Prelude

Professor Richards blinked unsteadily as he exited the tent. Raising a hand to shield his eyes, he found himself staggering a bit before the blast of furnace-hot air that greeted him. He resisted the urge to tug at the neck of his three-piece suit. That was the culprit, after all. Knowing how futile it was—first, because his shirt was heavily starched, and second, because everyone was watching him—was enough to make him resist. He was all too conscious of the looming stage in front of , the towering large screen projector blocking his view of the teams of reporters waiting just on the other side. When he circled around the back and climbed onto the podium, he knew how they already wanted to look at them. The crazy, irrelevant, forgetful old professor that with thinning, salt-and-pepper hair, wandering through deserts to dig up pottery shards, and waste away researching the only thing more uninteresting than his own life. It was obvious how they wanted to pin him. And thus the suit, and the big to-do.

In another moment, he was there. He waited a moment for the chopper to finish cutting overhead towards the landing pad. Remarkably, it was silent—and having caught the emblem on its door, so was Richards. In turn, seeing him onstage brought the whole crowd to a hush. In the background, the roughly two dozen officials from around the globe perked up expectantly in their seats behind him. His head spun, and he looked out over the crowd. Camera lights flickered from red to green. Impressive crowd for the middle of nowhere. He shuffled his papers. Solid green now. He cleared his throat, flushed slightly, and found himself shrinking away from his moment of professional glory. Fumbling quickly through his coat pocket, he chose to say nothing, and instead simply a produced a flat, silver, coin-like object the diameter of his fist. There was a collective gasp as the large screen projector showed a close up of the bas-relief hawk head dominating its face.

Confident, he leaned into the microphone and said:

“We are pleased to announce something to announce something beyond even our wildest imaginations. The information we have discovered both confirms and radically alters the ‘mother culture’ hypothesis pulled straight from Atlantis fairy tales. I believe that what we have found will fundamentally alter the way that humanity as a whole perceives itself, and its legacy on this Earth. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

Falling into the role, he paused a moment before announcing grandly, “Ladies and gentlemen. I am proud to announce to you, the discovery of the royal archives of King Narmer.”

The crowd erupted with applause.

***

(Note to Readers: This is the only time I’ll clue you in like this. But to establish the basics, a Warlord game played as the Egyptians. I’ll be posting multiple different viewpoints to give you snapshots of important moments in the game’s progression. Twists are in store for both how the game ends, and how we get to the future we see in this post. Hope you follow along.)