LandInglaisi - A planet remembers what its kings forget. Chapter 1:


The world of LandInglaisi floated beneath three silver moons and one artificial sun, a planet so obsessed with ancestry that every citizen could recite twenty generations of forefathers before learning basic arithmetic. Children learned battle poems before mathematics. Nobles inherited feuds with more enthusiasm than they inherited land. Entire villages could explain precisely why their neighbour's great-grandfather deserved an axe in the spine, yet remain uncertain about what season it was.

For a thousand years the great houses of LandInglaisi had divided themselves into tribes whose names echoed across star systems. House Godwine. House Wessex. House Rouen. House Mercia. Their banners changed. Their weapons evolved. Their grudges remained immortal. Historians referred to this condition as hereditary strategic ignorance. The nobles preferred the term tradition.


Across the northern continents, immense shield-walls marched beneath banners woven from programmable light. Warriors carried gravitic spears capable of punching through armoured vehicles, yet many still painted wolves and dragons on their shields because their ancestors had done so centuries before. Progress and superstition marched together across LandInglaisi, neither willing to concede defeat.

Harold Godwineson stood atop the basalt cliffs of South Hastinga and watched smoke rise from the sea horizon. The smoke belonged to three burning longships and approximately four hundred dead raiders. Harold considered this an excellent morning. A local poet immediately declared it a glorious victory. Harold corrected him. 

"Three victories become glorious. One victory is merely a good start." 

The poet dutifully amended the verse.


Several kilometres offshore lay floating corpses, shattered hulls and enough severed limbs to convince future archaeologists that diplomacy had failed spectacularly. The gulls were feeding enthusiastically. A veteran nearby remarked that gulls were the true rulers of history. Everybody laughed because it was difficult to argue with the evidence.

Far beyond the atmosphere, however, another audience observed. The spacecraft Sovereign Asset rested beyond visible detection. Its vast hull eclipsed entire constellations. Liquid-light conduits flowed through its structure like rivers of molten stars. 

Within its command chamber, Fleet Admiral Amelia Jumoke studied the unfolding conflict with an expression usually reserved for unruly children.


Temporal Inquisitor Kuti Felastic reviewed centuries of predictive data. "Probability of continental war has risen to ninety-two percent." Chief Tactician Peter Toshiba sighed. "Only ninety-two? Somebody must be showing restraint." Several officers laughed. Nobody believed that restraint would survive the week.

Meanwhile, beneath the ancient fields of South Hastinga, something older than every kingdom slept. The object had remained buried for almost two thousand years. Kings had walked above it. Empires had risen and collapsed above it. Religions had formed, flourished and fractured above it. Still it slept. Waiting.


The local farmers called the mound Dragon Hill. Every civilisation names dangerous things after dragons eventually.

 It saves time. According to legend, if one dug beneath the hill, they would find a helmet belonging to a king who had defeated death itself. Most villagers considered this nonsense. Others considered it profitable nonsense. Treasure hunters arrived every few years and disappeared shortly thereafter, usually because they were murdered by competing treasure hunters. LandInglaisi possessed a vibrant entrepreneurial culture.


On the eastern horizon, new sails appeared again. Thousands of them. Norman sails. Black. White. Red. An ocean of fabric moving toward the coast. 

Messengers raced across the kingdom. 

Bells sounded. 

Beacons erupted into flame. Lords abandoned banquets halfway through breakfast. Priests suddenly became experts in military logistics. Half the kingdom rushed toward war. The other half rushed away from it.

Harold stared across the sea. The invasion.

What neither Harold nor William of Rouen knew was that higher powers had already taken an interest in their conflict. Across distant sectors, machine gods debated. Across forgotten galaxies, ancient intelligences calculated. Across impossible dimensions, entities older than nations examined LandInglaisi like gamblers examining a game board. One of them was called Zeus. Another was called Odin.

Neither yet realised that the greatest danger on LandInglaisi was not the coming war above the ground. It was the thing buried beneath it. Deep under Dragon Hill, hidden beneath stone, iron and forgotten centuries, dormant systems suddenly received their first signal in fifteen hundred years. A single emerald light appeared in the darkness. Then another. Then another. The ancient helmet awakened. And someone inside it opened their eyes.



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