On Getting to the Bottom of this "Equestrian" Business

by McPoodle

Chapter 5: Markist History, Part 1

Chapter 5: Markist History, Part 1

At this point, Delver went into full-scale storytelling mode. “Before your discovery, all the mark plaques in the world came from a single source: a meteor bigger than this car which crashed to Earth in the year 1010. Picture the scene if you will: On the plains of northern Syria, two of the most ruthless rulers of the era faced off in battle to determine who would rule the Middle East: the Byzantine Empire or the Fatimid Caliphate.

“Byzantine Emperor Basil II was crowned at the age of five in 963, dominated by advisers and generals that soon tore the empire apart in civil war. Basil bided his time until his eighteenth birthday then ruthlessly put down the rebellions. He attempted to take back land taken from the empire by the Bulgars in 986, but was defeated by an army led by Bulgar Emperor Samuel, leading to yet another revolt back home and the loss of his entire army to an usurper. Basil married his sister to the Tsar of Russia, and in this way gained the loyalty of the Varangian Guard, the backbone of the Byzantine army for the next five centuries. With the Varangians, he assumed total control, crushing the traitorous nobility under heavy taxation. By all accounts he was a simple man who preferred the company of soldiers to living in the imperial palace. He liked to roll his side whiskers between his fingers when he was thinking. He mumbled when he tried to give speeches, but had an infectious laugh. With his tall torso and short legs, he looked much better on horseback than he did in person.

“Fatamid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah was born in Cairo in 985, and succeeded his father in 996, at the age of eleven. Just as with Emperor Basil, there was some civil strife over who would have ultimate power during Al-Hakim’s minority, ending in the Year 1000, like Basil’s minority did, with a bloody purge. In his solo rule, Al-Hakim sought to be an exemplary ruler to his Shiite subjects, while being an enemy to both the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, as well as to the Jews and Christians within his domain. In this later activity, he was acting against the traditions of hundreds of years of seeing such believers as ‘People of the Book’ to be gently persuaded to convert, instead outlawing the creation of the wine used in religious rites and in 1009 ordering the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the act which not only was the reason used nearly a century later by Pope Urban II to convince Christian rulers to join the Crusades, but which also triggered Emperor Basil to invade. These actions gave him the name ‘The Mad Caliph’ in the annals of Christian historians, while among his Muslim subjects grew a sect that came to see him as a sort of god, the Druze. He was a thin man, clean-shaven, with a gaze that seemed to see abstractions and eternities more easily than actual facts and individuals. He wasn’t particularly tall, but carried himself like a giant.

“The two armies met at Aleppo, on the shortest day of the year. Both armies were enormous, and both used religious rhetoric to whip their numbers into a blood-thirsty frenzy. And then at dawn, as both armies were rushing towards each other, this great flaming sphere fell out of the sun and embedded itself into the ground right between them.

“The soldiers fled in terror. The generals and their superiors, the Emperor and the Caliph, stayed to ponder this obvious omen. As the stone glowed yellow like gold, it was thought to be a sign from God. The two leaders met on the battlefield, shook hands, and left as firm allies. What each one did in the wake of this miracle was vastly different.

“Basil II invaded Bulgaria for a second time in 1014. At Kleidon his Varangians defeated an army of 45,000, leaving only 15,000 alive as prisoners of war. Basil ordered that of these prisoners, 999 out of every 1000 be blinded, with the lone exception having only one of his eyes put out. These fifteen one-eyed men were then left to lead 14,985 fully-blind soldiers back to the Bulgarian capital of Prespa. The shock of seeing what happened to his men gave Emperor Samuel a fatal heart attack. For this act of barbarism against his fellow Christians, Basil II has gone down in history as Boulgaroktonos—the Bulgar Slayer. He extended Byzantine sovereignty into Croatia, the Crimea, Georgia and Armenia. He was trying to conquer Sicily when he died in 1025.

“Al-Hakim immediately stopped his persecution of Christians and Jews. He tried to reconcile with Caliph Al-Qadir of Baghdad, to which Al-Qadir reacted by having his holy men publish a manifesto accusing the Fatimids of being of Jewish descent and Al-Hakim himself of being a secret Christian. After a decade of being demonized by his enemies and deified by his over-enthusiastic followers, the Caliph of Cairo walked out of the gates of his birth city into the desert wastes on February 12, 1021. He was never seen again.”

Delver held up his hand, cradling an imaginary stone. “What about the meteorite?” he asked. “Well Aleppo was in a territory that changed possession between Byzantines and Fatimids multiple times during this period, and no matter who was in charge, they could count on a man named al-Asfar to be a thorn in their sides. He claimed to be a devout dervish (at least when a Muslim ruler was in charge) but in fact was simply an opportunist out to get whatever he could. In the wake of the ‘non battle’ of Aleppo, al-Asfar came out to the field and inspected the still yellow-hot stone. He came back a few days later with a makeshift iron box on wheels with a door in front that he carefully rolled the stone into using poles.”

“A smart move,” commented Gus. “A hunk of iron glowing yellow hot would have a surface temperature of around 1000 °C.”

“Al-Asfar stuck a couple of long poles on the side,” Delver continued, “and hired some slaves to push and pull the box around.

“Al-Asfar rolled his box up to the walls of Aleppo, and demanded that the city surrender to him, or else face the wrath of his ‘sun stone’. The city, quite used to transfers of power, did what it was told. And before long al-Asfar had carved out a little kingdom for himself in Syria. His pattern would remain the same: walk up to a city in the predawn hours, open the little door in the box so everyone could see the glow, demand surrender, and then spend a few days in debauchery and plunder before moving on to the next city. Soon there was a second iron box being pushed around by slaves. This one was smaller, and was filled with gold and jewels instead of a meteor. Al-Asfar kept all the treasure. When the slaves asked what their reward was for pushing the heavy box around, he skinned their leader alive then answered the rest of them with the whip.

“When he reached the port city of Acre in northern Israel, the governor had the gall to call al-Asfar on his bluff, daring him to use his stone to level the city. The brigand had no idea how to handle this, so he got himself thoroughly drunk and fell asleep. His slaves took this opportunity to stab him to death then ran off with the box containing all the money. The next day, the governor ventured out to al-Asfar’s camp, figured out what happened, and loudly proclaimed himself victor of the ‘battle’. He then had the sun stone transferred to the top of a tower that was constructed for it on the eastern corner of the ramparts, so it could be seen by travelers coming upon the city at sunrise. Decades passed, and eventually the stone had changed color from yellow to red—”

“Meaning that it was only 700 °C instead of 1000 °C,” Gus added.

“Yes,” said Delver. “In an official ceremony in the year 1070, it was transferred to a new rampart on the western side of the city, so it lined up with the sunset now instead of the sunrise. It should be noted that in all this time, no one had ever touched the stone with their bare skin.

“In 1189, during the Third Crusade, the city of Acre was put under siege. The army of Saladin surrounded the Crusader army, thereby besieging the besiegers. In June of 1191, King Richard I ‘The Lionheart’ of England arrived, a man who was an expert at siege warfare. The final attack was on July 11th. By this point the supports of the ‘Sun Tower’ had been undermined by projectile fire, and so it was decided to deliberately collapse it upon the besiegers—to smite the Crusaders with the power of Allah. King Richard, at the forefront of the siege, was the one to be struck by the falling stone, knocked from the ladder he was climbing and onto the ground. The troops were so infuriated by this insult to their king that they carried the day, and followed their victory with a gruesome sack of the city.

“Richard, it turned out, was relatively unharmed from his fall, and in the wake of his army’s victory he insisted on inspecting the object which had been thrown at him. By this date it no longer glowed, but still radiated a detectable amount of heat. Richard removed his metal glove and touched the stone with his bare hand, and immediately fell unconscious.

“King Philip II Augustus of France lent his finest bloodletters, and yet not even that was enough to cure King Richard of his deathlike slumber. His body was moved to his ship, and he was surrounded at all times by priests praying for his soul. Finally he awoke on the 15th, but seemed to be in a daze. After regaining his strength he demanded to speak with Saladin, carrying wisdom from ‘beyond the grave’.

“Saladin had been very reluctant to meet with the Crusaders before now, partially for fear of deception, but mostly from the realization that the Crusaders had outfought him, and knew that any negotiations made now would act to make his losses permanent. But he had his share of superstitions, so he agreed to Richard’s request. He—”

Delver stopped on realizing that the limo had pulled up to the Holiday Inn in Toledo, Ohio, where they would be staying the night. “Richard and Saladin made peace,” he quickly summarized, “and everyone was amazed at Richard’s change in character. Tomorrow I’ll cover how Markism as a religion was born, and its effect on English history.”

Comments

[McPoodle]

This chapter is about the most useless one in the book, if all you're interested in is the main plot.

It exists to indulge my love of history, and to begin the weaving of an alternate history for this world.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I do love good alternate history, and this certainly qualifies. Eagerly looking forward to seeing how the ripples spread.

[Ms_Fruit_Bat]

A hot, hot magic rock
Also, I do love learning this weird alternate history you've concocted

[Jordan179]

8871084

The implication of its very slow cooling is that it had tremendous heat capacity. I'm guessing this is because its crystalline structure was twelve-dimensional, like the artisanal plate quasi-crystals.

Which also implies that it was heated by more than descent through the atmosphere. You see why? It would take great heat applied over a long time to change its temperature at all.

Incidentally, it would make awesome armor. I wouldn't be surprised if a plate of it of sufficient size could absorb a point-blank nuclear explosion without vaporizing.

[McPoodle]

9133285

Incidentally, it would make awesome armor. I wouldn't be surprised if a plate of it of sufficient size could absorb a point-blank nuclear explosion without vaporizing.

Ooh, I like the sound of that! I officially declare that fact to be canon to this universe.