When the Empire fell

When the empire fell, the survivors told stories around campfires, about the cannibal peoples who called themselves Godless, yet worshipped at the altar of Mammon, of Custodes and Patria. The strange people who it was said had electric hearts that would not weep to hear of children drowned in their name. Lifeless, mechanical folk, who read from the book and said that it was just and good that a person can die, for they broke the law, the law which said that there were invisible lines across the lands, and those who were born on the good side were good and pure and deserved to live, and those who were born on the bad side were bad and were to be given in sacrifice.

It is not known how the empire fell, but some say that Poseidon, grown powerful on the sacrifices made within his dominion, one day commanded the very sea to boil in jealousy and fury in order to strike at Mammon. Others say that it was Persephone who, sickened at the sight of so many children in hell, petitioned Hades. Upon learning of the horrors that the mortals of the empire had wrought, he commanded that the gates of death be flung open. 

 

The stories tell of a day when the sky darkened to a pitch curtain, rent with forks of lightning, and the very sea broiled red. It was said that white horses rose up from the froth of the sea, their manes stained scarlette and their nostrils and hooves spraying the froth of blood. On the backs of these horses rode the corsairs, the pirates, and the lost sea captains, and there were pale mares for every soul that had ever been drowned in those waters.

It is said that this ghostly army walked upon the surface of the waters and marched on the machine folk, and that their mechanical hearts seized at the very sight. Perhaps the saltwater shortcircuited them, some say. Others report that the machine folk, on seeing the souls return from damnation, cried and set to themselves, and tore down the altars to Custodes. It is said that in the coasts of the empire, the cliffs of Lesvos and Gibraltar and Lampedusa and Dover, were stained red that day, and that Persephone walked amongst the living, and counted the souls, and for every soul that was released from hell she chose a mortal to take its place, choosing only from those who had not wept. 

 

Opinions differ on the subject of whether those souls were eaten by Cerberus or not. The stories do agree on this, though: that of the empire, nothing remains but ghost stories.