The State of Europe: 1611

It was the year of our Lord 1611. In Constantinople, the beautiful and crafty 22 year old Kosem Sultan, a new wife of the young and pious sultan Ahmed I, was set to begin her long reign as a ruler of the Ottoman Empire and the men who nominally ran it. In Paris, a secret ally of the Ottomans, fifty-eight year old King Henri IV, although popular with the common people, had survived yet assassination attempt. To the north, James, ruler of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, was trying unsuccessfully to wring more money out of Parliament. At the gates of the Baltic, the proud King Frederick IV was set to launch the first of his wars, crossing the Kattegat to attack the Swedes. And far out at sea, in a neglected part of that king's domains, lay Iceland - the Thule of Greek legend, the land of geysers, volcanoes, and of the famous Thulian spar, the material of the Crystallic itself. These souls of this island had fallen into evil times, and were buffeted by a sequence of trials. There had been lean years of poor crops, raids of slavers. And there were rumours of a shadowy being - almost certainly a demon - who appeared at the autumn equinox, and extorted his due from the poor islanders.

It was late in the summer of this year a train emerged from the deserts, to the wonder of the world. The boldest of the Beduion raiders prudently hid from them. Eighty men, in strange custom, marched to the Ottoman capital. Eight of them bore a huge litter shourded in white. Upon entering a new city, the leader would show a letter with a red seal, with one word, in Arabic characters - Sythabus. There were never any questions thereafter. Within a couple of weeks, the eighty men the mysterious litter had reached Topkapi Palace, the home of the sultan and his court.

1. A translator speaks for Sythabus.

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