was never attacked, and technically never surrendered. Its computer network was taken over by effector weapons, and — freed of designed-in limitations — upgraded itself to sentience, to become a Culture Mind in all but name.

Of the Idirans, some killed themselves, while others went into exile with the Homomda (who agreed to employ them but refused to help them prepare for further strikes against the Culture), or set up independent, nominally non-military habitats within other spheres of influence (under the Culture's" eye), or set off in escaped ships for little-known parts of the Clouds, or for Andromeda, or accepted the victors. A few even joined the Culture, and some became Culture mercenaries.

Statistics

Length of war: forty-eight years, one month. Total casualties, including machines (reckoned on logarithmic sentience scale), medjel and non-combatants: 851.4 billion (±.3 %). Losses: ships (all classes above interplanetary) — 91,215,660 (± 200); Orbitals — 14,334; planets and major moons — 53; Rings — 1; Spheres — 3; stars (undergoing significant induced mass-loss or sequence-position alteration) — 6.

Historical perspective

A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than.02 % of the galaxy by volume and.01 % by stellar population. Rumours persist of far more impressive conflicts, stretching through vastly greater amounts of time and space… Nevertheless, the chronicles of the galaxy's elder civilisations rate the Idiran-Culture war as the most significant conflict of the past fifty thousand years, and one of those singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days.

Dramatis personae

Once the war was over, Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T'seif had herself put in long-term storage. She had lost most of her friends during the hostilities and found she possessed little taste for either celebration or remembrance. Besides, Schar's World returned to haunt her after peace resumed, filling her nights with dreams of dark and winding tu

The Querl Xoralundra, spy-father and warrior priest of the Four-Souls tributory sect of Farn-Idir, was among the survivors of the partial destruction and capture of the Idiran light cruiser The Hand of God 137. He and two other officers escaped the stricken craft while the Mountain class GCU Nervous Energy was attempting to take it intact; his warp unit returned him to Sorpen. Interned briefly by the Gerontocracy there, he was traded for a nominal ransom on the arrival of the Idiran Ninety-Third Fleet. He continued to serve in the Intelligence service, escaping the schismatic Second Voluntary Purge which followed the Homomdan withdrawal of fleet support. He reverted shortly afterwards to his earlier role of Combat Logistics Officer and was killed during the Twin Novae battle for control of Arm One-Six, towards the end of the war.

After joining Ghalssel's Raiders on Vavatch, Jandraligeli became a relatively trusted lieutenant in the mercenary captain's band, eventually taking command of the Company's third ship, the Control Surface. Like all the Raiders who survived the hostilities, Jandraligeli had a profitable war. He retired shortly after Ghalssel's death — during the seven-strata battle sequence in Oroarche — to spend the rest of his days ru

The drone Unaha-Closp was fully repaired. It applied to join the Culture and was accepted; it served on the General Systems Vehicle Irregular Apocalypse and the Limited Systems Vehicle Profit Margin until the end of the war, then transferred to the Orbital called Erbil and a post in a transport systems factory there. It is retired now, and builds small steam-driven automata as a hobby.

Stafl-Preonsa Fal Shilde "Nseestra dam Crose survived another serious climbing accident, continued to out-guess machines millions of times more intelligent than she was, changed sex several times, bore two children, joined Contact after the war, went primitive without permission on a stage two uncontacted with a tribe of wild horse-women, slaved for a dirigible Hypersage in a Blokstaar airsphere, returned to the Culture for the drone Jase's transcorporation into a group-mind, was caught in an avalanche while climbing but lived to tell the tale, had another child, then accepted an invitation to join Contact's Special Circumstances section and spent nearly a hundred years (as a male) as emissary to the then recently contacted Million-Star Anarchy of Soveleh. Subsequently she became a teacher on an Orbital in a small cluster near the lesser Cloud, published a popular and acclaimed autobiography, then disappeared a few years later, aged 407, while on a solo cruising holiday on an old Dra'Azon Ring.

As for Schar's World, people did go back to it, once, though only after the war was over. Following the departure of the Clear Air Turbulence — aimed rather than piloted out by Perosteck Balveda for an eventual rendezvous with Culture warcraft outside the war zone — it was over forty years before any craft was allowed to cross the Quiet Barrier. When that ship, the GCU Prosthetic Conscience, did go through, and sent down a landing party, the Contact perso