November 2nd

On November 2nd, 1418, the short yet bloody war between the Utrecht bishopric and the Teutonic Knights came to a dramatic close. Bishop Frederick of Blankenheim had seized assets from the Teutonic monastery adjacent to the Cathedral of Saint Martin and sent them to Philip of Burgundy. The Teutonic Knights, who were allied with Jacqueline of Bavaria, Philip's adversary in the second Hook and Cod War, were outraged and attempted to restore their wealth by kidnapping Frederick and holding him hostage. But Frederick, paranoid as ever, lived beyond the Teutonic reach within the fortified cathedral. His army of mercenary alter boys rained arrows and other missiles down on the Teutonic besiegers. The Teutonic Knights retreated to near-by Ijsselstein to prepare for a second assault, but it was an ill-fated move. Just before dawn on November 2nd, Frederick's alter boys flooded the canals and destroyed the dams protecting Ijsselstein. Though few actually died in the deluge, the sodden town was soon struck low by plague. Before the month was through the entire population of Ijesselstein was either dead or relocated. Utrecht expanded, consuming its conveniently conquered neighbor and has held Ijsselstein ever since.

November 1st

The separation between church and state has its roots in a theo-political debate that took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on November 1st, 1623. There had been tensions between the puritan Calvinist separatists known as Pilgrims and the Strangers, a heterogeneous group of European adventurers seeking gold and asylum from the polemic religious fervor gripping Britain, since the Mayflower first departed on its western journey. The strain was exacerbated upon landfall as the Pilgrims and Strangers attempted to contrive a charter for their shared village. The Pilgrims desired the creation of a theocracy in which a congress of Calvinist ministers would act as legislators, interpreters, and executors of the law. The Strangers lobbied for a plutocracy in which an individual's power to create or defy legislation would increase as his personal cache filled with New English gold. Initial hopes for amicable deliberation soon proved naive, and the proceedings descended into factional strife. The antipathy came to a head on the evening of November 1st as the village debated what percentage of the annual harvest was appropriate to sacrifice to John Calvin when a Stranger named Mordecai Wayne suggested (as recorded in his personal diary) that "questions of a theological, ritual, and superstitious nature ought to be the concern of the individual and not our village." Mordecai Wayne's words provoked fury from the Pilgrims and a riot erupted. The riot was accompanied by a conflagration which consumed most of the buildings in the village and, according to Mordecai Wayne, "smoldered into the new year." In the days following the riot the rift between the Pilgrims and the Strangers widened until the Strangers were chased out of town altogether. Mordecai Wayne was named mayor of the new village of Wessagussett on Christmas day, 1623. However, the community's gold-based economy soon languished as the land denied prospectors their expected due. Starving, Mordecai Wayne led Wessagussettians raiding parties into Plymouth frequently well into the late 17th century.

October 29th

Merry Cyrus the Great Day, est. 529BCE! On this day in history Cyrus the Great officially recognized the undeniable rights of all individuals by publishing the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cylinder thanks the god Marduk for sending Cyrus to Babylon, liberating the city from the tyrannical King Nabonidas. According to Herodotus, Cyrus arrived at the gates of the city unarmed, refusing to meet Nabonidas' troops in battle. Cyrus declared that such a battle would only prove who was the better general, not the better king. Afraid Cyrus' nonviolent civil disobedience would lead the Babylonians to embrace the Perian would-be conquerer, Nabonidas decided to ride out and face him in person. If Cyrus would not fight, then he would die. But Cyrus' sage serenity had been a ploy. Once Nabonidas was outside of his city gates, he was immediately ambushed by jewish guerrillas to whom Cyrus had promised the Babylonian Captivity would end under his watch. The Cyrus Cylander does not, as some claim, affirm the abolition of slavery, a minimum wage, national determination, political asylum, a flat tax, and freedom from state-mandated re-distrobution of wealth. However, the Yale University's JB Nies confirms the Cylander protects Babylonians' right to embrace Cyrus as their sole sovreign and to prohibits the building of a synagogue at the spot where Nabonidas was slayn. The Cyrus Cylander was later shattered by Cyrus son, the mad king Cambyses, in an effort to kill the god Marduk if he lived inside. When Cambyses found the cylander contained only rock and no god, he promptly raised and army to march against the Apis Bull, "a more killable god."

October 28th

Disabusing History: October 28th, 1840, the dark shadow of Tsar Ivan VI falls over Russia on his corronation day. Mere weeks after announcing Ivan as her heir, Empress Anna of Russia was found dead sealed within her palace of ice. Thirteen months of terror followed for Russia until the would-be Empress, Elizabeth, stormed St. Petersburg with her militia. By the time Elizabeth made her way to Ivan's throne room, the Tsar was gone. Ivan had escaped to his fortress at Daugavgrid on the North Sea. He refused to let his name be uttered until he had reclaimed his throne, instead he dubbed himself "The Nameless One." Initially sending annual invasions to seize St. Petersburg, The Nameless One was never able to successfully beseige Elizabeth's impregnable Winter Palace. Eventually driven mad by his legacy of failure and suspicious that his own entourage would betray him, The Nameless One mandated only he be allowed to set foot in Daugavgrid. He spent nearly twenty years in seclusion until one day in 1876, exitting his fortress for the first time in more than a decade, Ivan was mistaken for an intruder by a guard. He was arrested and executed before anyone realized his identity. Daugavgrid was razed and The Nameless One's body was never found.