Imperator: Resurrection of an Empire

The morning sun filtered through the eastern windows of the imperial palace like a benediction—soft gold light painting the marble walls, the columns, the banners of Romanus.

Julius sat alone in the imperial penthouse, his private high chamber, elevated above all others, giving him the highest view of the entire eternal city.

It was a space few ever saw—built not for power, but clarity.

From here, the Eternal City stretched far in every direction: domes of polished stone, smoke from the forges rising in thin columns, great roads spidering out toward every point of the empire.

And far beyond, imagined but known, the territories he had shaped—some by force, others by word, and now, by history itself.

He'd woken early, mind turning long before the bells could ring out.

Sleep had come in pieces.

Dreams had returned.

Not of battles.

Not of gods.

But of Yuri—of the young woman he had come to know in the years past, and of the weapon she had been turned into.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, leaning against the cold stone frame.

"Even peace has a price,"

he muttered.

His system map flickered beside him—only visible to him—projecting its ghostly overlay across the cityscape below.

Its red pins glimmered like coals, a constellation of dissent, clustered now not at the borders but at the spiritual heart of the continent.

Provincia Christi.

Once walled off and starving.

Now reborn—but not united.

The annexation of Christendom had seemed like a masterstroke: peaceful, symbolic, and total.

But beneath the gilded veneer of the Pontiff's throne lay a snakepit of zealots, opportunists, and silent militarists.

Four of the six militant orders were showing dissent to the Pontiff's actions, choosing instead to turn from Christs teaching and pursue the interim popes gospel towards power and control, turning their chapels into military centers, bringing about a crisis within the province bordering on the outbreak of civil war.

They did not fly open banners just yet, but Julius saw them for what they were: insurgent states within his borders.

He turned to the map again, watching the tiny pulses of movement.

The three dispatched legions—two Iron Maidens and one of the Praetorian elite—were en route now to two key cities.

Each city lit up on his map like a second sun.

Jericho in the provinces west, where the Knights Hospitaller, and Teutonic Knights were based and begining rumbling of attempting silent takeover of the ruling clergy.

Meanwhile Nazareth was at the mercy of the Knights Templar, and The Order of The Holy Sepulchre

The legions take a few weeks to arrive and plenty could change in that time, but the legions were not marching unprepared, they were marching with the intent to restore order when they arrived.

In the meantime until their arrival, order would attempt to be preserved by the armed forces of the papal states, and their commanders within the Papal Guard.

But with a doctrine more aligned with peace rather than war, if war broke out, the True Christians would be at the mercy of the Neo-Crusaders.

If these hardliner, hawk faction followers could not swollow the possibility of serving under his crown, the christian world would tear itself apart, and the whole might of Romanus would need to be called in to cleanse these heretics from the earth.

But Julius knew what would follow.

If it came down to it, and a cleansing was required using Romanus's might, more dissent would be created, this problem needed to be solved locally by the Papal forces themselves.

Even though he knew the world called for blood, the very script of the game itself demanding blood be spilt.

But had Julius arrived soon enough for the Codex to work its ancient magic to quell the rising unrest in Christi?

Turning his eyes away from the lands of Christ, and instead onto the Greecian Peninsula, where most of the lands had submitted themselves to become vassal states of the great

Some resisted even harder.

Athenia, having lost the Greecian war, and in doing so lost most of their own vassal empire when the faction states postwar aligned themselves with Romanus rather than remaining united with Athenia

But even with the Greecians mostly having given up, with his focus turned elsewhere on the continent, both the Athenians and Spartarii were hard at work trying to undermine his influence on the pennisula and restore Greecian control while gaining additional power themselves.

Sparta on paper was still an ally of Romanus, but the kings could see the writing on the wall, Romanus's assistance came at a grave cost, not one that would be paid upfront but in time.

With Argosia, Macedon, and Arcadia having fallen to protectorate status under the Empire of Romanus, Sparta's own military might on the penninsula was dwarfed in comparison, meanwhile the ideal of the Athenians who desired to do away with Kings of men, were further emboldened post war as all their work over hundreds of years had been undone in the matter of week thanks to another of those Kings.

The legions had pulled back fully from Athenian territory having accepted settlement by way of gold and jewels rather than accepting vassalization or annexation by the empire.

But this lack of oversight was allowing the growth of dissedents to come to power, and begin swaying the public to their point of view once more.

Of course they were never truly alone, Romanus's root had integrated itself into all neighboring lands, and the leaves even found themselves within the rebellious groups of both Athenia, and Sparta.

Some had even been given missions by their rebel commanders to go abroad and recruit from the fallen lands to raise a coalition of freedom fighters to push romanus from their lands and bring Greecia back into the overall hands of the Greecians.

Once Chrisi had been dealt with, Julius would need to turn his focus back to Greecia.

To quell the smoldering coals, before they could stand a chance of billowing up into a raging inferno.

Having finished collecting his thought, Julius absconded from his room, and went in search of Serena to begin laying down the next series of orders to prepare the empire to function once more in his abscence as he chases after the legions already marching to the Francian front lines.