fear the Emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Midgard Midgard diverges from real history in 860, when the Viking captains Hoskuld and Tyri set out to sack Mikligardr (Constantinople) while emperor Michael III "the Drunkard" was campaigning against the Saracens. In our history their fleet turned back; in Midgard they captured the city and were given the secret of Greek fire by religious dissidents, enabling them to destroy the Byzantine fleet on its return. With the riches of the city, a garrison left to hold it, and Greek fire, the Vikings' future raids against southern Europe were vastly more successful. Combined with the effects of the invasions of Europe by the Bulgars and Magyars, Christian Europe had no hope of survival. The "current year" is 1412; the pre-eminent Norse powers are Danemark (Denmark), Svearika (Sweden), Gardarika (a Varangian-founded territory stretching across northern Eurasia), and Vinland in North America. Christianity still exists, but it must compete with Norse paganism and "Thorism", a syncretic religion where Thor fights on man's behalf in Heaven in return for fealty in the afterlife. Other political entities of note include the Ming Empire, the Yanomami Caliphate and the Kingdom of Sikel. Caliph Caliph is perhaps the strangest of the Alternate Earths settings. The "current year" is only 1683 but the world is technologically far in advance of our present day. The point of divergence which made this possible is the invention of the printing press in the Abbasid Caliphate during the 9th century, which enabled the emergence of an Islamic Renaissance and consequent technological development about seven centuries ahead of real history. Calculus was devised in the early 11th century, oil-powered steamships were first built in the mid-13th century, and man first walked on the moon in 1434. The globe is divided between Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam (which comprises the four Muslim caliphates, the allied Christian Firanj (France and Germany) and China) and Dar al-Harb, the House of War, or those lands not governed by the dictates of the Ulama and the Islamic Shari'a law they define and apply to the Dar al-Islam. The secular Jamahariya Alliance (based in the New World) controls a third of the globe along with its ally, the totalitarian Caliphate of Hind (India); they are currently pushing for further conquest in an ultra-tech world that has not seen global war in centuries. Humanity has also spread to the