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Chieftain
Local Time: 21:18
Local Date: November 1, 2010
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 77
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The Bringer of War
The conductor gently waved her hands in the air, majestically rising and falling in coordination with the sound of decending flutes as though Venus herself lay dying before the audience in the darkly lit theatre.
Pointing the conductor's stick towards the back of the ensemble as to que to Roman horns (all things French had long since been banned since their annexation), the music rose up to fill the hall with waves and make the chandelier crystals rattle with the great overpowering sound of the benevolent brass.
As her hands drew close together and began to stop moving, the noise slowly grew down to nothing as the audience began to clap.
Without so much as taking a bow, her hands rose up to form sharp, crisp angles for the drums, and the military march began to cascading, violent tones.
Up in a private booth sat the greatest Emperor Rome had ever seen or would ever see, Emperor Caesar III. Caesar III had always been a follower of classical music ensembles, and was not unknown for his grandeur in such concerts. The Roman elite frequented the Grand Imperial Theatre in the center of Rome, "around which all the world revolved."
In the year 1785, Rome dominated her continent and held many overseas posessions. The Greater Dominion, the continent which Rome occupied, had housed in the past 7 great nations but now only 4. In 100 AD Greece had been conquered by the forces of Rome and Egypt, after a brave but hopeless struggle on the part of the Greek hoplites who would succumb to the forces of the Roman Legions, when the coastal fortress of Athens was burned to the ground and along with it its Great Lighthouse.
Alexander, however, had never been captured, and escaped into exile in Kyoto on the Lesser Dominion, presumably teaching Greater Dominion History at the University there when it was constructed in 300 AD.
The Carthaginians, too, would be destroyed, as German and Egyptian forces swallowed the country whole, while the Germans made the most game in a blitzkrieg campaign that ended with the execution of Hannibal by one of his generals in 850 AD. The General, who had been attempting a Coup d'Etat, was not as lucky as Alexander. He was captured by the now-famous German General von Schlieffen and executed in Berlin by guillotine.
Caesar III realized the threat Bismarck now posed and responded by making war on France. The nation, which had tripped and stumbled on it's path to keep up with the Great Three (Rome, Germany, and Egypt) could not stand against the great weapons of Cavalry which Caesar had so aggressively sought after. In 1110 AD, Paris too burned, and Joan has been enslaved as a reproductive part of the Caesar dynasty.
The cymbals crashed as the military march came to a resolute end, and the exhausted audience of socialites who did not share Caesar's affinity for the musical arts gathered to leave the theatre among the din of sleeping men and drowsy women.
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Caesar III was unlike his predecessors in that he did not have a large family. In fact, after his stressed war with Joan, he found her so repulsive he could not even perform his Imperial duties, and at the ripe age of 59 was impotent at any rate.
Peter's only daughter was the Grand Duchess Lidia, who was 17. As his wife had been diagnosed with a terminous illness, they found it to be of prompt desire to create an heir of pure Caesarian blood. This was, of course, before the fall of Paris and the capture of Joan d'Arc.
Lidia had been wed to the Grand Duke Caesar IV, who was not really a Caesar, but rather a cousin in the less-powerful house of Maximus. He had taken the name upon being wed to Lidia, and effectively made him the heir to the Roman throne.
"Lidia, I must know--are you confident of your husband's ability to rule the nation once I am deceased?"
The question from her father had caught Lidia by surprise, as she was reaching to grab her purse off an adjacent velvet-seated chair, and stopped in her tracks violently enough to make her dark brown curls and drooping pearl jewelry shake.
Her green eyes turned to meet the dark weary eyes of her father. "Why, of course I am, I wouldn't have wed him otherwise. God knows I sure didn't have any other reason to marry him," the Duchess said under her breath.
"I am sure you realize by now, Lidia, that I do not have much time left on this Earth," the Emperor said casually as he glanced at his pocketwatch. It was a quater to eleven, unusually late for the Emperor to be up. "If not simply from old age, I will die from my notoriously bad smoking habits before too much longer. I want to know that my nation will be run effectively after my death, as you can understand."
The Duchess had been busy getting her things in order. She had occupied herself with twisting a cloth napkin during the performance, and was now having a difficult time locating the object. She snapped her purse shut after checking to see if the napkin had found its home there, but to no avail, and replied to her father. "I of course know, father. You needn't worry. I will make sure your valuable empire is maintained well."
She turned to find the cloth napkin under the left leg of her chair and snatched it out from under it, to find her father standing much close to her than he had before. He embraced her, without her embracing him in return, and kissed her on the cheek.
"I know I can trust you to do the right thing. You are a capable woman and a smart girl. You are every bit what your mother was. I trust you will make a fantastic mother of this nation."
"Mother. Who wants to be a mother when you don't get a damn say in what goes on in the country."
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