James Mace

It is December 1878, and war looms on the horizon in South Africa. British high commissioner Sir Henry Bartle-Frere seeks to dismantle the powerful neighboring kingdom of the Zulus....

Four years after their departure for the east, the armies of Rome are bloodied and exhausted. Their victories against the Parthian Empire came at great cost.

After decades of strife and a pair of bloodily savage wars, the Kingdom of Dacia is no more. With King Decebalus dead, and the surviving members of the royal family in captivity, an uneasy peace descends upon the new Roman Province of Dacia.

In the aftermath of the Battles of Khambula and Gingindlovu, a lull fell over the war-torn Zulu Kingdom. Though British forces under Lord Chelmsford emerged victorious during both encounters, earlier defeats, casualties, and supply shortages required them to withdraw back into Natal....

It is January of 1879. While three columns of British soldiers and their African allies cross the Uminyathi River to commence the invasion of the Zulu Kingdom....

The year is 118 A.D. More than five years have passed since Tiberius Artorius Castus, Dux Britannica, departed to fight beside Emperor Trajan against the Parthian Empire. At his command was the legionary and auxilia division, Exercitus Britannica, known to the men in the ranks as Minerva’s Spear.

The entire Roman Empire held its collective breath as Germanicus and Arminius faced each other in what would become the most brutal and savage campaign....

In January 1879, three columns of British soldiers under the command of Lord Chelmsford, commenced the invasion of the Zulu Kingdom. The southern No. 1 Column led by Colonel Charles Pearson advances on the old mission station at Eshowe....

In late January 1879, following news of the terrible disaster to befall British forces at Isandlwana, Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood, commanding officer of the northern No. 4 Column, withdraws his forces to Khambula, near the Natal and Transvaal borders....

Following the assassination of Emperor Gaius Caligula in AD 41, his uncle, Claudius, assumed the imperial throne. After establishing his legitimacy and stabilizing his position with the Roman Senate and people, he looks to legitimize himself militarily....

Gaius Silius, legate of the 20th Legion, is concerned that the barbarians - though shattered by the war - may be stirring once again....

In February, 1815, after nine months in exile, Napoleon Bonaparte, the deposed Emperor of the French, escaped from the Isle of Elba....

It’s been forty years since the Roman conquest of southern Britannia. The hostile western regions are at last subdued and twenty years have passed since the cataclysmic Iceni Rebellion in the east.....

In the year 28 AD the people of Frisia, a previously loyal province, were suffering under the oppression of the Roman magistrate, a former Centurion named Olennius. So blinded by greed had he become that he taxed the populous well beyond their means to produce....

The year is AD 66, and the Roman province of Judea has exploded in rebellion. Far from being a revolution of unified peoples, the various Jewish factions of Sadducees, Zealots, Sicarii, and Edomites are in a state of civil war....

Since the reign of Emperor Tiberius, an uneasy peace has existed along the Danube frontier between the various Sarmatian tribal kingdoms to the north and the Roman Empire to the south.

In 89 A.D., following a failed insurrection by the governor of Upper Germania, the disgraced Legio XXI Rapax is dispatched to Pannonia, on the River Danube.

The year is 104 A.D. Two years have passed since King Decebalus knelt in submission to Emperor Trajan. The recent war between Rome and Dacia was brutal and costly for both sides. The graves of many thousands lie between the River Danube and the gates of Sarmizegetusa.

A new age has dawned for Rome. Following the brief reign of Emperor Nerva, Marcus Ulpius Trajan inherits the mantle of Caesar. A revered general and statesman, the senate a people of Rome greet his rise with an optimism not seen since the reign of Vespasian.

On the mist-shrouded Isle of Hibernia, now known as Ireland, 26 years have passed since the murder of the high king, Fiacha Finnolach. The usurper Elim of Ulster’s promises of peace and prosperity have come to naught, as drought and famine afflict the land....