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At some point in the early twentieth century, an asteroid slammed into the earth following a big ass solar flare this does something, anthros are now a thing civilization is gone for a bit.

(note make map 12/25/19)

(nah fuck that 4/9/20)

History.

After and during the Ruin the Germanic peoples returned to the old ways of raiding and general barbarism in order to survive the famines, and to store food for the bitter post impact winters, the Norse peoples were some of the first people to reinvent European civilization while memories of frozen corpses after battles fought in blizzards in the Northern reaches of Sweden and Norway, where Danish armies waged barbaric warfare over the Christianization of another single tribe on Zealand, a tribe that would become an absolutely oppressive force in Europe as the Nordic Empire. However the Nordic Empire's rise and opposition produced millions of refugees who fled to the mainland of Europe, there they would found the Polish State, a fascist state based of the Reich from the 1930's, while the concept of an undesirable was non-existent within the nation as they only knew of the Russian Steppe peoples who looked like them, the German barbarians who were perceived as their less civilized ancestors, and the Norse of which they were part of, bar the few remaining ethnic Polish who scraped by near the ruins of Warsaw in central Poland, while the Norse Poles were concentrated on the coast before the Black-Baltic road was founded after the Greko-Germanic peoples in Macedon reformed the Byzantine Empire under the name of Constantios after their king at the time, Consta the Great. The Norse Poles and the Norse had a strained relationship at the time of the founding of Constantios, but as trade from the Black Sea became increasingly valuable the relationship became fonder between the three powers as weapons, metals, coal, and new technologies from the Norse Empire funneled through the Polish State where timber, fish, and literature and printed goods, the Constantines traded oil, gold, silver, olives, and clothing, the three nations had Europe's first intertwined economies, quickly along the road and sea routes from Copenhagen to Konigsberg to Constantinople three new civilizations popped up, the Magyars in Hungary who were often hired as caravan guards by wealthy traders thanks to their skill on horseback, settled down and traded horses as well as clothing and goods from along the Danube River, on the coast of the Black Sea another group popped up, the Latin family speaking Romanians of old had changed their language through the years of interaction with the Norse and the Constantines, now speaking from a Latin base the words of business were predominantly Greek while items and warfare were often Norse, the Romanians referred to themselves and as EstRomanium, or East Romans. The Magyars and Estromanium eventually become developed enough to have their intertwined economies play vital roles in the Black-Baltic trade routes. The last of the Civilizations to appear along the Black-Baltic Trade Route was the German City-States, while not on the direct path to the Baltic it was a highly profitable market, where most of the steel in Mittleuropa was produced in Bavarian Steel Mills, and the other cities in the Alps produced old technology like the Norse as well as Holy Texts from Wien or Vienna.

Excerpt from the Austrian Sagas; "Lord Martin's army marched from the holy city of Wien to where his foes on the Adriatic, the Slovenic Kingdom of Maribor, had yet to hear the praises of the Lord and his Sohn, Jesus Christus. The as Lord Martin approached the ruins surrounding the Berg, the Slovenic Germans did not fight the Christian Army of Lord Martin, with the hammer of Wodin that adorned the castle having been torn down by the people, being risen before my eyes was a silver cross, being heaved by the King of Maribor, King Franc, behind him was a good two hundred men all heaving on heavy ropes to raise the cross to the peak of the castle. From the south though a new foe emerged, announcing its arrival with a rain of arrows that briefly blacked out the sky, fortunately for Lord Martin his men were still mainly in the forest, the branches and trees above him shouldering the brunt of the blow as if acknowledging the Holy mission of Lord Martin, his men, armed with crossbow and longbow returned an equally brutal volley of arrows, the screams of pain from the edge of the opposite edge of the ancient wood preached a victorious shot" - Chronicled by Borthoix of Prague, fought in early summer 294 Post Ruin

However, Western Europe was kept isolated from the thriving Eastern-Central European trade routes that allowed rapid and unprecedented development and growth, with the reemergence of civilization occurred at about the same time in three nations at once, the Italians resettled Rome, while the French resettled Caen, and the Spanish resettled Cordoba, however the West was not going to be founded in the immense and multi-century war of the Norse to found their nations, or a tremendous rebellion like the Poles, or Alexander like conquests of the Greeks, rather they would start as a single city and grow from ruin to ruin, the only nation that faced issue with combat was the Italians with a succession crisis divided the lands south of Rome to those north of it, eventually the Southern Roman dynasty was deposed and a venetian style merchant republic was founded, the new nation would send ships all over the Mediterranean to find peoples to trade with, where they would eventually meet the Egyptians, Libyans, and Greeks, the Southern Italians would have a small hand in the Black-Baltic trade route, but the Republic was more interested in mapping out these nations in order to sell maps to the world, a feat that would cost 3 ship crews their lives at the hands of Berber pirates and another in a shipwreck near Gibraltar. As the Franks crawled from ruin to ruin they would eventually bump into the Britons, a group of Celts in Northwestern France, and rather than fight the Franks the Britons offered their lands in exchange they would get to live here unharmed and treated like any other Frank, an offer the Franks were more than willing to accept. The Spanish got the short end to the stick in terms of ease of rise, as soon as the Spaniards resettled Barcelona the land was taken by the Franks in a brief war, and after reaching Madrid, the Berbers began invading the Iberian Peninsula leading to several brutal yet quick wars as the Spaniards were the first of the Latin peoples to reinvent gunpowder. The unification of Iberia after the resettlement of Lisbon was brief as those who living in Portugal began to speak Portuguese and eventually successfully rebelled against the Spanish Crown. This slow rise to nationhood was crucial to the way the Latins viewed the world, bar the Northern Italians who proclaimed themselves the heirs to the ancient Roman Empire, while the Franks desired nothing more than to unite all Latin speaking peoples, the Spanish wanted revenge on the Islamic North African tribes for their warring in Iberia, the Southern Italians became increasingly enveloped in the Eastern Trade with Northern Europe.

At the year 450 for the Norse, an initiative under Jarl Felix II was to retake Jutland from Germanic Barbarians, the Poles launched a campaign into Pomerania, a semi-successful one at that, at this point the Norse had an issue in Norway, as they had been sailing off to avoid service in the Barbic Wars, however, a royal charter fleet found the islands the Norwegians were fleeing to, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The hiding holes were added to the Norse Empire with impeccable haste as to use the islands as port provinces to explore and conquer the Northern World. The Barbic Wars ended in year 463, thirteen years after they began in Jutland, the reclamation of Kiel ended the campaign, while Poland managed to reclaim the whole of Eastern Pomerania. Between the two and a half centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence, the Norse Empire and Poland, declared an alliance between each other, and invited Estromanium, Magyar, and Constantios, into their new alliance, saying that they could form an alliance and protect both their collective economies and their sovereignty as nations. Naturally, the nations in which the invitation was extended to accepted the offer since the estromanium was threatened by the Steppe Horde, the Magyars by the Germanic Barbarians and Northern Romans, the Constantines were threatened by the Grand Uuvala Calif and mountain peoples, while the Norse and Poles faced the Steppe Peoples, Germans, and occasional raids from the Dutch and English.

The Western Europeans, the Franks, Spaniards, Ports, Romans/North Italians, Sicilians, and Irish Celts, initially had their differences, after the Roman Civil War from 412-425PR(Post Ruin), the Latin peoples and the Celts saw what horrors lie in the new gunpowder laden world, and with it began pursuing peaceful means to an end rather than the likes of killing one another over it like in the early days of their respective nations where crossbows and spear dominated the battlefield into the start of the 400's as the Constantine Greeks had given the Sicilians the technology of Norse muskets in exchange for the islands of Crete and Rhodes. The Roman Civil War will be explained in greater depth later, as will the Norse Founding and Rise, both Norse Civil Wars, the rise of the Constantine Greeks, Founding of Poland, the reintroduction of Gunpowder into Europe from the Norse, the British Wars, the Frankish-Spanish Wars, the Roman-Frankish Wars, as well as the Founding of the Kingdom of Lorraine, the Lorrainian Revolution, and the 2nd Industrial Revolution beginning in Greece, the 2nd Renaissance beginning in the Germanic Kingdoms, the Wien-Vienna divide and subsequent wars, the Great Blizzard Wars, The Dutch Wars, The German Founding(Early 600's), The Persian-Indians Wars as well as Middle-Far Eastern history and culture, The Islamic Collapse, The Reformations, The stand at the Volga River, The Rise of the Texian Kingdom (in the Americas) The Akan trading cities as well as their destruction and genocide by the Berbers and Nigerian Tribes. The Anthrax Event and colonization of Africa by the New World (Mainly Argen, Texas, Paulo, and Maine. The Wars of Pacific Domination between the Kinese, Japanese, Californians, Australians, the East Asian Islamic Collapse and Extermination, the Sikh Rising in Northern India, the Sino-Indian Wars of the 400's, the spreading of Christianity to Japan via California. The American Unification and the Great Wars of the Americans.

The Roman Civil War

The Italian Kingdom had quickly risen to power in a period of about fifty years, its population had been able to reach about three million, two million of which lived in North Italy, the last million lived in Southern Italy, about 50,000 Italian Subjects lived on the islands of Crete and Rhodes, while those peoples either spoke Turkish or Old Greek. The lead up to the Civil War in Italy began in 411 when King Felidae died without naming one of his twin sons as the next ruler of the Italian Kingdom, one son, Octavian, was much more aggressive and militarily minded, however the other, Cambrius, was calmer and more focused on diplomacy and trade. As the two rose to power at the same time in late 411 immediately the divide between the two became apparent between the Kings with zealots and partisans pledging their allegiance to one of the kings. The kings themselves were rather confused on why people were only choosing one of them as they attempted a dual monarchy. However, on April 23rd 412, a group supporting Octavian stormed the palace, and tried to kill Cambrius, thinking Cambrius dead, Octavian proclaimed himself emperor of the Italians and promised to avenge his brother, while Cambrius, who had fled the palace with a group of his supporters, thought Octavian was taking ultimate power. Late in the night on the 27th of April 412, Cambrius and his saviors arrived in Sicily, there he amassed an army of merchants and common folk, by July 412, he was able to convince the Southern Italian Provinces of his cause, this raised enough intrigue from the Constantine Greeks that they would propose the war winning deal to the Southern Italians, or the Cambrians, the Islands of Crete and Rhodes, in exchange for the Norse gunpowder recipe, 100,000 outdated muskets, 100 cannons, and a volunteer force of 2,000 men for the remainder of the civil war. The Cambrians accepted the offer as the rumors of a 150,000-man strong army of Roman Italians (The North) were being marched from Genoa to Naples. The Cambrians, adorned a green uniform with yellow markings numbered 65,000 men for the first battle of the Italian Civil War, while the Romans used a red uniform with yellow markings numbered around 95,000 men. The two armies met each other on an Olive Farm about forty miles from Naples, the metal armored Romans formed a series of phalanxes in their center, with supporting legionaries and light cavalry on the flanks, behind the main line, on a hill were some crossbowmen and ballistae, the Romans held the highest ground but the Cambrians held an adjacent hill not much lower than the Roman hill, where they had massed 55 Cannons and 40,000 men, however in the surrounding groves lay a 10,000 man trench with wooden spikes as a cavalry trap, the remaining 5,000 men were attempting to get behind the Roman line to meet up with an army of Cambrian Supporters that, if successful, would bolster the Cambrian Ranks by 15,000 men. The two armies would stay encamped for three days, which gave the Cambrian detachment of 5,000 to now become a force of 20,000 men behind the Roman line, and an unknown force, this rear force was comprised of the original 5,000 Musketeers, 7.5 thousand Italian pikemen from Venice, 2.5 thousand Archers, and 5,000 light cavalry, their commander, Francis Valinia, was rather inventive guy, rather than use is cavalry as line breaking shock unit, he opted to use the horses best in the prelude to the battle, using them to scout where the Roman supply lines were, and then using his combine pikes, and muskets, would capture or kill the caravan leaders, and loot their stuff. When the battle began on the 28th of June, the undersupplied Romans used their ballistae to fire at the lower lines of the Cambrian infantry, to little effect due to the digging of trenches, the Cambrians retuned with a volley of cannon fire, all but 4 shots missing and plowing into the main line or olive trees, but mostly hitting nothing and causing confusion in the Roman ranks as rather than men being splashed with boiling oil or fragmenting rocks, but having lines cut out of their ranks was a completely new terror to them. Soon the forward lines advanced towards the Cambrian Hill, the reserve of 10,000 Romans were still camped out on the hill with the 15,000 archers and ballistae crew, the advancing force of 65,000 men faced constant harassment from the Cambrian Archers on the Olive Farm and the 5,000 musketeers who were moving about the valley between the two hills on standard patrol. By the time the first Roman soldiers reached the bottom of the valley their numbers had fallen to 62,000, and then the army was caught in the firing line of the 10,000 men in the bottom of the valley, as the Roman Infantry became more and more distraught fighting up the hill, as where musketeers with bayonets were a hard enough battle for the Romans, the fact that entire phalanxes broke to cannons now firing grape shot down unto them, caused more fear and confusion along the Roman line, so General Scivii Sorvoria decided to use his reserve of 10,000 men to reassert control in the fight to the cannons at the top of the hill. However, Commander Valinia of the Cambrians saw this troop movement from his forested encampment and amassed his cavalry and pikemen, and as soon as the Roman reserve was in the valley, his cavalry would charge up the Roman hill to their camp and engage the Roman Crossbowmen long enough for the pikemen to make it to the battle, while Valinia's musketeers skirmishes the Roman reserve along their march. General Sovoria was able to force a retreat amongst the Cambrian musketeers by using men with javelins along with standard kit (Chainmail shirt, greaves, gloves, legionnaire helm, short spear or longsword, large oval shield or tower shield), and was able to spot the Cambrian trench before walking strain into the trap, dispatching 4,000 of his men around the trench, and as soon as they heard the first shot fired, would rush into the trenches and engage the Cambrians in melee combat, where the Roman infantry would have an edge. General Sovoria's plan worked perfectly, and butchered about 7,000 of the 10,000 men, he ordered one unit of cavalry, numbering 100 to take each a musket and bag of powder in order to recreate the products for the Roman Italian Army or RIA from now on, while the Cambrian Merchant Army will be CMA from now on, the 100 horsemen managed to not only escape the battle unscathed but managed to reach Rome the next day where the University of St. John at Rome would examine and hopefully reproduce the results of the Cambrian weapons. Meanwhile during the battle General Sovoria, upon witnessing his entire center of phalanxes finally succumb to grapeshot, rushed out horsemen to the battle line and ordered a retreat with his remaining 52,000 men, and ordered to retreat to Rome, however the men on the hill never received such orders, as the horseman who was told to go to the hill was shot on his horse by one of the remaining 7,000 Venetian Archer in the olive trees, and thus the 5,000 men on the top were slaughtered without mercy by the Cambrian Cavalry, and the eventual pikemen.

And thus, after killing 43,000 Romans, and losing 18,000 Cambrians, the Battle of Naples was over, and it was a crushing defeat for the Romans, the defeat broke the main Roman army, but General Sovoria made the defeat less bitter with the return of 7,000 muskets and a powder recipe, so the next battle would not be a massacre but a true battle. The Roman Army would sit back for the next two years and suppress rebellion within the northern provinces. Sadly, for the Romans, Venice was preparing to rebel as soon as the Cambrians launched their offensive, the Romans this time would be ready for the Cambrians with a firearm equipped army. After a year of skirmishes between the two nations the next major battle began, a Cambrian Army of 50,000 marched towards Umbria from Naples, the Romans, sent 60,000 men to hopefully intercept the Army before they could dig in, or worse capture Perugia and claim the province, however the main Cambrian Army of 70,000 was sailing to Genoa to capture the Northwestern Provinces of Italy, and an Army of 60,000 Romans were fighting back the Venetian Revolt, the Venetian army of 50,000 had ignited the Northeast of Italy into fighting so fierce that the Germno-Illyrian tribes that lived in Slavia were too afraid to risk raiding border towns. The Venetians reason for revolt was Independence from Italy, having installed a Republic and raised armies to fight off the Roman Italians, who simply went by Romans, and called their nation The Roman Empire, the Cambrians called themselves the Kingdom of Sicily, and Venetians were the Republic of Venice. This Three-way Civil War/Revolution was getting out of hand on an International standpoint, the Norse Empire and the Frankish Empire were beginning to use the Italian Civil War as a proxy war in their power struggle, the North African Nation of Tunis who had recently converted to Christianity from Islam joined offed to join the Cambrian's Kingdom of Sicily, an offer they accepted, the Tunisian Fleet of a hundred light ships and ten thousand horsemen were the backbone of the Genoa offensive as well as 60,000 Musketeers and Cannoneers, as well as a detachment of a few dozen Norse Skirmishers sent as volunteers, they are going to arrive on the shores of Liguria in mid-August while the Venetian Free Army mounted an increasingly intense and brutal offensive towards the Adige river. The first battle of 413 was fought in Umbria as a diversionary battle with a strong payoff, the 50,000 men consisted of 40,000 Line Infantry, 2,000 Skirmishers, 3,000 Chasseurs (Like horse archers but with carbines rather than a bow) and 5,000 artillery men, and thanks to the Norse Intervention possessed early cardtriges and more advanced cannons. The Roman army possessed 40,000 Firearm equipped soldiers, 10,000 Heavy Legionnaire Cavalry, 5,000 artillery men, and 5,000 Frankish Volunteers equipped with lightweight yet powerful carbines, designed for what the French think their inevitable war with the Norse and their allies will require for victory. The battle in Umbria was in the city of Norcia, where the Cambrians had stationed themselves within the city itself, the Romans decided to attack Cambrians inside the city, think that their greater numbers would work best in the city, or lest General Joviia thought that, inside the city, the Cambrians took to the inside of buildings, to roofs, and made fortified roadblocks all along the city, forcing the Romans long a labyrinth of gunfire or forcing them to split up into smaller units and be subjected to constant fire, this did not happen neither option that is. After two days of brutal door-to-door fighting by the Romans from the North headed South, gave up of preserving the city and where resistance was heavy, the Romans would start controlled fires to trap the Cambrian soldiers inside or bombard the city block with over a hundred guns positioned on a nearby hill, it only took the Cambrians a day to develop countermeasures and anti-urban fighting methods. As a week passed and the fighting in the city had left about 1 in 10 building burnt out or generally destroyed by fighting and another 2 in 10 damaged, the death toll of the battle began to include massive numbers of non-combatants simply caught in the crossfire or next door to a Cambrian held home, the death toll of week one of the longest battle of the whole war was low, only 3,000 dead Romans, and 2,600 Cambrians, however thousands more held minor injuries that still made fighting difficult. The second week brought an increase in Roman raids on Cambrian held positions, killing a stunning 4,600, the Cambrians. Not to be outdone used the Chasseurs to launch night raids on the Roman camp and artillery positions, while only killing 4,300 that week, they did disable or destroy almost half the Roman cannons, giving the Cambrians a massive leg up when or if the Romans launched larger offensives. The Romans began focusing their attacks on the West side of the city, managing to break through a major roadblock with some field made grenades, which allowed the Roman infantry who still had an old sword, a found axe, or even a hammer to storm into houses and butcher an untrained Cambrian soldier who didn't have their bayonet affixed but by the same token, if the melee armed Roman house raider bumped into a skilled group of Cambrian soldier, their survival chances hovered just above zero, the first month of fighting had depleted 10,000 of the 60,000 Roman soldiers and about 9,000 out of 50,000 Cambrians, the next few months of fighting in the now mostly ruined city of Norcia brought massive changes to their respective armies, the Romans developed a field hospital system and drafted local doctors, of fighting age that is, into the army as the first Field Medics of the Roman Army. By contrast the Cambrians developed a system of wagons that would appear right after fighting ended and scoop up the wounded, often there were four wagons, one for gunshot wounds and bullet extraction, one for large cuts and burns, one for broken limbs and one for the dead and too far gone, where they would try their best to fix the dying man's wounds but promised nothing, those who did, were often scarred horribly, or an amputee, as for the blinded, often times they would be asked if they wanted to live, and given the answer they provided. The Romans had field doctors and surgeons directly in the army, where upon one being wounded, they would (if safe) retrieve or get to the person and provide immediate help, the most common field surgery was to have the soldier drink half of a liquor ration, then pour the rest over the wound, put a cloth or towel in the patient's mouth and proceed to (if possible) remove the bullet, and stitch up the wound. Later the soldier would be taken back to the camp for further medical treatment including an extra 5 Italian Marks (equivalent to about 80 USD) to their daily salary if they kept fighting on for the Roman Army. The armies fighting in the streets of Norcia would begin to start fashioning crude helmets out of buckets, hammered platter, and armor out of pieces of sheet metal or wear a thin wood piece over their chest to give themselves an edge in a melee and protect their bodies from the various exploding and fragmenting things around them. The battle was reaching deeper and deeper into the city, the Roman numbers were finally beginning to pay off as they could afford more losses than the Cambrian forces. After four months of fighting the armies finally wore themselves to half strength, at this point the Cambrian army had landed in Genoa, and captured the region, and the Venetians were still pushing towards the Adige River. The Roman army refused to surrender Norcia to the Cambrians, and after 5 months of fighting, the city was cleared of Cambrian soldiers, however guerilla fighters and the Norse skirmishers continued to harass the Romans in the surrounding country and forests. The battle cost the Romans 31,000 men, and cost the Cambrians 42,000 Men, and while a bitter victory, the Roman army came out of it stronger, now equipping its soldiers with helmets and bayoneted carbines rather than hats and standard rifles, and the Roman Army changed its uniform from the red and yellow of traditional Roman uniform to a khaki and black uniform and a lighter version of the traditional Roman helmet without the red mane on the top of the helmet and dulled to a dark grey as to not give away the position of the soldier. As for how the Romans and the Cambrians were able to pay to mass such large armies, they were able to trade as far East as India and China thanks to Russian steppe traders and the secure passage into Europe given to them by the vigilance and strategic placement of the Constantine Greeks, not to mention the massive funds given to them by the two alliances backing each faction of the war and the lend leases given to them by the factions backing them, while the Black-Baltic Accord possessed greater technology and tactical prowess the Latins simply had more men to throw at an enemy, to the tune of a whole 20 million difference in population. The Latins fueled the Roman army, and soon the Francian-Spanish-Roman army numbering 70,000 began to march towards Genoa where the 80,000 strong Cambrian main army was campaigning, in Mid-November the mainly foreign army thought it wise to attack the fortified and wintering Cambrians, where Cambrius's chosen general, General Quintius Savoius, had fortified the city of Genoa and had a nasty surprise waiting just off shore for anyone dumb enough to assault a fortified position in the winter. The Romans decided against attacking the Cambrians in their fortress city, the Franks and Spanish though simply requested more men from their homelands to bolster their ranks, soon where 30,000 Roman Regulars once stood in the line 40,000 Spaniards and 20,000 Franks took their place, the 40,000 Spanish in the army outside Genoa were equipped with outdated muskets and lacked the proper information to launch an attack on the city, the Franks who decided to deploy half their troops strait from their ships to the battlefield to hopefully shock the Cambrians. So when the attack came in late November, the Cambrians unveiled their new and homemade weapons, as the Franco-Spanish army began the battle with a volley of cannon fire, and charging their cavalry through the blasted through city wall, this was met with a field of caltrops and hidden spike pits in the brush surrounding the city, this intelligent adaptive defensive measures crippled the cavalry charge, leaving only half of the horsemen still mounted and about 75% of the now dismounted horsemen were left dead in the fields of ferns and bushes, the following infantry were greeted with a loud whistling sound accompanied by a roar of a dragon, then as the first scared soldier looked up to see the rising cloud of over a hundred massive unguided rockets, then a few seconds later the rockets crashed into the field, and the metal shells ripped off the rocket warheads and flew across the now flaming field like shredded scythes of the reaper himself ripping all that stood in their path into one or more pieces, then came the counterattack, as a new wave of rockets flew towards the main artillery positions, the reserve of 20,000 Franco-Spanish soldiers were quickly bolstered to 30,000 as panicked men regained the composure upon seeing their allies standing tall, but the 40,000 Cambrians stormed out of the city, in outdated kit yes, but coupled with their rocket artillery and winter gear gave them more than enough of an edge to beat the remaining 30,000 Franco-Spanish men. The 20,000 Frankish Soldiers at sea were about to face the naval innovations of the Cambrians, the Tunisian ships that had landed the Cambrian army had now been outfitted with 10 cannons on each side of the ship and a 4 gun battery mounted on a rotation turret, with 100 of these ships they were easily able to not only catch the Frankish army but get them pinned against coastal guns and the Cambrian fleet and soon the entire force was sunk and the few hundred survivors were sent back to Francia, the rest who weren't saved in time drowned in the cold waters of the Mediterranean winter. The remaining Franco-Spanish soldiers were routed or lay dead on the battlefield and the Cambrians only lost about 2,000 men in the battle crushing the Franco-Spanish army. The Roman soldiers who wisely did not fight in the suicidal battle of Genoa were reassigned to the Venetian front to alleviate the pressure on the front, there they would manage to hold the Venetian rebels at the Adige river.

After another 5 years of skirmishes and minor battles the Romans realizing they've been beat in terms of they can no longer press offensives, allowed the Venetians to have their nation with their currently held lands, but the Cambrians were a different story, with an army of 100,000 they marched towards Genoa, the remaining 78,000 Cambrians were now well equipped yet undermanned to fight the fully modernized Roman army, General Sorovia of the Romans was smarter than the first time he fought the Cambrians, he kept units of Chasseurs, Skirmishers, all ranges of cannons (light/horse cannons, medium/foot cannons, heavy stationary cannons, powerful howitzers, and lastly 32 heavy siege mortars) and a new unit of his own design, he called them Legio socialii, a group of elite infantry designed for infiltration and mapping, while General Quintius Savoius had done his fair share of troop development, he had changed the uniform of his men to a dull grey with light brown and switched from hat to a helmet like the Romans, but of a different kind, you see the Cambrians had discovered a large weapons cache from the Second World War filled with weapons, helmets, uniforms, and tactics, as well as artillery shells and rockets. The Cambrians had their 78,000 regulars, including about 10,000 chasseurs and 7,000 skirmishers/rangers, 12,000 local conscripts, and 10,000 foreign volunteers 3,000 Norse, 3,000 Constantine Greeks, 1,000 Magyars, 1,000 Estromanii, and 2,000 Poles. The volunteers possessed breech loading carbines, and all of them were mounted infantry, the uniforms of the respective nations were stone grey with yellow trim, greenish-brown with purple accents, brown with grey specks with white accents, moss green with yellow trim, and green with brown splotches with orange accents. The Second Battle of Genoa was the largest battle of the war, and the turning point for the Romans, if they could win this battle they could press for peace and hold. The Cambrians who had been wintering in Genoa marched towards Milan, the temporary capital of the Romans as Rome was deemed too risky, and for the same reason Naples the largest city in the Cambrian held territory was not the capital at the time, but Palermo in Sicily. The Romans had positioned themselves across a river near Milan and had dug an extensive series of trenches and made wooden bunkers for their artillery as well as some spiked wooden barriers to funnel their opponent into designated kill zones. The strategy was new to the world of warfare, the Cambrians with their army arrived at night a day ahead of schedule and dug their own trench on their side of the river, and when the sun rose that morning the Romans found themselves staring at an entrenched Cambrian force, General Sorovia began the second longest battle of the war with an order to his heavy artillery to fire upon the most forward trench, and with a thunderous boom the enormous mortars fired 32, 500 pound cannonballs loaded with explosives that would detonated on impact, the sound of the guns alerted Quintius Savoius to the beginning of the battle, who responded before the cannonballs could even hit the ground to fire the rocket artillery. As the 32 cannonballs plummeted to the earth, only 4 hit their intended target dealing massive damage over a hundred Cambrians had died in the salvo and the trench had been badly damaged around the blast. The rockets missed their intended targets but hit an unknowingly more valuable target, the main barracks in the surrounding woods had been hit with the new type of rocket, ones designed to start and spread fires, and soon their barracks, and with them about half of the Roman Skirmishers, went up in violent flames. At about midday that day, a lone crack broke the peace once again, a Cambrian soldier in the trench had fired at the dull glow of a Roman helmet, and much to both armies surprise, had killed the intended target, painting the riverbank behind him with brains and blood, in response the forward trench of the Romans loaded a shot and sprung up and unloaded a volley into the Cambrian forward line, killing several dozen men, and the wildfire spreading through the nearby wilderness, the trenches lit up, and until sunset the soldiers would fire, crouch behind their trench walls, reload and fire again, by the end of the first week, two thousand Cambrians lay dead in their trench and a further three thousand had been thrown into the Po river, about six thousand Romans had died almost all of which were taken away from the trenches and burnt out barracks, and buried in a new graveyard near Milan over the next week, as with the recovered Cambrian corpses, they were sent in empty supply wagons back to Genoa to be buried. The next week the Cambrian army's engineers had begun logging the local forest, and the Roman army had begun digging tunnels between trench lines to secure safer movement of troops between said lines, between the daily artillery bombardments and the nature of the cross-river trench warfare, casualties were low by the standards set at Norcia, Olive Farm, and Genoa, only a few hundred a day at most. After about two months of this lower scale fighting, the Cambrians finished constructing a wooden dam, and rather than alter the flow of the river to around the battlefield to allow for charges and more control over the battlefield. This did not happen in the slightest though, instead it simply turned the surrounding land into a floodplain, most of which was Cambrian trenches, and soon after a massive storm came through, adding an extra layer of backfire, soon the two armies were flooded out, but the Romans, with their lighter kit, were able to fight in the madness, and soon, after a single Roman soldier shouted a war cry and charged through the riverbed's muck, the rest of the Roman army followed with the same breakneck pace. The flooded Cambrian soldiers put up a good fight, fighting as hard as men knee-deep in mud can fight. The ones near the top of the riverbank fled the battlefield on the orders of General Quintius Savoius, soon though he was found dead in his tent, shot by either the Legio Socialii or his own angry men. The battle did not cripple the Cambrians though, they lost 64,000 men and managed to save all their artillery pieces. The Romans pulled through the battle with only 40,000 losses and half of their artillery pieces lost.

After a few more years of minor skirmishes along the unofficial front lines with smaller armies, the growing efficacy of the Roman army, forced the Cambrians to request peace, all they asked was to remain independent of Rome and keep their land in the south of Italy and ceded Genoa to the Romans. By the end of the Italian Civil War, the Italian population had reached 5.5 million thanks to the discoveries and newly (re)invented technologies, and the death toll of each faction was high, but bearable in the long run. The Romans lost a total of 174,700 Men, the Franco-Spanish Volunteers lost 80,000 men, the Cambrians lost 189,200 Men, this is for the main war though, the Venetian Revolt killed 57,000 Romans and about 46,000 Venetians. A map of The Former Kingdom of Italy looks like this (note More lands were claimed during the war such as Corsica, Tunisia, the Croatian Coast)

The Cambrians Depicted in Yellow possess all lands South of Rome (as well as Corsica and Tunisia), and Half of Umbria, The Venetians hold all Northeastern Italian lands, and The Romans Hold the Rest of Italy (and the Croatian Coast)

The Norse Founding - Early 200's

Much of the Founding of the Norse Empire is shrouded in Legend, the legend goes as follows

"An Angel of the Lord came down to Zealand to see the people who survived the Ruin, two hundred winters later, the Angel chose a man to preach the word of the Lord to the pagans in Zealand. Come the summer of the year he had his whole clan preaching the gospel or had them gutted, gored, and put in the gallows. The Angel, while disgusted with the Chieftain's methods, admired how quickly he converted his tribe to the degree of total belief they held in the Christian Truths. On the Summer Solstice, Saint John's Day, at the ruins of Roskilde, in the massive cathedral-esc church at the top of the town he made his castle, the Church-Castle of the Norse, where God was king and Man was Duke to the Lord. The other tribes of Zealand fearful of the Christians belief in a single God attacked the Church-Castle of the Norse and of the five tribes that attacked the Church, each day a thousand men would fall, and each night a thousand men would join the ranks of the Christian King, at the end of the third night of the battle in the Church-Castle, the Christians of Roskilde, prevailed and forced the other tribes to convert and join the new Kingdom of Zealand. From there the rest is history that you live."

Shortly after the founding the Kingdom of Zealand, the King began to unite the Home Island of Denmark under his crown, these wars were brief and relatively painless to both parties involved as the losses were low and as they all spoke Danish already, there was no issues other than the religion matter, the Danes on the Home Islands were more than willing to accept the Christian Faith. However, this was not the case in the matters of the island of Gotland, or the province of Scania in southern Sweden, the battles over these lands were brutal, the Royal Danish Army (RDA) suffered massive losses during the battles, as did the Swedish Pagans. Soon after the founding king died, and his son King Thor rose to the throne, and his decree that began the Blizzard Wars would shape the Empire, while its founding is overshadowed by the events in the 300's

The Blizzard Wars

The Founding of the Norse Empire as we know it, truly came into itself during the Blizzard Wars, the two-century long war against the Norse, Sami, Baltic, and even some Russian tribes, starting with King Thor after an exploration vessel was attacked by Swedish Pagans, the crew was sacrificed to Odin. King Thor, named after the Pagan God, kept his title, and mobilized the Danish Army, loading them onto a hundred longboats each with 200 men, the twenty thousand men arrived in a mere two days to where the vessel had been attacked and brought ashore. On the beach, an army of 30,000 pagans stood, mostly unarmored yelling curses and drinking large quantities of cheaply made beer and mead. The Danes not stupid enough to attack them head on unleashed volleys of arrows from both bow and crossbow, unto the massed soldiers, the initial volleys shredded the lines of the pagans, then the return fire arrived, flaming arrows from the surrounding the woods. Forcing the Danes to land played into the pagan's hands ironically, though this is where the Danes would prevail, legion after legion of chainmail armored Danes, armed with hand axes, long spears, and most critically, war hammers that doubled as war picks. The larger force of pagans was shocked and scared of the masked Danish soldiers on their shore, where only some had the larger two-handed weapons, mainly greatswords or battle axes. The Danish soldiers were professional and well disciplined, and their archers, doubled as light infantry on the field, equipped with sword and shield, and the one thousand cavalry that had been brought with the Danes rushed to the woods to hunt the archers leaving the pagans without support. King Thor himself fought in the battle, standing like a giant amongst the pagans and Christian forces, they say he wielded a battle axe in one hand and used a cart bed as a shield, and with single strikes either cut swaths of men down or cut them down vertically. No matter how physically strong King Thor was, his presence made his soldiers fight twice as hard and absolutely terrified the fearful pagans. Within the hour the battle had been won, on the shore lay 15,000 corpses, about 14,500 of which were pagan the other 500 were obviously Danish. The Danes made camp on the beach that night and buried their dead just beyond the sand barrier, and threw the pagan corpses into the sea after burning them in massive pits. During the night, a raid of 2000 pagans attempted to storm the Danish Camp, this prospect was shut down with a trap and subsequent slaughter of pagans. The sole survivor of the pagan raid ran for the nearest village, and allegedly started the legend of King Thor, the Bloody Angel, the man who marched an army of black armored knights of who's face you could not see. After the night had ended, King Thor marched his men deep into the Swedish Homeland, there he fought battle after battle, increasingly brutal, battles beyond brutal, beyond the scale that could be fathomed in the west, armies fighting until no man could stand any longer, armies of pagans who scarred runes into their backs facing the Bloody Angel, and his legions of masked soldiers coated in scars and burns from five years of fighting, now finally at half strength would fight their final battle of the Thorian Period of the Blizzard Wars, the snow that the armies would fighting was already laden with corpses from the first battle King Thor had fought with the Anebiean Tribes, King Thor now 32, stared into the face of King Aqualori, and as the snow picked up the two armies charged each other, and instantly after the two armies clashed blood was shed and freezing onto the snow-laden valley 15,000 Veteran Danish men clad in armor clashed 20,000 angry and also well armored Swedish Pagans, while King Thor had warred and purged paganism from most of central Sweden, King Aqualori and the Anebian Empire as well as the Trodthieliam Kingdom in Norway would provide the strongest resistance to the growing Danish/Norse Empire during the first century of the Blizzard Wars, and in the second century, the Norse Rebels (according to the Norse that is) in modern Poland, and the Baltic Tribes along the southeastern coast of the Baltic. As the battle between the two factions dragged through the snowy winter day, the Anebians suffered more and more from the icy chill of the January winds as they could not stuff their leather coats with wool or furs, the Danes, behind their metal masks were, yes cold, but less cold than the Anenbians as their chainmail shirts and thick baggy pants were able to hold much more warm material than the Anebians, and at the cost of mobility, the padding absorbed a lot of energy from the strikes received from the Anebian soldiers, while a single cleave of an axe, or stab with a spear was enough to end a frozen and leather armored Anebian soldier, a team effort of Anebians or Danes was required to take down a heavily armored Dane or Anebian soldier. As the night rolled around, the sun had never shone upon the battlefield, where the few remaining Anebians fled on the orders of an injured Aqualori, the battle left King Thor with only 5,000 men, or a quarter of his original force. Finally, after five years of campaigning in Sweden, King Thor of Denmark, at long last lay down his axe, and sailed home, back to Roskilde, to the Church-Castle of the Danes, to his home.

Upon returning to Denmark, his men would leave the Danish Army and form a Holy Army, named The Brotherhood of Swords, and their ranks would swell to insurmountable numbers in the coming years, as they themselves would fight pagans in Sweden and claim lands for the Kingdom of Denmark and even fighting alongside the main Danish Army in several battles in the later stages of the war and long after the Blizzard Wars ended as pioneering infantry who would fight across the Russian Steppe well into the late 900's and were the last Danish Unit to pledge themselves to the service of the Founder's Empire, Sentilios, upon its return in the 9th Century pr.

The next campaign launched by the Danes, was launched by the Brothers of the Sword against a pagan tribe known as the Oslians who had been raiding the Danish Coast for a short while. King Thor was away for the time, preparing to marry a woman he had fallen in love with, a former pagan, Aqualori's Sister to be exact. The Sword Brothers sailed towards Norway as fast as the winds could take them in the Scandinavian Spring. The Osliains had heard the rumor of the Bloody Angel's battle at the Valley of Anebia, and that only 5000 men survived. The Sword Brothers, numbered 20,000, of which 5,000 were from the Thorian Campaign, 10,000 more were fanatic peasants looking for a better life, armed by the Sword Brothers with a simple chainmail shirt and coif, and a shield and long spear or hand axe, the last final 5,000 were soldiers sponsored by Danish merchant guilds or nobles, armed with partial plate armor, and equipped with the finest weapons available, armed with all manner of weapons the most popular of which were great swords, one handed longswords, Danish Warhammers/War Picks, and a new weapon, the halberd, one part axe, one part hook, and one part spear. The army arrived on the shore of Norway within the week of departure, the unprepared Oslians had been camping in the woods, the Oslians numbered nearly 40,000, but the Sword Brothers had armor, and the element of surprise. On that night, the Sword Brothers surrounded the Oslian Camp, and as the moon rose above the camp, they struck light demons crawling from hell, outnumbered 2 to 1 the Danish Crusaders poured in the camp lighting tent after tent on fire butchering all that opposed them.

An hour of slaughter later, the entire Oslian army was slaughtered, and their villages were taken one by one, and those who wouldn't convert would be killed on the spot after a myriad of other punishments, in the case of infants and small children, they would be taken by the Sword Brothers to be raised to be the next generation of Christian warriors, youthful maidens, regardless of faith were taken as wives to the Danish Crusaders. A single battle ended the emerging Oslian Kingdom, their capital built in the ruins of Oslo, Norway was sacked, and then renamed to Christiania. King Thor, impressed at the three-year-long campaign by the Brotherhood of Swords, granted Christiania to the Sword Brothers as a base of operations, effectively giving them a city to run and govern as they see fit, so long as they abided by Denmark's laws.

Various Campaigns launched by both the Danish Crown and the Sword Brothers tore across Sweden and Norway to little effect to the two rising Scandinavian powers, the Trodthieliam kingdom and the Anebian Empire. The Anebians held a great respect for King Thor, and his line as they saw them as the only nation able to beat them, the Danes respected the Anebian Swedes seeing them as valiant warriors, pagans worthy of fair treatment and not the slaughter of their citizens, in return the Anebian Swedes tolerated Christianity within their nation, eventually this would lead to the (relatively) peaceful end to the Blizzard Wars in Scandinavia proper. It would take another century for the Blizzard Wars to end all together, as Finland, Kola, The Baltic States, and the never-ending wars with Poland (Polskmark) would take another century.

The rise of Anebia, during the last half century of Anebia's existence, saw both massive military and economic success, its wars with Denmark forced rapid and massive changes to both society and the military, The Danes, who were strong and brutal hand to hand fighters, slowly began to incorporate more and more ranged units into their armies, from skirmishers with javelins and throwing axes, to powerful crossbowmen capable of ripping through the finest armor available at the time. The Anebians had access to larger horses, and thus could field powerful heavy Cavalry, capable of tearing swathes out of the Danish lines before falling to the armored Danish Spearmen. The first seventy-five years were dominated by the bloodshed at point of spear, arrow, and sword, lest for the Anebian-Danish period of the wars.

The Sword Brothers in Christiania had raised a different sort of tactic, using Swedish horses, and their own light crossbows, had managed to make an incredibly mobile army, speeding smaller forces of a few hundred to raid villages, and had ox pulled wagons for primary force movement supported by the new Jager cavalry, mounted crossbowmen that doubles as light cavalry, the Trodthieliams adapted a hardcore defensive strategy, every man was equipped with both bow or sling and hand weapon. Battles between the two powers brutalized both factions involved, in stark contrast to the good treatment the Anebians gave the Danes, and vice versa, the winners of each battle slaughtered the wounded who lay on the battlefield, no prisoners were taken. Bodies of the fallen were left to rot in the valleys they died in, an honorable funeral in both the Danish Church, and the Vallahallian Texts, where the soul moves on, the body becomes just a shell in which it once inhabited. The Sword Brothers conscripted every man of every class at age 16, and would have them serve in the armed forces of the Sword Brothers for four years, at age 20, the Sword Brothers would be marched in identical masked uniforms with a piece of parchment indicating deeds of valor and skill in combat, before them would be the girls the left behind, now adults, and the higher class women would be allowed to choose their husbands to be first, they would never be allowed to talk to their man of intrigue directly but would be required to ask their comrades about their personality and more private actions. Due to the massive loss of young men to the immense scale of the Sword, Brotherhood-Trodthieliam Wars the men would also take a "formerly" pagan bride and a woman from the Sword-Brotherhoods rule. The Vallahallians would not force marriage ever though and love meant to be uncontained within their borders, where anyone and everyone could love and breed with whom they saw fit. A stark contrast between the two powers, however they were terrifyingly similar where it counted, the value of technology and its research and (re)discovery, and during the winter and fall the two nations poured every remaining krone into the development of new weapons, and thus the great arms race began, they both discovered gunpowder at the same time, their application of the new weapon was drastically different, the Sword Brothers made grenades and began trying to develop cannons from ancient Danish Texts about the Thirty Years War in the barbarian lands Germany, when it was thriving and civilized. It was then thought that the Thirty Years War was the cause of the Ruin until later discoveries the next year proved otherwise. The Trodthieliam Norwegians created rockets, and used rocket powered arrows, ballistae, and fire throwers.

The Battle of Solhus Valley was the first gunpowder equipped battle since the Ruin some quarter millennia in the past. The Battle went as well as a valley battle could be, but the Blizzard Wars are more about the cultural-social impact than the thousands of individual battles that made up the first century. The end of the First Century was marked by the mass deployment of the musket into the Danish and Sword Brotherhood Army, the embracing of Christianity in Sweden and royal marriage marking the end of fighting in Sweden, as well as the storming of Trondheim and fall of Norway at the hands of the Sword Brothers.

The Second Century of the Blizzard Wars began when King Johan died, his twin sons each born from the Anebian-born queen. The two sons had been alienated from one another due to fierce sibling rivalry and the fact that they had been raised in different circumstances, the twins were named Felix and Carolus, Felix had been raised in Zealand by General Ulf. General Ulf was the son of a wealthy merchant who was slain during the final days of the Anebian period, and thus raised Prince Felix with religion as a forefront in his life and taught him about trade and military strategies, the bond between Prince Felix and his adoptive father was so strong that when his real father died, King Johan, he was cited saying that "my father is dead, yes, but I lost no family today", he would take General Ulf's daughter, Maja, as his wife, the two would remain incredibly close during the Scandinavian Succession Crisis and after as well.

Prince Felix was in the hands of a loving family, he was a social young boy and could properly adapt to the higher echelons of Norse society, he had become well versed in the art of the court at a rather young age. Under Ulf's tutelage, the young Felix began to train the art of properly managing finances and striking a deal with other parties both fiscally and politically, he took great pride in being a Prince, and was not afraid to use his royal ties to pressure a target to get what he wanted. Felix had played the courts during his teenage years having affairs and courting powerful families, where he had massive political influence over the nobility of the Norse Empire, his brother had none of that. The political rise of Felix lined him and his foster family's pockets with vast wealth, his trading company, Prince Trading had given him a massive reserve of wealth and passive income he used to further develop his image. He took his wealth and increased the wealth of the citizens of Copenhagen-Roskilde and on his powerbase in the city while not venturing off the island of Zealand

Prince Carolus did not receive much if any love or care during his child from anyone but a single man and his family, the Marshall of the Sword Brotherhood, was tasked with raising the Prince. Carolus grew extremely attached to his foster family, it is likely that he promised the Marshall's daughter to marry her when he returned from his mandatory four years of service in the Sword Brothers. During those four years he changed and emerged, he had earned a nickname from the Germanic Tribes, The Bloodied General or The Benevolent Nord, it is said that while his men were equipped with muskets and firearms, he preferred to use a bow that he took from a Germanic barbarian that he had axed down during the battle of Riga. He was known to be a silent hunter and cold tactician during combat and its preparation but was a polite and generally nice man during downtime and favored the medical tents where he would assist in surgeries and tending to the ill. Prince Carolus also refuted his title of Prince during his service and simply was referred to by his rank, which was initially a simple foot soldier, but during the battle of Riga in year 302, he had run out of ammunition for his gun, picked up a dead Baltics' axe and shield and reentered the fray. The next day he arrived back to the Sword Brother's Camp, red with blood, and had a line of Baltic tribespeople lined up, and had them attend church or face death, the Baltics who refused were cut down with the axe he picked up the previous day. The General of the force tried to get Carolus killed on the grounds of desertion and defiance of orders, Carolus challenged the General to single combat with the General's weapon of choice. On that same day Carolus, challenged to a swordfight, would strike the general down with a single strike through the General's shield, breaking it in two and proceeding to cleave through the General's torso, killing him near instantly. The Prince was called the Bloodied General, as he assumed the General's position, as no other officer dared to challenge the Prince, he ordered his men to rest for the day but prepare to move to the ruins of Riga, where they would be fashioned a new type of helmet and be given a bayonet. Upon arriving in Riga, the mark of Soviet Union was found in several buildings, to the Sword Brothers the Hammer and Sickle was a sign of the past and often new and better technologies. On the march, Carolus had discovered a stockpile of weapons belonging to a nation known as Deutsches Reich, and they marked their weapon caches with Swastika and/or the Iron Cross, there he found thousands of firearms far more advanced than anything he had ever seen coupled with this was enough ammunition to wage a century of campaigns, but most importantly to him was the cars and tanks. He tested one of the rifles, G43, he ordered his men to take the weapons and those that he had in excess he sent to Christiania with cars and one boat had only a Panzer II. The greatest change that the discovery of the weapon's cache was that of books, books about fascism and that of racial glory, about the Aryan race. Carolus saw this a means to justify no longer slaughtering villages as they were Aryans as well as them, the Sword Brotherhood was concerned with this development but generally fine with a lowering in the slaughter so long as it still brought about the spreading of Christianity. What the Brotherhood didn't know as how he was managing to raise such a massive army, and where he was headed, from the books and other texts he had managed to teach himself old German, and from this began burning a path towards Danzig in Poland, with a force that rose in strength every village they came across, every city on the map of Carolus brought about new and more technologies, the warpath of Carolus had made the people on the Southern Coast of the Baltic had become loyal to the benevolent Norse conqueror, and his enemies mortified of his brutality and efficiency on the battlefield. At Danzig, Carolus had a mere year left on his campaign before his service was over, and at Danzig he met a new group of people, the Poles and the Civilized Germans, the Men of Danzig themselves had bolt-action weapons, the week-long battle left the force of Danzig broken and her people open to invasion, the Norse Conqueror, Prince Carolus, was kind to the people of Danzig if they were willing to convert, something they were reluctant yet willing to do. His final month in the Sword Brotherhood's army came to an end his men held a massive celebration to the end of his and his soldier of similar age's end of service and return to Christiania, the countless men who had been recruited from the formerly pagan villages had instituted the policy of the Sword Brother's Four Years of Service. Carolus to convert the more powerful tribes and emergent empires had taken a total of four formerly pagan brides during his campaigns. Upon his return to Christiania he stood in a class of his own amongst his surviving peers, and the men from other armies had only heard the legends of Carolus, his conquest, and his rise to power. When the women of Christiania arrived at the mass marriage ceremony, Carolus had a swarm of higher class women surrounding him, and every man from his campaigns was interviewed extensively about the man with the meter-long piece of parchment clipped onto his armor, detailing over a thousand kills, his deeds, his mercy, and his march to Danzig from Riga. As the ceremony continued, the men under Carolus were first to go, Carolus himself stood alone at the end of the ceremony, all the other men had been married off, but he stood alone, waiting for the bride-to-be he knew was coming soon. As dawn came and went Carolus then marched out of the great hall where his comrades accompanied in, he went out alone, he walked down to the harbor, and got onto a boat. His bride-to-be, had died unbeknownst to him of a disease during his service but no one had the heart to tell him, while not married to any women of the Norse he sailed back to the only thing he knew, the Southern Coast of the Baltic Sea, straight to Danzig to his home. Upon his arrival, the soldier of conquered lands pledged their allegiance to the Benevolent Norseman. Where Felix had the court on his side, Carolus had an army that the Norse could only dream of, and the cunning to shatter the icy northern court like a hammer

The Norse Civil War and the Founding of the Polish Reich

After Felix "ascended" to the throne of the Norse Empire, the church castle was bombarded by offshore gunboats, Carolus and his brutal cunning had the Norse Navy under his command, those who defied his decree now lay dead in the frigid Baltic waters, the guards in the nearby Court of Nobles open fire upon the nobility of the Norse. This early victory was decisive in the later stages of the Norse Succession Crisis, as with half of the major families on regent for the next ten to twelve years made the state of total war that the Polish already had entered the early stages of total mobilization. The war did not have major battles but rather was fought along brutal and long fronts, the Carolean Army drew from massive and deep reserves from Central Europe, and while the Norse fought them at sea and on a limited front in the Baltics. The brute of the Carolean army was fighting down Vistula River. He made an announcement to the Sword Brotherhood, calling all that supported him to come to Danzig, to join his new nation, one where nobility doesn't exist, and everything is granted on merit and effort. About half of the Sword Brotherhood heeded Carolus's call to Danzig, escorted by a massive portion of the Carolean Navy. Felix, who was en route to the Church-Castle witnessed the plan Carolus had instituted from the beginning, he and the new Princess Maja, rushed towards General Ulf's barracks. Upon arrival, they had found General Ulf and about half of the barracks fighting the other half of the garrison. The General had the Norse Flag flying high, his men with their rifles and green uniforms, their foe wore a red white and black band along their right arm, they flew a flag with vertical bands of the colors on their arm with an Iron Cross dead center. The soldiers who were loyal to General Ulf were slowly pushing back the Carolean rebels. The battle at the barracks was won by General Ulf after Felix arrived, as the Carolean rebels fled the battle to the docks, and escaped the island of Zealand to the path to Danzig. While the attack on Zealand could be viewed as foolish by all standpoints, the attack was merely a distraction from Carolus's main movement, bitter Norwegians and Swedes who felt like second class citizens when compared to the Danes, were also fleeing to Danzig. Over half a million refugees flooded into the emergent Carolean state from the Norse Scandinavian Holdings. The explosive population of the Norse peoples and of those who were loyal to Carolus would enforce a sentiment of quick and decisive warfare by the Norse under Felix, and the ideal of prolonged conflict by the Caroleans would be easy enough to achieve. Using a guide on field fortification construction found in a bunker with the hammer and sickle, Carolus began construction of a fortified trench-line along the Norse-Polish Border, there the Caroleans would feed a near endless supply of experienced soldiers from the Vistula campaigns.

As the years of naval and trench warfare began to finally sit in, the Polish Fascists began to look for alternative methods of income, sending formerly nomadic horsemen on explorative missions, the Poles found the river Danube, this, naturally shifted Polish society entirely, the ethnic poles who had been living side by side with about a million refugees who came to the rising Polish nation from the Norse Empire, and new arrivals from Germany and the Russian Steppe, as the virtue and skill at arms attracted certain tribes to come live and assimilate into the Polish Nation, ironically the diversity of the Polish armies would be their greatest strength, with firearm equipped horsemen from Russia, to the brutal German foresters with carbine and axe, and lastly the powerful Baltic Line Infantry, with wave after wave of chainmail and helmeted men with Baltics. Ironically enough, the population of both the Felixian Norse and the Carolean Fascists continued to grow exponentially, this massive growth left the Russian and German tribal spectators shocked at the sheer size of the engagements, the Norse and Poles became wrapped in Germanic and Slavic myths, each army and nation becoming a sort of holy land, Danzig and Konigsberg were the two holiest cities in the North Rus's religion, while Aarhus and Poznan became holy sites for the Ostgermanii people. Service in the heavenly armies of the Norse and Polish were a right to manhood in the Northern Rus and Ostgermanii peoples, the reward of joining the Poles or the Norse was the highest of honors. Slowly the Poles reached farther and farther south and east, the great Sudostern kampf, was the fuel of the Norse Front, with hundreds of thousands fresh soldiers, and more acres of land to cultivate and more wood and metal to use. It was realized by the Norse after a grueling 17 years of war that attempting to suppress the Carolean revolt was costlier that the gains of holding the lands that the Caroleans were believed to hold.

The end of the First Nordic-Polish war (Der Krieg von Carolus to the Poles) was brought about after the 4th Norse army was shattered at the 4th Battle of Konigsberg, Carolus, second eldest son, Erwin, was the leader of the Konigsberg order of the Sword Brothers, he and the 9th Polish army had beaten them down, the Norse only had 3 operational armies while the Poles had 11, the Norse realizing they would collapse if the Caroleans decided to push beyond Estonia, pushed for a peace treaty. The Southern Baltic Provinces as well as Lithuania were ceded to the Polish State, Carolus, pleased with this result continued his campaigns through south-central Europe

The Interwar Period

After the first Polish War (402-419 PR) the Poles needed a break from war as much as the Norse did, while they had suffered considerably fewer losses (by about 25,000) from a war that claimed over 200,000 lives, the male Polish population had very nearly been pushed beyond a point of recovery, so with its 90,000 remaining males of breeding age, by the order of Carolus, they were to take as many wives as they could, and if they refused to breed, then they were deemed not of need, and very promptly killed. Th Norse still under king Felix, were at first disgusted, but soon realized the advantage of the artificially made population boom. King Felix did not enforce his will by point of blade though, he used the shine of coin and greed of men to work his breeding initiative, soon though it was realized that the Poles, who for so long were thought to only be around Konigsberg and Danzig, had pressed deep into East-Central Europe, the Norse responded by conquering Karelia and by resettling the city of Saint Petersburg, and raising their land area and providing lands ripe for the construction of cities. This massive development of both nations stoked an industrial revolution between the two nations, both industrial revolutions were coupled with social reform, or lest the attempt.

The industrial revolution in the Polish state was inspired by the original industrialization of Germany under the Kaiserreich(1871-1918 A.D) and from it grew factories and workshops from Konigsberg and Danzig from city to city, eventually crawling down to Karlshafen near to the source of the River Vistula, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. The Mountains functioned as the natural southern border of the Polish Empire, one that would maintain until the Great Western War or The Great European War depending on nationality or stance of who started the war. The greater land holdings of the Poles gave them one clear advantage, they could spread their industry and not be affected, but they had inadvertently concentrated their industry on the banks of the Vistula and Oder rivers. This coupled with the nature of Carolus's reign brought his sons and daughters into prominent positions, most of his daughters had already been married off, while his sons had begun to resettle or create new cities across the Empire, his two oldest Karl and Erwin would settle the 4th and 5th largest cities in the Empire, being Karlshaven and Ewinsberg. The rule under the Carolus's children brought a degree of mercy to the harshness of the king, functioning as nobles but with their father's will of iron and value of merit over birthright meant that

The Norse however had to concentrate their industrial might near the coast or by the Norwegian Mountains, where the resources could be easily obtained, and this is where King Felix would shine, where Carolus was a moderately efficient king with good values and a pleather of incredulous princes and ministers that came to be from his principles, Felix was as cold in the courtroom as Carolus was on the battlefield. The industrial concern of Felix would bring about a family owned company, the royal family that is, Nordic Industries officially was under one of Felix's daughters who had been married off, the prince however was the largest stockholder, and therefore held a tremendous say in the direction of the company, and who did the prince answer to, that's right, Felix. It was soon realized that in order to promote the massive growth that would be needed to even compete with the Poles in the near future, and thus he began the Concern of Industry, a new government office awarded to a certain Duke of Bornholm, Lord Svenner.

The Industrial Concern under Lord Svenner flourished with railroads connecting every city and steamship harbors along every coast, from Roskilde to Arhus, and from Christiania to Aneby. Lord Svenner had made his family beyond wealthy and had even been promoted to the Duke of Aneby a very prestigious position the Norse Court rivaling the power of the Brotherhood of Trondheim's Marshall.

(hand busted) return when healed

Story idea;

Overly complicated romance political intrigue story based around some Cambrian sea life from Sicily, Eagle twins from Greece, Wolf from Germany, Horse from Russia, Spanish Lion, Arabian camel, and (one of each) Polish, English, Roman, French, and Scandinavian princes.

Point of conflict- Royal Marriages to avoid war, nobles don't want that, crown does. Polish Prince and Greek Girls find old Nazi bunker and determine that the real enemy lies beyond the sea upon learning of "America" they also become Nazis because that'd be funny. Arab Camel and Spanish lion become friends and want to trade fiancees. Fiancees want it too but don't say (Roman and English probably). Cambrian sea princess and Wolf hate each other while having to double court with the French and Scandinavian princes because they are best friends after *almost* killing each other in the Benelux.