Prologue: Movements of the World
Personal System Calendar: Year 0009, Day 1, Month I-IV: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6854, 1st day of the 1st Month
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Maya Village: The Morning After
The new year arrived quietly in Maya Village, the settlement still wrapped in the peaceful exhaustion that followed the previous night's celebration. For the first time in months, August Finn allowed himself to break his rigorous routine. He slept well into the morning, his body finally acknowledging the accumulated fatigue of leading a community through crisis after crisis.
The Finn household remained unusually quiet, its twenty-two residents recovering from the festivities in their own ways. Some nursed headaches from the village's home-brewed wines and ales, while others simply savored the rare luxury of sleeping late without urgent responsibilities demanding their immediate attention.
Outside, the snow that had blanketed the Great Forest for months was beginning its slow retreat. The temperature had risen just enough for the first signs of thaw to appear dripping icicles, patches of exposed ground where the sun hit most directly, the subtle shift in the forest's soundscape as water began to flow again beneath the ice.
Winter's grip was loosening, but it had not yet released its hold entirely.
Across the village, similar scenes played out in every household. The beast folk of the Kotoko Clan remained in their temporary shelters, warm and safe but contemplating the decisions that would come with spring's full arrival. The human refugees who had found sanctuary here months ago were settling into what was beginning to feel like permanent residence. The established village families were already planning spring planting, construction projects, and the hundred other tasks that would define the coming year.
Maya Village had survived another winter. More than surviving it had grown, integrated, and strengthened despite challenges that would have broken lesser communities.
But while the village rested in well-earned peace, forces beyond its knowledge and control were already moving against it.
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The Shadow Hunters: Imperial Intelligence Mobilizes
Far beyond the boundaries of the Great Forests, in cities and towns that some of Maya's residents had never seen and could barely imagine, Imperial agents were already on the move.
Imperial Field Agent Cassius Marlowe had departed the Imperial Capital of Aetheguard three days after receiving his orders from Director Valerian Thrace. He traveled by conventional means, commercial coach, merchant caravan, and public transportation deliberately avoiding anything that might draw attention to his movements. He was officially a merchant's assistant seeking new suppliers for a trading company based in the capital, a cover identity so mundane and common that it rendered him effectively invisible.
His destination was the city of Gremory, where Baron Kirka's trading operations had first drawn Imperial attention. The Baron's merchant network dealt in dozens of commodities from hundreds of suppliers, creating a labyrinthine commercial empire that would take weeks to properly investigate. But Marlowe was patient and methodical. He would begin with the unusual purchases: the rare medicinal herbs, the high-quality leathers, the specialty goods that suggested an organized production source rather than individual hunters or gatherers.
Somewhere in that commercial network was a thread that would lead back to the source. And Marlowe would find it.
He was not alone in his mission, though he would never meet his fellow operatives. Director Thrace had dispatched three additional agents on parallel tracks, each investigating different aspects of the supply chain. One would focus on Baron Kirka's operation directly. Another would infiltrate the pharmaceutical company that had received the massive herb shipment. The third would investigate the Fernando household, whose unusual discretion about their suppliers had raised suspicions.
Four agents, four approaches, all working toward the same goal: locate the unauthorized settlement in the Lonelywoods Great Forest.
The agents asked questions carefully, never pushing too hard, never revealing their true interest. They spoke with merchants and dock workers, with caravan guards and warehouse managers, with anyone who might have handled goods coming from the mysterious forest suppliers.
Most people knew nothing. The supply chain was deliberately opaque, information compartmentalized to protect the source. Those who did know something: the warehouse workers who had seen shipments arrive, merchants (Baron Kirka's own men) who had negotiated prices, guards who had escorted caravans to pickup points were surprisingly tight-lipped when questioned.
"Don't know, don't care," was a common response. "The goods are quality, the prices are fair, and I don't ask questions that aren't my business."
There was loyalty there, or at least a professional discretion that would take time and effort to overcome. These weren't people who would casually betray their business partners, even to official-looking investigators with impressive credentials.
Marlowe recognized this pattern. It told him several important things: the source had established long-term relationships with its trading partners, suggesting stability and reliability. The trading partners were satisfied enough with the arrangement that they actively protected it. And most tellingly, there was an understanding explicit or implicit that revealing the source's location would be a betrayal to the trust given to them even if they do know, which they didn't, well none of them do. And for those who did like the few in the Fernando Household, they had already sworn through a magical oath that they would die if they so blabber on its general location.
The only clue that the agents have was that it was not a desperate refugee settlement struggling to survive. This was an organized community conducting sophisticated trade operations while maintaining operational security that would impress military intelligence officers. And they only realized that the products were from the great forests. Because the empire has dealt with so many items in its millennia of existence. That it already has such a wide catalogue of items in their Imperial archives, that they could roughly trace it back to its origin.
Marlowe's preliminary report to Director Thrace reflected these observations: "The settlement exists and has been operating for years, possibly decades. They maintain excellent operational security. Local trading partners are loyal or at least professionally discreet. Infiltration of the supply chain will require time and careful approach. Recommend extended operation timeline."
Director Thrace approved the extension. Whatever this settlement was, it was worth investigating properly.
The shadow hunters were patient. They would find Maya Village eventually.
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The Dying Isle: Zahran Ishmar Noor's Hollow Victory
On an isolated island so remote that it appeared only on a few maps and was visited by no ships, Zahran Ishmar Noor stood amid the fruits of his labors and felt nothing but crushing despair.
The cave system where he had spent years in near-total isolation had been transformed into something miraculous. Although his original goal had been the barren wasteland desert above, where he had already made some progress with his half-moon crop circles. He had thought of the cave with its hidden life far beyond the surface's destruction and had also planted the seeds his parents had left for him. What had once been a dark, lifeless stone chambers now hosted a thriving underground forest. Massive trees grew toward engineered light shafts, their canopies spreading to create a multilayered ecosystem. Streams of purified water flowed through carefully carved channels, feeding the vegetation and creating small pools that teemed with aquatic life. Bioluminescent fungi provided ambient lighting throughout the caverns, casting everything in an ethereal blue-green glow.
The air was cool and clean, the temperature regulated by the forest's natural processes. Birds now had also begun to nest in the underground trees. Small mammals scurried through the underbrush. Insects pollinated the flowering plants that had somehow found purchase in this subterranean paradise.
And it was spreading.
The massive underground forest's influence had broken through to the surface, making his previous efforts above seem minuscule. Trees now grew outside the cave entrance, their roots splitting the barren rock to reach the enriched soil below. Vegetation was creeping across the island's surface, reclaiming landscapes that had been lifeless desert for generations. Springs were appearing where none had existed in living memory. The island's microclimate was changing, becoming more humid, more temperate, more capable of supporting life.
Ishmar, no longer the frightened child who had fled into these caves years ago, was now a young man aged beyond his years, by the brutal work of environmental restoration, who had achieved the impossible.
He had brought an ecosystem back from the brink of total collapse. He had reversed desertification (10% greenery) through nothing but determination even without magical talent and only years of backbreaking labor. He had created something that would have taken nature centuries to accomplish on its own.
And there was no one to see it. No one was there to celebrate it with him. No one to share in the triumph.
The village that had raised him, that had turned against him when starvation drove them to madness, that had hunted him with the intention of killing and eating him, that village was gone.
When Ishmar finally emerged from his self-imposed isolation and made his way to the settlement where he had spent his childhood, he found only death. Human bones littered the streets and filled the houses. Some skeletons still clutched primitive weapons or cooking utensils. The signs were unmistakable to anyone with eyes to see: they had turned on each other in their final days, driven to cannibalism by hunger so extreme it destroyed their humanity and their sanity.
They had consumed each other, one by one, until none remained.
Ishmar spent days searching the nearby settlements of the island, at least those he knew existed desperately hoping to find survivors. The island was huge, almost a continent by itself, large enough to have once carried the lives of millions of people and supported sophisticated civilizations in the past. Surely some had fled before the final collapse. Surely some had found alternative food sources, other ways to endure until his work could save them.
But the island was vast, and his search was going to take some years. The green wall he had built had not spread too far, not yet at least, it still wasn't enough. And he found no one. The village had been the last remaining settlement, and now it was nothing but a graveyard. He also went around the ancient city that still stood proud, checking everywhere for survivors. He went to the grand library he once frequented to acquire the knowledge that enabled him to achieve what he had achieved now: texts and knowledge left behind by the past.
Now he was alone, standing in the center of the village square, surrounded by the bones of people he had once known, children he had played with, adults who had taught him their skills, elders who had told him stories of their great past. Ishmar felt something break inside him.
He had saved the island. But he had failed to save its people.
The bitterness he had felt toward them when they hunted him had long since faded. Yes, they had tried to kill him. Yes, they had been driven by primal hunger to see him as meat rather than as a person. But he understood, in a way only someone who had truly known starvation could understand, what desperation could drive people to do.
He didn't hate them. He had never truly hated them, even when running for his life through the desert. He had only wanted them to survive long enough to see what he was building for them, that what he said wasn't nonsense, that it could be done and that he could have proved them wrong. But he felt the guilt. He knew he must have also instinctively driven them away with the bitter hatred he felt during the first few years. He knew it within him maybe if he had slowly continued to reach out and had saved a few, or convinced a few of the younger folks, not the old people who only saw the bitterness of their past, of how they had failed to do what he had done.
But they hadn't survived. And now his achievement felt hollow.
What was the point of saving a world if there was no one left to inhabit it?
At nineteen years old his body prematurely aged by trying to learn magic, the massive magical expenditure of a novice whose body didn't know how to fully utilize it with no one to teach him but himself, required for his environmental work his hair already showing streaks of premature gray, his hands marked with calluses and scars from years of labor, Zahran Ishmar Noor made a decision.
The island was recovering. The ecological systems he had established were self-sustaining now. The forest would continue spreading without his constant attention. Animals would continue returning to an island that could finally support them. Given another decade or two, this place might become a genuine paradise, a green jewel in the middle of a vast ocean.
But it would be a paradise with no people. A garden with no one to tend it, appreciate it, or benefit from it.
Ishmar had dedicated years of his young bitter life to this project. He had sacrificed his childhood, his health, his connections to other human beings. He had paid the price demanded by his ambition, a paradise of green.
And now it was time to move on.
He would leave the island. Find a ship somehow, or build one if necessary. Return to the wider world from which this island was so isolated. Find other people, other communities, other places where his abilities might actually make a difference to living populations rather than serving as a monument to the dead.
He had brought life back to a dying island. Perhaps he could do it elsewhere, somewhere where people would be alive to appreciate it.
As Year 6854 began, Ishmar began preparing for departure. He had no idea where he would go or what he would find. But anywhere had to be better than remaining alone in a paradise built for ghosts.
It was now time to leave the island. He already had a vague sense of direction toward a continent that was far bigger and wider than his current world. Maybe there he would find people and a trace of that guardian beast who fought for their island and left after it had achieved victory, a promise to the Ancient King of their ancient civilization. But it was also the victory that had destroyed their island.
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The Eastern Sub-Continent: The Helmas Project
Millions of kilometers across the two great rivers that ran through the central-west and central-east of the western, central, and eastern sub-continents, east of the Imperial Capital, on the farthest side of the Central and Eastern Sub-Continent, the most ambitious reconstruction project in modern history was beginning to take shape.
The Eastern Sub-Continent had been a war zone for the past several years, with the conflict only ending last year. The indigenous Eastern Arkanians, a proud people with their own languages, cultures, and long history of independence, had fought a brutal conflict against both internal and external invaders. Internal, because it was half of their own continent that had been infected and turned against them by the Great Evil and its Dark Forces, who sought to conquer and exploit their lands. The war had dragged on for a good part of the last four to five years, devastating cities, destroying agricultural regions, cultures, and civilizations, and killing millions.
The Elms-Arkanus Empire, observing the conflict from across the great rivers, had initially maintained neutrality. But as the situation deteriorated and it became clear that the Eastern Arkanians faced potential extinction, Emperor Janus Cornwall made a calculated decision to intervene. This came after a plea was made by one eastern household kingdom that he greatly favored. One that valued its people more than their own house. That king, Rupert Greyhaven III, prioritized the welfare of the people over his own house and even sent his most trusted retinue, Earl Serverus Freek. Through that plea, the Emperor made his decision after the failed Great Assembly of the Eastern lords and ladies had disappointed him, choosing instead to heed the call for help from their allies in the east.
The Imperial military force that arrived on the Eastern Sub-Continent in Year 6849 was overwhelming. Millions of their Imperial forces both Royal and Regular Army, Navy and Marines including their Pillars of the Empire, the 20 Great Ducal Houses and their professional soldiers backed by war mages, siege engines, and naval support, swept through the plagued half of the continent, all 35 million square kilometers of it with brutal efficiency. The invaders and turned Eastern Arkanians, who had been grinding down the remaining half of Eastern Arkanian resistance through attrition and terror, suddenly found themselves facing an opponent they could not match. The conquest, recapturing, or cleansing however you viewed it lasted from the year 6849 to 6853.
Within those years, the invaders were driven out or utterly destroyed from the Arkanus Continent, driven back to whence they came. The Eastern Arkanians, who had been on the verge of continental defeat, suddenly found themselves victorious though their lands lay in ruins, their population was decimated, and their military was in shambles. But the great victory was all but worth it.
The Empire then made its offer: partition the Eastern Sub-Continent. Return 17.5 million square kilometers (one-fourth of the total land area) to the Eastern Arkanian control of the 35 million square kilometers they still held, making it 52.5 million square kilometers total to be divided among their surviving kingdoms and noble houses as they saw fit. The remaining 17.5 million square kilometers (one-quarter) would be administered as Imperial territory for the next century, during which time the Empire would provide military protection, economic support, and reconstruction expertise to both portions of the sub-continent.
The Eastern Arkanians, pragmatic if nothing else, accepted. They were in no position to refuse, and the terms were far more generous than anything they had expected. They would regain control of the vast majority of their ancestral lands, receive military protection against any future invasions, and benefit from Imperial reconstruction investments even in the territories they controlled.
The 17.5 million square kilometers under Imperial administration had been designated the Helmas Special Administrative Zones and divided into eight regions:
Helmas Region 1 (Northern Coastal Zone) - 2.2 million km²
- Governor: Royal Imperial Navy Admiral, Marcus Stormwind
- Focus: Maritime trade, port reconstruction, naval infrastructure, fishing industry
- Population: Approximately 200,000 survivors (estimated 29 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Rebuilding port cities that had been systematically destroyed
Helmas Region 2 (Highland Plateau Zone) - 2.1 million km²
- Governor: Lord Hadrian Forge
- Focus: Mining operations, mineral extraction, metallurgical industry
- Population: Approximately 150,000 survivors (estimated 13 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Restoring mining operations while improving worker safety
Helmas Region 3 (Central Agricultural Zone) - 2.3 million km²
- Steward: Lady Elara Greenthorn
- Focus: Large-scale agriculture, grain production, food security for entire sub-continent
- Population: Approximately 400,000 survivors (estimated 45 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Soil restoration after years of contamination from war magic and neglect
Helmas Region 4 (Eastern Forest Zone) - 2.2 million km²
- Governor: Baron Eldrix Zick
- Focus: Sustainable forestry, timber production, wildlife management
- Population: Approximately 100,000 survivors (estimated 18 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Balancing resource extraction with environmental preservation
Helmas Region 5 (Southern Industrial Zone) - 2.1 million km²
- Governor: Countess Helena Markova
- Focus: Manufacturing, urban development, industrial production
- Population: Approximately 500,000 survivors (estimated 50 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Rebuilding destroyed factory complexes and urban infrastructure
Helmas Region 6 (Western Trade Corridor Zone) - 2.2 million km²
- Steward: Count Ali Ababa
- Focus: Overland trade routes, commercial development, merchant networks
- Population: Approximately 300,000 survivors (estimated 25 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Establishing security along trade routes through still-dangerous territories
Helmas Region 7 (Cultural Heritage Zone) - 2.1 million km²
- Governor: Scholar-Lord Tomas Preservation
- Focus: Cultural preservation, education, historical site restoration
- Population: Approximately 250,000 survivors (estimated 20 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Rebuilding educational and cultural institutions while respecting local traditions
Helmas Region 8 (Military Frontier Zone) - 2.3 million km²
- Governor: General of the Imperial Army, Viktor Ironshield
- Focus: Border defense, military training facilities, fortification construction
- Population: Approximately 100,000 survivors plus 100,000 Imperial Troops rotating military personnel (estimated 15 million before the wars)
- Key Challenge: Defending vulnerable borders while building permanent defensive infrastructure
The total surviving population across all eight regions was estimated at approximately 2 million people, down from an estimated pre-war population of 215 million. The demographic catastrophe was staggering, but it also meant that land was abundant relative to population. Settlers willing to relocate to the Helmas Zones would find opportunities that simply didn't exist in the more crowded regions of the Empire.
The economic framework established for the Helmas Project was unprecedented in Imperial history:
Years 1-10: Zero taxation on all economic activity. Complete Imperial financial support for reconstruction, infrastructure, defense, and administration.
Years 11-20: 1% taxation rate as regional economies develop initial self-sufficiency. Continued but gradually reducing Imperial financial support.
Years 21-30: 2% taxation rate. Imperial support focused on specific development projects rather than general budget support.
Years 31-40: 3% taxation rate. Regions expected to be largely self-sufficient with Imperial support limited to major infrastructure projects.
Continuing the pattern, taxation would increase by 1% every decade until reaching the standard Imperial rate of 15% for regions outside direct imperial control, (vassals, special administrative zones, etc.,) in Year 6954, a full century after the project's initiation. At that point, the Helmas Zones would be granted full administrative autonomy while remaining within the Empire's economic and defensive sphere of influence.
The Helmas Project required massive Imperial investment tens of millions of Imperial Orichalcum Coins annually, thousands of administrators and skilled workers, and entire legions committed to long-term garrison duty. Critics in the Imperial Senate argued it was financially unsustainable, that the Empire was overextending itself for territories that might take generations to become profitable.
Supporters, led by Emperor Janus Cornwall himself and the Duke Households, the Pillars of the Empire, countered that the long-term strategic value was incalculable. Control of the Eastern Sub-Continent's resources, its minerals, its forests, its potential agricultural output, and its strategic position for maritime trade would more than repay the investment over time. And beyond mere economics, the project demonstrated that the Empire was not simply a military power but a force for reconstruction and development.
"We do not merely conquer," the Emperor had proclaimed during the Senate debate that authorized the project. "We build. We restore. We create prosperity where there was only devastation. This is what separates an empire from tyranny."
As Year 6854 began, thousands of Imperial citizens were making their way to the Helmas Zones administrators to staff the newly established governments, soldiers to provide security, engineers to design infrastructure, farmers to work the abandoned lands, merchants to establish trade networks, craftsmen to rebuild destroyed cities.
It was, by any measure, the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the Elms-Arkanus Empire. Its success or failure would redefine Emperor Janus Cornwall's continued legacy from his millennia of lifespan and potentially reshape the balance of power across the entire world.
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Converging Threads
As spring slowly advanced and Year 0009/6854 unfolded, three separate narratives were developing across the world of Centuury:
In Maya Village, a community of 883 souls (and growing) was navigating the challenges of integration, expansion, and survival in the heart of the Great Forest, blissfully unaware that Imperial intelligence was closing in on their secret.
On a remote dying island, a young man who had accomplished the impossible was preparing to leave his hollow triumph behind and venture into a world he barely knew, carrying abilities that could reshape environments on a massive scale.
In the Eastern Sub-Continent, the most ambitious reconstruction project in modern history was beginning its century-long journey, creating opportunities and challenges that would ripple across the world.
Three threads, seemingly unconnected, each moving toward uncertain futures.
But the world was smaller than it appeared, and fate had a way of drawing together people and events that seemed to have nothing in common.
The movements of the world, like the movements of individual lives, followed patterns that could only be seen in retrospect. Whether it was by design or simply its predetermined natural course.
And in Year 0009/6854, those patterns were beginning to form.