17 kids were killed at Parkland.
Its all starting to look a lot like the Holy Land in the first century.
The Republic is finally undone, the Empire now rules the world but although strong and still expanding, it is clearly corrupt at its core and its days are numbered. The new Emperors are deranged and crooked. A charismatic preacher appears, mad cults clash across the land, Essenes, Nazarenes, Gnostics. The Holy Church splits, then splits again, and yet again. Strange Eastern religions slither out of Asia, steeped in blood and mysticism.
Alexander’s old empire has long since fallen apart, Only its warring provinces remain and new shadowy empires are arising on the fringes of the world: the Parthians, India, Persia, China. All that remains of Greece is its beautiful language, its crumbling cities and its fading trade routes. A new religion based on an old one sweeps the Empire, growing strong on persecution. The barbarians are at the gates, biding their time, growing bolder every day. The wall is abandoned, the border forts deserted, and the legions are recalled, too little and too late. It is a time of prophecy, apocalypse, rumor and fear.
When the Empire splits, and finally unravels, only a Dark Age remains, castled warlords and landed chieftains keep a fragile peace (when not at war with one another!) when the rievers come to pillage. They keep the peasants on the farms at sword point so that at least there is food and a semblance of order. The old temples, roads, monuments and aqueducts can no longer be maintained and are mined for their stone, no one remembers how to rebuild them. Soon, even the knowledge of how to bring them down will be forgotten and only their ruins will remain as reminders of a Golden Age.
Fascism is only a temporary stop on the way to feudalism. History doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but this all does sound hauntingly familiar.
The Lost Legion
It is said that Caesar sent a legion
deep into the heart of Asia.
They never came back home;
perhaps fighting to the last,
a broken square on some dusty plain.
Others say they simply melted
into the earth, their children now
speaking strange tongues and
wearing foreign garb. Or slaves,
toiling under a cruel foreign sun.
We too once marched too far East,
sought the rising sun, the world ocean,
the mountains at the edge of the earth,
the deserts of our disappointment,
the endless forests of our failures.
Our campfires are dimmer now,
and getting fewer every day.
Some of us have fallen by the wayside,
peaceful where we came to conquer.
Fellow exiles now, no longer comrades.
Occasionally we even meet.
But we soon recognize each other.
We were beaten, but we fought like demons.
And we planted our banners deep
in the Eye of the Beast.