This is a story inspired by an Armenian campaign I did, when I had brutally fought the Romans for control of the west. Read, critique, and above all enjoy!

Prologue: The Fall of Our Empire

The world would have been ours. Who could have stood against us, the chosen sons of Vahagan and Armazd, the mailed soldiers of the heavens, the bearers of the sacred flame? Not the savants of Arasces, or the craven plainsmen, the Scythians. Not the ruined empire of Seleukos, or the womanly Greeks, or the treacherous sons of Mithridates who ruled the Pontus. Even the men of Aegyptus, who we fought against for twenty hard years, lay at our feet, their chariots scattered into the desert. From Memphis, to Makedon, from Elam to Hyperborea did our empire stretch; none would stand against us, and the thunder of our mighty Kataphraktoi echoed from east to west.

Then came our undoing. From the darkness of the west there came an army, their ranks like iron and their swords shining like stars. Their leader, Brutus, came forth to speak with us, and we treated him with honor, for his people had conquered as much of the west as we had of the east. But his words were not of peace and friendship. In a fiery voice he demanded that we leave not just Hellas, which his masters greatly desired, but the Pontus and Aegyptus as well, lands that he looked upon with hunger.
Furious at the fool’s arrogance, our king had him turned away, to tell his craven masters that if even one of his people set foot on our lands, our warriors would swarm across the sea and storm his lands. As Brutus was hurled from our doors, his guards crucified behind him, he swore revenge. We laughed at him and mocked his words, but we did not know that this man, this arrogant Roman, would be the downfall of our empire.

And then, hardly a year later, Brutus returned. But he was not alone. At his back marched thousands upon thousands of his iron soldiers, men with hearts of steel and the strength of lions. Like a riptide they smashed into Hellas, scattering our stunned armies and sending them to flight. The barbarian Celtae and Getai, who had long made war upon our borders, joined with them and came upon us as well, joyfully sacking the cities we had denied them for so long. And yet worst of all was the betrayal of the cursed Parthian-bred satrap, Jahangir, who stabbed our brave soldiers in the back as they stood against Brutus at Athens. The traitor led the Romans in through a side gate, and so were our phalangitai and Kataphraktoi treacherously slaughtered. Hellas was lost to us in a month-long orgy of blood and betrayal, and yet still that was not all. Even as our enraged emperor, Aramu, led his armies and fleets into the Peloponnese to reclaim what the mongrel Romans had taken from us, our foes to the east, who we had subdued for almost a hundred years, came for us with fire and sword the lust for land.

The Sakae and Sauromatae, the barbarian horsemen of the plains rode through our lands in Scythia, ravaging our legions with their cowardly archers. Five times did our Kataphraktoi meet them upon the steppe and five times were they destroyed, for the plainsmen could turn on their horses and shoot us down even as we chased them. Far to the south, the black men of Kush stormed up the Nile and smashed into our territories in Aegyptus, our desperate phalangitai picked apart and slain by their terrifying elephants. And finally, in the very center of the empire, the wicked Greek turncoat Lysimachus rose up and led his “Sons of Alexandros” into Antioch, the richest city in all our lands. Vahagan and Armazd had surely turned their eyes from us, for our empire was being torn asunder, and all we could do was retreat.

It was seven years later, when Aegyptus had become a Kushite prize and Lysimachus had taken not just Antioch, but Hatra and Jerusalem as well, that the death knell was sounded for our empire. In Thracia our king Aramu made a last stand at Byzantium, two legions of Rome and an army of barbarian Getai at his gates. At the temple of the Greek god Ares he met the Roman, Brutus, sword-to-sword; in a duel that both armies paused to watch, Aramu stumbled and was pierced through the heart by the Roman’s gladius. Disheartened by the king’s death, our armies were cornered against the gates of the inner keep and slaughtered mercilessly.

After that, all we could do was retreat to the heartland. Anatolia and Pontos we gave up, along with Babylonia and Elam. We fled into the deepest strongholds of our home, into the cities of Kotais and Tigranocerta, into Phraaspa and Atraxerxia and Arsakia and into the countrysides that surrounded them. While the Romans glutted themselves in the west, and Lysimachus gleefully took over what we had left behind, our lands became a fortress.

Fifty years have passed since then. All Hellas and Anatolia is Roman, and Lysimachus, now an old man, pushes into the east, locked in war with the Baktrians and Soghidians. The Sakae and Sauromatae have spread all across the plains to the north; sometimes they make raids over the Black Sea, to pillage Roman Pontos. Far to the south, the men of Kush have taken Judea and Phoenicia from Lysimachus, preying upon his lands while he fights to the east.

War swirls around us in every direction, and our old enemies have all but forgotten us. But have not, and will not forget them. Let our Kataphraktoi don their helms and their mail; let our phalangitai strap on the sword and the spear. Let the horns of battle blow across the winds of the east, and let the cry of Vahagan’s name strike fear into the heart of our foes. For soon, we will rise up once more. We will rise up, and take back what is rightfully ours.

The world could have been ours. And perhaps, it still can be.

Perhaps.