Chronicle 55 Anno Stellae 7537, Chronicle 56 Anno Stellae 8033, Chronicle 57 Anno Stellae 8507: RetroStar Chronicles, #3

By R.D. Ginther

Chronicles 55 returned us to Babelen where the next generation of Sharru found himself in financial difficulties and his kingdom on the verge of toppling. With a great scheme to bring his country back to the top tier of industry, Sharru left on a conquest leaving his son to reign in his stead. This turned out to be a grave mistake for both rulers, as the son of Sharru, a lover of great decadence, could not resist defiling the holy articles of the Jewish temple. This put him in a very unusual predicament where the aged Daniyel was once against sought out for his wisdom in strange phenomenons. After a grave warning, Daniyel disappeared from off the scene, or so it seemed; leaving Babalen to face its doom.

 

Chronicle 56 gives an insight as to the true purpose of the mysterious jewel-stones seen throughout the eras on Earth II. Each stone, the next one more evil and diabolical than the one before it, sought out fertile 'land' to sow its chaos, with the hope of recreating its kingdom in the process. After Babelen failed, the star-jewel found another ideal target to restart the process of building again. The famed Iskander the Great happened to be its focus, but his rule was short-lived. Wally the pedometer pondered on the Algols, a fiercely wicked species of aliens who were considered as gods by Iskander and his people, but in actual fact the evil power behind the jewel-stones. But all was not lost, as FC became the dominant controlling player in the wargame, destroying stone after stone, showing them and even Wally that he was the unpredictable wildcard in the game.

 

Chronicle 57 introduced us to yet another evil jewel-stone, sapphire, which brought more evil than any other stone before it. More of FC's plans were revealed as the book called The War of Heaven and Earth was introduced along with a training manual held and instituted by Daniyel. FC was raising up his army of alphabet warriors who would prove to be the strangest yet the most extraordinary individuals. Brun happened to be one of those warriors, who entered into the picture as a captive first, then a husband to Andromeda and then a father to many children. Next was Molu who was even more extraordinary and with these two warriors in particular, the story takes unusual twists turns, revealing more about the evil agenda of the Algols. Yet more evil entities were introduced called the Gorgon sisters, who happened to be more fiercely wicked than the Algols. These creatures were tied to the Atlanteans led by Chief and Commander Elektra, and were somewhat shunned by them for obvious reasons. In the end, most of these entities were handled by FC and his army of extraordinary alphabet warriors, using unusual tactics to devastate these evil entities' agenda for world domination and destruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: Jun 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201324117

Book preview

Volume III,

Battles of the DUBESOR in the

Days of the Dire Night

Chronicler Gabriel Tall Chief

Book 1

"For God is my King from of old, working salvation

in the midst of the Earth;

You divided the sea by Your strength. 

You broke the heads of dragons in the waters,

you broke the heads of Leviathan

and gave them as food to the people in the wilderness...

the day is thine, the night also is thine...

—Old Hebrew victory chant from the Book

of the War of Heaven and Earth"

"The stone which was rejected by the builders

now has become the chief cornerstone."

—Old Hebrew paean from the Book of the

War of Heaven and Earth"

"First the rosebud of life, then the rose of eternity.

—Joseph Forgione, Poet Laureate of New Jersey,

Pre-Holland America State, ANNO STELLAE 1996"

"The West Rose Window of the Washington

National Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul,

Mount St. Albans, Washington, D.C., is over 25 feet

in diameter, contains 10,500 pieces of stained glass,

and represents the Creation.

—Excerpt from a writing taken from the Cathedral ruins"

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD,

And His train filled the temple.

—Prophet Isaiah in the Book of the Wars of Heaven and Earth"

CHRONICLE 55

ANNO STELLAE 7537

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN

The Sharru of  the ill-starred Colossus died in peace in his palace,  and another like him but not as great  took his place.  His eldest son ruled until the two reigns together attained threescore and almost ten years. 

Daniyel now was an aged man.  Though rarely called to court now, his wise counsel was still remembered and valued, but there was little resort to it since the kingdom and dynasty fared well, it seemed.

Peace and prosperity abounded in the kingdom and its tributaries.  It seemed to many that things would always go on that way—Babelen the Great forever!

Suddenly, with no apparent warning, the golden head began to totter.  The Sharru, grasping for remedies, consulted everyone but Daniyel.

Trade was down, far down from former levels.  Nobody wanted Babelen’s wonderful, somewhat over-priced goods anymore.  Hating the heavy surcharges and the short-changing, false weights and measures and other trickeries of Babelen, caravans bypassed her marts and cities grew rich on the fringes of the realm, stripping the Sharru of much needed taxable income.

His advisers came to one solid conclusion about the crisis.  Seize the distant trade-cities  siphoning off cash flow and suckers from Babelen and put them all out of business!  If the caravans had no alternative, they would be forced to return to Babelen.

On the surface, the strategy seemed perfect.

The Sharru, outfitting his army,  set out at its head;  he was determined to see his generals did exactly what he had commanded.  This was just too important a mission; if bungled, Babelen was bankrupt!  If successful, Babelen would overflow with rivers of gold once again, as it had under his father.

His father?   A come-back to his father’s level of income would be a hard scrabble battle to win!

The Sharru even had to strip the gold and jewels from his father’s tomb for provisions and to arm his fighting forces.  It was done under cover of night, of course, so the citizenry would not see and be offended by his desecration of the temples and his impious act.

Many people, though grown old, recalled the former Sharru and his memory was reverenced, along with the Invisible God the king’s chief seer, Daniyel the Jew, had made known to the Sharru. 

Now he himself did not place any stock in the Invisible God; he preferred old, traditional gods he could see and touch.  Restoring many old temples, he gained much support for his throne from his own generation, though, in doing so, he forewent the favor of his father’s generation, of which many held on to the Invisible God. 

So the anxious, purse-poor Sharru set out from Babelen, leaving a son, Dauphin Prince Nir-e-shaddrezzar,  behind as Second Sharru (a regent, except in title). 

The old monarch was no sooner out of the gates of his capital than Nir-e-shaddrezzar began acting like his father had turned everything over to him and he would be gone forever. 

He proclaimed a Kingdom Jubilee to initiate his reign, calling on the priesthoods of all the temples to present themselves in the royal parade.

Taxes were not abolished on that day, it is true, but the faux Sharru made up for it with vast expenditures on the entertainments and banquets. 

The truly glorious hand of  the Invisible God, which not only laid bare the heart of kings to Daniyel, but had previously lifted Yosef in one triumphant move from prison to palace, was utterly forgotten in the young ruler’s agenda.

He favored all gods, high and low.  The more gods in the kingdom’s board of trustees, the better, he reasoned.  He discriminated against none and upheld the rights of his subjects to worship them in any way they wished, however many children were sacrificed in the present generation, or how many abominations were committed by the cult prostitutes in the streets, not hidden behind temple walls.

When parading through the city, he paid no attention to the many thousands queued up to drink the popular cheap soups whose taste was enhanced by miscarriages or fast-food meals consisted of extracted infant brains mixed with spices and the ubiquitous MSG (men, sausage ground,  processed from executed criminals) spread on nifty buns.

To him, the gods were a very good idea, and no practice of piety too base even if it leaned heavily to the highly profitable trade that depended on the sacrifice of the unborn and the recently born.  Let the human-devouring gods of his fathers’ favor his mighty city and kingdom, Babelen, in turn!

Unifying his supporters with this plan, Nir-e-shaddrezzar embarked on a spending spree of  unparalleled pomp and splendor,  satisfying the whims of  greed and self-indulgence.  Meanwhile, his father, out of sight, out of mind, wearily plowed through burning sands  and wildernesses with a sweating army to find and level Babelen’s economic competition. 

Daniyel,  cast into obscurity by the worldly court, but still active in prayer for the restoration of  his people and the Temple, kept to his house and high-walled courtyard.

He knew what was happening around him.  His fellow Jews came with reports that the new king’s tax collectors were bearing down especially hard on them—seizing all the goods of their shops if they resisted the huge new levies to pay for the Jubilee. 

Jewish widows were driven out of houses left to them by loving husbands, and everything sold to pay the death and estate taxes to benefit the king. 

If a hard-working, thrifty Jew had bought his freedom and had come into ownership of  a vineyard,  that was taken and sold, and he was returned to it a pauper and a slave to work on it for a new owner, some wealthy court official usually.

On and on the accounts went, how the new Sharru had exceeded the grasp of his absentee father,  robbing people outright, particularly when they were found to be believers in the Invisible God. 

To add fuel to the outrage, the Sharru continually commanded new additions to the palace, all paid for by stiff new levies. 

Though starving widows and children filled the streets,  the palace soared several more floors,  each more splendid than the other.

The temples, too, cashed in due to the Sharru’s patronage of them in response to the temples’ contributions to his people’s economic stimulus programs  and the national defense and war campaign fund.  Their coffers overflowed with stolen Jewish gold, and his too, though nothing went out to the old Sharru beating the bushes of the Arabian deserts and wilderness to turn the caravans back through Babelen. 

Daniyel soon found himself with so many hungry people at his door, he turned his house into a soup kitchen, but with a difference, no MSG, no baby brains, no sausage that could be made of anything from dogs to cadavers to rats.

Drawing on his life’s savings, and utilizing his portion from the Sharru’s prophet pension until the economizing Sharru ordered it discontinued, he fed hundreds of old men,  women, and children, mainly oppressed Jewry.

How long could he do so?  he wondered.  How long would the young Sharru continue to oppress the people so pitilessly?  Would it stop when his father returned?

Daniyel prayed fervently for the return of the old king to come and restore former laws respecting the Jews—which were utterly disregarded by Nir-e-shaddrezzar. 

Finally, when Daniyel faced his own impoverishment trying to feed a multitude of the poor, the palace lit up with the royal banquet for the Royal Jubilee.  This was the climax of month-long festivities during which Babelen filled with chanting, sumptuously-dressed priests of every god of  Babelen,  dancing girls,  bears,  magicians performing tricks, and all the rest of  the religious circus. 

The whole capital became drunk with free lager and wine dispensed by the celebrating Sharru. 

Soldiers danced with street hookers, generals and statesmen with palace harem concubines, the Sharru with the pick of his own private harem. 

From walls to palace the city became one great party.  The temples were decorated as richly as the palace.   Restored to full royal favor they strove to outdo each other in processions, number of sacrificed animals, and free services of cult prostitutes, both male and female.

A thick clouds of incense and smoke hung over the city like a shroud, morning to night, and there was no ceasing in the music-making, drinking, and dancing.

If anything, the celebration grew more intense as night fell.  Celebrants were getting robbed,  beaten, and sometimes killed, but few kept safely indoors as nobody wanted to miss the fun.  Some houses were set afire, and people gathered, but they were laughing, not bothering to help the victims caught inside. 

It was all part of the entertainments, and no one seemed to care if the fire spread.  Soldiers drunkenly came to investigate.  But when they found they were Jews’ houses, nothing more was done. People came to roast their (BBB’s) baby brain buns on the coals and warm their MSG sausages which they washed down with the Sharru’s free lager. 

Daniyel, keeping indoors all during the riotous day of the state banquet,  felt the world was coming to an end.

His expectation of the Restoration of the Jewish kingdom and temple was dashed once again. 

He prayed but felt there was nothing else he could do.  His own prophecies, apparently, would now come to pass, fulfilled by this excuse for a man and ruler, the so-called Second Sharru.

The Dire Night he had foreseen for the world was now fast descending upon them.

Instead of wisely conserving what remained in the Royal Treasury, the Second Sharru was flinging off all restraint in royal expenditures. 

The whole apparatus of his government was affected.  If the state prisons were unable to supply set quotas for MSG, then they had to resort to making sausages of the living prisoners.  When the living prisoners were processed, the authorities commanded more arrests, so the police got busier.   The arrests soon grew numerous enough to keep the MSG production at prescribed levels and a crisis was averted. 

At the apex of the system, the Sharru gave no heed to a devastating Crunch coming to Babelen.  Why should he?    His hundred or so gods and thousands of priests serving them promised him a river of  gold and pleasure that would never cease flowing.

Wearing a perpetual smile Nir-e-shaddrezzar appeared before the people at state of the kingdom events and spoke and put the best construction on the conditions under his rule. 

His statesmen and generals, though worried about the lapse in royal funding for the outlying garrisons and even the capital’s protection, could not convince the Second Sharru there was any danger.  Nor did they particularly believe there was any danger as there hadn’t been a major conflict for years with a serious foe.

The great defensive Wall of the Plain was not even guarded;  the militia was de-commissioned and  sent home without pay. 

The spy service was also sharply curtailed, except in the capital and palace, to forestall any opportunist who might wish to be Sharru in Nire-e-shaddrezzar’s stead. 

To show everyone that he was in charge, the Sharru sent token forces out form the city to make peace in rebellious or restless districts, where the citizens were fighting amongst themselves over scraps of food in the empty granaries and storehouses since the farmers had all fled away, unable to pay their crushing, high taxes.

He himself rode out and reviewed his peace-keeping troops, but soon left to return to the joys and amenities of the capital. 

No ruler of  Babelen before had done things in this personal, on-site fashion—or to such a degree.  Yet the kinglet (for he was no great king as he made himself out) grew bolder as time went on and his father still tarried in distant lands.  Was his father ill?  There was rumor of that.   

What was to be done with such a Ludwig II, the mad, spendthrift king of Bavaria equivalent at the helm of state?   If they had access to the temple archives, they might have found old, old accounts telling about that ruler who drained Bavaria’s treasury dry as he built the most extravagant edifices,  palace after palace he would never reside in,  for no other reason than he wished to fashion in stone, marble, crystal, gold and silver, what he admired so greatly in the operas of Richard Wagner his hero of a composer.

He continued blithely on that way, even pulling couches from his palace out for his guards to lie on, until he was found with his finance minister drowned in a pond.

Nobody would say how in the world that happened.  Case closed!

Unlike Ludwig II, the Second Sharru was more proactive and probably would not want to share a pond, his head weighted down by a sack of cement under the water, with ducks and duckweed.

Dissenting statesmen found themselves barricaded by palace guards and spies.

The Second Sharru brooked no opposition, despite the tender-hearted, caring impression he cultivated.    Although he could not risk a contrary impression, by slaying certain highly respected officials of  the old regime of his father  who differed with his policies, he at least quarantined them.   

Destroying their reputations was also effective.  His spy service worked over-time fabricating accounts of crimes the men never committed, but these were read out to the people and in the courts as though there was no disputing the facts.

His chief wife, too, joined mightily in propping up his administration.  An energetic woman with strong speaking abilities, she attacked all those who thought the king might be spending too much.  She was forever calling them traitors and malefactors who cared nothing about the welfare of the people or the poor. 

Though her speaking out was unprecedented for the time, the Second Sharru allowed her every liberty.

She also was delegated enormous powers of state and despite continual failures exercised them publicly, a thing that had never happened, even with the queen mothers.

Bombarded daily with reports she hatched of the misdoings of those who opposed her royal husband, the people were led increasingly to think the Second Sharru was doing a good job despite the officials trying to undermine his charitable, caring, compassionate efforts to improve the people’s living conditions.

Though Babelen was falling apart in plain view, that was all the result of what the Sharru had inherited, she claimed, not what he himself caused. 

Together, the Second Sharru and his chief  wife strengthened his position among the nobility and ruling classes, though he was never very popular with the military he underfunded and made no effort to disguise his contempt of.  In a review of his army, he called his military corps a corpse, which was no slip of the tongue but just to make the point that the military was all about creating corpses, whereas he was about creating lives of purpose, feeling, and beauty.   

Murderers, robbers, thieves, and rapists stalked the kingdom from end to end, enjoying free pardon in the courts of the king.  It was the petty crimes that supplied the criminals that were processed into MSG.  First, they had let everyone in this class go, to save the cost of indicting and jailing them, but when the MSG food stocks fell perilously low in the warehouses, they re-criminalized them and let the big crimes go unchecked to demonstrate the state’s compassion.

The Second Sharru passed decrees almost every day saying how much he hated violence of that sort that made people commit crimes, he made every effort to appear on the side of the criminals, not the victims.  As for the MSG category prisoners, he said nothing at all, they did not exist in his penal system and the penal code, apparently.

Though he hated families too, particularly godly-living, closely-knit Jewish families, he told everyone how he loved such families, though his palace was thronged with women for his and his courtier’s  own enjoyment. 

Whatever the nobility thought they needed in a leader, he could assume those qualities whenever they were present.

Many knew he was a shameless sham, but it made no difference.  They went along, for they profited hugely from his corrupt administration.

As for the common people?   As long as the markets and soup kitchens supplied cheap or even free MSG meals, they were on his side.   They cheered the Second Sharru whenever he rode forth from the palace in his state carriage with his chief wife, for they actually thought the young man was doing his best for them—just as he assured them repeatedly he was doing.

Of Truth, beauty, justice, holiness, integrity, loyalty, fair-dealing, honor, peace, happiness—not a trace remained in Babelen.

Decadence and moral degeneracy, with fashionable toleration of every kind of crime and evil-doing,  ruled the entire society.  

Though he constantly spoke for the poor and the oppressed, he robbed them himself.  Though he spoke and passed decrees against crime, he promoted it.  Though he said he cared only for the welfare of his country, he gave away entire districts to curry favor with some neighboring kinglet; or made alliances that put Babelen’s security at severe disadvantage to some other power.

Though he spoke for wisdom and probity in the administration, he promoted only self-seeking, embezzling nobles. 

Though he preached good government and his aim to maintain the commonweal’s peace and harmony, he sent his spies and bullies everywhere, letting them molest the people however brutally they wished.

Though he repeatedly let the Jewish community know he valued them highly, synagogues were closed at the slightest pretext for the sake of the kingdom peace.  Moreover, the schools of the Jewish people or other godly people were forced to accept his own administrators, who installed his state-authorized gods and all the licentious rituals of the priesthoods.

Hating businesses that reaped profits that he did not want them to enjoy, he taxed them out of existence if he could, or snarled them with so much red tape regulations they could not operate under the overhead of so much book-keeping and paperwork and shut down.

Their penalties for not reporting were stiff fines.  The fines were punitive, and if not paid, they were forced to close their doors under threat of seizure.  No house, no synagogue, no school, no business was safe from invasion by government agents and foreclosure and confiscation.   

How can the kingdom endure this extent of misrule,  Daniyel sighed. We are driven to blackest despair by the Second Sharru, but he overcomes every difficulty somehow and continues to plunge us all deeper into the abyss!

After his last prayers for such a benighted ruler and his God-forsaking kingdom, the grieving Daniyel retired to his upper chamber, his jogger’s bracelet blinking on and off as usual.

It was there he sat in his chair, unable to think because of the screams and babbling and fights all round his house, when the gate was nearly knocked off its hinges by the Sharru’s ruffians.

Hey, Jew, you’re wanted by the king of kings!  the captain shouted at Daniyel when he finally got to the door and opened up.

What took you so long?  Hurry, get a robe on your wretched, thieving old bones!  Something decent for the court now!  Not some old rag you stole off one of our poor widows who couldn’t pay your interest rates!  We can’t wait all night!  Hurry!

The invasion of his privacy and the taunts concerning his Jewish antecedents were unprecedented on his level of  nobility but expected.

Daniyel knew that what his people were experiencing would one day like a wolf come to his own door.

Well, here the wolf was!  Even so, the captain of the guard had no right to come without being announced into the presence of  such a high-ranking foreign noble as Daniyel.

Though he be a Jew, a member of a thriving, hard-working, law-abiding, community-minded, charitable, religiously separate people, the Sharru’s policies had made him and his people a despised, persecuted minority.

Clearly, all force and spirit of the law was overturned in the present kingdom, and he had watched for this very hour. 

Daniyel did as he was ordered and got ready as fast his wretched, thieving old bones could in obedience to the Sharru’s summons.

Grooming his own hair, beard, and gown as best he could, he paused at the door as he was being led out to the waiting chariot.

He calmed the servants who had come out, anxious, confused, and foolishly prepared to fight for his safety,  then turned to the impatient, grumbling captain.

"What, pray, is the desire of