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Well, I've kind of backed myself into a corner.
I'm running a homebrew system twice a week with two different gaming groups, and things just got appallingly complicated.
It's not a game-mechanic or a numbers problem, it's in- universe politics, and I'd appreciate some advice on player steering, actually player empowerment.

The game setting is fantasy, powerful but not routine magic, fairly high intrigue, not quite thaumpunk but the idea has definitely occurred to a few people.

This is the situation; the characters mostly come from a kingdom, Kuquan, that is about to get involved in a major war.
Their enemies-to-be are a group of closely related states to the south, the five kingdoms of Zarthan. (it was only well after it was too late to change that I realised I had stolen this from H. Beam Piper.)

The historical model I was using for the Zarthani was Spain in the final stages of the Reconquista- with the elvish people standing in for the Moors. High, Great, Edral, Austral and Further Zarthan are raging hotbeds of human xenophobia, they have a large standing army- the elves were expelled by force- and the only land border they have is with Kuquan.

Most of the elves who didn't die or escape by sea went to stay with their relatives in Kuquan, which has a substantial minority of elves who have significant cultural and legal influence. This is a year after the final expulsion happened, so the incomer elves who haven't moved further on are the militant nutters who want their lands back.

The local elves are not best pleased by all of this, and while kin is kin, it is duty, not friendship- they reckon the incomers have been warped by the need to fight, some of them have spent their entire lives under arms and are almost as hate- filled as the Zarthani. The incomers and locals are from two very diferent political cultures.

Raw numbers favour the locals, numbers under arms favour the incomers. The joker in the pack is the svartalfven, (dark elves- well, "Drow" is product identity after all) who have been living underground for some time now, and are more or less openly bidding to side with the humans, to keep this lunatic lot in check.
There are a few dwarves, too.

The king of Kuquan is widely renowned as a fool. He has a fine notion of chivalry and a high idea of what a leader ought to be, and it completely passes over his head that he isn't it. He can't hold the affection of his greater nobility; doesn't even really understand that he has to try, which should illustrate the scale of the problem.

The king's younger brother is not an idiot, but he is of the opinion that if he does for instance, kill his brother the king, the kingdom would come apart- open regicide would do more harm than good. He's probably right.
The former fourth in line to the throne was recently executed for treason- and quite right too. The third in line, next after the two brothers, is the King's daughter, a fifteen year old girl.

The actual balance of forces is heavily in favour of the Zarthani. Without nonhuman aid, Kuquan would last two summers at most, not that the King realises this.

The problems are; loyalty of the nobility to the king.
Regicide on the eve of a war of survival.
The elves heading in at least two different directions.
Existing bad blood due to a few minor incidents.
Very adept Svartalf string pulling- they already broke the back of the local militant tendency, largely through sheer embarrassment.

I have the ballistics of the situation already worked out; that is, what'll happen if the players don't come up with anything.
The elvish incomers will go to war, taking what of the humans they can con into attacking now with them as cannon fodder. They're not as subtle as they ought to be, and they'll take heavy losses.
The native elves with a large tranche of moderate humans will try to pull their collective behind out of the fire, and do fairly well up to a point.
The king will insist on taking charge himself, fight overly- dramatic pitched battles, and lose.
The frontier line will break, and the border provinces will fall, within two campaign seasons, the capital within three and the last strongholds of the kingdom within five. Then the pogrom begins again.

So, the big question; how do I get the players into a position to do something about this? What do I offer up to them to actually make a difference?

I have a preacher and a disciple, a shaman, a knight- banneret, a demon of a vanquished god, a renegade svartalf empath and a snotling horde in one group, a dwarf artificer, a kensei, a half-elf half- demon refugee and a wannabe-necromancer bard in the other. (Yes, I know. Thse lineups are subject to change.) Help?

Money. Lots and lots of money, in a form not easily stolen. Wars are expensive, and those who have the ability to fund them are naturally influential.

You've fucked up. You needed to decide how to get the characters involved at the time of character creation and shaped character creation from there. Now you have to improvise.

Your characters probably don't all want the same things, which will make it harder. The best tool in your arsenal at this point in the game are the hated enemy and the powerful patron. The hated enemy will give them a reason to fight against a side and the powerful patron can reward them (cash and magic goodies are the rewards that motivate most players) for doing what he wants them to do. Start them out with a cruel betrayal (powerful enemy- humiliate them and screw them out of money and magic to really get their blood boiling) or a job (powerful patron) with a good reward.

Make the patron a likable guy and not a shmuck, so the players will actually want to keep him around.

This sounds much more interesting than the last war-oriented D&D campaign I played in, which was just the DM narrating the political climate while the players rolled dice until the enemies all died.

Three possible main objectives come to mind for your scenario:

• Prevent/delay the incoming elves from starting the war.
  
  Any sort of attack on Zarthan by the elves will have to be somewhat organized, and where there's an organization, there's a leader(s). Find him and talk him into chilling out and waiting for a better opportunity. Stress the need for the nation to fight united, and beseech him to gather any support and reinforcements they can in the meantime.
• Deal with the incompetent king.
  
  Any war with a bumbling chimp as commander-in-chief is doomed to failure. How powerful is the magic in your campaign? Would it be possible to, say, replace the king with a doppleganger (temporarily, if need be)? If not, perhaps an illness could be "arranged" rendering him incapacitated, so his brother is forced to deal with affairs until he recovers. Make sure that the state doctors know he will one day be better so they can reassure the populace and hopefully avoid panic.
• Procure any advantage for the inevitable war.
  
  Are there any sympathetic neighboring countries? Or any countries at all that could be "persuaded" to lend a hand? Also, as Feil said, get money, for both the players and the nation's coffers.

Now, I don't have any experience as a GM at all, so I don't know if these how possible/realistic these are. Hopefully it is of some assistance. This sounds like the type of setting I would prefer to play in, where the players' and characters' skills and attitudes play a bigger role than the magical modifier of their sword.

A snotling horde?

Okay, what I'd do would be a following story arc:

1) Introduction: first, they have to learn about the political climate from a source of your choosing. They may accompany a royal diplomat on the way to somewhere, or perhaps stay at a royal court. I'd use a cliche: if the knight-banneret has any land, the group may be staying there, relaxing and all, when an Important Messenger arrives and asks to stay the night. Now: if the group likes the knight and you feel they will aid him, have the messenger bring summons from the king's brother. If not, have the elves try to murder him - let's say he was moving important documents relating to aid one of Kuquan's neighbors was willing to give or something.

2) The players are given a job by the king's brother: introduce him as a likeable character, trying to save the King from himself. If you make the players like him, they should get involved in the wider conflict easily - if not, offer them rewards. He will ask the group to run some increasingly important errands: escort diplomats, perhaps? Assist in forming regiments for the upcoming conflict? Spy on enemies? Seek a powerful magical artifact? There's plenty of space here.

3) War breaks out, the Kingdom is invaded: the epic starts. Make sure to reward the players for their hard work: the regiments they formed would fight the invader and do very well, the alliances they helped form would pay off, etc. (unless they screwed up horribly). Possible plots would involve them trying to broker peace, commanding or taking part in battles, defending villages and hamlets from raiders,etc.

End it with a huge battle, where all the characters established during the campaign would meet for one last time. Have a noble knight they came to know and like lead a charge into the elven ranks and die tragically, have the demon defending a barricade against overwhelming odds, the preacher urging troops to fight on (or convincing the commander not to give up yet) and the knight arrive in the nick of time with reinforcements to save the day. Come up with other possible scenes like that and give everyone their five minutes of fame. Players love that stuff

Anyway, it all depends on your player's characters, of course, and what they want to do.

How about asking them? If they want to see themselves in battles, do battles, it they'd rather dungeon-crawl, use the cliche plot of "Find an artifact, save a kingdom". You may also think about introducing a villain, but in such a campaign he's not really needed. They may meet the enemy Grand Marshall at a royal ball somewhere, though. Make him a nice fellow, likeable, funny and cool to hang out with.

The next they see of him, he's standing on a hill,commanding the Elvish Horde, with a stone-cold face, and looking on as his troops advance, killing the group's friends

Feil wrote:Money. Lots and lots of money, in a form not easily stolen. Wars are expensive, and those who have the ability to fund them are naturally influential.

One thing to do is reward the players with things that cannot be stolen. If they do a good job, the magic user gets taught a better spell, the fighter gets better combat training, the thief gets taught special techniques, etc. This is in addition to a few regular funds they might get for the mission (costs, plus some profit).

Gold will be spent.
Weapons can break.
Items can be stolen.
Scrolls can be cut/burned.

Knowledge is with you.

IO, are you sure you mean fucked up, or just fucked?
Either way, I reckon you might be on to something. The characters stepped into this situation, the group lineups have changed a fair bit, and normality just doesn't seem to appeal to most of the players.

The system is fairly lethal, and most of the NPCs are well aware of this. They don't expect anyone or anything who risks their life so frequently and for so little to be entirely normal, although in practise both groups have effective leaders, characters whose formal rank - the Knight-Banneret- and reputation- the Kensai- serve as a diplomatic cloak for their less reputable followers.
That and Kuquan is relatively multiracial- albeit with significant friction- and relatively tolerant.

The characters have been dealing with this for some time, this is the second plot point before the denoument.
The larger group is a mix of experienced players and relative newbs- we meet at a games club and we get spectators, some of the kids asked to join, and I knowing that the veterans could use the cannon fodder, let them.
That's where the snotling horde came from, it was both an experiment in the swarm rules and the only kind of character I thought the rookie player could keep alive long enough to actually learn something. (He set a record by going through three characters in one session, just before this.)

They have done a few things to the situation so far, enough to have a reputation, and expectations, following them. They have the basic grounding, and have gone through some preliminary moves.

Magic; there's a fun hangup in there- two of political importance, actually. One of them being that the state of understanding of the world is basically Newtonian, they have managed to get that far. Magic is widely known and recognised as a human- or at least, sentient- thing, the product of a mind and will, not actually woven into the fabric of the universe in any way. By definition, a wizard is a being with the strength of will to ignore and over-ride reality.

The other interesting problem; there are established militias, skilled mercenaries for hire, and at least the possibility of mass citizen armies. Knights and the old feudal order retain a lot more importance than they really ought to because of the spiritual and mental disciplines that form part of the chivalric code; their training and dedication make them much more magic resistant than citizen- soldiers. On an open thaumaturgical battlefield, they can survive and fight effectively where all but the hardest professionals would be literally blown away.

Considering who the king is surrounded by- feudal types including lots of knights, and more than a few court wizards- the doppelganger idea probably isn't going to work. A diplomatic illness might, though- there would be a lot of passive support for that.

Getting money is easier said than done; anyone prepared to help finance the war is going to attach some fairly heavy strings to their contribution, which is going to make a major plot point in itself. (Oh, crap, the svartalfven just about could do this...) And it would have to be one hell of a bank raid to prop up the national treasury.
Execution and expropriation of any less than the most openly treasonous nobles could cause the situation to come apart, an emergency tax might work.

PeZook, I can probably run with most of that, though as usual the devil's in the details. There are two potential elvish leaders, for instance- the local, Happenist lord who only recently ascended to the supreme authority, was the former deputy high inquisitor- office of insuring elvish purity- and is used to thinking the unthinkable; for someone whose day job is to be an intolerant son of a bitch, he's surprisingly open- minded and tolerant in private, and in practical politics.
The head incomer is flamboyant, charismatic, and in private a homicidal psychopath- the bad blood has gone to his head and he would cheerfully pay the humans out in their own coin, if he could. The incomers have already displayed significant paranoia against the local Kuquani humans, and could easily go on to make arses of themselves in that way.

I sense a plot coming on. Thanks for that.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote: Getting money is easier said than done; anyone prepared to help finance the war is going to attach some fairly heavy strings to their contribution, which is going to make a major plot point in itself. (Oh, crap, the svartalfven just about could do this...) And it would have to be one hell of a bank raid to prop up the national treasury.
Execution and expropriation of any less than the most openly treasonous nobles could cause the situation to come apart, an emergency tax might work.

If they enjoy courtly intrigue, a big plot point could be them scheming to get some filthy rich noble-who-doesn't-give-a-shit to contribute some of his mind-boggling wealth to the cause. Every character could get it here, maybe except the goddamned snotling horde

The Knight is an obvious choice to getting to know people and winning favors, the preacher has some nice ways to apply pressure on people, especially if the empath figures out who has a guilty conscience, i have no idea what the disciple or shaman does

PeZook, I can probably run with most of that, though as usual the devil's in the details.

Well, obviously. I don't know your players

But historically, surveying your group for what kind of game they like has worked wonders for me.

the local, Happenist lord who only recently ascended to the supreme authority, was the former deputy high inquisitor- office of insuring elvish purity- and is used to thinking the unthinkable; for someone whose day job is to be an intolerant son of a bitch, he's surprisingly open- minded and tolerant in private, and in practical politics.

Well, you can either use him literally, or invent some lower-level officer they meet and like. If you enjoy such things, there could even be a nice ethical dillema between duty and loyalty to friends.

For added drama, they may save the guy's life somewhere, and then have to face his troops in battle. He will have a debt to them, but he will also have a duty to his country and his people.

Oh, the choices that snotling horde will have to make!