New Civilizations (IC, Closed)

[Ulls]

The Town of Ego

The first signs of identity were built for Ego. The use of cloth had started to take its use to be more of use for sailing as the first longships were made in North America, at least as far as those that built it know. The people of Ego brandish the tattoos and symbols that mimic the very ones that Jeb had on with some variety. The town started to take more shape and become expand as more come to hear about the power of Ego. It was slow and support was still low but soon the Wild Wolf will begin his grand campaign.

To the warlord himself, this campaign will be more than conquering the primitive tribes up north, it was establish a civilization for the use of industry for their greatest test, to island hope towards Europe. It was something that was needed for Ego to advance and help build an empire before the British were to get to the East Coast. He also became the first to jump at the sight of going north. He always wanted to explore this alternate world as he was cooped up in Ego for too long and his mind wanted to wander.

The longships themselves were more similar to the Viking designs as best as he could imagine. The people of Ego had the use of canoes and had some use of paddles but they never had something like this. Jeb believed that the longships would give Ego a major advantage when it comes with naval superiority in the Great Lakes region, but this laid the future for ideas for the Great Lakes and trade. However this all must be put on the side as the northern campaign begins.

The sails had an image of the Night Owl in some form on the sails. It wasn't as define as those that are on the totems or on the copper idols, but it was something that defined the fledging Native American empire.

The longships were to first move up north and invade Michigan. The invasion was the northern land that Jeb knew was between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. They were some rivers that could potentially allow them to get to Lake Superior but Ego needed to grow and the use of having major control over the western side of Lake Michigan would allow for more use of trade between the coastal provinces.

The first start of their grand campaign would last around a few months to secure enough ground and assimilate the tribes or enslave them. They will expand their lands with force and make their might known throughout the Great Lakes. The warlord gave his word that he will return once they reached the Bay of the Hud that he called it. He told his advisers to start trying to domesticate Turkeys and start making the slaves to build larger farms and taught the idea of sharecropping for the slaves to have some homes while they work for Ego.

They also needed more slaves to transport more resources and goods as the warlord started to think that once the invasion was done and the increase need for longships to ferry goods and people to colonize the area with coastal villages to prepare for their next step. Jeb would allow this as the increase need for maritime uses as the people of Ego need to be able to understand the use of naval power for the grand campaign.

Another reason why he did allow this was to spread diversity among the warriors and promote war and adventuring through land and sea. This will become useful in the need of picking governors that can keep warrior traditions going through the developing Ego culture. The second part was him allowing his advisers to be tested and start to develop more sophisticated ways of managing their rising towns and villages. There were still more great improvements needed for their infrastructure and supply routes to be of use to try and be used to have a bigger economy for their empire and to encourage more growth.

He had put his faith in his advisers as they haven't been trying to rebel against him, mostly since they know he is the most feared and skilled fighter that they have. He knew that he could have Ego's growing domestic affairs as he see more better wooden homes have started to replace huts and tents.

As the supplies were being packed in, Little Star snuck into one of the longships and the warriors try to stop her from getting on but Jeb said that if she needs to continue her training and will be a personal auxiliary and will learn how war is being waged. To the warlord, he knew that her training would stagnate if it were under Three-Feathers and he wanted to personally dissuade her about the glory of war, but remind her of the necessity that comes with establishing order in a world of chaos and wandering false spirits the only way Ego knows.

The longships left at the sight of sundown as torches lit the way up north as Jeb called this a new ceremony as they gave their prayers to the Night Owl as they prepare to make the first start of their grand campaign a reality and carve their place in history.

[Achidyemay]

Being sent back in time to start an ancient civilization is full of learning opportunities, many of which Everett has come to realize over the following month with his adoptive tribe. Here are a few things that this extended summer camp has taught him.
1. Most foods don't have a lot going for them taste-wise
2. The rocks have to fit together or the wall may fall
3. Don't eat that, it's poisonous
4. Working wood with stone tools is hard
5. Making stone tools is hard
6. Favors carry a large amount of weight
7. Don't eat that, it's poisonous
8. Basically nothing is permanent
9. There are no weekends to look forward to
10. Don't eat that, it's poisonous

As usual, Everett rose with the sun. After weeks of sleeping naked on the beach, he was very thankful to be waking in a bed of pelts and wearing pants! He only had the one pair that Huệ had made for him, but at least he had pants. Coupling that with Hai's pancho and he was ready for prom. Or a day of work outside, which had started to be his everyday. Stepping out of the small wigwam-esque hut and into the misty morning air, Everett could't help but reflect on how he still didn't understand what was going on. If he was going to get home, he would likely need a boat. A large boat. With provisions. And a crew. And sailing back to Wisconsin would have its own challenges in and of itself. Everything he thought of was just a nail in his destiny's coffin. Or so he thought. Maybe if he could figure out how he had gotten sent to this strange, electricity-less land of no wifi, devoid of functioning toilets, he could figure out how to get back. He had already tried praying really hard, so that was sort of out of the picture.
Today he was planning on continuing to smooth out the land within the retaining wall they had built. He wanted to get a head start on the more laborious chores before the sun got to be intense. He picked up his hoe, a carved, wooden number that had serve him faithfully thus far. It was still at the outside of the retaining wall, where he had left it after last night. He was the first one out, but had no doubt that the others would join him eventually. Everett figured he had a lot to repay these people for, even if they didn't know how to get him home, and he was working hard to repay them. Besides, he had plans for this small community. Once the farms were set up and prepared, and the homestead was more established, he could really let loose. There were so many ways that they could benefit from Everett's first world knowledge. But in the mean time, he was sure they'd benefit from him trenching the rice fields. He had been taught what he was doing by an incredibly disbelieving crowd. The fact that he didn't understand how rice worked, in their minds, was convincing evidence that he wasn't their ancestors. They also had a tough time convincing themselves of the United States, and the numbers that he was throwing around didn't help. Eventually they came to the shared conclusion that Everett was from the heavens above, because it was the only thing to them that was on the scale that he was describing, and he just liked the idea of being a fallen angel.
The flat land surrounded their homestead for miles and Everett was lost in the idea that maybe one day all of this would be farm fields, or maybe a city with towering skyscrapers. He waved a good morning to Bảo as the young man entered the field to help him. Bảo was the unofficial leader of the group and Huệ's older brother. It had been his idea to go on this expedition. Turns out, several people were coming south to make new farms. Since Bảo wasn't going to be inheriting his family's farm, he had gotten together with his other friends that didn't mind coming with and they had all come south. This, Everett realized, was why they were all so young. Bảo himself was no older than 25. Bảo was particularly excited because down here he didn't have to pay taxes to any lord and they were far from bandits. He liked to joke that some day he would be a mighty emperor, and after hearing Everett's stories of America, he liked to say that he would lead the charge and conquer the heavens themselves.
"Tell me a story," Bảo said, once he had gotten a little closer. When Everett had first started working on the farm, and after he had been taught what to do (which was quick, he had never grown rice before, but most of what they were doing made sense to him), Everett had asked Somboon, Hai's younger brother, to tell him a story. Somboon had been confused at first, but after some probing from Everett, he managed to spin a tale about the creation of the big river. The ad-lib style and epic story telling (that the audience of wall builders felt free to add to) told Everett that this was an original. When he had asked them about religion later, around the campfire, Huệ had laughed as if it were some joke. They had no time for children's stories. Everett thought about asking why they had thought he was a spirit then, but decided against it.
"Once upon a time there was an old woman who lived alone in a bottle." Either way, storytelling had become a common practice when working. They went back and forth taking turns telling each other stories, mostly as a joke. It didn't seem like there was any established lore that they knew and it was a rule that the listener could change the story at any time, so Everett never bothered to tell anything historical. Everett was also aware that some words didn't translate well. For example, just then, the more literal translation of what he said was "lived alone in a bucket" since bottles hadn't been invented yet.
"Her only company was her pet cat, she lived very poorly and had very little to eat. Her nets pulled up nothing and she was too old to work in a garden. And oh, oh dear, all her family had moved away to the south leaving her all alone." He gave a meaningful glance to Bảo and then laughed. Bảo chucked some mud at him which Everett skillfully ducked.
"One day she finally did manage to catch a fish, it was beautiful, with golden scales. She thought about how tasty it would be to fry up that fish and finally have something to eat. But then the fish spoke to her, fair lady, do not eat me, I am the king of all fish and if you let me be I will grant you many wishes" Everett affected a high piched voice for the fish, but Bảo shook his head, insisting that the fish had a much lower voice, more like a 67 year-old man who smoked 3 packs a day.
"The woman was still very tempted to eat the fish, but decided to give it a chance and let the fish go. the fish swam in three circles and then told the woman that he would give her whatever she asked for. The women, now out a meal, asked the fish for dinner. The fish said done and then with a flick of his tail, he was gone."

Everett would recount the story of The Old Woman Who Lived in the Vinegar Bottle as best as he could remember it, and only had trouble when he got to the part where she wished for a new car. They didn't even have the wheel and the wheelbarrow wouldn't even be invented for another 3000 years, so that put a bit of a damper on the story. By the time he had finished, everyone else had joined them in the fields. Afterwards there was a debate over whether or not this would be enough land for the coming rainy season, or if they needed to build more. Bảo seemed to think it was enough and wanted to start building a storehouse/communal building. Wǔ thinks they'll need another field. When Everett first moved in he had noticed the growing rivalry between the two. Bảo was older, by a year, and had strong support from his sister and as the organizational head, but Wǔ was more serious, and seemed more intent on leading. As usual, now, Everett came between the two and offered a compromise, they would build an extra field only half the size of the other and also build the house. Everett figured that if they all worked hard they'd be done before the rains came. Wǔ wanted to object, but Everett told him that if he wanted things to be easy, he could go back up North.

Construction on the megahut, as Everett had taken to calling it, was actually a relatively straightforward affair. While they definitely new how to build their tools and work the wood better than he could, the overall construction was insanely simple. The whole building, when it was finished a month later, reminded Everett of Native American Longhouses, but it was elevated about three feet off the ground. It had a very open floor plan, is the best way of putting it. This gave Everett an idea.
"We need a bathroom," he announced one morning. This, of course, was meaningless sounds to everyone else. So he went through the process of describing the toilet and shower and bathtub to them. They didn't actually seem that enthused, although Hai was curious about the idea of pumping water. Everett explained that it was useful for a variety of things, like sanitation or irrigation, which led him to ask Bảo why they didn't plant rice all year round. Huệ responded that rice needs rain that wouldn't come for many months, it was impossible to grow rice otherwise.
"I can build you an irrigation system." Everett said. Exceedingly pleased with himself.

[The Grim Reaper]

Inbuhedj, Egypt

The introduction of a numerate class, as small as it was, had led to the youth of Inbuhedj developing a new way of approaching the world. Suddenly, everything was quantifiable, measurable, decidable. As schooling began to formalize, with Vijaya appointing apprentices and masters, the world started to look just a bit more organized. He had modelled his classes against his understanding of primitive warfare, drawing from his memories of ancient Roman history - his simplest goal was to instill his followers with an understanding of the importance of the reserve, and of tactical knowledge. To that point, he had started to organize them into triads - a master, who would lead the triad from behind and form a reserve, and two apprentices under each. The apprentices would regularly swap positions during the battle, with a forward rank getting in close to control the enemy and a second rank to exploit this control with ranged attacks.

This was a highly regimented tactic, and it did not perfectly fit out Vijaya's heavily mobile, tactically independent doctrine. He understood this, but his primary goal was to equip his troops as officers and teachers - to that end, a very broad understanding of military matters would help him form the core of a helter-skelter combined arms force. His intention was to take himself to the leadership of Inbuhedj as someone prepared to form a coalition of Inbuhedj's local allies, the populated but far less fortified petty kingdoms in the Delta itself, in order to repel the expected aggressors from the south. The troops he would get would be inconsistently equipped, and potentially not even trained. He needed officers able to carefully dig through that muck for a functional force of warriors.

That would come with time. And he had all the time in the world. Yet, he did not know yet that what he faced was a long, unchallenged line - he still saw the world in dots, and points.

Ancient Egypt's Flooding of the Nile had made it crucial to develop a calendar, a point that preceded Vijaya's arrival on this land. To this end, they had developed a conceptualization of three seasons of four months of thirty days - the Flood, Emergence, and Harvest - with five intercalary days. Vijaya, however, required more precision - firstly, wanting to add a leap day, and secondly, to add a weekly Sabbath. He knew that making his mark on Inbuhedj's religious calendar would, slowly, percolate out to the traders that frequented the area, and would act as a direct barometer of his influence in civil society. Games were all well-and-good, but if he were to become a successful member of Inbuhedj's community, he would need to also be able to exert himself on its productive community.

He outlined to his followers a hierarchy of time, which they were to use to begin recording the sales and arrival of goods, using their increasing power over the trade flowing through Inbuhedj to impose their growth as a scribing class on the goings-on of the city. It was as thus - an era, of one hundred Leaps, of four years, of three seasons, of four months, of three fortnights, of two weeks, of four days and a fifth Sabbath. Each year would have a year's end week at its close, to make a total of three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days. Each leap would have a leap's end day at its close, following the year's end week. The exception would be the leap's end day that would end the era, which was omitted. This was a significant adaptation of the existing calendar, which was still relatively rudimentary and still to be entrenched by the structures of government. Yet, Vijaya's calendar was largely commensurate with that of the native calendar. It was its granularity that gave him space to tie to it holidays and modes of practice - in particular, the Leap and Era, which he knew would help keep his calendar aligned to the astronomical features and seasons that it attempted to capture.

The single change that he had made to the day-to-day circumstances of his calendar, in fact, was to delineate a Sabbath for the week, change the week from ten days to two, and change what was once the intercalculary five days to a single 'Sabbath' week.

He intended not to enforce the Sabbath too strictly, for now. But it would soon serve as the litmus test of his capacity to secure the primacy of his religious institution; when the time came, he would action his litmus test by attempting to forcibly bar access to the ports of Inbuhedj on the Sabbath, which would set a custom that would immediately propagate across the Nile through its ramifications for traders across Egypt. Taking about three days to traverse the Egyptian portion of the Nile, traders attempting to transit through Inbuhedj would find themselves suddenly obliged to keep the Sabbath - or, at least, plan about it. With the Sabbath, Vijaya would monopolize Inbuhedj's leisure time; and, with it, the lives of all of the Nile's traders.

Yet, the world had both time and space. Vijaya had recently christened his temple, removing his name from it to announce it as the Academy of Inbuhedj. It was from here he hoped to impose the organization of Inbuhedj into space and its inhabitants, by instituting a census. The census would be an incredible undertaking, even for the large cadre of students who offered free labour,. Many of their parents found themselves paying Vijaya for the privilege of studying writing, numeracy, logic, and tactics under him, which went towards supporting the growing physical reach of the Academy from simply a home to a loose compound of warehouses and archives at the docks of Inbuhedj.

The census would grant to everyone a family name, and a home. So too would it record the assets of Inbuhedj - Vijaya intending not to use this to delineate private properties, but rather, the collective tools of labour that the people of Inbuhedj could use. It would be a reversal of naming properties by those who owned them; instead, he would number them off with streets, named with verbs and adjectives rather than after people. The census would be recorded both as data and in a simplistic street map, to be turned into signs. Each census taker would specify a first name, the name of their head of household becoming their middle name, and then be granted the name of their street as a last name. In this way, Vijaya hoped to prevent some aspect of the primacy of the patriarch of the household from being passed down, instead having people identify themselves in relation to the names on the map for which he was responsible. In future, those who married under the auspices of the Academy would be granted as a family name the name of the street to which they moved, no matter whose volition it was under, taking their old family name as a second middle name. Vijaya's naming system would not catch on for many years, but it would perhaps be a base for future generations to work off, when Vijaya had passed away. Perhaps as bureaucracy became more entrenched, they would adopt his work - otherwise, he would have to implement it through his control of Nilotic trade. It would be a gradual project, certainly. Vijaya did not know how long it would take to conduct a census of Inbuhedj, still being unclear on how large the city actually was. At an estimate, he judged it to be somewhere in the thousands. So he would do it by suburbs, intending to give each record a date along his strict new calendar.

He would also begin to accept, on behalf of the merchants of Inbuhedj, a ledger of orders. These orders would be measured in a proto-currency, used to allow merchants in Inbuhedj and outside it to purchase from the warehouses of the Academy for transportation to the marketplace - and, with it, allow Vijaya to both control the issuing of currency and to slowly increase his control over the land about the river Nile. As he flipped more and more land into the Academy, with the support of the fragmented petty councils of Inbuhedj and a King more taken with secular politicking, he would rent it out to the merchants. The mercantile class was still not particularly powerful, which made them a low-risk, low-reward support base for Vijaya. There was little Inbuhedj's government could do - most of their officials had already bought into Vijaya's Academy, voting with their children and the rise of Vijaya as a household name. Attempting to dislodge someone already so well-known and so tied to trade would swiftly mark Inbuhedj out as easy pickings for its enemies in Upper Egypt, with any such news propagating within days up the Nile.

While he considered it, however, the question of developing a modernist society was interesting. Now would be the time to challenge gender roles. He knew from his time at university the story of the rise of feminism in 20th century Tunisia - the postcolonial regime wished to shore up a secular, democratic state, and currying favour with a newly-educated and financially independent, liberated female population gave them a near-untouchable majority. Vijaya's interests were much more idealistic, if as benevolent, but he had a general understanding of how the Tunisian state had done it. They had formalized, making professional, the traditional feminine crafts - using tailoring and the crafts to found schools that would teach literacy and paid as any manual labour job did, as well as instituting democratic workplaces to craft a leadership class amongst the women.

For now, however, Vijaya would simply need to establish himself as a legitimate mentor to females as he was to his male officer corps alike. He believed it was rather too early to promote gender equity in the military corps, but he had quite the idea of his own. He'd set the Academy up as a matchmaker - allowing the daughters of the powerful to meet and mingle with the most intelligent, wealthy, and fit of Inbuhedj (or, in other words, his students). He would, of course, use the time to carefully ingratiate himself with the upper classes - a few favours here, a bit of support for his land claims there, and suddenly one's child is batting above their weight in terms of courtship. It'd be an interesting way to attempt to normalize meritocracy, too, setting the intelligent paupers he took in as peer-students in the same circles as noble children. He wasn't entirely comfortable with making his Academy a marriage market, but it was better than the average arranged marriage.

Then, he would be able to impose his particular educational methods on women as men. Etiquette schooling is back in, baby - and it's bringing literacy, numeracy, music, art, and military tactics with it.

---

Northern Ethiopia, across the sea from Yemen

Donovan's ship would find itself in a land that was sparsely populated, but that had a history stretching millions of year. Many would argue it was the cradle of humanity, but humanity's rise would be in other nests. Yet, the land known as Punt nevertheless had spots of civilization, long-known to the Ancient Egyptians by this point, trading in the Nile from its tributary out of Lake Tana. Most ubiquitous to the trade out of Punt was myrrh, a fragrance much beloved by the Egyptians, and ivory. Most ubiquitous to the trade into Punt was Egyptian pottery, and crafted goods - including chessboards, Go pebbles, and the clay dominos that Vijaya had begun to manufacture as replacements to the flimsy, quickly deteriorating bark cards he'd prototyped.

They were rare and far-between - the trade was not a large part of Vijaya's plan in the short term. But those that did exist were prized possessions, carrying intricate designs on their back - many had given them near-mythical properties, as the talking pictures, noting how Vijaya's followers could easily translate similar scratchings on clay. The designs were transliterations of Ancient Demotic script into the Latin alphabet, the letters used by English. They were signed with Vijaya's name, and the name 'Inbuhedj'.

Traders in this region often invoked Vijaya's name, praising him for his bringing of writing and of games. It was not a particularly extensive cult, but the few who were members formed a strange, collegial network from the African coast in the Mediterranean into deep Tanzania.

Donovan would find himself suddenly beset upon by hopeful traders at the coast, seeing his gaudy clothing, large fleet, and hoping to find goods that could be sent to the quickly centralizing trade networks that led to Inbuhedj, from Ethiopia's Lake Tana. Their civilization was not yet extensive, and they did not fear an invasion across the sea when they and Vijaya shared an enemy in the increasingly militant Upper Egypt. Amongst the most vocal was Saba, an Ethiopian merchant who owned the very first deck of dominos in Ethiopia. "Come, come! You look as if you have much to trade - let us talk! Please, sit down and play blackjack with us."

[Conwy-Shire]

Amadeus Mulcahy | Part 1, Chapter 13
August 15th, 63 A.G.
August 15th, 1 C.R. (Colchian Reckoning)

An evening breeze, heavy-laden with August humidity, pressed into my back as I made my way down the Lane of Crafts, nodding to familiar faces as they poked their heads out of the many workshops lining either side of the cobbled pavement. Most men had begun packing up for the day, their crafts and commissions forced to wait another night as the natural curfew of failing sunlight sent the craft masters back into their homes. Such was the order of things nowadays, enforced by social compulsion rather than any monopoly on violence the Ashturi proto-state held. In these streets, where the sway of civilisation had taken root, it was hard to think that the other half of the region - those who still lived outside of the guiding light of Helios' League - still enjoyed the squalor and simplicity of neolithicism.

Into their midst a deluge of bureaucrats had been flung, due in no small part by my burning desire to wrest utter control of the entire valley, from coast to mountainside. Men skilled with the craft of speech spun honeyed words in the ears of chiefs and petty kings alike, as far south as Batiimi, and as far north as Sokhumos, where even the worship of Helios and his sisters was little heard. Cartographers of the most ancient temperament, men who knew the lay of the land from the time before paper mapping, also scoured the valley and beyond, for I had oft wondered where this isolated stretch of land lay, relative to my modern, civilised, homeland. The final, yet most important group, of which had disseminated from the centre in Ashtur were the merchantmen, who now plied the roads and waters of the known world, such as that was in an era bereft of globalisation. The traders' reach now spread further than the common language did, pushing deeper towards the unknown with each caravan and merchant's expedition. The goods they returned with were marvels beyond compare: cotton garments of every colour of the rainbow, small and tart apricots, and most importantly a sackful of red-streaked rocks collected from amongst the lowland marshes of the south-west.

Hallur had been the first to see potential in extracting metals from the marsh-stone, and from his request for my presence at his forge this evening I had high hopes. Red streaks most likely meant the material was iron-bearing, a necessary evolution from Bronze if Ashtur was to ever be brought out of hyper-agriculturalism to any form of true industry.

But as I entered the workshop fronting Hallur's residence, ducking to avoid a low crossbeam, the look on the ageing smiths face was anything but excited. As he explained it, the metal would not yield out of the encompassing material, and no heat provided by the bronze-making specialist could weaken the material enough for mallets and the like to make any use of it. It was only by my reassurance that he didn't through the material away then and there, the frustration plain on his face. Though the visit was not intended to, in the end it stretched long into the dusktime, as we sought to remedy the malaise of inadequate workability. I left the smith in a pondering state, and as I stole a glimpse over my shoulder I could see the old man poring over the diagrams and illustrations we had drawn up, a new hope spilling across his features.

I stumbled under the low crossbeam on the way out, praying the smith didn't notice the scuffing I left on his workshop floor as I walked back towards the Deliberative Hall. Taking in the night air like this, with the humid air long-since passed, reminded me of the old times, walking along old roads, with old houses lining the street of my very modern past-life. The irony didn't fail to notice how I now walked along remarkably new roads, with new houses lining the street in a very ancient time. But such was the conundrum, and until I managed to get my head around it I would blissfully enjoy the ignorance of this new civilisation.

Having arrived at the hall some time later, I fell into bed with an explosive sigh, barely noting the finished tome of a constitution which lay nearby before sleep overtook me.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Part 3, Chapter 18: Sinews of Bronze and the Grave

August 2nd, 63 AG

Down the breech-block came with a thud, two men stripped to the waist and coated in sweat in the summer sun securing the firing mechanism of the piece. Near at hand stood one of the expendable prisoners assigned to the Arsenal, a swarthy man of the East whose brand spoke of murder. As the two guardsmen retired, he advanced to take up the lanyard that controlled the cannon, and I leaned forward in the bunker in eager anticipation. The wrought iron slits of the stone edifice left little room for vision through grating meant to stop shrapnel from accidents, but I could see enough. Beside me the two guardsmen entered the bunker's rear, and they looked out of the slits too, while on the roof of the facility a signalman waved the red flag at the prisoner.

With a crash all too familiar from our time in the north on campaign, the piece spoke. An oath might have passed the lips of the prisoner, but if it did it was lost in the ringing silence of the time after the cannon's discharge. Even with my ears stuffed with specially fabricated lengths of wool, the noise was nearly deafening; but, more importantly, I could see through the fog-bank of gunsmoke that the cannon stood still in one piece, and that the splintered target at the end of the range was indeed ruined. Through that length of wood and straw had the cannonball torn its way, cutting the man-sized figure cleanly in half, almost exactly where the artillerymen had aimed it only a few minutes prior.

I clapped my hands together once in glee, and as the prisoner wandered away from the cannon, dazed by what he had not known would happen, the faculty of the cannon design team began making good time out of the rear door of the bunker to inspect the intact weapon. Smiling, I rose from my reviewing chair, and followed them along with the twin figures of my guards. The wet earth of the recent rain squished slightly under my boots as the floor turned from pavingstone to grassy testing range, but that didn't bother me unduly, or indeed the field gun. This newer model, like the bombards that had preceded it, had wide wheels designed to support the weight of its heavy cast-bronze body even when conditions were less than firm. Indeed, my bodyguards probably sank in to the soil more than it did, which was good, for normally I would have expected the force of the explosion its body had contained to have left a larger mark on the weapon's trajectory.

But, no, the tracks it had been placed in had done as we hoped. As it would if emplaced in proper fortifications, a memory gleaned from the vestiges of my past and trips to old forts from before Independence, the gun had rolled only far enough back to ameliorate the firing impetus effectively without undo stress on the carriage. The trunnions on either side looked intact, or near enough as could be seen with the naked eye. About the weapon the engineers and natural philosophers swarmed like a shoal of predatory fish, though my approach parted them; after all, without my inspiration, this design would never have seen the light of day, and they owed both their careers and their funding to the Crown. Along the barrel my hands ran, the machine appreciably hot after dissipating so much energy, both kinetic and thermal. The grin on my face grew wider as I examined the barrel both by touch and sight. This model, at last, appeared to have survived a test firing without any serious damage.

Oh, it would take weeks of further testing, of stripping down successful designs and inspecting them at the microscopic level to ascertain if any flaws that were invisible would prove catastrophic. But the reinforced single-cast and cold-worked bronze cannonade appeared to be the design I was searching for, now being turned out with their own vastly expensive but oh-so-replicate-able casts. Most importantly, the breech block had held, when combined with the metal cartridge. Stepping back, I allowed the artillerymen to work the breech mechanism, the heavy block sliding upwards at the thrust of the reloading lever and neatly expelling the warped piece of brass that had been the carrier for the corned gunpowder charge. It was still smoking from the heat of the explosion, and hissed slightly upon touching the damp grass. About the bent canister I knelt with the engineers, motioning for their leader, Flavian, to join me.

"What do you make of the shape of the canister, as compared to one yet to be fired?" I asked the question quietly, for I wished to hear his answer, rather than merely have an answer by committee that the entire team composed.

The gray-bearded man frowned, wiping his hands on brown leather apron he wore before drawing padded gloves from his pockets. I waited patiently as Flavian donned the protective equipment, before taking up the brass casing and examining it closely, turning it this way and that. He coughed, before slowly nodding.

"Aye, it is as you said, Hegemon. This fired casing does appear to have flared at the base some, at the end towards the breech-block. That is what you predicted, no? The expansion with explosive force to seal the edges of the breeching mechanism?"

His nod was answered with one of my own, and I took the casing from him, my hands already protected by my supple leather work-gloves to display it for the other engineers to view. Standing, I pitched my voice higher, letting it carry over the conversations of the assembled men.

"Note, esteemed colleagues, the flared nature of the end of the casing. This is as was predicted- though the breech block does not seal the barrel of the piece by itself, the addition of the casing prevents any backfire or escaped explosive gases from harming the operator, and allows for the precise measurement of the amount of powder in each charge for the gun." Mutters passed between the half dozen men and women as their eyes noted exactly what I had said was true. There had been no small debate in the Arsenal about my insistence on using metal cartridges and the breechloading mechanisms. To many of those who called themselves men of reason in the Imperium, the idea had been one of illogic, to spend valuable metal and leave one end of the lethal weapon open to her firers, near madness and a risk to the lives of those who worked to refine my visions.

But my suppositions had been borne out. True, it would require regular reforging of these casings, or else the material expense would prove daunting if such great quantities of high grade metal were merely discarded. The Empire, though vast, was still only a burgeoning industrial power by the standards of the countries of the past? future? which would have made the transition from muzzle-loading shot with free-floating spherical projectiles to the shaped casings and breechloaders I hoped to make the standard of the Imperium of Man. It was a leap of faith, one I hoped would not burn me, to try with my foreknowledge of the ways of the future to leapfrog over those less than desireable aspects of technological advancement. In some ways I dreaded putting my foot out to take the next step, and finding only a bog where I placed my weight. After all, it had taken centuries for the powers of old Europe to progress from bombards to Napoleonic cannon, and even Napoleon had loaded his guns from the front like other decent men of the time.

We did not have those years of experimentation and refinement. That was both good, and bad, in my opinion. Good because the ways of military thinking such machines created after generations were not entrenched; I hoped, prayed, that the officers of the Great Companies would accept these new cannons, mass-produced and standardized, in just as good of grace as their old trebuchets and skorpions. After all, men whose grandfathers had fought with sticks and stones already had to be cognitively adaptive to accept cavalry and crossbows; what was one more marvel to be put to the use of the Emperor's Service? On the other hand, that lack of steady refinement was costing us. This was the first of twenty three separate prototypes, according to Flavian, that had not suffered detrimental damage in the firing process. That was why we used convicted murderers- already a dozen souls had been sent to confront God early due to spectacular failures in certain parts of the gun.

This was playing with fire. But Prometheus did not steal fire from the gods to give it to man by ensuring his hands would never be burnt. Progress marched forward across Europe and beyond- I suspected even now, based on the gathering evidence that I was far from the only Sojourner upon this ancient Earth, that the kingdoms and polities I knew of would be but a small sample of the dangers the Imperium would face in the centuries to come. Here there were enemies that could be seen, but afar, in America, or Asia, or Africa, there may be other men like me, or of even a bent better suited than mine to dominion over their fellows. I would not leave the people I had come to love defenseless because I feared to do all that was necessary. If some few rapists and brigands had to be sacrificed so that the Imperium would be secure, their veins I would open with my own hands, if I had to.

Almost without thinking I signed off on another half dozen batches of these cannonade, prototypes with minor tweaks and derivations to try and improve upon the functional model here, the document pressed in to my hands by one of my Blackguards as the engineers of the Arsenal watched pensively. Their work would go on, and I would sleep better tonight than I had in some time. Surely cannonade would secure our future. Surely.

Western Reaches of Promina Province
July 17th, 63 AG

A clank sounded as one of his men felt a pebble bounce off of his shield, and Sabrino looked worriedly toward the western horizon. Slingers, aye, those could be dangerous. These people of Promina were not known to use such devices, but the wild men of Thrace had done so when the Third served there. Sabrino lifted his shield slightly higher, and growled frustration at the cowards in the nearby grass. Whoever they were, they were too clever by half, and hadn't exposed themselves so he could tell how many there were, or whether they were safe to pursue. He thought he had counted about a half dozen arrows fired at his squad, but they might have only a few archers. Or maybe they were all archers, and he was letting his patrol of fifteen men be yanked around by a few bandits.

There was one saving grace though; a horn call winded again after about half a minute, closer now, and as the section-leader risked a glance north he could make out hurrying figures in black and white coming in a column at speed, several of them mounted and armored up. Cautiously, he ordered his men towards the wheatfield in guttural Battle-Speech, curt words designed to convey meaning quickly and clearly in the heat of combat. Rising from his kneeling posture, Sabrino held his shield in front of him and his shortsword at the ready to strike, his patrol forming a small shield-wall with the crossbowmen ready to fire on any movement as they walked down the slight hill towards the waving yellow grasses. Their faces were taunt with concentration, looking for the ambushing foe to expose itself.

[Reatra]

It was now June, June 20th (at least according to the calendar), some sixty-three years After the Liberation. For the past fifty-nine years Soto has been the Great People's Leader of the People's Regime, first of just a collection of villages on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, now a state stretching from the end of the Baja California Peninsula to the island of Haida in the north. With trading posts along the western coast of the continent. Ships full of experienced sailors hug the coast and ensure that goods and people make it safely from one site to another.

In Peru they had made contact with the city-states who had given them cotton textiles and more than a few slaves to teach us weaving, of course we immediately freed these men and women, but they were more than willing to continue aiding us afterwards. We ventured into the highlands and captured alpacas and llamas and guinea pigs, which the people had domesticated (if only just barely), along with potatoes and quinoa and other Andean crops, and brought them home. That was forty years ago (the Totikama had made it a priority to find a way to bring these beasts and plants back to California), and since then they'd been introduced across all the People's Regime (and then some!). Along with corn, beans, and squash from Mesoamerica, and several small mammals and birds to bring and keep in pens (peccaries and turkeys the main ones), the availability of food has grown dramatically. But that's not all! The mountain goats from the north have been brought to the Sierra Nevada too, meaning that previously useless lands are now full of great big mountain goats, their wool being used to clothe and cover the masses, their meat used for food, their horns used for... horns. The introduction of the mountain goat some four decades ago has since turned the Sierra Nevada from a practical wasteland (except for a few gold and copper mines) to an actually productive region.

Yet it was the mass introduction of steel-tipped tools for laborers during the Fifth Five Year Plan (currently on the Eleventh) that really turned the People's Regime from an inefficient but spirited mass of workers into the practical factory-nation it is now. The Fourth Five Year Plan had seen the development of large-scale steelmaking technology, which had long been made in small furnaces in San Francisco, and the means with which to produce tools out of the stuff was really expanded in the Fifth. Soon steel-tipped mattocks and shovels and picks and hoes and axes were allowing labor squads to carve entire hills and mountains.

That's when the terracing really began.

See, the Central Valley is very fertile, but needs irrigation, and irrigation can be provided by the two major rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, flowing through it. Yet California, and the West Coast in general, is very hilly, and the investment in terracing a hill and cultivating it very quickly pays off. Some crops are best in the Valley, but potatoes, the staple, are good mostly anywhere, and having a temperature-controlled region can really help with yields. In the North Bay dozens of great hills and mountains were cleared of trees and terraced into steps, with stones and gravel being in great demand, there was the need for quarries in the South Bay. Concrete, too, is widely used for construction, as the earthquakes that are common in California (the last big one was some decades ago) mean that special architectural techniques are necessary to keep the masses safe. The need for stones and ores meant the need to get water out of mines and quarries and for mining equipment. This prompted the introduction of steam power. Handscrews can only pump so much water, after all, and while they're very effective attacked to a windmill, they can continually pump when attached to a fueled steam engine. Small steamboats, too, mean less manpower wasted on rowers and more men available to efficiently transport goods off and on a vessel, and it means that ships can paddle their way north against the wind. The Totikama has ideas for much larger steam-powered facilities, effectively partly mechanical factories, which would churn out small parts by the tens of thousands to be fitted together with ease. This is still some years off, but the hope is that soon the productive ability of the People's Regime will be enough to arm every solider with a blade and every adult with a mattock.

Things have been going well, and it seems like this trend will continue for some time...

---

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[Oudland]

Punt, Northern Ethiopia
Coast of Africa

The landing was tense for Donovan and his warriors, who could not comprehend the words of the many curious natives. Men gawked at the masks of the Aikhtiari, brazen and fierce in their design. A few brave souls saught after these as curiosities, much to the reserved chagrine of the devout warriors of Azazl.

After a while they warmed to the good nature of the situation as Donovan facilitated the encounter. His men carried nothing of much practical value besides their sturdy alloy weapons with silvery sheens. A few had qat or salt, however, and the odd warrior carried small figurines made from quartz or copper, depicting an aspect from Donovan's fabricated Pantheon, which seemed to mildly interest a few of the traders.

Donovan had not expected to find the stirrings of civilization. To think that he had considered...

Well, not now. There is no enemy here. These people are innocent. Charming, really.

One eager trader snapped him out of his wonder, hailing him and inviting him to a game of...

Blackjack?

He blinked at the man from under his mask, suddenly realizing how long it had been since he had really remembered home. Or what used to be home before he found himself transported into the ancient Yemeni highlands.

Donovan recovered. Removing his mask, he got the trader's name and, as his Aikhtiari disciples looked on to study his behavior, sat down to play a game of blackjack with him.

"Today is yours, Saba. I am Yamat. It is rare that I meet a friendly face--" Donovan hesitated, shocked. The man was dealing him dominos lettered with English. Though he had a thousand questions, he retained his composure. "--and rarer still that I ever sit idle. These cards of yours are impressive. How did you learn this game?"

[Civilizations OP]

Events of the Middle of the Year, 2936 BCE

Eastern Reaches of Yemen

Above the roads that lead east, dirt tracks that normally teem with trade, vultures and scavengers circle, attracted by the scent of death. A man clad in boiled leathers derisively kicks aside a copper mask from one of the decaying corpses, before continuing west along the road with his fellows. Armed with captured weapons and flush with enthusiasm from a series of successful ambushes, brigands have banded together with followers of a new god, Sarvas, one of their number claiming to be a god-king. Taking advantage of the distraction of the tribal elders looking east, nearly three hundred men march west in loose formation, an agglomeration of the foes of Sheba and the white demon that leads her, resolving to restore the rule of good honorable men who serve Sarvas to the cities.

Forest Encampment, Eastern Italia

As the days pass without any movement from the warlord, or his adviser, Ted, the count of warriors from the various tribes near what may one day be Rome is beginning to dwindle. Some leave openly, clasping arms with their friends before shaking their heads and walking off west back to houses and wives, while others simply disappear in the night and their tents and gear are found missing the next morning. A tribal host, summoned for combat, these men were eager at first, but as the heat of summer rides high with no sign of the dreadful force they are meant to be fighting, individuals with the clout to do so abandon the fight. Within a matter of a day nearly thirty men have left the host, and more seem likely to think better of spending so long so far from home as the days crawl onward.

The Central Valley, California

Perhaps it is just the heat. Perhaps it is the natural rite of all men, to look for something greater to believe in than their fragile bodies of water and bone. The emergence of the Cult of the Red God, Parmal, though, was not something the people of the western coasts expected. Drawn from the wild ravings of a man either gone insane with malady, or indeed divine revelation, a religious movement in the Valley has brought significant opposition to the egalitarian musings of the man out of time who has tried to ingratiate himself with the locals. Hundreds have embraced the doctrine of Parmal, which rejects the teachings of Riley in favor of a vengeful god who demands sacrifice of his followers for salvation in the Great Hunt to come. These cultists, naming themselves the Red Hands, have begun asserting control over their fellow men, weak and conditioned to accept authority from above by the trappings of the Californian state. In their eyes might makes right, and the Red Hands have marshaled many units of the armed forces that defend the state to their banners, the martial focus of the Cult being particularly attractive to those who wield the weapons of De Soto.

Northern Italia

In the ruins of old Fenis, the scattered warlords and factions have begun to coalesce, a vital development if they are to hope to hold back the men who slew their lord whose steel-shod hosts have overrun most of what had been the old kingdom's territories. Near a small town named Pava, a concord led by the man Adrian Riga has banded together nearly a thousand warriors and several of the old Fenisian colonies west of the main mountain citadels. They have dispatched an emissary to the invading forces of the Imperium, warning that encroachments on to their territories will lead to "war to the hilt", and offering to negotiate a new peace between the two powers.

Eastern Ego

In the eastern reaches of the lands bound to Ego, several tribes formerly considered pacified have expelled their overseers from the city-state, sometimes violently. Banding together with a warlike tribe farther east known as the Atravakars, they have announced a willingness to militarily resist the return of Ego's influence, and begun forging their own weapons and primitive armor as well as refusing traders from their former masters.

The Caucasus

Political troubles have recently manifested in the lands of the League, with some of those horse-tribes on the periphery of the League demanding greater representation in the affairs of the League, and to have lands set aside for their grazing herds near to the cities. This, of course, conflicts with the growing agricultural needs of the sedentary inhabitants of the League, and two of the Elders have already declared that they will not negotiate with such threats from men who do not live as many do in Helios, for the words of the pastoralists carry a hidden menace of withdrawing their military support if their demands are not met.

Inbuhedj, Egypt

The great chief of Inbuhedj has approached the Academy in recent days, or rather his messengers have. Seeing the valuable role the record-keepers and scribes of the Academy play in the economy of his polity, the chief of chiefs, with the support of the clan-fathers, has insisted that such a vital purpose be turned over to the purview of the crown, with the scribes to be integrated in to the apparatuses of the state and their wages and maintenance paid from the tribe's coffers. This represents an opportunity Vijaya to integrate himself in to the political system of Inbuhedj, possibly, but also may represent the grasping of lesser men to take what he has made and profit from it...

Valkenheim, Norsca

In the halls of the nobles that make their homes in the capital of Norsca, whispers pass here and there. Some of the spies of the Crown notice nobles holding secret conclaves, apparently discussing the recently disappearance of most of the royal host to parts unknown. This lack of power on behalf of the ruling dynasty has not gone unnoticed, and indeed some of the jarls have called publicly for the state to tell her people where their defenders have gone. Others, more quietly, appear to be gathering their bannermen, unsure about the ability of the crown to secure the state any longer against threats both internal and external, while others quieter still may indeed being mustering their levies to increase their personal lands and avenge old slights in the absence of the king's forces.

[Oudland]

Tarut, Gilead
House of Nokta, Council Chambers
Sheikh Hamzah Al-Jazari, Elder of Sheba

Dimly cast in flickering torchlight, Hamzah stroked his grey beard, clad in plain faded robes of what was black, but was now grey as he. He wore a calm expression as he heard the report from one of the Mukarrib's commanders, an Aikhtiari warror called Kashif Zahir. Kashif spoke in a flat tone, recounting the casualties of a string of ambushes upon their patrols.

Just when we thought we were safe.

"Now they have joined together under a king who claims divinity. They march-"

"More heretics? Led by a king of bandits!" The outburst came from a visibly shaken Numa, an Elder native to Tarut. Hamzah shot him a scowl and beckoned for the commander to continue.

"They march now against Gilead. There are many--" he leveled his gaze at the council, then continued, "at least two score, by scouts' reports. I believe it will be more.""

A solemn silence settled over the room. A contemplative elder named Ibrahim spoke next. He and Hamzah both hailed from Sheba, and had known Donovan before he was Mukarrib.

"It is surprising that they have managed to defeat those of your order, Commander."

Kashif stiffened and didn't respond. Ibrahim continued.

"I assume now this overgrown mob has scavenged our Mukarrib's arms. They are little more than brigands, and we have the larger force." He said so confidently, but his posture betrayed his misgivings. He shifted in his seat.

Hamzah spoke up, "Mlk Yamat left with only a small detachment."

Numa stood, quivering, and pointed a finger at Hamzah. "Where is our Mukarrib when we need him most? How do we know he did not tuck his tail and flee across the Black Sea--"

All eyes were on the terrified elder, who stood as a spectacle with his thin, shaking finger outstretched in the midst of the hot, dimly lit stone chamber. The gaze of the Aikhtiari was especially dark. Hamzah steepled his fingers and replied calmly, "You speak dangerously, Numa. Keep your cowardice hidden from us." As an afterthought, he added, "Have faith in our Mukarrib." Hamzah knew why his king had taken soldiers across the water. Kashif nodded, satisfied. Numa quickly sat down and averted his gaze. The tension faded, but Numa's words lingered.

Hamzah addressed the warrior.

"We will convene here again in a few hours. Let the other commanders know that their presence is requested."

The Aikhtiari bowed and swiftly exited the chamber. Hamzah looked around at the rest of the council, who all seemed to be looking at him. They had much to discuss.

Kingdom of Gilead

After news of the approaching army spread, a vessel with a small crew was dispatched across the Black Sea to find Donovan and inform him of the impending attack on Gilead.

Hamzah mustered most of the kingdom's might had been shifted to Tarut, the easternmost city of Gilead. Archers lined the walls, and the streets were packed with infantry and horses. A camp was erected outside of the walls for the soldiers. The commanders sent scouts on horseback to check the enemy's progress and set up patrols within and without the city to retain order. They were ready, but many looked west, as if they expected Donovan to arrive on his pale mare at any moment. Donovan's people prayed for Yamat's swift return, terrified at the prospect of losing everything they had worked so hard to build.

To them, he was the prophet of Nokta and Azazl, and a son of Gan. The Shepherd. Only his enemies feared him as the White Demon of Sheba.

Men volunteered to fight alongside the regulars to protect their homes and their property.  Hamzah put them to work digging trenches around Tarut instead. Hamzah would give the Mlk two days to return. If he did not, they would have to proceed alone. Without their prophet, morale was sorely lacking, and Hamzah feared for what might happen in Donovan's absence.

[Ulls]

The Grand Campagin,
Invasion of the Michigan Land Bridge

The Warlord's warband made progress in the Grand Campaign. Jeb was happy that he was able to get out of Ego for a while, he just wish to be without an army and carrying a spear and shield. He was amazed at the tribes that scattered the very land bridge but he also knew that each one is contested against the other. To them, this was a way of life, it was also the very foundation that Ego will be built on.

The movement into was slow as scouts were being sent all over to report back on what tribes where near their landing and greet them the way Jeb knew how. The tribes were tough, their constant fighting had allowed them to have many veteran warriors but the warriors of Ego were more trained and better equipped that they could take a few tribes before a messenger came to him about what had just happened.

He was in a tribal village he just pacified and teaching Little Star mathematics after she was done with her physical training. She was growing strong as a warrior and a scholar but it will be up to her to see where her path takes her. The news was some of the most grim that Jeb had heard. A large, warlike tribe from beyond Lake Michigan by the name of the Atravakars had manage to influence several tribes to rebel and have started to send reinforcements to them as a means of alliance.

The Wild Wolf was beside himself but he took a breath and gathered his warriors and new tribes bonded to Ego and constructed totems of the Night Owl and the major spirit of the Everworlds. This marked the very small gains of territory and the frontier that they will have to come back to. The warlord wanted to see what Three-Feathers can tell him more about the situation and then he sent the messenger to the local tribes that had very good scouts, young women, and widows for something that he'll need to do to correct this and to continue the rise of Ego.

[Achidyemay]

Everett was using a coal pencil he had made to outline the plans for the watermill. He was writing on “paper” that he had also made, the inside of some tree bark. It had taken him the better part of the morning to make that pencil and paper. Now he was running into other hiccups, mainly because he wasn't a great artist, he hadn't taken anything remotely geometry related in a few years, and the pencil had a habit of smearing (his hands were a gray mess). Earlier his plans were to make some sort of gear-driven Archimedes' screw, but he came to the conclusion that gears and tubes made things too complicated. He wanted to make something simple and reliable. Now he was outlining something in between a Ferris' wheel and a normal waterwheel. The river would turn the large outside blades and then small cups would dip into the water and funnel it along chutes to the center of the wheel. From there it would flow out through the axle and into a trough running along the walls. Viola, water everywhere.

Everett was having kind of a proud moment to himself when Hai swooped in out of nowhere.
"You done yet?" Hai had become very interested in his plans, although he didn't seem to understand them. Huệ was behind him, walking up with a bit less enthusiasm. Apparently, Hai had told her about his plans and his drawings and she had come to have a look. Now, she looked down at the grayish mess and raised an eyebrow.
"Pretty much, it took me a while, I've never been good at this medium." He laughed a bit.
"And what does any of this have to do with water?" Huệ asked.
"I'm making blueprints, er... blackprints." Everett responded, holding up a hand covered in ash. He was a bit sheepish that he was bringing so much planning before a group that tended not to plan.
Huệ continued to look confused, and while Everett thought that it was about the drawing/planning thing, it eventually dawned on him that their language didn't have a black/blue distinction yet, either.
"Basically,” He explained, “this allows me to know what the water wheel will look like before it is made." She seemed to approve of this.
"And what's with all the marks?" She said, kneeling down beside him to gesture at some of the squiggles.
"Well... these here are numbers, this is the letter l, I've been using it to mark lengths, and then these are all smudges." More confused looks.
"I'll do writing and math later, let's make sure we don't starve first. Can you hand me that strip of bark?" Everett was pointing to the pile of blank sheets he still had left. Huệ obliged him.
"Thank you, here are the pieces we'll be building today." He outlined the paddles. They were 3/4 a length tall and one length wide.
"See this stick here?" Everett picked up a nearby stick nearly a meter in length that he had found earlier that morning when he was stripping bark. "This is a length, the paddles need to be as long as it and then this long. We need to make ten." He marked a portion of the stick and held up his hands. Huệ was amused by something.
"Why do you do the things you do?" She asked.
"That's a great question." Everett replied.

Everett had to make the first paddle himself, which was an arduous process involving an adze. Everett had never planed boards like this before, so this was weird. And difficult. Eventually, he had one done, though, and he gathered Hai and Huệ at the river for a demonstration. Huệ had been talking with Yǔn and Hồng at the time and so they were there too. He then proceeded to demonstrate the effect of flowing water on a board held perpendicular to its surface and then, with much pinwheeling of his arms, he slowly taught them how it would work. Several aspects were hard to explain to these people, who had never seen an axle before, and Everett was quickly redoubling his belief in the need of the k-12 school system. Huệ seemed very interested in what was happening and Hai took to playing with the paddle in the water, using it to splash water at the girls who eventually dove in after him.

At dinner Huệ made the case to Bảo that they needed to work on Everett's waterwheel project. Bảo, ever trusting of his wise sister and with everyone else's support, approved the project. Construction would start the next day and anyone who could was encouraged to help. Since the farm areas had been established and the house built, along with Everett's penchant for building fish corrals, there wasn't a whole lot to actually do and Everett found that there were usually a lot of people willing to help. He quickly fell into the routine of making some component and then showing them the process and end result and having them make it. Usually the replicas were better than his examples. In his downtime he would take walks in the forest, usually accompanied by Yǔn. She had a habit of not really saying much, but occasionally just saying what she was thinking. Everett enjoyed listening to her mind at work, her insights into the world were completely uninformed and based entirely around observation and a child-like wonder. He, meanwhile, had spots around the forest where he had noticed something important and he had begun to experiment with the various things that surrounded his area.

Assembly of the waterwheel began sooner than Everett had originally anticipated, and he was surprised at the skill that many of them employed. Very quickly, however, Everett realized that rawhide straps wouldn't work well in the water and he made some last minute modifications, opting for a pin system instead. A trench to direct the water underneath the wheel was dug and a cheer was lifted when she began to spin on her own. Shortly after, water came out the spout and began to cut its way through the channels around the fields. Everett would modify and tweak these for a more even flow over the next few days. According to Bảo, the rains were another two months off, at least, and yet they were going to start planting even sooner.
Truly it was a great time to be alive.

The planting was started and Everett's day became very busy. Wake up early, work the land, get done when it gets hot and then take a walk. It was usually cooler (if not still ridiculously humid) underneath the canopy and the shade was welcome. Then later in the evening it was back to work, harvesting fish and gathering what could be gathered from the forests. Later he would retire to the fireside with his charcoal pencil and attempt some math. It had occurred to him that candles would be nice, but the only evident source of wax was a beehive to the north that he had been monitoring for a while. He was waiting for the colony to split so he could capture the new hive and bring it home. It also occurred to him to start to teach his peers math and writing. He didn't want to rush into anything though; he wanted this to be an easy and straightforward endeavor with real world applications and benefits. He had decided that a metric-based system was probably the best, but while he was at it, he wanted to solve most of the problems he perceived with the metric system. He was planning on doing this with a charcoal pencil by campfire light.

Eventually the day came that Everett decided to show what he was working on. By now he had became very competent in creating and holding charcoal, so he prepared a dozen of them. He wanted to do this in bright enough light, so he invited everyone over around midday into the shade of a large tree.
"Hey everyone, thanks for coming. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started." He began by going over pencil grip and the basic shapes. The consonants were based on Hangul, with a few additions and subtractions to make them fit their language better. These were easy and it didn't take long before they all seemed to grasp it. Then he demonstrated that, to form vowels, diacritics could be added around the letter. This took some time and Everett encouraged them to practice drawing syllables to each other. For many, their penmanship was sloppy and they kept getting ash everywhere. Huệ and Somboon picked it up quickly, fortunately, and were a great help. Then he established how to make a word, by laying the letters in a column, and then how to make a sentence, by marching the letters back and forth across the page, the same way they plow a field, and by leaving a space between the words.
"Remember, ours minds aren't meant for remembering everything," Everett concluded, unaware of his logical break, "Write things down."

The classroom size fluctuated greatly after that and Everett found it was more difficult to prepare materials for reading and writing than it was for him to make waterwheel components. Somboon continued to be a great asset. The kid loved writing; even if no one was willing to listen to his stories, he was always able to write them down. Everett encouraged him and often asked to read what he wrote. Huệ didn't read or write on her own, but continued to have a strong knowledge after that first lesson and would come in from time to time in a very helpful role. She started to read what Everett was writing out loud when he was working. She would stagger when she got to the math, but Everett had always been in the habit of narrating and labeling what he was doing anyway. Huệ wanted to know what the math was, but Everett held off, telling her that he'd show everyone when it was ready. She accepted this, but didn't like it. Yǎhui, Wǔ, and Bảo were also fairly regular. Yǎhui was there because Somboon usually was and the two would pass notes back and forth. She wasn't as good as he was, but not by much. She often couldn't choose which letters to use, even though everything was spelled phonetically. Bảo was there for a similar reason at first, he was only there because his sister was, but Everett eventually instilled the "pen is mightier" rhetoric into him. Wǔ wasn't willing to let anyone else learn a skill that he couldn't and practiced most fervently. Everyone else didn't really come by. Yǔn would show up, but only to see Everett.

Numbers and arithmetic and geometry came next, and when Everett finished his system and presented it, only Huệ really cared. He had to make a separate trip down from his "tree of learning" to tell Bảo about his calendar plans. It was an interesting system. Everett had given a lot of thought, trying to mix the solar year with the lunar cycle, but it didn't really work at all. Eventually, after a week of ever increasing exceptions, he decided to abandon the moon idea and make a perfect, base-ten-sorta solar calendar. He had developed a length, that, when fashioned into a pendulum, produced a period whose second was exactly the right length to allow for 100 seconds to equal a minute, 100 minutes to equal an hour, 10 hours in a day, 10 days in a week, 4 weeks to a shortcycle, and 10 shortcycles to a longcycle or a year. He cheated, of course, the tenth cycle was five days long, six every leap year, not the usual 40 days. Bảo didn't really care about numbers, but Everett managed to explain to him the poetry of a system that has as many months as fingers and weeks as limbs. When Bảo brought it up, Everett agreed that the moon phases were important, as were the celestial bodies, but the longcycle would allow him to better predict the growing seasons and the rains. They could use a separate lunar calendar to track the heavens.

Speaking of, the rains came, and with them, new irrigation challenges. Drains were made, culverts were dug, ditches diverted water and Everett couldn't remember what it was like to be dry. Writing became a purely inside thing, but Everett still managed to keep notes on his habitat. According to his best guess, he had been here for 5 or six shortcycles now. This had allowed him to start to put together pretty complete notes. He figured that, since no one he had met seemed to have ever interacted with the first world, it was important to document the surroundings. Clearly no scientists had ever been here before. Or he had been sent back in time, a concept he was entertaining more and more lately, and now he needs to start this whole science thing all over again. Still, now that the rains had come, the area essentially transformed and there were whole new discoveries to be made.

Everett also decided to make use of the rain as protection for his forays into fire. At first he had been using charcoal from the wood, but then it occurred to him that he could be making actual proper charcoal. It took him a while to get the kiln just right, but eventually he was making coal. With that he could get a fire hot enough to start making ceramics, which was super easy. Clay was an extremely prevalent resource, they had used it extensively when they made the rice patties. With Wǔ's help, Everett built an adjoining hut area. It wasn't large, but there was room for three to sit and there was a wheel in the back. It was the weighted type you kicked. A lot of Everett's friends at college would go out and do pottery sometimes and Everett wasn't bad. But, it filled him with grief, and he got really depressed and homesick, wondering where they were.

In a similar vein to ceramics, Jay (from the first post) took a course on glassblowing. Everett didn't really understand it well, but he wanted to give it a try. It took him a while to find the right sand mixtures to even get close to the right results and he came up with a few novel screening devices for purifying the sands. It would be many more shortcycles before he was casting anything and he still didn't have the metal to really go all in with the glass blowing. Meanwhile, ceramics really took off as the national pasttime and the kilns were almost always burning.

"You want to build a what?" Hai asked, clearly confused.
"Okay, you know how wood floats, right?" Everett says, he was prepared for this. While he was used to explaining things at this point, he also liked to start out with the assumption that they new what he was talking about, just in case.
"Right..." Hai replied. Everett picked Hai because he had a good understanding of the river already, but he would need other's help.
"Okay, if you take a lot of wood and put it together and then build the sides up, like a coconut, you'll have a bowl. If you stretch that bowl out, you'll have a boat. Boats are useful for catching fish and transporting things." So far, Hai seemed to be following, which was good. "We're going to build one, a small one first, and then, hopefully a larger one."
Everett's new plan was to create increasingly larger and larger boats until he had a proper sailing ship, from there he could sail to Seoul, hopefully, and find out if he really did get sent into the past.
At the moment he wasn't sure if he wanted to try to sail upstream, or downstream. Sailing upstream would be hardest, but he new there were people further North. Sailing downstream and along the coast was another option. It would be nice if he could get a motor going, but he would need metal for that. It's a shame really, metal is a super useful thing to have, but in neolithic Indochina, no one seems to even comprehend what that is.

Everett and Hai managed to build the small boat without much difficulty. Hai proved to be as skilled as ever and Everett welcomed the adze wielding lessons. With the boards planed, they could be bent into the proper shapes and stressed in a jig to hold the proper shape. This would take some time so Everett thought ahead at some of his plans and approached Bảo one evening.
"Do you have alcohol?" Bảo set down the tool he was using.
"Not here, my family would make rice wine at home."
"Do you want to try to make some?"
Bảo laughed, "sure."

At Everett's request, several jars were prepared for fermentation and the rice wine was fermented. This too would take time, and so Everett resumed his attempts at glassware. Keep in mind that he's still very active within the community, teaching and farming and building and interacting. His side projects take up only the remaining time left in his day. Speaking of, today one of the jungle things he had been keeping an eye on, a colony of lac bugs, was ready for harvest. He had already watched them cycle through their life cycle once and he was fairly sure now was the best time. He conscripted Yǔn and Yǎhui to help. Harvesting them was a gross process, so was cleaning the raw shellac and I'll spare you the details. Neatly, some of the purifying techniques Everett had been using on the sand also applied to the shellac and things rolled from there smoothly. For now, the chips were left on a rack in the ceramics hut (a new addition as the kiln became backed up).

Huệ was happy to teach Everett better woodworking when he asked her about it. He wanted to be able to make small things, plates and bowls and the like. In exchange she asked to help him with the glass making process. Turns out, she had several great ideas and they started mining quartz at the source, fracturing the rock into a coarse sand that worked well. The first bottle wasn’t glass blown, but was poured over an earthen cylinder. Several more of these were made. The clarity of the glass was very important to Everett, who was attempting to make his lab equipment, and many different types of quartz sand were tried.

Meanwhile, the larger boat was being made. The boat project was by and large the popular thing to be working on. Several of the kinks with the first model had been worked out. Leftover coal pitch was used to waterproof between the boards and they linked over each other and to a central structure. Everett had gone for something close to a viking ship, which, thanks to a book on ancient civilizations he used to carry around with him, was the only type of ship he knew how to build. There were a few differences, the sleeping quarters was on deck in a low hut and the sail was triangular to allow for tacking, there was also an actual rudder in the rear of the ship. Despite their superior crafting ability, it would take a long while for the larger ship to be completed. In the end, the small boat was 5 lengths (3.7m) and the larger boat was 20 lengths (14.8m).

Fortuitously, the ships were done at the same time as the rice wine. Two of the five had turned to vinegar, which Everett kept, but the rest worked out fine. Using his newer glassware, he managed to further distill the alcohol to a higher purity. Using this alcohol, he was able to dissolve some of the lacquer into a liquid and then coat the wooden dining set he had made. Tomorrow was the anniversary of his arrival here, and since then he had introduced writing, ceramics, glass making, better irrigation, and sailing. He felt proud with his accomplishments.
Tomorrow was also the day they would set sail, Everett, Hai, and Yǔn would all go. Everett decided that it would be better to sail around the coast towards the east. They brought provision for a shortcycle and Everett brought the things he had made for trade. Sailing east was the plan, but as they prepared for the journey, Everett noticed that the wind was starting to change in its consistent direction. Where for months it had been blowing eastward it was now starting to fail or blow westward. Referencing his notes he realized that the rainy season was over and also that 5 short cycles ago the wind had reversed.
“Interesting,” he mumbled to himself, “the winds change direction with the season.”

“Change of plan,” he walked up to Hai. “Were going to be tacking eastward and then sailing back. It should be easier coming back than going anyway, so I think this is a good idea.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
“Did you talk to Somboon?” Everett wanted him along to draw maps
“Yes, he still doesn’t want to come.”
“Ah well, he’ll come on later voyages, I know it.”

[The Grim Reaper]

Inbuhedj, Egypt

Light from the bonfire flickered off the dark corners of the Academy building, its clay tablets and colourful paints sparkling with the whims of the flame. Vijaya leant against the wall, as he watched his students feverishly copying the small but valuable repository that the Academy had come to hold. There would be only one set as a comprehensive copy - the rest of the tablets were tables of contents, a list of the myths, legends, and histories that had painstakingly been gathered. Vijaya had recounted to his students the message that had been directed to him from the King.

This was the moment that he had been waiting for - the moment that would convince him to make a move. He was no longer biding time, but rather, putting into play his revolutionary spirit against a state he had always feared. Having asked for time to consult with his students, the King and his government had been courteous enough to grant it. Yet, Vijaya neither dared subject himself to an institution he hated, nor to reject its proposal for fear of reprisal. What he dared to do, however, was to let his students soar. These tablets they were copying were to go with his graduates to the far-flung cities of Lower Egypt, those smaller than Inbuhedj and depending on it as the first and last line of defense against the Upper Egyptian hordes. There, they would start pockmarked Academies of their own, mirroring and supporting Vijaya's plans for Egypt and the world. The complete set was to be dispatched to Heliopolis, where Vijaya intended to operate his contingency plan.

From Heliopolis, Vijaya's students would begin the process of establishing themselves as he had - as teachers and professors of the Academian worldview, attempting to form their own professional officer and bureaucratic corps. From there, he would begin the arduous process of mustering a military, to march to the 'aid' of Inbuhedj in order to repel a phantom raid from Upper Egypt. Then, and only then, would he make his gambit to defang the King of Inbuhedj, taking on the aristocracy of Inbuhedj as petty officers in an army at their very doorstep, marching them into the lands of Upper Egypt to conduct a decisive preemptive strike. To his students, he would grant positions of power in the various local religious hierarchies, building up his universalist religious institution, and to his dispersing military he would grant the responsibility of local democratization across their places of origin and of destination - leaving behind a loyalist officer corps, to become the core of an Egyptian academia.

By the time the country had stabilized enough for the aristocracy to agitate for their prior privileges back, he hoped to have garnered loyalty for his religious and democratic institutions sufficient to put them back down.

He had already begun to recruit the traders moving through Inbuhedj as allies, attempting to present himself as someone prepared to secure their safety in the face of the growing threat of the ambitious petty kings of Egypt. His universalist religion was exceptionally appealing to them, people bent as they were to keeping their noses clean and their spirits desirable to all the many cults of the Nilotic settlements. What was even more appealing to them was the power of writing - what the King of Inbuhedj saught for himself, Vijaya expected would even more appeal to the traders. And so he made them an offer they could not refuse, metaphorically speaking - to take their children on as students, for exorbitant funds in return. He promised them what he intended to do - to make pretenses at integrating into the state, guaranteeing them a safe and lucrative position in the bureaucracy of the state. More importantly, however, Vijaya hoped it would buy him some weeks and the resources he required to put his plans into motion. In their place, he would send students for the traders to take back to their homes, creating academies that, he promised, would facilitate trade and set the foundations for their children to become prestigious local officials.

In what time he could buy, he saught to slowly take the copies that were needed for his students, and in particular, to teach them the oratorial skills they would require. Those he selected as his representatives abroad would be those most musically-, logically-, and drill-inclined. Over time, they would slowly filter out of the Academy, being replaced by traders' students. Those noble students he had would stay with him; they were too closely tied to the Crown to give up, and at any rate, their absence would be missed. But he kept many poorer students, too, especially from the neighbourhood of the House of Menes where he had initially resided. These were the students who would escape recognition and notice from the Crown, and they were the ones who he would replace with foreigners.

---

Punt, Ethiopia

Saba momentarily looked surprised that Donovan did not know of the game, before finding his composure. It looked more as if he was surprised Donovan specifically would have to ask, quickly relaxing as he fell into a familiar role as guardian and historian of his little card deck.

"This is the first deck to make it this far down the Nile - it is several days' travel."

Saba allowed a moment of silence to hang in the air; it seemed that this sort of conversation could be very contextual, in Saba's experience.

"I learned the game where it was made - at the Academy of Inbuhedj, by Vijaya and his students. All traders on the Nile know of Inbuhedj (Memphis) - it is at the very root of the Nile Delta, up past Wo'se (Thebes) in Lower Egypt. Vijaya is the man who brought this writing to us. I have seen his students do incredible things, voicing to clay as I speak, and then having their counterparts recount to me my very own memories from the clay. I had the opportunity to speak to him when I was in Inbuhedj - he was found at the banks of the Nile, about a year ago. The Academy is what he calls the compound where he teaches his students to read, write, count, and make war. They are funded by selling games like this - these cards, and also chess pieces and Go pebbles. In return, they buy spears, grain, and the myths and histories of traders.

If you wish, a guide can take you up the Nile, but it is a long trip and you would need to hire boats. It is also quite dangerous - it is well-known that Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt are in conflict, and you would need to pass through their shared territories to arrive in Inbuhedj. They are not yet at war, but Upper Egypt has been mobilizing for many years now in its attempts to unite the country. Their military is still occupied with uprisings and dissent, but they are substantially a fighting force."

[Conwy-Shire]

Amadeus Mulcahy | Part 1, Chapter 14
September 30th, 63 A.G.
September 30th, 1 C.R. (Colchian Reckoning)

---

- Political troubles have recently manifested in the lands of the League, with some of the pastoralists on the periphery of Ashturi territory demanding greater representation in the affairs of the League, and to have lands set aside for their grazing herds near to the cities. This conflicts with the growing agricultural needs of the sedentary population, and two of the Elders have already declared that they will not negotiate with such threats from men who do not live as many do in Helios, for the words of the pastoralists carry a hidden menace of withdrawing their military support if their demands are not met. -

---

Once more we, the delegates of the League, recessed from the Deliberative Hall. It was the second day of discussions, and whilst true-men were out in the fields reaping the Autumn harvest, I was cloistered here, hammering out the finer details of constitutional law. Though I had been sitting on the finished constitution for some time now, it was only with the construction of the Deliberative Hall's new brick-gothic council room that proper proceedings could begin. The brickwork itself was exquisite, made from fired bricks in the long and slim Roman style, giving the lights that streamed into the chamber a distinctly auburn hue. It was with a heavy head I closed the doors to that chamber, following the League delegates as they dispersed until the next day.

Whilst the others fled to their accommodation, some like Mishar to their own Darbazi and others to guest lodgings, my own trek home consisted of walking up the stairs of the Deliberative Hall to a suite that was quietly reminiscent of my old home. I had scarce sat down in the lounge and set a bronze pot of water to boil when I was intruded upon by a friendly face.

"Amad, how'd today go?" It was Tedore, who I counted amongst the growing intelligentsia of Ashtur, for lack of a formal bureaucracy to employ him. His letters were impeccable, written or carved, and whilst he struggled with anything beyond the most basic of mathematical concepts - like myself - his services so far had proved immeasurably useful.

"I told you Tedore, it's Amadeus, not Amad." I forced out through clenched teeth, watching the man take satisfaction as the friendly barb hit home. "The talks were pointless, as always. It consists of little more than my reading out and explaining every second word to the old codgers… Tea?"

The young functionary nodded eagerly and sat across from me on one of the many raised cushions in the main room, pulling one of my hand-spun cups from the drawer with an ease that gave away how many times he had been through this process. Ever since mints had been harvested from along the banks of the Phaesos, a tea-culture had cropped up, due in no small part to my public obsession. As I brought the pot off the kettle-stand and measured out the drinks for each cup, the familiar aromatic scent of menthol filled the room, and the two of us clasped the steaming cups of tea as soon as it was safe to do so. I expected tea-consumption to skyrocket as the winter months rolled in, going so far as to pre-emptively monopolise and expand the production of the mint-bearing plants beyond the domain of Ashtur to the broader League-held lands.

We sipped the brew in gaps of silence, listening as the outside noises of the town shifted and changed from the standard chatter to the manful joking and laughter of those returning from the fields in time for the sunset prayers. Though I was not one for enforcing attendance, it was heartening to see the turnout grow with each week, and the communal benefit which grew out of such collective gatherings was just as important as the spiritual benefit. It was not as if God would mind being called Helios, for he had worn many faces throughout the old and new testaments of yore. Nor was it entirely irreconcilable to assign symbols to the holy trinity, after all there was little difference between the radiant Father, companionable Son and mysterious Holy Spirit as the Sun, Dawn and Night, was there?

Once the tea cups lay empty at our feet, talk turned to business, at home and abroad. The cartographers whose task it was to record the lay of the land were fast returning from their respective zones, compiling and comparing notes and rough sketches into a master map which would be presentable soon, Tedore reported. Similarly the dissemination of the currency once used in Uruzriam to solve bread-shortages had become commonplace, and the ash-stamped chits were now considered standard fare amongst the markets of the League and beyond.

The talk turned darker as the focus turned to prevalent rumours, which were as important as real information in an age bereft of concrete information, if you wanted to be ready for anything. The most alarming and corroborated rumour was of dissatisfaction amongst the pastoralists, of anger at being jostled between the increasingly demanding agricultural spheres of League-towns. It was to be expected that the issue would crop up at some point, but their current monopoly on horsepower made their interests of vital importance to the league - perhaps too much. So long as the sons who lived within the town walls remained loyal to their cosmopolitan upbringing, and their sworn service to the League, the current arrangement we had hammered out five months ago would hold. But to be cautious I resolved to warn the guard-commanders to remain on high alert, for rampaging pastoralists would be devastating on the spirit of the League, not counting the damage it could cause whilst the harvest season was yet to finish.

"Thank you for the news Tedore," I said as the sun began to pour directly through the western window, alighting down the length of the Harbour avenue. "You have evening prayers to get to, I believe."

The young man nodded sagely. "Perhaps you'll be joining us this eve?"

"No sadly, I prefer to view the proceedings from my window, and I have much to ponder."

The young man nodded again, it was becoming increasingly normal for my absence to be felt at the evening prayers, though the other elders had taken up the torch in leading the prayers with all their fervorous gusto. It was also becoming colder once the light fell away behind the horizon, and whilst I had thus far escaped catching a chill or other malaise, I knew that prayer-goers oft complained of the cold the following morning.

With that and more pressing on my mind, I stood by the westward window as the sun set, bathing in the last of the September light. As the sky grew dark I drew the shutters close, and retreated into the sleeping annex of my suite.

[Ulls]

Town of Ego

The handful of longships came into dock with fewer men that left but the scars of battle marked their glory to their people. Jeb came onto shore with a grimace upon his face, but his mood lighten when he saw the current standing of Ego. The town itself had grown quite well as he saw the black smokes of industry raise up in the air as civilization is shown in a world where Native Americans had never been able to make something like Ego in Jeb's history. The town had walls and finely crafted wooden homes on both the inside and outside of the town. Turkeys and deer litter camps, hunting areas, and farms that both hunters and slaves tend to gather food or resources to make goods.

There is the totem, banners of the Night Owl, and a well that was made of clay bricks that had some sort of crank that is connected by a copper chain that is connected to a small weave basket that can get fresh water that comes from the Oconto River when they made new paths to get the fresh water to come around the town and flow it down stream. That was before they grew their town to touch Lake Michigan and had to start fishing for their increasingly demanding need for food.

People talked and walked around the center as small caravans of slaves pulling handcarts of food and copper goods that are being sent to an exchange where others barter goods for things such as food, idols, and even some weapons and armor that haven't been entirely controlled by the leadership. On one end of the town had a craftsmen's district that had large campfires that smelt copper spears, bowyers who have been making better longbows that are becoming similar to what Welsh would use. These bows were a step up from what the current army wielded and Jeb will make sure that they quickly become part of the band so that they can deal with the enemy.

One thing that he was surprise to see was the implementing of leather armor. To be more specific, Ego had armor, padded armor to be more specific with wooden shields with a leather covering. The use of leather armor was something that Jeb was trying to implement for sometime but Three-Feathers had figure something out how to do it. Jeb walked up to the craftsmen and he stopped and bowed in the presence of the warlord.

" Warlord! It is an honor for you to grace me with your appearance." He said with a respectable tone.

" There's no need for that craftsmen, I was just admiring your work, who told you to do this?" Jeb questioned.

" It was Three-Feathers, he said that he wanted for the craftsmen to begin working with the leather into something called a ' breastplate'. He said he heard it from you talking about what you used to do in before the Night Owl called you to lead Ego. I still don't know what are 'elves' or this world called 'Middle Earth' but I'm sure the army will love to have added protection now we have to fight rebels and their Atravakarian allies."

The Author was surprised to hear that Three-Feathers was taking an initiative to furtherly enhance the army and try to improve upon equipment. He walked up to the longhouse as he saw a slave carting away what seem to be burnt remains and warriors carrying torches outside the town. He opened up the door where his two advisers were waiting for him to arrive.

" Warlord, I hope your trip back from your Campaign was good but we have a grave situation in our lands." Paranthutan acknowledge Jeb's presence.

" Yes I know, its my fault." Jeb said.

The two looked at him with a questionable look as Three-Feathers spoke.

" Je...uh I mean Mutawotu," he corrected himself," why did you said that this was your fault? I am the one to blame for this rebellion."

Jeb shook his head," you were not prepare for this kind of fighting and I was blinded by my quest to advance Ego beyond what it's now. The Atravakar had been able to exploit a weakness with a lack of intelligence network. They snuck in, manipulate recently pacified tribes, and sprout this rebellion. It is something I hadn't thought of entirely when the problem didn't present itself but now..."

He motions a slave to open the door where a couple of hooded figures with wooden masks walk in. They had light steps and had a clandestine visage around them. They didn't say anything but bowed to the Warlord as he spoke to the both of them.

" I was given a vision by a spirit of the Everworlds." He said as he rolls up a sleeve to revel a fox like tattoo that he got while up north.

" I have made a pact with the fox trickster Tuat to be the patron to the tribes that I have conquered in the name of Ego. They will be our spies, assassins, and the ones that will be our defense in the shadows of the holy night." Jeb proclaimed.

The two of them didn't know what those words meant but their leader explained about how his world had intelligence networks and how feared they are but also how important that they will be needed for something like Ego so that something like this doesn't happen again. He also named them Tricksters because nothing else really gave him any other idea but he stop his explanation as he takes a demanding tone.

" Three-Feathers, what happened to the chieftains that allowed themselves to be removed from power?" He questioned his second-in-command.

" I had them burnt alive than have their bodies burned outside the village in case of disease spirits and that's the last thing that we need as of right now." Three-Feathers answered.

Jeb gave a nod," good, makes a statement and helps keeps the health of Ego going. Now onto the rebels and their allies."

He motioned the Tricksters to come closer.

" These Tricksters are paramount for the submission of the Atravakar. I don't want them annihilated but I want them vassalized, it means that they will have some of their freedoms but we control them and they will fight for us. But first, the rebels and what warriors they have in our lands must be dealt with. Three-Feathers, I want you to lead the warriors on the land while I lead some warriors and archers by the sea and stop any reinforcements. During those battles, the Tricksters will infiltrate the tribe and bring it down enough that Ego will exert its influence to the warriors and bind them to the Night Owl's chosen." He orders as the rest give nods in confirmation.

Though Jeb is furious that the Grand Campaign is being put on hold because of this newly risen threat, but Ego is just as important now in the present as it is in the future and it must win this war to secure its place in the world.

[Oudland]

Donovan
Punt, Northern Ethiopia

Donovan listened intently as Saba told him about the game, then as he went on to elaborate on the origin of the dominos and the written language they used. As the merchant spoke, Donovan became progressively more alarmed and excited.

This Vijaya was 'found' on the bank of the Nile... and he has introduced English to Egypt. Brilliant.

Whoever this man was, Donovan doubted he was a native. Saba continued and explained to him the current tensions in Egypt.

Though he was not particularly familiar with the geography of the region, Donovan roughly knew where Egypt was on a map in respect to Gilead. The journey would take him far from home, and though he yearned for the adventure and the revelation it promised, he had a great many responsibilities that he must tend to before attempting such an expedition. He was loathe to leave his people in the hands of the council without first telling them of his plans.

They did not command the same respect as he did.

Donovan played conservatively, but blackjack had never been his game. He conceded the win to the merchant.

"Perhaps you can show me around, and introduce me to these guides? I would like to book passage up the Nile, but first I must return to my Kingdom. I can compensate you for your trouble, of course."

Donovan smiled as he made reference to his royalty and position of power, hoping to appeal to the merchant's ambition.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Part 3, Chapter 19: Promethean Uprising

September 16th, 63 AG

I stood on the reviewing stand, the precautionary chemical mask tied about my face feeling a bit useless as the valves on the subsidiary tanks ticked upwards steadily without any release of toxic fumes. It was a worthwhile measure, though, given how this was one of the first efforts made by the men of Germania, or indeed the entire world, in using such a highly pressurized system. I should be feeling elation at these achievements aright, and I smiled behind my veil of cloth and shook hands with the engineers who had built the apparatus. But my heart wasn't really in it, at least not today. Sure, it represented a great leap in our understanding of the material world. The distillation of this thick crude in to lighter fractions with better burning ratios and utilities would usher in an age far different from that of steel and stone which we inhabited now.

But how was one man supposed to feel joy for an entire nation? Could I care that much for untold thousands whom I had never met, never heard speak, who were merely numbers in the bureaucratic rolls of the Administratum and tax chits? Perhaps I could, on a good day. But with the Sixth dispatched south to crush the last vestiges of Italian resistance, the Imperium safe on all sides as far as I or the Emperor could tell, my zeal for advancement sometimes felt like taking a rest. I am still a man, immortal though I am, and wariness with the passage of the years is something I have heard spoken about by those friends I have now left to death's embrace, a stretching of mind and soul which I perceived touching my own fabric.

Tanya spoke of it too. It was hard to relate to women or notables who had been nothing more than lecherous twinkles in their fathers' eyes when the Imperium had expanded to the Polish grasslands. Time, the grinding passage thereof, had worn down our relationships and those we had known well until they were nothing more than dust in tombs and memories which we shared. This aging had come, blessedly, with a memory I had never hoped to possess, of such surpassing quality that I still remembered my good friend Gaodon when he was young, when I first met his sister on the bloody road south of Mara after a bandit attack. I remembered him as he had been then, a young man hale and strong and full of life, not as the ancient elder desiccated, though venerable, that he had been before the Lord had taken him home.

Still, such memories were all I had now of many men and women I had counted kindred spirits in their times. Even their grandchildren were now growing to of an age with what their forebearers had been, and their memories barely included those who had gone before them. If I ever died, nobody would remember those generations that had been and now were not, would not recall that their great-grandsire had been a venerable forger of bronze swords when such implements were the forefront of military technology, would not know of how their mother many times removed had laughed with such joy when learning the beauty of dappled silver and ink letters on a page.

As the workers of the refinery celebrated around me, I accepted glass after indifferent glass of fine grain spirits that were pressed in to my hands, like in color unto the honey-colored gasoline coursing from the steel holding tanks to exclamations from the chemists brought over from the Academy. Tonight I would not remember much of the test aside from getting well and truly drunk. But then again, I suppose I had earned such excesses, in one way or another.

[Ulls]

Eastern Ego

For the first time since the founding of the city, Ego sent it's men and women to war. During it's two years of existence, there hasn't been much in the way of peace. So was the way things were in the Great Lakes Region, war was commonplace, but in the form of raiding and displacement. Ego used war as a means to build a civilization that put some form of unity by the spear but this will be the first time that they will have to defend their rule.

Hundreds of warriors from Ego met the rebels and the atvarkian allies in open combat. This surprised the Warlord for the tribes would use raids against their enemies before Ego subjugated them. Now Three-Feathers fights them in combat as he is both tested and tempered in the field of battle. In his mind, he wandered if he can ever truly lead them and get his throne back from the nomad. He always thought that he could try and turn his tribe back from being a warlike empire to a peaceful confederation. However, he knew that the tribe that now calls itself Ego had a meteoric rise to power in the region and wouldn't go back to being simple farmers.

The Wild Wolf was on the leading longship, banner of the Night Owl was on the full mast of the sail as arrows were ablaze as they waited for the next wave of canoes from the enemy. Jeb never piloted a ship much less ever thought of being in a naval battle. He prayed to the deities in the sky that it was a simple one as to stop the coming flow of so that Ego can be able to smash the rebels and take the fight to the east. When he saw the moving of water, small canoes moved but he noticed that the enemy wasn't coming from the water, it was coming from the south.

Nevertheless, Jeb burn the canoes to send a message and started to race to the south between Ego and Michigan to intercept them before they reinforce the rebels. The march was forced for both armies, the main host was with their leader with the rest being marshaled by the second. The battles on both sides were just as brutal and were perhaps the most biggest fights in this part of the United States. Hundreds of warriors stabbed at each other, the rebels suffered more sense they were using stone and tribal weapons that Ego shed to become greater, yet they still fought with a great strength to defend against their brutal masters.

Both warrior leaders saw their enemies had surprised them as they fought with a vigor that they hadn't seen. The enemies of Ego were hell bent to try and get their message clear but they must steel themselves as they fought to get complete their goals. Copper and stone weapons killed one another, arrows, darts, and spears killed or injured their targets on mass. Jeb suffered a lot of casualties as the Atvarkian reinforcements were able to flank a rushed warband but female marksmen and warriors managed to a pull a pyrrhic victory by outranging the enemy with their longbows and aimed for the warriors that they rally under, their leader was one of them.

Jeb quickly rush to the battlefields of the rebels and encircle them. The rebels gave up but they knew that they bloodied up their former masters and their warriors were injured or killed by their primitive weapons. The rebel leaders gave up themselves as sacrifices in exchange to spare the wrath of the Wolf's wrath. An injured Wolf gave them with eyes measured in both respect an anger as he told them that he will spare their people if they work with his warlord to make their enemy bleed and bow to the warriors of Ego.

They knew that they had no choice to say in the matter. The Warlord was hungry and his goal was not yet met. He respected the warriors across the lake and he knew that his winded army wanted a break but this war needs to end, by the surrender or one or the other. He marshalled Three-Feathers and the rebels but he also sent word for he had a new decree over the lands that were Ego.

The decree was that any strong slave who is willing to fight in the coming invasion will be freed of their chains. It was a need to quickly fill the numbers to press against the tribe but to also instill the idea that to fight for Ego guarantees freedom. He knew that this will further set back his plans for Ego but his must press the charge and vassalize the warlike tribe.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Near the settlement of Tarut, Kingdom of Gilead, Yemen
September 18th, 2937 BCE

The rumble of spear on shield clatters in the early hours of the dawn, warriors and brigands drumming weapons together in a fearful clatter, nerving themselves for battle and to break the spirits of those amassed against them. From the east the forces of Sarvas the God-King have come, swelled by reinforcements from smaller states farther east who do not wish to serve the Pale Demon, and brigands hired for war with the promise of a part of the plunder of Gilead. Their marching numbers blot out the east in inky darkness as the sun slowly rises behind them, a motley assortment of men in leather, some bearing weapons of flint as their ancestors have for generations, some wearing broken pieces of copper taken from slain adherents of the Demon as trophies.

Their commander, a tall man with skin the color of burnt parchment standing nearly a hand and a span over any other soldier, stands forth from the assemblage as the army approaches the low palisade that guards the border city. Still out of bowshot, his booming voice resounds in the still air, air taunt with the anticipation of bloodshed.

"I am Humar, Lord of Hosts of the Almighty Sarvas, He Who is God Made Flesh! Abandon your allegiance to the devil that will bring you all down to death, men of Tarut, men of Gilead, and you shall be richly rewarded with life eternal in the gardens of pleasure of Ulda, and spared from the wrath of the Dawn Which Rises. Turn away from the destruction which the false-god Yamut leads you to, and you shall not taste of death on this day. Thus says the Almighty Sarvas, through I, Humar, his servant!"

The commander stood proud and erect before the walls of the city, as if daring any to challenge his words.

[Oudland]

Outside of Tarut
Eastern Gilead

As the clamoring army approached, they would first behold the warriors of Gilead. They were assembled in four columns comprised of mixed infantry and archers, flanked by two small squadrons of light cavalry. In total, they numbered five hundred. 

Kashif himself stood at the fore of the defenders astride a lean stallion, which sported a coat as dark as the commander's robes. The mood was tense. The soldiers of Gilead were untested in large scale battle, accustomed to small skirmishes against foes far less fearsome. His Aikhtiari were eager, singing the hymns of Azazl to lend their spirits to their fellow soldiers. Still, many of the regulars shuffled nervously as the enemy rattled spear against shield.

He turned to survey them all. All were lightly clad in padded leather and arsenical bronze ring mail. The Aikthiari wore their typical robes and masks, while the regular infantry wore ivory shard helms. The footsoldiers were outfitted with hand-axes and banded shields. Archers carried barbed long-knives. The cavalry wielded stout spears, along with bows.

 "I am Humar, Lord of Hosts of the Almighty Sarvas, He Who is God Made Flesh!"

Kashif whipped around as the enemy commander's voice boomed over the field. He growled, and the singing died down.

"Abandon your allegiance to the devil that will bring you all down to death, men of Tarut, men of Gilead, and you shall be richly rewarded with life eternal in the gardens of pleasure of Ulda, and spared from the wrath of the Dawn Which Rises. Turn away from the destruction which the false-god--"

His words were lost on the company of defenders as the songs of battle were renewed to drown out the heresy. Many of the defending warriors roared in outrage, offended at the audacity of these ignorant invaders who blasphemed their prophet.

Other commanders began shouting orders and two columns surged forward, readying their bows. Kashif strutted forth upon his stallion and shouted, "Ready!"

Arrows were nocked. "Steady!" The other commanders echoed his call, and the archers took aim. The enemy host was still out of range, but the archers would pepper them with arrows as best they could. Infantry marched in tight formation as they moved forward, ahead of the commanders and the archers. The other two columns of soldiers took up positions on their flanks, and the cavalry stayed put.

Kashif quieted the song of his Aikthiari. As stillness settled over the field, he called out in a voice full of authority and disdain.

"Trespassers! I say only once: lay down your stolen arms and depart from this holy land!"

[Ulls]

Western Michigan,
Lands of the Atvarkians

The warband was reinforced as they marched by land . The Wild Wolf knew that this was halfway done as he was armed for the kill. He and Three-Feathers were together as they went the same passage as the enemies went through. Copper spear in a shaken hand, he knew that he was tired but he forced himself to keep marching.

His second try to make him slow down and rest. It was only when he collapsed from exhaustion that they made a war camp on the border of their enemy. When Jeb awoke, it was at night and he overheard talking between Three-Feathers and another voice. He then heard screaming from a man and the nomad walked out of the tent.

It was the leaders of the Atravakars. Some were tied up with copper daggers at their throats and the others were shouting at the Tricksters that were ever keeping the fine edge of the soft metal at the flesh of the hostages.

" It seems that my Tricksters have done their job." The Warlord said as he yawned.

The leader stomped his way over to the nomad and puffed his chest out and barred his teeth at him.

" Release my family. Now!"

Jeb was mostly alert as the leader demanded him to do something. The warriors trained their spears at the warriors of the Atravakars as they were ready for a fight. The Wild Wolf looked at him with a smirk but his eyes showed determination as he spoke.

" If you want them back, then do yourself and your people a favor and surrender to Ego."

The leader punched Jeb and he felt the rush of pain as he got knocked down. It made him remember that while he was the most skilled warrior of the empire he crafted, he was still weaker than even Three-Feathers. The Warlord got up and cracked his neck and tackled the leader as they went at each other. The warriors of both armies gave them some space and stand down as the two elites went at each other.

Jeb was able to pull of a suelex against his march larger opponent. He was his greatest fight that he had to do. The man was tough, big, and skilled. They were both tired and bruised but Jeb took a breather as he kept his hands up.

" You are a strong and cunning warrior. Your tribe and ancestors must have quite the history. I will honor that if you join me and become my partner, my vassal and I will show you many more battles and prosperity that you can only dream of."

" Stop talking and show what Ego can do!" the Atravakarian leader roared as he charge at the invader.

Jeb put his hands together as he was able to smack the leader with a underhand axe swing and came down with a overhead and his head hit the dirt hard. He then gets over him as he to beat him until he was unconscious. His body slumped over as he was exhausted from the fight. Three-Feathers got both of the leaders and told someone to get a healer.

The sun was starting to rise as the leader got up and saw that herbs and creams from a populace were placed on wounds were bandages couldn't reach.

" Why didn't you kill me?" He asked Jeb.

" Because that will be a waste of a good warrior." Jeb replied.

" You dishonor my ancestor by denying me death." The warrior said angrily.

" I spared you so you can get your honor back and lead your tribe to find in the name of Ego." Jeb said as he turned his head to him.

" I will not be absorbed by your city!" He tried to get up but the pain made him rethink that.

" No, I wish for you to be my vassal for you and your tribe are cunning as you manage to give me the greatest fight that Ego ever had and make several tribes rebel against me. Just fighting you has cost me more than any little skirmish." Jeb said as he admired the fight.

" What is a 'vassal'?" The leader asked

" It's like a tribe that is underneath a stronger one but instead of paying me with warriors and I will defend you and lift you up in exchange." Jeb explained

" why don't you take my tribe if you like my warriors so much? You are the stronger warrior and have proven your name's worth." The leader question with a grim look on his face.

" Not every tribe needs to be conquered if their culture makes strong warriors. I want you to be who you are and fight for Ego. In exchange, I will protect you, trade with you, and share in the prosperity that Ego will bring to all that it touches. You may not think that it is a good deal but it's better than having this war continue and making me force you to submit by burning down your homes and enslaving your tribesmen em masse." Jeb said as he got up but clutch his chest.

" Then it seems that I may not have a choice, the Atravakars will fight for Ego and become its vassal." The leader bowed to the Warlord

" Trust me, very few have chose no believing I was a liar. Those tribes are now slaves to build Ego or have been displaced by me to make way for those who do serve me and the city. I do keep my word and you will see prosperity before I die." Jeb proclaim as he moved outside slowly.

He told the news to Three-Feathers, he had done the deed and vassalized the Atravakars. Their support and cunning will allow for the empire to rebuild and their influence to expand beyond the waters. Still the damage was done and it will take more than a while to rebuild but he knows that he has to reform his government and improve his culture before he reaches up north to the Hudson Bay and prepare for the grand journey up north and west to the land that will secure Ego's place in America.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Part 3, Chapter 20: The Coast of the Night Watches

October 7th, 63 AG

The sun over the white city of Constanta was pleasantly languid, despite the month, her rays affectionate cats that embraced this bustling hamlet on the shores of the Black Sea. I could understand as I stood on the balcony near the harbormouth why this region had been the playground of the rich during the time I had come from, kissed by warmth even as fall touched the rest of the continent. The crying of the gulls was distant, down by the piers where trade from the east and the south filled the coffers of the leading men of this city, reducing their normally harsh voices to memories of salt and spray that I held fondly. Behind me footfalls padded softly on the pale bricks of the balcony, and soft hands caressed my cloak-covered shoulders as I sat looking out over a small sample of what the Imperium had become. They then moved downwards after working knowingly at knots in my muscles from riding the day before, playfully brushing my chest as moist lips pressed gently against the side of my neck.

"You are up early my love" I bemusedly spoke to my wife. It was truth. Tanya was one of the most productive and driven women I had ever met, in this life or the shadows of memory that had come before, but she was a creature of the evening hours more than those that immediately followed the dawn. Here the day was still dawning, the harbor's sails furled, even the streets quiet as they would not be for hours again, no sound of boot or wheel or hoof on their flagstones.

"To be fair, you are too. You aren't as stealthy arising from bed as you think you are, and this one creaks." Her melodious voice held amusement, and I chuckled softly. It was true. This was probably one of the best houses of the city, kindly given over to my usage by a local merchant in what I presumed were hopes for Imperial favor, but the construction of the bed my wife and I shared could do with updating. It may have been sturdy once, but these days a carpenter may have had work to do if he had inspected its structure.

One of her hands ventured lower mischievously as she spoke, and slipped inside the front of the cloak I had thrown on to greet the dawn. As it lazily traced elegantly long fingernails across my chest I smiled, and turned my head to kiss my lady properly, before rising from my seat and turning back towards the house.

"I admit to near starvation. We eat well enough when we travel, but there is nothing quite like a properly cooked meal to share."

At my words Tanya curtsied, a gesture which sent my eyes traveling to her shapely pale legs barely covered by her filmy nightgown. Smiling slowly I took one of her cool hands in mine, and led her in to the house. It wasn't quite a breakfast I would have had before, sixty years ago and beyond now past, but the frying pan we scavenged from the cupboards wouldn't have looked too out of place on a cooking show, and the scrambled eggs and strips of corned pork that sizzled upon its cast iron surface tasted just as delicious as they would have elsewhere. Salt for the goods was a fine additive, though in truth I had almost forgotten the taste of pepper... it was just one of those things you learned to do without.

Well, for now at any rate. One day I intended to see the Imperium reach as far as the Spice Islands, to sit atop trade routes that would span the globe. For now, though, I would settle for dominance in the areas which were of greatest important to the everyday function of the needs of our economy. That was why I was here in Constanta, after all. Scraping my plate as clean as could be hoped- for Tanya's cooking has only grown more scrumptious over the decades we have lived as one flesh- I sluiced away the sweat and heat of the night past with a quick rinse in our host's bathing room. Modern convenience, no, for the water had to be drawn by servants to fill the carefully molded pottery basin, and wasn't as hot as would make for a proper start to the day. But it was certainly better than trekking down to the local bathhouse, and I felt almost like a new man after cleaning grime from my pale hide with abrasive lye soap and ample rushing water.

Dressing simply in the trousers and light gray jacket I had set out the night before, I kissed Tanya goodbye and opened the door to the house. Mikelos and Teravian were on duty today as my guards, stalwart men whom I had both trained and worked with for many years. They had never had to save my life so far, but I had no doubt they were willing to take arrow and blade in to their bodies if such was required to spare their Hegemon from harm; there were those in the Imperium who viewed me as a prophet come from God Above to redeem the lost and fallen of this time, delivered from my time to theirs by the grace of the Creator to bear His word to their dark hearts. These days the many churches from Asia Minor to Germania didn't even bother to preach against such beliefs. Indeed, I wasn't even sure these days if I didn't half-endorse them myself. As decades turned towards a century, my hands remained as steady as ever, my eyes bright and true, my hair untouched by the graying of age. As a man in my youth my body told me, but my eyes betrayed wisdom far beyond what the years of my physical form could tell.

Was that divine intervention? Perhaps. I knew not what purpose there could be in another outside force to give me life eternal, as was promised to those who believe in Christ. But I accepted the gift, wherever it hailed from, and my resolve to make the most of the time I had been given, however long it was, rarely wavered. That was why I had ridden here from Tar Veril, to the utter east of the province of Clar. I wished to see for myself the progress that had been made in the designs sent from the Annals of the Years, to see how my own words had been taken and molded to fit the needs of waking hours upon these briny depths. Constanta held the largest drydocks and shipyards upon the Black Sea, or so the merchants who plied her waters said, and from here the mighty sinews of trade stretched as far as Scythia, as far south as the shores of Trebizond, and out the Dardanelles and the Bosphorous Straits even unto Italia and the south of Greece where men bearing the standard of the anchor slowly turned barbarians to good men of the Imperial Creed.

I nodded to the two Blackguards, greeting them by name, and at my word we made for the stables, to take mount for the journey to the harbor. It could have been walked, yes, but Constanta was a great city, and growing greater still day by day. I had no desire to make my way through the press and crush of marketplace and thoroughfare, and the pass-roads of the Imperial Highways were closed to those who went on foot or drew a cart, so better to expedite the business of maintaining a civilization which stretched from the shores of the Dnieper River even unto the wash of the Obersee in the far-removed Alps. My personal gelding, Swiftstride, a joke only I understood in the millions of those who lived under the banner of black and white, whickered as we entered the stables, happy to see me, and eager to greet the many new sights and sounds of a town he was new come to.

The ride was uneventful, though at points I simply marveled at the system I had erected over these long years, at how many goods in the marketplaces had sprung from half remembered snippets of knowledge of my misspent youth, at the cacophony of humanity which teemed in the byways that ran near the pass-roads. Dark men with skin the color of tanned leather hailing from Asia Minor, pale folk of blonde aspect whose blue eyes told them as Germanians, swarthy Italiots bearing brands of the Oaths newly taken and unfaded by the years, even shifty-eyed men of Scythia haggling for the goods of the mightiest empire on earth to bear back to their priest-king and his nobles. It was a sight to see, a sight that would not have been seen two decades ago, a sight no man could even have conceived of a century gone. Upon this primitive time the effects of my decisions and those of the other Sojourners had broken like waves which would not be denied their passage, sweeping along all in their path in a direction which, if one stopped to consider, was still not entirely clear.

Some parts, however, presented with clarity. Some scraps of that destination, or perhaps simply aspects of the journey, visible for those with the eyes to see. This path that I had placed us on had run here, to the dockyards, where behemoths of felled forest giants carefully milled in to gray planks were constructed for voyages across the wine-dark sea to climes both exotic and familiar. A smile ghosted across my face as I viewed the square-rigged sails meant to catch every breath of wind, the lovingly crafted keels and rudders designed to see crew and cargo through the narrow reaches of the Straits, and yet retain the ability to save effort on the part of her captain when he piloted her through the rumbling waves of the Middle Sea, land left far behind.

They were many, more than I had anticipated, even with the knowledge of the numbers and port reports still ringing in my head from my study during our journey here. Here and there in their assayed ranks a sail was darker than others- those which were merchantment opted for undyed sails, the cheaper option to be sure, but the gathering navy marked their sails in coal-black hue, mixed with an extract of naptha proof against fire and rain to let sail fly free but leaving her dark as night. Aye, upon those sails a symbol which warmed my heart fluttered, the anchor which was my birthmark since my youth, and now a symbol of the Imperium of Man which would embrace the world.

[Labstoska]

Perth, Australia, 2017
Oliver finished taking his glass of whisky before he was ejected from the bar. The incident which started his ejection was that he had been drinking rather heavily for a reason he couldn't quite remember and in his drunkard state he distinctly remembered himself getting into a fight with an individual quite the bit larger than he was which did explain the large welts which covered his body. Than the barman hauled him out of the bar and now he was trapped out in an impending storm.

"you call that a bar, you don't even let people get drunk" Oliver called after the barman.


"just go home Oliver" the barman replied .

So Oliver began to stagger back to his car and attempted to clamber into it however he ran into some trouble when he discovered that he had no keys. He began to walk back to the bar in order to acquire his keys however the storm that had been threatening to hit finally released it's heavenly silo. The storm began to unleash it's endless torrents of water and winds slammed into Oliver whipping up his hair and cloths, he could no longer see the bar at this point in fact he couldn't see anything ahead of him. A sort of pressure began to build up on top of Oliver's head pushing down on him, crushing him, carving out the inside of his head and leaving him confused and very afraid. Eventually with the wind ripping up his ears, the rain smashing down on his face and the mysterious pressure building on his head, putting a rope around his brain and tightening it every second and with all that Oliver finally crumpled to the ground in an unconscience heap.
Where Perth will be, Australia,2937 BC
Oliver was lying on the ground in a large open plain surrounded by 13 near naked aboriginal men most of which were standing in a large circle around his body, two were brave enough to come closer and were currently prodding the spears at Oliver's resting body.

"What is it" called one of the men from behind.

"I think it may be a spirit of the dead"the man who was currently poking Oliver replied.

"If so why does it have the flesh of a human"exclaimed the other man who prodding Oliver

"perhaps he was reincarnated" The man from the back called.

Oliver now began to stir from his slumber and groggily opened his eyes, he was greeted by two near naked Aboriginal men staring down at him and pointing some rather sharp spears at him. He then proceeded to notice that he himself was naked so he quickly moved his hands to cover up his exposed genitals. This received a gasp from the Aboriginal men who surrounded him and they quickly retreated a few steps backwards and levied their spears at him.George stood up and addressed the assembled aboriginals.

"Okay mates I was drunk yesterday and i may of did some things that I may have forgotten like coming out into the outback so if you could please just direct me back to Perth i would much appreciate it"

Much to Oliver's surprise the gathered men began to laugh all except one who appeared to be the leader of this group, stepped forward and spoke.

"First of all we are not your mates secondly this Perth place that you speak of does not exist within the territory of the Noongar tribe and thirdly what do you mean by drunk and why on Earth would this effect your memory"

Oliver was beginning to feel worried, he would of thought that this was one of those tribes that have never encountered the outside world if he didn't already know that those did not exist in Australia so he instead asked.

"Okay then would you please take me back to your settlement or wherever you live"

the leader of the this group then stated "why would we allow a possibly malevolent spirit into our homes".

Oliver decided to go along with the spirit thing "Because i can help you, i can make it that you never run out of food again, i can make so that your warriors are the strongest in the land and i can make it so that the Noongar tribe controls all the land in the known world" and with that they began there march back to the Noongar settlement.

[Holy Tedalonia]

Wheatfield Ambush
The battlefield was silent. As the men had watch the Imperium soldiers glance through the wheat, they decided they couldn't stay forever. Octive quickly signalled his men to retreat, but to split up in hopes of forcing their for to divide or target one of the groups retreating. Once the orders to retreat on Octive's mark were given he told the men next to him to retreat, but try and make sudden and unpredictability movements in hopes of staying out of the enemies aim. He knew this might lead to heavy casualties, but he needed to do something. He gives the signal and runs.
Italian Encampment
After dealing with discontent Italians and impatient warriors, Ted had told them to wait for the rest of the warriors to return. This however did not stop the disgruntled Italians from leaving. This disappointed Ted since he really had hoped they were more disciplined then that. Ted considered the possibility of them heading back, but his plan to stop the Imperium in their tracks was becoming more of a fantasy. He considered the possibility of joining the Imperium, and since he knew how the Imperium identifies people; he figured he could find a way to manipulate his fingerprint. This plan however requires to be far away from his Italian allies. Ted pondered further on what he could do as he awaits his soldiers return.

[Achidyemay]

1.1.1

Everett slept poorly that night and woke up three times. At first it was a standard nightmare (there had been a lot more of those since being sent back into the past) and the two times he tried going to sleep after that he had dreams that were simply too weird. The kind of dreams you just can't deal with for too long. When he woke up the third time he figured it was close enough to the morning that he was going to wake up for good. Quietly rising from bed, he slipped outside to a morning that hadn't quite gotten up yet itself. Lighter hues of blue and gray crept from the east, but everything else was a dusky gray. Everett inhaled deeply the fresh but muggy air. He still wasn't used to the warm evenings and mornings, despite its consistency. He had grown up with crisp morning air even in the dead of summer, and he was still finding it impossible to adjust to the constant warmth.

The ships were bobbing gently in the river, tied securely to their moors. They had been rolled into the river the day earlier with a large splash and larger cheer; Everett was glad to see that they were still floating this morning. They had been christened, in true form, with names and a shotglass of ricewine flung violently against their hull. The larger one was named Windwaker and the smaller one was named King of Red Lions. Everett decided he would give the smaller boat a bright red lacquering when he came back. For now they drifted quietly in the steady current of the river. There was no wind in the river valley and Everett hoped they would encounter some when they reached the sea. He did not want to have to paddle to wherever they were going and, according to all of his Grandfather's adages, it was looking to be a very clear and calm day.

Everett hoped a lot of things about the voyage. He hoped for wind, but not too much. He hoped they would find civilization and he could make his way back home again, and eventually he would come back with air conditioning and electricity to repay the villagers. He hoped that if they found another colony like this one, they wouldn't be crazy and attack them, capture him and skin him and turn his skin into an aphrodisiac. He hoped they wouldn't die in a tornado, like the mongols, or tip over and sink; he considered making life jackets, but he wasn't going to be the guy to tie coconuts to himself. He hoped that the small stove didn't light fire to the whole ship. He hoped that the fishing nets wouldn't tear too bad. He hoped things didn't go screwy at home. He hoped, he hoped. There were so many ways this expedition could go wrong. But he was also very excited. Going on adventures always put him in a good mood and the concept of being an olde timey explorer resonated with him.

He stretched experimentally before launching into some impromptu Tai Chi. In his experience with Asia, there was a disappointing lack of martial arts that failed to live up to his Western expectations. The flailing of limbs didn't last long, suitably limbered he grabbed a shallow basket off of the porch and hopped down. He headed over to the cucumber patch and started to harvest the last of the fruits. Everett had bee working hard diversifying their food sources as much as possible. While they were content to gather from the jungle, Everett was harvesting seeds for planting in near fields. He wanted to start growing fruit trees, palms, and other woods, but that would take time. He also wanted to make a bid at rubbermaking, because that had always fascinated him, but had so far been unable to find the tree. He had also promoted crop rotation and after each growing season there was a rearranging. They were mid-rearrangement at the moment (different growing times prompted differences in the rotations) and Everett was uncomfortable with leaving now. More people were needed on the farm, and he probably needed more people to be available to sail the ship. But, more importantly, he needed to leave. He needed to be proactive about his rescue. He couldn't just wait until some overenthusiastic city planner decides to build a highway through their settlement for him to be found.

"You're always up and doing something." It was Yǔn, she must have crept into the garden while he was lost in thought. Everett turned around to greet her.
"I will get plenty of sleep when I'm dead."
"You nap a lot too." She yawned.
"No one comes to class." He grinned. Then yawned. "Are you ready for today?"
"I guess, I'm still not totally sure we should go."
"I understand what you mean, but we've got plenty stored even if things go bad and it'll be safer the more people are on board. Besides, it'll be fun."
She nodded, "You're right, and I want to see the ocean, I haven't gotten to yet."
"You haven't taken Red Lions down the river yet?"
She shook her head.
"Well... It's like the sky, but perfectly reflected so that it seems to go on forever. We won't be leaving sight of the shore, though."
She thought about this for a while. Then she asked, "Do you want to go for a walk?"
"Sure, let me go put these cucumbers away and grab a pad and pencil." He consented.

The writing materials were purely habitual, the route they took wouldn't take them by anything of urgent interest. In the distance a herd of elephants was causing some severe deforestation. The rest of the jungle was likewise fairly loud with the sounds of life. They fell back into their now old habit of not really conversing but occasionally voicing thoughts at one another. As expected, nothing noteworthy happened, but by the time they made it back to the megahut, everyone was awake and the sun was shining brilliantly overhead. Hai and Bảo came up to them. Apparently, everything was ready and Hai was really excited to get underway. This wasn't the first time that they had left their home, and while they were coming back, Everett was once again impressed by their foresight. They all said goodbye, Everett went over one last check to make sure that everything was good, which it was, and then scurried up the ladder one last time. With all three on board, Bảo untied the boat from its moorings and it slowly began to float downriver.

Navigating the meandering waters of the river was an easy proposition and Hai sailed masterfully. The sail was still down and Everett was sitting in the small hut on deck. He was reminded of the time he had sailed around Superior, he had gotten ridiculously seasick then and he hoped he wouldn't this time. Yǔn was at the prow, looking very regal, occasionally giving direction to Hai. It didn't take long before they were at sea. Raising the lateen sail was a near farcical affair, since the mast and yard had been designed to come together well over their heads. It ended with the Hai and Yǔn climbing the mast and then Everett handing them up the yard and Hai manipulating it with his feet to get it up and then handing it even further up to Yǔn. Everett made a note to add rigging for hoisting the yard in future ships.

The breeze was rare and sporadic, but with constant vigilance, proved just enough to move them along the coast. Eventually, Everett realized that by sailing closer to the shore, they could make better use of the onshore breeze. The water was a bit rougher, and Everett got fairly nauseous, but he attempted to stay active for the other's sake. Speaking of, they were having a blast. Everett was glad they were having a good time. When Hai asked if they were going to put nets in, Everett helped as best he could, trying to muster the focus for the task. Everett understood sea trawling in principal and the net was designed well, but he had no idea what they caught when they pulled the nets in. He was friends with three marine biology majors, but the identification of epipelagic marine life within the Gulf of Thailand was not his thesis. Hai had some ideas though and Everett brought up a jug of water for cooking rice. Lunch was an interesting spectacle.

As the sun began to set, they purposefully ran aground on the coast and weighed anchor. With the sail brought down and tucked away, they set up a sleeping schedule so that someone was always awake for the night. Everett would stay up first. He had brought some simple woodworking tools along and retired to the top of the squat hut. From up there he watched and idly carved away.

[Ulls]

Ego

Peace came with the sign of fall and the rebuilding of Ego came. The war had the military suffering heavy casualties, most died from diseases sense there were very few fatalities from the battles. This had to be fixed as the lack of trained warriors meant that raids were becoming more frequent in the east and the borders of the northern tribes that weren't conquered during his incursion. Even though he brought the Atvarkars to heel, they're still enemies at the gates.

Jeb had started to hear reports that the enemy tribes had started to take revenge on merchants and attempted to plunder a few villages but the defensive militias suffered greatly. Ego can't survive under this intense pressure in its current state. The Warlord needed to change and reign in the tribes that were bound to the city. He needed to assimilate them, cast down their individual tribal cultures and reform Ego into a true nation, a true empire.

Tribal chieftains were called from all over the lands to the growing city. Farms and slaves grew in number as a second wall was being built around the farms for fear of raiding tribes trying to stage a large-scale raid against the weakened power. The wall stood as an example of the new type of architecture as they started to mix mudbricks and wooden foundation to form a defense from fire arrows or mass assault. It was built by the kilns that were built for the growing craftsmen of copper goods and weapons. Eventually, the strong brick itself was something that the adviser believed that it could used for building.

Jeb told her that mud bricks were more used in drier regions and would have their weaknesses here. Still, the adaptive building style would help against the weather and the fire attacks if the tribes started to learn how to do that. Within the longhouse, the Warlord told them about the weaknesses it came from their current state and told them that a new government was going to happen. The chieftains were mixed about it as Ego left the tribes culture alone in exchange for buying goods and send their warriors to serve for Ego. However, he said that the war has brought many weaknesses to light. One of things that he said was that the multicultural wouldn't work unless they are those that promote strength, trade, and the general contribution to Ego.

He started to talk about the ideas of meritocracy, military tradition, and nobility. The major idea that got the chieftains agreeing was nobility, this was of course destroyed when Jeb make it behind a major requirement, they must be skilled enough to perform their duties. Some chieftains were good warriors and had fought with Jeb in the war while others have been noted as skilled stewards and their tribal villages had grown prosperous underneath the yoke of Ego. Therefore they would be two noble houses, one to keep military traditions and marshal the army, and the other to be governors of the state and the economy.

These two noble houses will structure the empire as a means of having equal amounts of tradition between the military and the state. This also secure the idea that the two governing branches will continual survival of Ego after Jeb passes away. He had is two best advisors and allies to lead them both and to oversee the advancement of the unity of Ego while he is the Warlord and the leader of the empire. This was the future on how Ego needed to be in order to prepare for the Grand Campaign.


When it came to the north in the Michigan Land Bridge, he decided to call upon his new vassal to help secure the land. He offered them tribes that they conquered. This was the first step that both can work together in this peaceful times. The tribes were in the lands were absorbed up north as they were split by the two powers. Those that were absorbed by Ego were made into Tricksters and the coastal villages were marked to be used as shipyards for the longships that will make their way towards Canada and continue the Grand Campaign to get to the sea.

As for now, Ego needs to rebuild is lands, carve new roads out the lands, and bring Ego's influence to those that they have conquered and prepare the expansion of the empire.