Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Edward stood on a wooded hillside, looking down over the slaughter beneath him. There were vast mounds of dead knights and men-at-arms around the enemy standards they had charged in vain. Armored bodies lay suffocated in the mud, drowned in their own helmets or crushed by companions in the heat of battle. Others were face-up where they stumbled, bleeding at the breast or shoulder from the final blow of a misericorde administered as they helplessly lay.

There were few to witness the scene; the victor had withdrawn and the vanquished fled. The few ragpickers who might have appeared were too busy mourning their own, leaving the field to naught but the crows.

“My brothers and sisters shall reap a fine repast from this foolishness,” said a crow, alighting on a discarded sword plunged into the earth and lost by its owner. “Even with the many hard and inedible parts, there are still succulent eyes aplenty to be plucked and fine, soft noble flesh to sup upon.”

“You would do well not to speak so lightly of such a tragedy,” Edward said sadly. “Three dukes, eight counts, a viscount, an archbishop, countless nobles, burghers, and bailiffs…thousands dead, including those who were slain outright and those who could not be ransomed and were not worth capture–ended by an enemy fearful that they might continue the fight and precariously outnumbered even in victory.”

“Does a farmer not speak lightly of the crows he shoots or poisons in warding them from his crops?” the crow replied. “Does an uninterested party not chuckle at the misfortunes of others which might be turned to its own advantage? I think that it is you who speak improperly about this, friend.”

“Perhaps. But within a generation, these men’s sons, and their sons’ sons, will flight over the same land and spill the same blood for the same futile reasons,” Edward said. “Even one such as yourself cannot help but see the tragedy in the shared fate of all those who have lost battles…and all those who have won.”

“Death is the shared fate of us all,” replied the crow. “As is futility, as is the repetition of past mistakes and sins. Why feed if we must die? Why bear our young if they too must perish? Why watch as a thousand crows die at the hands of a thousand farmers for a thousand worthless hulls of grain? No crow ever considers these things, as they are too amused by the blackest humor innate in all such things. One may view history as tragedy or comedy; it is in finding levity in both that my kind survives.”

Edward regarded his companion. From the way the early morning sunshine played across its feathers, and the unearthly way it broke that sunshine into its component colors like a ground crystal lens, it was clear no ordinary crow perched before him. “There is, I think, wisdom in your remarks,” said he, “and while I cannot agree with them, I find the perspective illuminating in the face of such despair. Pray tell me your name.”

“I have no name but that of my kind,” replied the crow. “Much as those before you mired in the field of battle now bear none but ‘man’ as their title and rank.”

Inspired by this.

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The Citizens’ Revolution

By 802 CE, the rule of the Sejanian dynasty had become increasingly decadent and corrupt. Huge portions of the imperial treasury were spent on luxury items, and the imperial army was regularly sent on raids into the Outland to enrich the emperor’s coffers. This tense situation led to a series of serious Oustsider invasions, as the scattered groups temporarily united under strong leaders. The incursion of 799 reached nearly to the City itself before being repulsed, and much of the Farmlands was laid waste in reprisal.

This led to a critical food shortage; importing foodstuffs from Outsiders was impossible thanks to the border raids, and the large imperial army needed an immense supply to continue its campaigns. Though gunpowder and musketry had been rediscovered, this technological advantage was offset by increasingly inept military leadership. For instance, the Battle of Stedman’s Farm in 799 resulted in the annihilation of an entire army after the emperor’s brother led it into a trap, but the reins of the armies remained firmly in imperial hands.

802 saw food riots in the city and fresh Outsider incursions along the frontier. Emperor Marcian II ineptly left the situation in the hands of his family members, and the result was the Canal Street Massacre, in which nearly 200 unarmed and starving citizens were gunned down by troops from the Citadel. Two days later, news arrived in the capital of imperial defeats at Marcus’ Mill and Caleb’s Ford. Though these defeats were nowhere near as serious as Stedman’s Farm, the effect was to galvanize the City into open revolt. Many members of the imperial army joined the citizens as they stormed the Citadel under heavy fire, and Marcian was forced to flee the City.

A council of citizens formed a provisional government, seizing imperial weapons and supplies while accepting the allegiance of many units bound for the front lines. Marcian and his court retreated to the imperial army encampment in the Farmlands, and immediately began planning an assault to retake the City. The resulting fighting, which pitted royalists against revolutionaries, lasted until 808, and was utterly ruinous, with opportunistic Outside invasions and bitter campaigning in and around the City itself. The last imperial forces surrendered after the decisive Battle of the Bay, and Marcian was executed by a kangaroo court along with most of the remaining nobility.

The Citizens’ Republic

Taking inspiration from then-radical political philosophy, the new provisional government declared itself a democracy, and elected the first Mayor in late 809. Mayor Quinn, a veteran of the Citizens’ Revolution, moved vigorously to restore order. The remaining Outsiders were expelled, and the imperial treasury was emptied in reconstruction efforts. By 815, when Quinn left office, the Citizens’ Republic was secure.

The Farmlands were the site of one of the new government’s most controversial programs. Outsider prisoners of war were forced to labor on the farms, whose native population had been decimated by the fighting. Eventually, the manpower shortage–coupled with the recovering City’s growing needs–forced regular, government sanctioned raids for more laborers. Though, according to the City Charter, the Outlanders were eligible for citizenship, in practice local laws and hardened attitudes left over from the Revolution meant that the laborers were little more than chattel.

Despite this, the young Citizens’ Republic underwent a cultural and technological renaissance, with many works of art and new ideas forming a potent and diverse cultural mélange. The stagnation that had dogged the city in the last years of the monarchy had finally been dispelled.

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The Founding

The City was founded–and the modern calendar begins–in 1 CD. Sejan, the de facto leader of the refugees, established a settlement overlooking the bay. The ships were stripped and scuttled offshore to prevent the invaders from easily identifying the site, and a fortified citadel was constructed of hewn stone to protect the citizens. This construction used up the limited resources that the refugees had brought, and they soon found themselves at the same technological level as the surrounding Outsiders.

While the expected attack by the invaders never came—indeed, they vanish from the historical record altogether—the nascent City soon had to contend with Outsider attacks. While poorly organized, the lack of a technological edge meant that these early battles were hard-fought, and the Outsiders—as has been the case in every subsequent conflict—outnumbered the defenders.

In the face of this onslaught, Sejan and the surviving Sepulcher clergy devised the foundations for their new society—renewed technological emphasis and territorial expansion to secure a buffer zone against the Outsiders. By allying with several loose groups of Outsiders, Sejan was able to take a considerable area of fertile land surrounding the city. Once the frontiers had been established, the Citizens turned on their Outsider allies and expelled most of them, while others were kept as slaves to work the new land.

By the time of his death in 44 CD, Sejan had conquered the core area of the modern City and Farmlands. He had overseen the establishment of all the trappings of a new society, invigorated research with the aim of re-establishing the technology of the Precursor City, re-founded the Sepulcher and laid the cornerstone for its basilica, and created the ancestor of the modern Citizens Armed Forces. For these achievements, Sejan was the only ruler of the City ever to receive the moniker of “the Great.”

The Imperial City

Though Sejan himself had not used a title, his son Valer was awarded the title of king by the leading citizens upon his father’s death; this began what later became known as the Imperial Period. Though initially intended as a temporary measure, Valer and his successors rapidly consolidated their power, and within a century the City’s government had become a hereditary monarchy. The early kings were generally able rulers who continued Sejan’s focus on technology (though the people had regressed to an Iron Age level since their arrival) and built a powerful military to expand and protect the Farmlands’ frontiers.

In 592 CE, King Aurel V proclaimed that the City would henceforth be ruled as an empire. Declaring himself Emperor Aurel I, the monarch moved swiftly against the City’s nobility in a brief but sharp civil war. Many of the City’s nobles were executed, and those that remained were reduced to landowners with hollow titles. Aurel oversaw the creation of a unitary state in which nearly all power was centralized in the hands of the emperor. While this led to short-term stability for Aurel and his successors, it had dire consequences for the rest of the population.

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