1382

If 1380 had been the *Year of the Magna Carta*, 1381 *should've been* the *Year of the Commonwealth*. Instead, it was the *Year of the Ork*, humanoid creatures that started as domesticated pigs or wild boar and *mutated*. Across the Eastern Hemisphere, they commandeered human weapons and devastated regions.

This was the second example of the world's fauna being weaponized. The first had been the amplified Western Hemisphere species, both predators and prey, but also key flora that fed the grazers. It was as if who or whatever was behind the amplification wanted the cycle of life to continue just long enough to weed out everything that wasn't selectively enlarged. Based on ignoring the humans, weeding out the people seemed like the main goal.

Zombies had hit both hemispheres hard, but the West got a special flavor of that. Not so much "undying" as "reincarnated;" some of the amplified species hadn't been seen in four millennia or longer, previously hunted to extinction. Already "megafauna" of their time, they came back bigger, faster and stronger.

In the north of *The West*, by the end of the year, the *HMS Discovery* found the threats were morphing and evolving. The orks were quickly migrating under their own direction, jumping the strait from northeast Siberian areas to the northwest corner of the Western Hemisphere (at the the expense of the Inuit). Further, they'd been seen riding dire wolves.

If it weren't for the rise (and merger) of bioweapons, the CMC would've marked the political blossoming of the Age of Enlightenment. Likewise, the creations of the Order of Merlin would have stolen the show in any other timeline. From magical mapping to frozen smoke to *Rods of Water*, even powerful magic was struggling to keep up with attacks on the world.

## **World Events**

* **Chinese Dynastic Dynamics:** That January, Zhu Yuanzhang, emperor of the nascent Ming Empire,died of plague and returned as a zombie. Put to rest by his own son Zhu Biao, amidst an massive ork attack, the episode encapsulated the challenges China faced. Biao, an owner of several *Glow Stones* via *Silk Road* trade, sent out a special envoy to the West for magical assistance.
* **The Battle of Ginestra:** The Hungarian-Croation coalition allied with Dmitry Donskoy of Muscovy-Vladimir. Outside the universal enemy of the orks, they had mutual enemies in both the Golden Horde and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Horde now at a political imperative for conquest, the massive counterattack came in March. There was mutual devastation, but the Golden Horde was effectively extinct after the battle.
* **April:** 84-year old Kęstutis, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, dies en route to negotiations with former Grand Duke Jogaila. Jogaila regains the rule of Lithuania.
* **May:** The Ottomans conquer Sofia from the Bulgarians. Their push is accelerated, looking to maximize territory and resources and against the growing shadow of Plantagenets. The Ottomans already know their "security tactic" of genocide has precluded negotiation. The density of wild boar and otherwise [formerly] domesticated pigs complicates the issue: the ork presence is extensive through the area – and getting worse.
* **The Greater Impact of the Altercation:** Rumors of the late-May *Altercation of the Angels* quickly echo out of London, with it widely interpreted that the archangel Michael is also Ares and Mars (appeared "in many forms"), creating a kind of cross-religion tolerance. The downside, Michael/Mars suggested the King of Blood and Thunder use his London armies to destroy the world. While King Edward had rebuked the "entity," this sowed fear and suspicion of England, if not the CMC.
* **Rebirth of the Western Middle East:** The Mamluk Sultanate had since disintegrated, but that opened the door to two new polities: the *Great House of Egypt* (essentially a kingdom), and the *Caliphate of the Hejaz* (now guided by the previously persecuted Sufis). After the turbulence of the fall of the Mamluks, the two successor states were just now achieving stability. Mid-June marked Egypt's reconquest of Cairo from an occupying ork horde.
* **July:** Balša II of Zeta conquers Albania. Just a little north of the Plantagenet Peloponnese, there is jockeying and politics around the lands *in the shadow*. Orks a significant factor, making travel extremely dangrous in areas outside of those within patrol range of the Royal Guard.
* **October:** James I succeeds his nephew, Peter II, as King of Cyprus. Connections to Aquitaine, Italy, the Plantagenet Peloponnese and the CMC in general are looming...

### **Date Unknown**

* Ibrahim I is selected to succeed Husheng, as Shah of Shirvan (now Azerbaijan).
* Ahmed deposes his brother, Hussain, as ruler of the Jalayirid Dynasty in western Persia.
* Rana Lakha succeeds Rana Kshetra Singh, as ruler of Mewar (now part of western India).
* Dawit I succeeds his brother Newaya Maryam, as Emperor of Ethiopia.

## **The Sphere of Magic**

### **January**

* **The Treaty of Warsaw:** Louis I of Hungary and Poland agreed to a peace treaty with the CMC, which secured almost the entirety of his western borders. This was unprecedented for him, allowing him to focus on the ork threats (not to mention the Lithuanian, Ottoman and Golden Horde threats).

* **Joyful Labor:** In the heart of the CMC, complex, capable automatons reach the general market. The four initial models were basic but covered the gamut of the greatest needs: household, agriculture, general labor and sentry. Most of them powered by arcane crystals, they provided instant benefit wherever they were deployed, from farmer's fields to construction to unwavering, ever-vigilant guards.

* **HMS Explorer reaches Gameroon:** the Persian port of Gameroon was well-known to the West since Alexander's conquest of the area during antiquity. As was their trade, the *Explorer* mapped the city in detail and gave a complementary copy to the city fathers.

### **February**

* **The Return of the Valois Crown:** Duke Charles VI is crowned King of France by King Rickard, former of King of France. This Plantagenet-in-Valois-clothing has been Rick's little brother as of late, and his strength of character was proven in surviving the crucible of the **Dominus Exorcus**.
* **The Reunification of Christendom:** the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leadership officially came together as one church. Importantly, old theological distinctions weren't necessarily resolved – but the dialogue of reconciliation and unity was more important than metaphysics that didn't seem to affect whether healing miracles were achievable. The healing metric was the gold standard to defining what was worth arguing about.

### **March**

* **The Elegant Union:** Mary, daughter of Louis I of Hungary and Poland, is betrothed to recently-royally restored Charles VI of France. Both the Poles and Hungarian nobility had reservations, but both logistics and Charles' own diplomacy won over the locals. The wedding was set for 1385, after Mary reached the Age of Majority.

* **Silk Road Diplomacy:** a diplomatic entourage from Ming China arrives in the Kingdom of Zion after a 3-month trek. What was left of them started training in Aquitaine to become arcane-enabled SA. In the meantime, a platoon of SA specialists immediately headed to China to assist the emperor in stabilizing the situation.

* ***HMS Explorer* reaches Mumbai:** After two months of coastal mapping, the Explorer reached the Seven Islands of Mumbai. At the time marginally controlled by the Delhi Sultanate, the Sultanate itself was in decline as stories came out of the west and confidence in religious mandates declined. Competing Hindu kingdoms were edging into the area and the RANP wasn't shy about distributing *Glow Stones* to the locals as gestures of good will.

### **April**

* **Austria Joins the Kingdom of Germany:** The Duchy of Austria was the home of the House of Habsburg, a chief rival of the House of Luxembourg. Emperor Charles IV had successfully minimized their voting role in the Empire and that had rolled over into their exclusion during the recent creation of the Kingdom of Germany. That also left Austria both a loose end (outside trade benefits with the Plantagenets) and a loose cannon (without control of waging foreign wars). Margrave Rick of Brandenburg brought them to negotiations and into the kingdom as a voting member.
* **The Evolving German Culture:** Art, music, food, poetry, fashion; all the things that made culture *everywhere* were evolving, sometimes at fireball rates. That was true in London, where Western-hemisphere styles (anything with pockets) were catching on. It was true in Bordeaux and Paris, where magical-scroll captures of scenes had been experimented with in a kind of early photography. In Germany, it was the evolution of music that was the most remarkable marker. In true RANP-style, musical notation was standardized as musical styles themselves grew to match the growing sophistication of court audiences.
* **The Shoshutes-Kaskaskia Connection:** The fourth Imperial Federation of the Upper WestHem, this brought five new modestly-sized kingdoms and a principality into the CMC. As the politics evolved and grew, the locals were working out how to adapt the command-magic (what the Plantagenets used for binding magical oaths) to work on the animal brains of the megafauna, seeking to soothe, perhaps reverse, and maybe even bring these monsters in allies.
* **The SA in China:** In response to the Chinese request, the CMC sent a vanguard SA platoon to China. Rick knew the east would have problems (like everybody else), but didn't realize the extent of the devastation. Once in China, they assisted the royal court in securing the borders against the orks, the undead, and the airborne plague. Their primary mission was train locals in low-level, high-utility magic while assisting local militias... and hunting the source of the undead.

### **May**

* **The*****Altercation of the Angels*****.** A visitor arrived at the Westminster Court credibly claiming to be the Archangel Michael. He has appeared in many forms, including Mars, the God of War, and encouraged the English to unleash their wrath on the world, starting with France. When King Edward IV rebuked him, four other angels arrived and Michael/Mars killed three of them, but the fourth – Camael – survived to "banish" the archangel/god of war. While the brief episode would take years to unpack, Camael confirmed that the archangels had gone mad. A war of the heavens had begun on earth.

* **Germany joins the CMC:** There had already been momentum for adopting a German-version Magna Carta, and Germany itself had recently grown to include the Duchy of Austria, so there were positives all around. There was already CMC *Regimental* assistance in battling orks, but the final push came in the form of supernatural impetus: Germany witnessing the *Altercation of the Angels*, live. The lethal endorsement of Mars, and the English rebuke to answer, was God's own sign that Germany needed be part of the Commonwealth.

* **The *HMS Discovery* in Asia:** By the end of May, the *HMS Discovery* had been forced south of the Arctic Ocean due to the ice, but mapped down what would've been called the Kamchatka Peninsula and the coast of what might've been called the Sea of Okhotsk. They made speed runs around Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands before making landings in Japan and Goryeo.

### **June**

* **The Chaos of the Churches:** the aftermath of the madness of Michael reverberated around Europe. The archangel Michael was identified, but considering that he'd "had many names," it threw all the world's religions into both doubt and dysphoric belief. For those who still had a place for a God of War, this didn't foster any nostalgia. The biggest conundrum for those concerned was continued access to healing despite reaching for the arcane. After that, it was a litany of questions, including the commitment of the angels to the war, could they reverse it, and where do they go from here?

* **The Shaking of Kilkenny:** On the seeming heels of the *Altercation*, the sun rose in the middle of the night and an earthquake nearly flattened Kilkenny. Fires were lit for miles around and devastation northwest of Kilkenny was unlike anything seen on earth. While local theories placed the blame on archangels, the ROM deduced this was likely somebody trying alchemy in a lead mine...

* ***HMS Explorer* reaches Dhaka:** the extended stay in Mumbai, plus a two-month early-summer coastal exploration brought the *Explorer* to Dhaka by the end of June. Back in what was marginal Delhi Sultanate rule, the *Glow Stones* had already had unintended consequences as the Delhi Sultanate had officially become a secular organization.

### **July**

* **The Completion of the Reconquista:** The Emirate of Granada was in a slow disintegration from half a dozen factors, but had hung on through a contentious relationship with old Castile. Despite the recent surge in Jesuit policy, there was a great deal of local history that had no problem setting aside Christian principle to exact revenge. To prevent the bloodbath, Rick requested the "honor" of the reconquest, and King John granted such. After a gentle assumption, Rick intended to turn the area over to his uncle John, but was instead granted the area as the Duchy of Spania.

* **The Magic Minds in the Royal Arms:** first noticed during the non-combat in Granada, the horseless carriages of the Royal Arms of Aquitaine could follow directions *without a driver*. While there were still drivers and gunners, low level tasks were becoming automated.

### **August**

* **Ceuta joins the Noble Plantagenet:** Just across the strait from Gibraltar, Aquitaine annexed Ceuta from the Kingdom of Fez. Long battled over between Granada, the Crown of Aragon, and Fez, the Aquitaine capture and NP possession stabilized that corner.
* **The Orks of the West:** The orks that made it across the straits of the north had already been skirmishing with the WestHem CMC. Their mobility on the megafauna (mostly dire wolves) made them considerably more a threat than equivalent hordes in the East. In August, the subarctic hordes conducted a coordinated assault on the Tsuut'ina Kingdom, the northernmost component of the Aranosages Imperial Federation.

### **September**

* **The Growing Automaton Market:** more magical automatons were unveiled for sale in Zion. To neighboring Israel, this was a callback to their own protective magic: fulfilling the lore of golems, a magic thought long lost. To neighboring Egypt, this was the replacement for slaves. It wasn't cheap, but it was industrious and dependable – and with the continued need for crystals rather than food, it kept Egypt and Zion in a close relationship. The automatons were still largely anthropomorphic, but that was branching off as well as specialized reaper-harvesters were introduced for agriculture.
* **Rise of the Druids:** In the Western Hemisphere, shamans had taken both Jesuit training and Wizard training and the fusion created a powerful, nature-tuned method that found a way to make peace with the otherwise anti-human megafauna. This brought an adjustment of policy of how the megafauna were approached and dealt with.

### **October**

* **The Semi-Circumnavigation:** the *HMS Explorer* met the *HMS Discovery* in the port of Hong Kong, marking the technical circumnavigation of the planet. Widely celebrated in London (then the rest of the CMC), the news was celebrated in Hong Kong as well. After gifting more *Glow Stones*, they resumed the journey in their respective directions, looking for full circumnavigation in both easterly and westerly routes.
* **The *Human* Peace of Europa:** There were still spots of tension: Aragon, Lithuania and now-Ottoman Bulgaria where they were a hair's breadth from combat, but for the first time in living memory, there were no *current* wars between human factions. There were still pockets of orks that were moving through rough, otherwise-depopulated terrain: harsh stretches of the Alps, parts of the Black Forest, and areas where the AoC or Plantagenet armies had political restrictions.
* **London Calling:** piggybacking the protective wards of London and Westminster, voice communication spells were used to have long-distance but still-discreet conversations. October marked the installation of tuned communication crystals on the protective wards, and the methods would continue to rapidly evolve. By January 1383, someone in London could contact someone else in Bordeaux. This soon spread across the CMC.

### **November**

* **The Growth of the Light:** the light of knowledge in this case is accelerated by the *Books of Learning*, which have expanded now to more than a hundred subjects. Winchester College, whose planning was already in the works, is founded in England and is one of the larger schools to pop up in this rush to teach.
* **Gunning for the Magus:** Rick was out deep in the wilderness, high in the Alps, away from protective wards, not camouflaging his presence, when he was attacked. Forty died in the assault, including bystanders, OM and Jesuits. Ten beings in fiery red, estimated to be demons, assaulted with blinding purple fire. Rick, the OM and Jesuits fought back, eventually killing the beings, but they only left burn marks rather than corporeal bodies. Rick was left with burn marks himself, and the assassination attempt is seen as the harbinger of a changing celestial war.

### **December**

* **The Strange Wealth of Egypt:** The incredible market of "New Egypt" for the automatons had the attention of the OM. They were paying in gold – more gold than they were calculated to have, especially considering they didn't have a magical component beyond a small underground of second-hand magic (and definitely not one capable of alchemy).
* **Fall of the Northern Yuan:** The Mongol monarchy, the Great Yuan, was caught in an ork maelstrom that brought dire beasts across the strait from the WestHem. Just a little to the west, the horse-tribes of the Oirat fell soon after. Beyond, the orks were eyeing the Timurian horde next.