Chapter 116: Propaganda

September 5, 221 AD, Genava (Alpine Fortress), Gallia.

Just five days before the terror settled over the Senate halls of Rome, the highland fortress of Genava was already fighting its final week...

The civilian populace ran screaming through the streets, seeking shelter in their cellars, while Roman garrison troops rushed toward the shaking southern walls.

An invading force, unlike the unorganized barbarian hordes that traditionally plagued the Alpine passes, had besieged the wealthy city at dawn.

The enemy didn’t use battering rams, scaling ladders, or wooden siege engines.

Instead, they utilized bizarre, spring-loaded torsion engines to hurl leather-wrapped spheres.

Whenever these spheres struck the stone masonry of the city wall, they detonated with a roar of chemical fire and concussive force, shattering the rock.

Inside the praetorium, an emergency war council was hastily convened among the city’s patrician elite.

"Magistrate, who in Jupiter’s name is attacking us?" Tribune Drusus, a young officer, demanded, slamming his fist onto the table.

He glared at the elderly man sitting calmly at the head of the council.

Magistrate Flavius was seventy-two years old, his face deeply lined with decades of political and military experience.

He didn’t lead the council because of his martial prowess, but because he was the only man in the room who had actually fought in a real war.

Flavius rubbed his temples, listening to the distant explosions rocking his city.

"They are not Helvetii tribesmen, and they are certainly not Germanic raiders. Their armor is uniform, forged of a strange steel I have never seen before." The old man sighed. "I suspect they are the rebels from the south. The ones they call the Syndicate."

The younger aristocrats in the room exchanged bewildered looks.

"The Syndicate?" Drusus scoffed, crossing his arms and leaning back. "That is a myth fabricated by frightened merchants to drive up the price of iron. You are telling me an army of rebellious blacksmiths marched hundreds of miles through hostile territory to lay siege to an impregnable Roman fortress?"

Flavius shot the young Tribune a withering, exhausted glare. "You isolate yourselves in this mountain fortress, drinking wine, blind to the shifting tides of the world because you do not own a navy. I assure you, Tribune, the explosions currently tearing down our southern wall are not a myth."

The grim certainty in the old magistrate’s voice finally silenced the room.

They had assumed they were untouchable behind their ancient walls...

"Should we send riders to Legate Rufinus?" another patrician asked, his voice trembling slightly with newfound hope. "He marched forty thousand infantry toward Arausio just a month ago. Surely he can divert a legion to relieve us."

Flavius let out a bitter laugh that chilled the room. "If the Syndicate is sitting outside our gates with thousands of infantry, what do you think happened to Rufinus at Arausio?"

The realization hit the council like a blow to the stomach.

To reach Genava, the Syndicate would have had to march directly through the Rhone valley.

If they were here, it meant the vaunted, invincible Roman vanguard had been completely and utterly annihilated.

"Then... should we open the gates?" Drusus swallowed hard.

Flavius frowned, drumming his wrinkled fingers on the table. "How long can the masonry hold against those explosive spheres?"

The captain of the garrison stepped forward. "A week, Magistrate. No more. The blasts are degrading the mortar. We attempted to sally out through the western postern gate to flank their artillery, but the enemy possesses repeating crossbows. They shredded two centuries of our best men before we even closed half the distance to their lines."

Flavius closed his eyes. "Very well. We hold the walls for a week. Send messengers through the hidden northern goat paths to the Helvetii chieftains. Promise them Roman gold, land, anything they want. If we do not break this siege ourselves, we will all be crucified by the Forge Master."

Just beyond the range of the Roman archers, Commander Valerius sat on a wooden ammunition crate, thoroughly annoyed.

He stared up at the walls of Genava, watching a specialized squad of *Custodes* engineers crank the torsion springs of their modified grenade-throwers.

*Thwack. BOOM!*

A section of the Roman parapet shattered, raining deadly stone shrapnel down into the city streets.

Valerius let out a frustrated sigh. "I miss Decimus," he grunted to his senior lieutenant, Kaelus, who was standing nearby.

"The bombards would have reduced that wall to gravel in an hour," Kaelus agreed.

"I know," Valerius muttered, crossing his arms.

Decimus’s massive *Grapeshot Bombards* weighed several tons each.

Dragging them up the steep, muddy mountain trails to Genava was a logistical impossibility.

Valerius was forced to rely on the much lighter, spring-loaded grenade throwers, which meant this siege would take an agonizing week instead of a single afternoon...

Furthermore, Valerius was operating completely blind.

Without the open plains to deploy his cavalry scouts, he was forced to wait for Silas and the *Umbrae* to secure the surrounding peaks.

Silas was currently navigating the treacherous mountain passes fifty miles to the west, delayed by harsh weather and localized rockfalls.

Valerius leaned back, resigning himself to a slow week of explosive attrition.

He just hoped Silas arrived before the Romans managed to rally any local mountain tribes to their defense.

...

September 6, 221 AD, Civitas Aurelia, Gallia.

Three hundred miles to the south, Lucius stood inside a newly constructed brick warehouse.

He was standing before his newest, and arguably most dangerous, invention:

A massive, steam-powered rotary printing press.

Lucius had recently made an incredibly difficult personal request of Valeria.

He had asked her to write a comprehensive, damning memoir detailing the corruption, the political assassinations, and the gross moral decay of the Roman Senate.

He knew the request would cause her immense emotional distress, dragging up the darkest, most traumatic memories of her past.

Yet, Lucius had no other choice.

She was the only person in the empire perfectly suited for the task.

Firstly, Valeria possessed the educated literary prose that the Roman elite respected.

She knew exactly how to weave philosophy with devastating emotional narrative.

Secondly, as a former patrician who had narrowly escaped the Senate’s treachery, her perspective was undeniably authentic.

*Clack-clack-clack. HSSSS!*

The roar of the steam-press pulled Lucius from his thoughts.

He watched as iron rollers continuously stamped white sheets of paper with intricate, detailed woodblock imagery.

While Valeria was currently drafting the sophisticated literary memoir designed to break the morale of the educated Roman aristocracy, Lucius was overseeing the mass production of visual propaganda.

He was printing millions of cheap pamphlets.

Because the vast majority of the Roman plebeians and auxiliary soldiers were illiterate, the pamphlets relied entirely on visceral, easily understood imagery.

They depicted fat, grotesque Senators hoarding grain while skeletal Roman children starved, contrasted sharply with heroic images of the Syndicate’s prosperity, overflowing granaries, and fair courts.

Lucius intended to flood the Italian peninsula with this propaganda.

He wanted to bypass the legions and strike directly at the foundation of the Roman Empire.

By the time Commander Valerius marched the *Custodes* out of the Alps and into the Italian heartland, Lucius intended for the Roman plebeians to welcome them not as conquerors, but as desperate liberators.

But for now, all the Forge Master could do was wait for the black ink to dry...