Animis Opibusque Parati - Intro

Titus Livius sat down with his blank book and opened to the first page. He’d been working on his history of the Roman Empire, “From The Founding Of The City”, but after having filled 80 books and seeing no end in sight…he needed a break. Lately at the bath house he had been talking with a friend of his about how he wanted to try writing fiction, yet every time he’d tried this he would always find himself drawn back to history. His friend, a politician, had just been talking about all the ways Rome might have been different in the modern day if it was still a Republic, if Augustus hadn’t come in and changed everything eight years ago. Combining the two threads of conversation, Titus’ friend suggested that he write a fictional history of the Roman Republic where Augustus lost to Mark Antony and the Republic had stayed a Republic.

He may have only been a historian, but Titus knew what kind of stories would get him lynched in a hurry. But the idea of writing a fictional history had truly intrigued him. To take that history and project into the future was even more intriguing, for who knew what strange new corners of the Earth might be discovered or even what the Empire’s men of science might bring into the world?

Maybe if the Carthaginians hadn’t been conquered, but had expanded across Africa as the Romans did the same across Europe and areas of Persia. What if the two great powers found themselves in a terrible stalemate for centuries to come, continually matching each other man for man, weapon for weapon, struggling to win a race of development which would break the stalemate and allow one empire to conquer the other?

Pretty soon Titus had lent quill to parchment, starting one of the greatest epics never discovered by 21st century historians. Titus began to write…

Animis Opibusque Parati

The Deus Ex Machinists had done a marvellous job of whipping up whatever revolutionary developments were needed for anything the architects had wanted to build. Thanks to them and their wondrous tools, the city of Helvetica had been able to rise from the middle of the North Atlantic and spell out for the world which of the great powers would be victor in this centuries old war – Rome…