title: Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author:  Karen Radner 
description: <br />"An incredibly succinct and valuable introduction to ancient Assyria. . . I highly recommend this book." - <em>Ancient History Encyclopedia</em>
zlib_text: The Pact
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Sarah Cawkwell
  
  And the stolen voices of his venerable kin will welcome him, embrace him and
  bear him to the heart of our scarred past, the first home of the Argent Order.
  There, the ashes of the great destroyer lie mingled with the fading embers of
  our birth, two banners falling as one to call him back. Back to the beginning.
  Then will the past be revealed.
  
   From The Orthodoxy of Varsavia, Author Unknown, 221.M37
  
  Nothing had survived.
  
  Once, according to the records, the planet Lyria had boasted fertile and
  verdant grassland which generated seemingly endless supplies of food for the
  people of the Imperium. Agri-habs had dotted the landscape in the south of the
  single large continental mass and people had worked the soil diligently. The
  mountains and rockier terrain in the north had been far less hospitable. But
  as the saying went, where there was a will there was a way and the indigenous
  tribal people of the world settled wherever they could find flat ground. Thu