HE WAS BORN INTO A WORLD FILLED WITH TREACHERY, dark magic, and unresolved war.

His coming had been foretold, and his birth was a joyous event among the few mystics considered worthy to witness it. As his mother gave him life, she and her newborn were surrounded by an azure glow. Soon the glow faded to reveal the crying child for whom the hopefulPon Q’tar clerics had waited so long. They named him Vespasian Augustus I, and it was he who was destined to lead his country to final victory over Shashida, the southern nation that had for so long threatened Rustannica’s way of life.

Immediately after the child’s birth, his mother and father were taken away. Five veiled wet nurses would take turns suckling him, ensuring that no singular attachment would form in his heart and perhaps mar his later devotion to the clerics who would shape his life. The child was everything; the woman who birthed him and the man who sired him were little more than living suppliers of unique bloodlines. The boy would be raised alone by the mysterious clerics. One day those same mystics would grant him rule over their nation.

ThePon Q’tar had explained the boy’s sudden appearance and amazing blood quality to the citizens of Rustannica as wondrous gifts of magic that were to be welcomed, rather than omens to be feared. The citizens quickly took Vespasian to their bosom, and as he matured they hungered constantly for news of his upbringing.

He had been born thirty-two Seasons of New Life ago. Today, more of Rustannica’s enemies would die.

Small numbers of captured Shashidan soldiers were usually killed outright on the battlefield by the Rustannican Imperial Order. But if the captives were numerous, they were brought in chains to Ellistium, Rustannica’s capital city. There, most would be forced into slavery; the remainder would be condemned to fight one another to the death in the “games,” a lavish spectacle staged in Ellistium’s great coliseum.