The Migration Period (4th–6th centuries)
You are standing in the Forum as Rome exhales its last grandeur. The marble is pocked with smoke; the air tastes of tallow and iron, and banners hang limp from empty standards. Imperial law frays while bands of Goths, Huns, Vandals and Lombards move like dark weather across the map, and you must carry what matters and abandon the rest. You join convoys and broken legions, barter with strangers, bribe officials, or strike out alone toward unknown rivers and lonely mountain passes. Winters bite, rivers rage, whispers of treachery follow every campfire, and alliances are brittle as frost. Loyalties shift—former enemies become guides, neighbors become rivals—and every night brings the weight of who you protect and what you are willing to risk. You step into a world on fire; every road is both promise and threat. Walk the ruined ways, read the faces around your fire, and keep moving until the map looks different than it did when you began.
Look inside
Rain washes soot down the fluted columns of the Forum Boarium, turning the gutter stones slick beneath your worn sandals. Rome smells of wet ash and spoiled grain, an imperial capital emptied of its legions and starved by broken supply lines from Africa. In the shadow of the Temple of Portunus, vendors sell scorched olive oil at extortionate rates to citizens wrapped in coarse wool mantles, their proud togas long abandoned for practical barbarian garments. You carry a sealed cedar cylinder beneath your cloak, an urgent missive entrusted to you by a dying notary of the imperial chancery with orders to carry it north to Ravenna before Odoacer's federate troops close the Flaminian Way. The wax seal bears the double-headed eagle of the Western court, pressed over cords of braided crimson silk. Your contact was meant to meet you beneath the arches of the Cloaca Maxima's ancient outfall, bearing horses and a safe-conduct slip stamped by the Magister Militum. A slender woman in a dark red tunic steps from behind a ruined brick pier, pulling her linen palla tight against the damp wind. Severina wears a silver signet ring upon her right hand—the mark of an ancient senatorial house—and her…
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