Weeks had passed since King Ragnar oversaw the loading of rifled cannons into the bellies of his ironclad ships. Departing the freezing docks of City Titan, the primitive steamships crossed the Atlantic, their reinforced steel prows cutting effortlessly through the heavy waves.
Powered by boiling water and burning coal, they bypassed the limitations of wind and fragile wooden hulls. Belching thick clouds of black smoke into the sky, they carried elite Viking mercenaries and Tang laborers to establish the empire's first overseas military base on the Levantine coast. The industrialized North had finally arrived in the Middle East.
In the sprawling throne room of the Palace of the Green Dome in Baghdad, the geopolitical reality was fracturing. Caliph Harun al-Mu'tasim hurled a jewel-encrusted goblet against a marble pillar, shattering it.
