Original Post
"Stellaris is an odd name to call a ship." Alvi said, rubbing her chin as she looked at the shape being built up in the scaffolds. The young scientist had only recently arrived from Thorholm, and her newness to this sort of environment showed in the wobble to her steps as she adjusted to where she was.
"Believe me I wanted to name it after a person rather than something so generic." Ivan laughed, the man adjusting his tie and offering the blonde an earnest smile as she gave a bit of a snort.
"A generic name would cause the least argument." Zhou said, the older Chinese man intruding into the space of the pair as their eyes flicked over to him.
"Did it have to be so...Latin?" Malisa said, the Iranian woman folding her arms with a visible frown forming on her face as Zhou nodded and gave her an apologetic look.
"It's been a long time, I think we can forgive the transgressions of foregone centuries by now." Zhou said, nodding at the end of his sentence.
"Not all wounds are so old, Zhou." Abena said, the Ghanian scientist scowling ever so slightly as she inserted herself into the conversation.
"If there was ever a time to close them, I think now would be best. This is something meant to be shared by humanity, not a further cause for division." Zhou said, placing his arms behind his back as he looked onto the shape forming, watching the machines work with a small smile on his face. Even now the world still found ways to impress him.
"It's not dragging up the image of the "Romans" that bothers me, it's that it's really cheesy." Alvi said with a laugh, having let everyone else meander about the conversation to her amusement.
"What else are you going to call a space ship without tripping on someone's sensibilities? Calling it the League like I wanted at first would probably seem a bit like gloating to the ex-Dominion nations wouldn't it?" Ivan said, Alvi tapping the end of her stylus to her lips before shrugging and sighing in defeat.
"...Fair point." She said with an exhale.
As the human race prepares to make its first journey into the stars with the Stellaris system, we must first ask how we got here. How have we come to stand at this point in history, with world wars and crusades now behind us and the infinite expanse of space in front of us? Fortunately, describing the journey we have taken is the purpose of this blog post. Some would start our journey all the way back at the dawn of recorded history at Sumer, or even before when we lived in caves and hunted wild mammoths for sustenance. I however will start with the beginning of what many would call the "middle ages" that existed between antiquity and modernity.
I am Alfhildr Larrsen, a historian from the Nordarikki from the city of Agnafit, and I've started this blog to show you all the journey that we've taken from 769 to now. A journey full of great glories and inspiration and of tremendous sorrows and tragedies. Of the formation of kingdoms and empires and the blood and slaughter of world wars and genocide. Of discovery and of atrocity. Of the rise and fall of great powers and the path that faith has taken in the course of centuries. While I'm not fond of the pornography of delving into atrocity, I will try not to shy away from the ugly parts of history, just as I will not shy away from its triumphs and oddities. And so, we shall start at the year 769 by the Christian count, or the year zero by the count of the Forn Sidir; when Sigurd Ring of the Af Munsos had his famous vision, or dream if you're not of the faith from Odin.
The world from central asia westwards until the western edge of Iberia and Africa was a fractured mass of dynasties, tribes, faiths, clans and petty states that have arisen to prominence following the demise of the Roman Empire in the west and the crushing of the power of Byzantium and the Arabic conquest of the Iranian Empire. In India, the Gupta Empire which once ruled a large portion of the subcontinent was now long passed from any living memory, and even the far smaller Harsha Empire was now a thing of the past. At the time, the greatest power in the world was the Abbassid Arabic Caliphate; which stretched from Baluchistan all the way to Egypt, a mighty empire with no equals; but one who stood on a foundation of sand. In Christian Europe we saw the rise of Karl der Grobs as the Frankish King sought to claim all of what was once Gaul and Germania, even if it meant a reckoning with his brother, while a tiny band of Christians desperately hung onto the Iberian Peninsula.
At this stage of history, we shall primarily focus on the unification of Scandinavia and the expansion of the Forn Sidir faith once it was formed out of the traditions of the Norsefolk, with attention also being put on the resurgence of Iranian Zoroastrianism in their war to liberate their homeland from Arabic occupation, and the rise of the Ghanan Empire and the birth of the Akani faith as well as the affairs of western Europe. This isn't saying we will be ignoring other happenings in the world by any means, but we can hardly cover everything at once; so we will need to select our focuses and go from there. From time to time, I will bring up updates regarding other sections of the world, particularly if I get enough requests to do so.
I will be combining primary sources, historical texts, documentaries, classroom material, popular media, and more to provide both the facts and our modern perspective of the past in this exciting time before we set to the stars with the looming launch of the first faster than light ships. This should hopefully give my readers the benefit of every possible perspective as we peruse through more than twelve hundred years of history.
We start our account with Sigurd "Ring", a Petty King of Svitjod. married to his teenaged bride Alfildr and with the heir apparent of the young Ragnarr, Sigurd would go to sleep on the last day of the year 768 only to be plagued by what he would call "visions." As the Sögur would attest to he was whisked away to Valhalla itself to speak before Odin in a dream, now the following is all just me paraphrasing from my holy book so it's probably going to lose out on a lot of the poetry, but the Sögur attests to the following happening.
"The King, Queen, and the young princeling found themselves unable to pass into restful sleep as at once, all were taken into dreams took them hence to Asaheim in the halls of Odin. Brought before the great lord of Asaheim and the All-Father Odin and Queen Frigga, they stood there at the feet of the gods themselves to hear the words of the lords of the nine realms.
At first, Sirgurdr and Alfhildr stood proud, refusing to bow before the city of splendour. "I am the king of my realm, and I need to bow before no man." Sigurd said, daring to look upon those who sat and yet dwarfed them all the same.
"Have you forgotten your piety before the High King whom even you are sworn to?" Odin asked, and at once Sigurd and Alfhildr quailed, but it was their son who bent his knee before the all father knowing his place before the one eyed god was not to argue with his summons.
"What fool are you to not see what your child can not?" Frigga asked, and a great shame filled the hearts of the King and Queen, and both lay themselves upon their knees, weeping for forgiveness.
The All Father smiled upon Sigurd, and bid him to rise as the eyes of the great gods were upon him. "You are not here to weep oh king, you are here because you have a purpose."
"Why do you call upon me oh Father? I who rule the lands of Svitjod." Spoke the King, rising before Odin consulted with his ravens and then spoke in return.
"The tricks of the Jotun are many and wicked, and they have come to test the true and the strong. The lands of the Germans shall soon fall to the lies of the three headed giant, they will seek to take you away from the pure and true faith as they ever do, coming with crosses on shields and death in hand."
"You will unite the lands you call home, and from there a mighty empire can grow; an empire that will call your dynasty Fylkir. I know you will do this, and I know you will make me glad for the children of your line shall spread our word far across midgard, far beyond the lands you call home."
This caused a profound change in Sigurd, who immediately began to consort with his Godis as he dived deep into the matters of faith to see what would need to be done to keep the northlands pure from the encroaching faith of Christianity and to ensure dominance in the baltic. To be taken seriously he would need to prove that he truly was favoured by the gods by bringing all the tribes of the north together, bringing the priests under one banner, bringing the holy places under his protection, and by defeating those of lesser conviction in battle. He would need to take his scattered tribes and make a great kingdom out of them, and if he could not achieve this; his children would do so in his stead.
Now whether or not Sigurd ever actually had those visions is a matter to be discussed in a theology blog; not here. If you wish for a more wholly secular explanation, it is likely that Sigurd did suffer from some dreams, and due to the suggestibility of the human mind immediately after waking up and our own poor memory of the worlds we create while asleep; it's probable that Alfhildr and Ragnar simply accepted what he said as true. Some would point to the prophetic nature of the dreams, that Sigurd was able to know that Saxony was about to fall; as proof of this. However the definitive edition of the Sögur was not completed until the Norse had established a kingdom that would have entertained a Saxon envoy. So make of this what you will.
Though powerful by the standards of the Northlands, Sigurd would need to be the master of far more if he was to live up to the message of his visions. He was a mighty warrior to be sure, and he was noted for having a powerful way with words. His skill with managing coin or intrigue however; were sorely lacking. And though he could speak of some learning, he was far from the most knowledgeable man in the land. This meant that it was crucial for him to make the right allies, those who could help him manage the busywork of money and subterfuge or could cover that which he lacked in terms of a deeper education.
Should he sound the call for war, he could potentially expect two thousand men at arms to join his call; twice as much as his next closest contender; the petty king of Austergautland. But if he were to engage in rapid, uncontrolled conquest it was virtually certain that some would stand against him as a common foe, and as his dominion grew it would be virtually certain that those beneath him would make his rule difficult.
The other two focuses of this introduction are two others who claimed to have been commanded by heaven itself to protect their faith from the encroachment of outsiders.
Seydou, ruler of the large and powerful land of Ghana; is reported to have spoken with a powerful priest who held dominion over the sacred land of Silla who prophecized that a Ruler of Ghana would bring the world within the sight of Nyame. Now what this actually meant is quite infamously ambiguous. What counts as "bringing the world within sight of Nyame?" Does it mean to conquer the world as some have tried? Or does it mean making the Akan faith respected by the world? Does it simply mean keeping it alive in the face of Islamic encroachment?
Nevertheless, this incident was recorded in what would later be the Holy Text of the Akan faith and would inspire the Farbas of Ghana to seek to create a mighty Kingdom that would stretch across western africa. Songhai and a series of small tribal realms stood in the way of this conquest, and any expansion would have to face a reckoning with the Muslim powers to the North. Though the Arabic chronicler who recorded Seydou's life was rather unimpressed by any of Seydou's qualities, the conquest of western Africa would be a work associated with him for the rest of history.
After spending years amassing funds to prepare for his conquests; Seydou decided that he had enough money to enlist the services of some three thousand mercenaries. This army would prove to be of great use in conquering Songhay when combined with his own tribal levies, as the much smaller Kingdom could not hope to resist the onslaught of the Ghanan army and its grossly superior numbers.
The legends speak that Seydou had six soldiers for every one commanded by Songhay with most of these being his freshly hired mercenaries. This meant that the outcome of the war was essentially never in any real doubt. And Seydou, convinced of the righteousness of his conquest, would settle for nothing less than the total subsumption of Songhay into his realm. We will get to the war shortly, but a note on western Africa. If at any time it seems odd that the north African powers don't ever simply just invade to crush the rising West African peoples, it's worth noting that the Sahara desert isone of the most impassible barriers for an army.
The Roman Empire in all of its days never sought to penetrate particularly deeply into the desert, nor did Carthage or Persia. And so, despite the fantastic wealth of the region, it was deemed to be virtually impossible for a sultan or an emir in northern Africa to try and conquer a region of the world that was separated from the world's centers of wealth and power by a vast stretch of utterly unforgiving desert.
Now we come to Shekih Anushirvan of Iran. Anushirvan was stargazing one day, and found a comet passing overhead, the brilliant object streaking across the stars with a brilliance that set the astronomical community of the time aflame. But Anushirvan, a Mazdakist who believed strongly in Ohrmazd's message of charity, took it to mean something else. That he was destined to free Iran from the Arab yoke. And to do this, he planned on bringing the whole structure of the Abbasid empire crashing down around the Arabs by cutting off the head of the serpent. At once, Anushirvan's character began to change as he threw off his traditional shackles of laziness and delved into his tireless scheme with which he would cast down the Arabs and fulfill what he believed to be his destiny.
By all accounts a wise man, Anushirvan was notably pious and committed to the teachings of Zarathurstra and Mazdak and came to write of what he saw as the oppression of his homeland and the arduous test of the Zoroastrian faith imposed by the Arabs. If he could send the empire into collapse, he could have a chance to declare independence. And so he gathered all the most accomplished figures in the ways of murder and sought out all those who had something to gain from Al-Mansur's death, regardless of whether or not they were Zoroastrian. Any help in freeing the faithful of Ohrmazd from the minions of Ahriman would be appreciated; so that those who would seek to impose the will of Allah would be forever cast from the lands where Ohrmazd revealed himself.
By coincidence, the Roman Emperor Konstantinios the fifth had the same idea as did Khagan Bhagatur of Khazaria, King Oda Gosh of Abyssania and Sultan Umar of Africa, and also began to plot the death of Al-Mansur. He would not be long for the world, as the later Iranian chronicler Cyrus attested to. "Soon all the land would be plotting against the Caliph. Whether they saw him as a tyrant oppressing their faith or if they saw him as simply an obstacle to their own gain; they made plans in secret to unravel the empire of the Arabs. Ohrmazd smiled not on the Arabs as all sought their downfall, and even the fellows of their faith looked upon the Caliph's station greedily with the hopes of one day sitting upon his throne."
This rather obviously meant that the Caliph would quite soon be a dead man. To this date, to compare something to Mansur in Iran generally means to evoke the image of a vast number of people plotting against something. This can be seen in a famous political cartoon where Grand Vizier Nahid is looked at hungrily by the Iranian parliament, with the decrepit shadow of Mansur behind her as she prepared to give her speech as her faction in government was starting to fall out of favour with the general Iranian body politic. This was even used the seminal absurdist comedy film series "The Six Thousand Year Joke", a beloved classic of Iranian cinema with twelve entries and stellar production values whose first entry was released in the Zoroastrian year 2373.
In the scene, a Zoroastrian, a Byzantine, a rival claimant for the throne from within the Abbasid empire, a Khazarian, an African, and an Abyssinian assassin all bump into one another as they each hope to kill Mansur through almost impossibly elaborate schemes. Each of whom is arguing over who gets to kill the doomed Caliph before a disgruntled courtier simply slips something into the Caliph's water and kills him. This is met with the vocal disappointment of the other involved parties who dejectedly walk home as the entire palace erupts into a brawl for the throne of the Caliphate when they hear the news that the heir apparent of the Caliphate had been mauled to death by a Hippopotamus while out hunting in Egypt.
But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves. At the moment, the Byzantine Empire declared war on Emir Hasan to strip him of his possessions in Coloneia as part of the Basileus' plans to reverse the severe territorial decline that the heirs of Rome had suffered and the Abbasid Empire was busily engaged in a war of conquest against the tiny realm of Kalat to expand its domains a little further. For the time being, Anushirvan would have to play it safe and keep his head down.
This is my first non-alien space bats timeline but I will say straight off the bat that this is definitely a teleological timeline to a rather significant degree. That being said I'm still going to try and present an air of versimilitude as much as I can.
The general conceits of this timeline are basically: a reborn Zoroastrian Persia, and reformed paganism dominating in West Africa and in Northern/Eastern Europe. I suppose you could call it something of an Abrahamic faith screw? I wouldn't call it that but I can't exactly control you now can i? I suppose you could also accuse me of bias because I am myself a Neo-Pagan but going by this rationale would prevent pretty much every alternate timeline ever from being written for fear of ideological and religious biases showing.
Also if you subscribe to the school of thought that the triumph of Christianity and Islam or Monotheism in general was inevitable then you can avoid a long fruitless debate that will change nobody's opinions by clicking out of the thread and reading something else.
I'm probably not going to go all the way to 2200 A.D. But I am going to be covering a lot of time. I will bounce up and down the timeline as I feel is needed to flesh out things I may have only mentioned in passing before or to give some sneak peeks of what's to come ahead.
I'll be combining bullet point timelines, in universe narratives, in universe documents, out of universe overviews, in universe media and more to provide the most diverse possible set of framings for the timeline.
As to how I can possibly maintain this and my ASB timelines at the same time? It's because I'm a loser with too much time on his hands to spend on writing mediocre fanfiction. As to why I'm starting yet another writing project? This one more or less absolutely refused to leave my head and I've often tried to make something similar in many an attempted paradox interactive megacampaign. I already have a rough outline of events up until 1500 or so planned.
Lovers of Britain will probably cry and Byzantophiles will probably have quite the roller coaster ride of emotions. And because you all expect it from me; don't worry, you will all get your horrifyingly large body counts and ample provisions of human suffering and woe.
This is a project open to reader contributions, if I like something you write for this timeline enough I'll threadmark it. You're also welcome to PM or email me to collaborate if you want.
As I am not Tolkien, I'm not going to be constructing languages. Just assume translation convention is in effect for anything presented from an in universe perspective.
"Believe me I wanted to name it after a person rather than something so generic." Ivan laughed, the man adjusting his tie and offering the blonde an earnest smile as she gave a bit of a snort.
"A generic name would cause the least argument." Zhou said, the older Chinese man intruding into the space of the pair as their eyes flicked over to him.
"Did it have to be so...Latin?" Malisa said, the Iranian woman folding her arms with a visible frown forming on her face as Zhou nodded and gave her an apologetic look.
"It's been a long time, I think we can forgive the transgressions of foregone centuries by now." Zhou said, nodding at the end of his sentence.
"Not all wounds are so old, Zhou." Abena said, the Ghanian scientist scowling ever so slightly as she inserted herself into the conversation.
"If there was ever a time to close them, I think now would be best. This is something meant to be shared by humanity, not a further cause for division." Zhou said, placing his arms behind his back as he looked onto the shape forming, watching the machines work with a small smile on his face. Even now the world still found ways to impress him.
"It's not dragging up the image of the "Romans" that bothers me, it's that it's really cheesy." Alvi said with a laugh, having let everyone else meander about the conversation to her amusement.
"What else are you going to call a space ship without tripping on someone's sensibilities? Calling it the League like I wanted at first would probably seem a bit like gloating to the ex-Dominion nations wouldn't it?" Ivan said, Alvi tapping the end of her stylus to her lips before shrugging and sighing in defeat.
"...Fair point." She said with an exhale.
Excerpt from the Blog "History's Mysteries". Circa 2200 A.D
As the human race prepares to make its first journey into the stars with the Stellaris system, we must first ask how we got here. How have we come to stand at this point in history, with world wars and crusades now behind us and the infinite expanse of space in front of us? Fortunately, describing the journey we have taken is the purpose of this blog post. Some would start our journey all the way back at the dawn of recorded history at Sumer, or even before when we lived in caves and hunted wild mammoths for sustenance. I however will start with the beginning of what many would call the "middle ages" that existed between antiquity and modernity.
I am Alfhildr Larrsen, a historian from the Nordarikki from the city of Agnafit, and I've started this blog to show you all the journey that we've taken from 769 to now. A journey full of great glories and inspiration and of tremendous sorrows and tragedies. Of the formation of kingdoms and empires and the blood and slaughter of world wars and genocide. Of discovery and of atrocity. Of the rise and fall of great powers and the path that faith has taken in the course of centuries. While I'm not fond of the pornography of delving into atrocity, I will try not to shy away from the ugly parts of history, just as I will not shy away from its triumphs and oddities. And so, we shall start at the year 769 by the Christian count, or the year zero by the count of the Forn Sidir; when Sigurd Ring of the Af Munsos had his famous vision, or dream if you're not of the faith from Odin.
The world from central asia westwards until the western edge of Iberia and Africa was a fractured mass of dynasties, tribes, faiths, clans and petty states that have arisen to prominence following the demise of the Roman Empire in the west and the crushing of the power of Byzantium and the Arabic conquest of the Iranian Empire. In India, the Gupta Empire which once ruled a large portion of the subcontinent was now long passed from any living memory, and even the far smaller Harsha Empire was now a thing of the past. At the time, the greatest power in the world was the Abbassid Arabic Caliphate; which stretched from Baluchistan all the way to Egypt, a mighty empire with no equals; but one who stood on a foundation of sand. In Christian Europe we saw the rise of Karl der Grobs as the Frankish King sought to claim all of what was once Gaul and Germania, even if it meant a reckoning with his brother, while a tiny band of Christians desperately hung onto the Iberian Peninsula.
At this stage of history, we shall primarily focus on the unification of Scandinavia and the expansion of the Forn Sidir faith once it was formed out of the traditions of the Norsefolk, with attention also being put on the resurgence of Iranian Zoroastrianism in their war to liberate their homeland from Arabic occupation, and the rise of the Ghanan Empire and the birth of the Akani faith as well as the affairs of western Europe. This isn't saying we will be ignoring other happenings in the world by any means, but we can hardly cover everything at once; so we will need to select our focuses and go from there. From time to time, I will bring up updates regarding other sections of the world, particularly if I get enough requests to do so.
I will be combining primary sources, historical texts, documentaries, classroom material, popular media, and more to provide both the facts and our modern perspective of the past in this exciting time before we set to the stars with the looming launch of the first faster than light ships. This should hopefully give my readers the benefit of every possible perspective as we peruse through more than twelve hundred years of history.
We start our account with Sigurd "Ring", a Petty King of Svitjod. married to his teenaged bride Alfildr and with the heir apparent of the young Ragnarr, Sigurd would go to sleep on the last day of the year 768 only to be plagued by what he would call "visions." As the Sögur would attest to he was whisked away to Valhalla itself to speak before Odin in a dream, now the following is all just me paraphrasing from my holy book so it's probably going to lose out on a lot of the poetry, but the Sögur attests to the following happening.
"The King, Queen, and the young princeling found themselves unable to pass into restful sleep as at once, all were taken into dreams took them hence to Asaheim in the halls of Odin. Brought before the great lord of Asaheim and the All-Father Odin and Queen Frigga, they stood there at the feet of the gods themselves to hear the words of the lords of the nine realms.
At first, Sirgurdr and Alfhildr stood proud, refusing to bow before the city of splendour. "I am the king of my realm, and I need to bow before no man." Sigurd said, daring to look upon those who sat and yet dwarfed them all the same.
"Have you forgotten your piety before the High King whom even you are sworn to?" Odin asked, and at once Sigurd and Alfhildr quailed, but it was their son who bent his knee before the all father knowing his place before the one eyed god was not to argue with his summons.
"What fool are you to not see what your child can not?" Frigga asked, and a great shame filled the hearts of the King and Queen, and both lay themselves upon their knees, weeping for forgiveness.
The All Father smiled upon Sigurd, and bid him to rise as the eyes of the great gods were upon him. "You are not here to weep oh king, you are here because you have a purpose."
"Why do you call upon me oh Father? I who rule the lands of Svitjod." Spoke the King, rising before Odin consulted with his ravens and then spoke in return.
"The tricks of the Jotun are many and wicked, and they have come to test the true and the strong. The lands of the Germans shall soon fall to the lies of the three headed giant, they will seek to take you away from the pure and true faith as they ever do, coming with crosses on shields and death in hand."
"You will unite the lands you call home, and from there a mighty empire can grow; an empire that will call your dynasty Fylkir. I know you will do this, and I know you will make me glad for the children of your line shall spread our word far across midgard, far beyond the lands you call home."
This caused a profound change in Sigurd, who immediately began to consort with his Godis as he dived deep into the matters of faith to see what would need to be done to keep the northlands pure from the encroaching faith of Christianity and to ensure dominance in the baltic. To be taken seriously he would need to prove that he truly was favoured by the gods by bringing all the tribes of the north together, bringing the priests under one banner, bringing the holy places under his protection, and by defeating those of lesser conviction in battle. He would need to take his scattered tribes and make a great kingdom out of them, and if he could not achieve this; his children would do so in his stead.
Now whether or not Sigurd ever actually had those visions is a matter to be discussed in a theology blog; not here. If you wish for a more wholly secular explanation, it is likely that Sigurd did suffer from some dreams, and due to the suggestibility of the human mind immediately after waking up and our own poor memory of the worlds we create while asleep; it's probable that Alfhildr and Ragnar simply accepted what he said as true. Some would point to the prophetic nature of the dreams, that Sigurd was able to know that Saxony was about to fall; as proof of this. However the definitive edition of the Sögur was not completed until the Norse had established a kingdom that would have entertained a Saxon envoy. So make of this what you will.
Though powerful by the standards of the Northlands, Sigurd would need to be the master of far more if he was to live up to the message of his visions. He was a mighty warrior to be sure, and he was noted for having a powerful way with words. His skill with managing coin or intrigue however; were sorely lacking. And though he could speak of some learning, he was far from the most knowledgeable man in the land. This meant that it was crucial for him to make the right allies, those who could help him manage the busywork of money and subterfuge or could cover that which he lacked in terms of a deeper education.
Should he sound the call for war, he could potentially expect two thousand men at arms to join his call; twice as much as his next closest contender; the petty king of Austergautland. But if he were to engage in rapid, uncontrolled conquest it was virtually certain that some would stand against him as a common foe, and as his dominion grew it would be virtually certain that those beneath him would make his rule difficult.
The other two focuses of this introduction are two others who claimed to have been commanded by heaven itself to protect their faith from the encroachment of outsiders.
Seydou, ruler of the large and powerful land of Ghana; is reported to have spoken with a powerful priest who held dominion over the sacred land of Silla who prophecized that a Ruler of Ghana would bring the world within the sight of Nyame. Now what this actually meant is quite infamously ambiguous. What counts as "bringing the world within sight of Nyame?" Does it mean to conquer the world as some have tried? Or does it mean making the Akan faith respected by the world? Does it simply mean keeping it alive in the face of Islamic encroachment?
Nevertheless, this incident was recorded in what would later be the Holy Text of the Akan faith and would inspire the Farbas of Ghana to seek to create a mighty Kingdom that would stretch across western africa. Songhai and a series of small tribal realms stood in the way of this conquest, and any expansion would have to face a reckoning with the Muslim powers to the North. Though the Arabic chronicler who recorded Seydou's life was rather unimpressed by any of Seydou's qualities, the conquest of western Africa would be a work associated with him for the rest of history.
After spending years amassing funds to prepare for his conquests; Seydou decided that he had enough money to enlist the services of some three thousand mercenaries. This army would prove to be of great use in conquering Songhay when combined with his own tribal levies, as the much smaller Kingdom could not hope to resist the onslaught of the Ghanan army and its grossly superior numbers.
The legends speak that Seydou had six soldiers for every one commanded by Songhay with most of these being his freshly hired mercenaries. This meant that the outcome of the war was essentially never in any real doubt. And Seydou, convinced of the righteousness of his conquest, would settle for nothing less than the total subsumption of Songhay into his realm. We will get to the war shortly, but a note on western Africa. If at any time it seems odd that the north African powers don't ever simply just invade to crush the rising West African peoples, it's worth noting that the Sahara desert isone of the most impassible barriers for an army.
The Roman Empire in all of its days never sought to penetrate particularly deeply into the desert, nor did Carthage or Persia. And so, despite the fantastic wealth of the region, it was deemed to be virtually impossible for a sultan or an emir in northern Africa to try and conquer a region of the world that was separated from the world's centers of wealth and power by a vast stretch of utterly unforgiving desert.
Now we come to Shekih Anushirvan of Iran. Anushirvan was stargazing one day, and found a comet passing overhead, the brilliant object streaking across the stars with a brilliance that set the astronomical community of the time aflame. But Anushirvan, a Mazdakist who believed strongly in Ohrmazd's message of charity, took it to mean something else. That he was destined to free Iran from the Arab yoke. And to do this, he planned on bringing the whole structure of the Abbasid empire crashing down around the Arabs by cutting off the head of the serpent. At once, Anushirvan's character began to change as he threw off his traditional shackles of laziness and delved into his tireless scheme with which he would cast down the Arabs and fulfill what he believed to be his destiny.
By all accounts a wise man, Anushirvan was notably pious and committed to the teachings of Zarathurstra and Mazdak and came to write of what he saw as the oppression of his homeland and the arduous test of the Zoroastrian faith imposed by the Arabs. If he could send the empire into collapse, he could have a chance to declare independence. And so he gathered all the most accomplished figures in the ways of murder and sought out all those who had something to gain from Al-Mansur's death, regardless of whether or not they were Zoroastrian. Any help in freeing the faithful of Ohrmazd from the minions of Ahriman would be appreciated; so that those who would seek to impose the will of Allah would be forever cast from the lands where Ohrmazd revealed himself.
By coincidence, the Roman Emperor Konstantinios the fifth had the same idea as did Khagan Bhagatur of Khazaria, King Oda Gosh of Abyssania and Sultan Umar of Africa, and also began to plot the death of Al-Mansur. He would not be long for the world, as the later Iranian chronicler Cyrus attested to. "Soon all the land would be plotting against the Caliph. Whether they saw him as a tyrant oppressing their faith or if they saw him as simply an obstacle to their own gain; they made plans in secret to unravel the empire of the Arabs. Ohrmazd smiled not on the Arabs as all sought their downfall, and even the fellows of their faith looked upon the Caliph's station greedily with the hopes of one day sitting upon his throne."
This rather obviously meant that the Caliph would quite soon be a dead man. To this date, to compare something to Mansur in Iran generally means to evoke the image of a vast number of people plotting against something. This can be seen in a famous political cartoon where Grand Vizier Nahid is looked at hungrily by the Iranian parliament, with the decrepit shadow of Mansur behind her as she prepared to give her speech as her faction in government was starting to fall out of favour with the general Iranian body politic. This was even used the seminal absurdist comedy film series "The Six Thousand Year Joke", a beloved classic of Iranian cinema with twelve entries and stellar production values whose first entry was released in the Zoroastrian year 2373.
In the scene, a Zoroastrian, a Byzantine, a rival claimant for the throne from within the Abbasid empire, a Khazarian, an African, and an Abyssinian assassin all bump into one another as they each hope to kill Mansur through almost impossibly elaborate schemes. Each of whom is arguing over who gets to kill the doomed Caliph before a disgruntled courtier simply slips something into the Caliph's water and kills him. This is met with the vocal disappointment of the other involved parties who dejectedly walk home as the entire palace erupts into a brawl for the throne of the Caliphate when they hear the news that the heir apparent of the Caliphate had been mauled to death by a Hippopotamus while out hunting in Egypt.
But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves. At the moment, the Byzantine Empire declared war on Emir Hasan to strip him of his possessions in Coloneia as part of the Basileus' plans to reverse the severe territorial decline that the heirs of Rome had suffered and the Abbasid Empire was busily engaged in a war of conquest against the tiny realm of Kalat to expand its domains a little further. For the time being, Anushirvan would have to play it safe and keep his head down.
Excerpt from "Parallel Worlds" thread "How important were the visions?"; Circa 2011
Terminal Delusions said:
volvasSong said:
Terminal Delusions said:
Falcon of Flame said:
Perplexephant said:
dragonRider said:
Perplexephant said:
volvasSong said:
dragonRider said:
Falcon of Flame said:
Author's notes
This is my first non-alien space bats timeline but I will say straight off the bat that this is definitely a teleological timeline to a rather significant degree. That being said I'm still going to try and present an air of versimilitude as much as I can.
The general conceits of this timeline are basically: a reborn Zoroastrian Persia, and reformed paganism dominating in West Africa and in Northern/Eastern Europe. I suppose you could call it something of an Abrahamic faith screw? I wouldn't call it that but I can't exactly control you now can i? I suppose you could also accuse me of bias because I am myself a Neo-Pagan but going by this rationale would prevent pretty much every alternate timeline ever from being written for fear of ideological and religious biases showing.
Also if you subscribe to the school of thought that the triumph of Christianity and Islam or Monotheism in general was inevitable then you can avoid a long fruitless debate that will change nobody's opinions by clicking out of the thread and reading something else.
I'm probably not going to go all the way to 2200 A.D. But I am going to be covering a lot of time. I will bounce up and down the timeline as I feel is needed to flesh out things I may have only mentioned in passing before or to give some sneak peeks of what's to come ahead.
I'll be combining bullet point timelines, in universe narratives, in universe documents, out of universe overviews, in universe media and more to provide the most diverse possible set of framings for the timeline.
As to how I can possibly maintain this and my ASB timelines at the same time? It's because I'm a loser with too much time on his hands to spend on writing mediocre fanfiction. As to why I'm starting yet another writing project? This one more or less absolutely refused to leave my head and I've often tried to make something similar in many an attempted paradox interactive megacampaign. I already have a rough outline of events up until 1500 or so planned.
Lovers of Britain will probably cry and Byzantophiles will probably have quite the roller coaster ride of emotions. And because you all expect it from me; don't worry, you will all get your horrifyingly large body counts and ample provisions of human suffering and woe.
This is a project open to reader contributions, if I like something you write for this timeline enough I'll threadmark it. You're also welcome to PM or email me to collaborate if you want.
As I am not Tolkien, I'm not going to be constructing languages. Just assume translation convention is in effect for anything presented from an in universe perspective.
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