{ Where England Can Begin }

LONDON, ENGLAND. The capital of the world's largest and most powerful empire. Home to the greatest parliament of magicians since the house of Solomon almost three millennia ago. The pinnacle of governmental fortitude, the home of the world's greatest magical resources, and the vanguard of the modern age.

BUT ALL IS NOT UTOPIA. The British Empire's Czech nemeses are growing restless, stirring in their gloomy fortress of Prague. It is all the magicians' police forces can do to quell murmurs of uprising before they begin. Prague is in disarray, broken and forgotten, but it is not without ancient secrets of its own.
And it's not without allies, either: the Thirteen American Colonies themselves have begun complaining of mistreatment by Mother England, and if the Americans decide to rebel, London will not be able to support a war on two fronts.

AND THAT'S NOT THE ONLY PROBLEM. Tired of the Ministry's ever-watchful eye, the nonmagical commoners long ruled over by the magicians have begun to grow uneasy. A small but vocal faction has risen up to denounce the government with preposterous claims of tyranny, oppression, violence, and cruelty. They refuse to accept that the vigilance spheres instructed to watch their every move do so wholly for their safety; or that the nightly nine-o-clock curfew is merely to protect them from the dangerous demons that walk the London streets at night; or that the fact that the most vocal of the government's detractors seem to vanish without a trace is merely an example of the Ministry exercising its right to keep the peace by any means necessary. Isolated but increasingly numerous and daring attacks have sprung up all over the city, fruits of the so-called "Resistance's" labours to illustrate their dissatisfaction at the magicians' subjugation.

WHAT'S WORSE, the magicians' rule is continually threatened from the inside as well. The government is an unsteady juggernaut of self-perpetuating betrayal, backstabbing, muckraking, and revenge. In the capital of the world, status is power, and power is everything. Political plots are a dime a dozen — which makes the serious threats all the more dangerous, masked as they are by a continual web of deceit.

AND, OF COURSE, THERE ARE THE DEMONS. The magicians' great wealth of power, and great they are indeed; but there has never been a demon that a magician could trust. It is only with scores upon scores of complicated rules, sigils, traps, and false pleasantries that the magicians are able to bind these wicked, willful, deadly creatures.
So strong and malicious are they that a magician must spend nearly a quarter of his life in an apprenticeship, learning to control them, before he is even allowed a minor position in the government.

AND IF A FEW MAGICAL BOMBS DROPPED BY DISILLUSIONED COMMONERS IS BAD, IMAGINE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF A TRULY POWERFUL DEMON GOT LOOSE FROM ITS BINDINGS AND DECIDED TO TAKE THAT WHICH IT CRAVED MOST... REVENGE.


Where England Can Begin