Hans Franzberg and Geraldus Iphengesis were seen leaving court together not long after the death of the king and the start of the fighting that would become the Civil War. Eschewing the safety of the Queen’s Court in London they disappeared from London. Rumours had it that they had died. Better that they had.

It took many months before a clear picture could be established of what occurred, and years before the full truth was discovered. The pair headed straight to Franzberg’s retreat on Voll Island, taking advantage of the confusion to slip past Franzberg’s usual guards and escape to the West. The ships patrolling the waters around the island had been co-opted by the war effort, and so the two easily made it to Franzberg’s laboratory.

From there, the two planned their venture; to make a blasphemous walking monstrosity from the corpse of King Henry. Geraldus brewed potions and Franzberg prepared devices, including two pairs of Seven-League Boots. With these in hand, it was easy to travel quickly to London and enter St Paul’s Cathedral where the King was lying in state. The body was stolen, and taken back to Voll Island where the two villains put the next stage of their plan into action.

A couple of weeks later in Somerset, reports were first received of a creature looking like the King, moving with the aid of clockwork devices and breathing fire. Despite attempts by local milita to capture the creature, none were successful; it was as strong as ten men, and it breathed death. Few even dared approach; the monstrous visage of the dead King Henry made even the strongest heart quail.

Finally a dashing young captain in the Dragoons, Sir Harold Neville, was able to trap the King-creature in a cage of iron reinforced with help from his brother Hubert, an alchemist. In fact it was Hubert working with a number of notable Inventors who managed to work out a method to disable the creature and remove the Inventions from it which disturbed the King’s final rest.

Geraldus vanished soon after this, few realising his involvement with the King’s body until much later.

The Battle of London, which commenced immediately following the Regicide and continued, in chaotic and haphazard fashion, for weeks and months after, was eventually won by the Royalists; though at heavy costs to the citizenry and the city itself.

Although the Catholics tried to storm the Palace several times, Rebecca Lanik's casting of the spell known as Aegis kept the Court and immediate environs safe, whilst allowing the Royalist forces to sally out and take the fight to the enemy where they chose. Several intelligent young men and women with red ribbons tied about their hands, of various backgrounds and ancestries, were seen assisting Lanik during this period; they were generally assumed to be her Theurgic apprentices, and made themselves immensely useful during the ensuing fight. The Prague embassy departed London at midnight of the first day of the Civil War, the entire Embassy complex disappearing in a flash of blazing light; it took with it the dragon Sii Maou, the ambassador from Zilmatillia, various dignitaries and last-minute refugees, and Master William Brandage - but not his wife.

Heavy fighting throughout London forced most of the Royalist forces to fall back to the area immediately around the Palace in the first few days of the conflict; although they had a very secure stronghold there from which to chip away at the Catholic rebels, it became difficult for them to make useful sorties out into London. As a result, although the Catholics were quelled within a matter of weeks, much of London was devastated by the fighting and the furious zeal of the few Catholic Magicians and siege engines. Many of the city’s residents had fled to nearby villages and towns, with London’s infrastructure in tatters; not helped by the Catholics’ poisoning of several freshwater wells and rivers, leaving clean water a particularly scarce resource. Several times, houses and buildings were fired in an attempt to draw Royalist forces out to protect the city; the Catholic fanatics seemed to have no regard for civilian lives, and used the most hideous of tactics in order to sap the morale of the Queen's forces. The spell of Aegis stood up well to most of the attacks, although the Catholics had some Theurges of their own, and occasional hostile Angelic clashes were seen in the skies over London.

During those days Captain Gloria O'Keefe demonstrated why a woman with nothing left to live for should be feared. Fighting on the side of the Royalists earned her the enmity of her own church and particularly the Jesuits, who had accepted her into their order mere months before. The brutality of her actions in putting down the rebels may have been rather more than was necessary, but it did keep her safe from the other Royalists and nobody could ever claim that she bore Rebel sympathies.

Rebecca Lanik was never alone during the fight; always, rather, surrounded by a squadron - almost an honour-guard - of dark-clothed young men and women, some of obviously Jewish origin, some apparently pure English stock. The stories say that these individuals conversed among themselves in terse, quick battle-code that sounded like Hebrew, and that they were attended by the distinctive golden light of high-intensity Theurgy. From Aegis to the summonings of martial angels, to occasional retreats into the Celestial realms themselves to safeguard the person of the Queen and arrange unexpected ambushes and attacks against the Catholic forces, these mysterious companions of Lanik made themselves immediately indispensible through the fight - and, as soon as the siege of London was over, vanished just as immediately. Lanik's later involvement in the war suggests that they must have been working as spies, agents or even assassins through the years of civil unrest; but no name for the group ever appears in records, nor any detail to identify them other than the red ribbons they wore bound about the wrist or hand.

Luca Braganza assisted in the organisation of the efforts to retake London, fighting in the front lines himself. As the fighting settled down he hurried to Ireland, and his family, with as many of his men as he could muster.

Don Santiago made the most of the confusion of the fighting, and an amazingly fortuitous fire in the coffee house next to the Spanish Embassy, to slip away over the rooftops. As he fled to Dover, London burned behind him. Catholics and Protestants managed the odd ceasefire in the interests of fire-fighting (and looting), but swathes of London were left a charred wreck.

A few short weeks after the battle began, London was effectively abandoned by both sides. Civilians and some courtiers attempted to rebuild in the ruins, but the rising water level was making the banks of the Thames an increasingly risky place to live.

The Lord-General of the Dragoons the Earl of Hertfordshire, Edward de Vries, was thrust into the defence of the country only scant months after his appointment. His Dragoons represented the chief strength of the English military but the majority of his forces were badly placed in the north, enforcing the quarantine of Yorkshire. De Vries dispatched couriers to rally his forces and march them south, the crisis only allowing him to spare a smattering of troops to keep the contagion from spreading. Other couriers were dispatched to the lords and councils of England ordering them to render their militia and regimental obligations to the Crown, and imposing martial law and curfews over the entire country.

The Lord-General was never one to lead his troops from the rear, but was always found in the thick of the fighting with his flaming sword striking down the rebels. In London he personally lead raids against the strongest nests of traitors, and though he could not save the city with the forces at his disposal he ensured that the majority of its inhabitants escaped the flames and rising waters. At Bristol he fought his way, with a small force, to the city walls after it had been besieged. His fiery sword and black armour were recognised as he stood in the breach in the walls. His presence alone held off the large Catholic a day as its panicked leaders sought the Dragoon army they believed he heralded.

Edward de Vries had brought hope but in secret council he told the Lady Katherine (Viscountess of Bristol, daughter of the Duke of Somerset and wife of Sir Alexander) that no fresh army would arrive, but he pledged his sword to her in the name of his friend Sir Alexander. The next day though, as the Catholic army pressed its attack again against the exhausted defenders, as their muskets and pikes began to pour through another breach in the walls, salvation came. Edward de Vries' flaming sword was joined by the brilliant white shaft of Alexandros, as first they saved the Lady Katherine from Jesuit assassin that attempted to strike her down from behind and then they cut their way through the attackers. Alexandros seemed to grow in brilliance and wrath with every step he took, and the Lord-General seemed to be a dozen places at once. The defenders rallied and counter-attacked, and though the priests and the Jesuits hurled their foul benedictions against the pair all could see who Heaven truly favoured. By nightfall only rebels who could not run remained within three leagues of the city.

With the Catholic army at Bristol routed and veteran troops returning from the north, the situation began to stabilise and slowly the Royalist armies ceased to retreat and began to retake the land even as the waters rose. The fighting in the Southwest now centred on the Franzberg Cannon as the Duke of Somerset, William Milton, used it to punish the duplicitous Spaniards and Catholic zealots hurled themselves against it in to fulfil Papal orders for destruction. The initial attack against the cannon by troops rallied from the Catholic defeat at Bristol, was hard fought. The faces of the rebel troops were lit red by the glow from the cannons heat when the Duke unlocked a secret cache of Franzberg devices. Golems with threshing bladed arms, balls which rolled upon the ground and exploded amongst their legs and countless other stranger weapons fell upon the Papists. The rebels broke once again and further attacks against the Cannon would be easily beaten back.

King James, in negotiation with the Dragoons, brought down the forces of his Highland levies and the more standard lairds’ military units almost as soon as the Catholic crisis broke following the Regicide. He took and held several key cities, and maintained the quarantine barrier around plague-blasted York, disdaining the magical methods suggested by English advisors in favour of a “shoot on sight” policy for any apparent plague victims trying to escape the quarantine area. In later days, his choice of methods was widely blamed for the spread of the plague across Yorkshire and other northern territories. Scotland itself remained largely unaffected by the plague, amongst rumours of tacitly sanctioned Witchcraft hotly denied by James’ court.

Through a combination of martial law, excessively “firm” tactics in suppressing the rebellion (dark rumours of torture, witch pyres, and the families, associates and entire villages of those suspected of harbouring rebels being put to the torch occasionally filtered out) and a particularly politically astute policy of controlling the courier and information network out of the North, James managed to keep the Dragoons and other Royalists forces in the South unaware of the extent to which he had gained control over the Northern counties, giving the impression that he was continuing to suppress an ongoing rebellion when in fact he was cementing his personal and military control over the region. By the time the Dragoons had fought the good fight in the South, leaving the clean-up and defensive tactics largely to the Privateers and financiers, and the military finally turned its exhausted and increasingly damp-booted troops to the North, Scotland and James effectively controled a swathe of land down to Hull.

Yorkshire was spared from the ravages of the Catholics by King James’ swift intervention with troops and promises, but this rapidly turned into an occupation. With even magical channels of communication unreliable or blocked entirely, the witches of the North rapidly banded together, with Apollonia at their head, to minimise harm.

The Scot’s hypocrisy was turned against them, with many of the witches burned during this time being those who had been unofficially hired by King James’ spy master. Ravens became known as heralds of misfortune, as they could often be seen circling over the houses of those suspected of Scots sympathies.

Though not preventing the occupation, the Sisters of Hecate certainly made it difficult. King James’ men would often find themselves revisiting the sites of earlier attacks, or encountering storms that moved with them. Some wrote of hearing the life-stories of those they had killed every night, others of the silence of their camps and the constant feeling of being watched, and judged.

While the Dragoons secure the midlands, the Court was finally gaining a clear picture of the scene for the first time since the assassination of King Henry. The plague had effectively burned itself out by 1609, decimating Yorkshire and surrounding counties and leaving several “ghost towns” in its wake – settlements devoid entirely of people, whether chased away James’ forces, killed by overenthusiastic Catholic rebels, fled to warmer climes or dead in the plagues. Those years saw a mass exodus in some sections to the Americas, as colonists left in an attempt to make a new life in the New World.

Although Spain had so recently signed a treaty of peace and amity with England it quickly became apparent that it was their gunpowder and gold that had allowed the rising, with Don Santiago playing a key role. It is unclear now whether he had the backing of the Spanish government in what he did, but there is no doubt that they seized the chance to hurt England. As soon as word reached Spain of England’s distress, galleons laden with supplies and volunteer troops set sail. The ships of the Venerable Order however were still strong, their crews loyal and their cannons eager to take Spanish prizes. The citizens of the coast became used to the sound of cannon fire drifting over the waves, and by night distant fires burning over the horizon.

The fighting in the Channel was heavy, and the Spaniards briefly forced a beachhead at Dover. The Lord-General Edward de Vries focused most of his available troops in southern England, and the “English War” is mostly seen as having been fought in the South. The combined factors of King James’ “assistance” and the plague ensured that little attention was paid to Northern England during the crisis; the region was simply not understood as a high priority. King James seemed to be doing his promised role in keeping the Catholic uprising quelled in the Northern counties, and during the immediate civil war people were generally focused more on the immediate crisis and fight for survival.

During the fighting in the South the efforts of Admiral Taylor and Captain Glory in mobilising the Order ensured that the Spanish were harried at every turn. Though the Spanish numbers were too great to fight the invasion head-on, the privateers ensured their crossing was not smooth. Ships bearing supplies and replacement troops soon found themselves being redistributed to the English or at the bottom of the Channel. Forced to live mostly off the land, the Spanish became demoralised and hungry; an easy target for good English soldiers, fighting to defend their homeland. It is widely agreed that the inclusion of women in the ranks of the British forces had a great effect on Spanish morale; the commanders, unwilling to order the slaughter of the “weaker sex”, frequently found themselves cut down by Englishwomen eager to prove their martial prowess was the equal of any Spaniard Papist dog.

England managed to strike back against the Spaniards more directly too, using the Franzberg Cannon to strike against Spanish cities and ports. The Catholics attempt to capture the Franzberg cannon failed and they never managed to control it as the Duke of Somerset ordered the use of stored Franzbergs to push back the overwhelming enemy forces. The cannon itself was eventually destroyed by the stress of constant firing against Spain, retribution for their hand in the death of the King and strife in England. It did immense damage to that country before its eventual annihilation.

Portsmouth and Dover were both heavily fought-over, as was Calais, and fighting spread quickly to sections of the French and Dutch mainland. By late 1607 the entire South of England was under Royal command, and the Spaniards have been driven back onto the continent; however, there was still heavy fighting in France and what remained of the Low Countries by this time, and many or most English families have at least one adult away in the wars. Levies across the countryside were made such as have not been seen since the time of the Henry VI, and the entire situation was complicated greatly by the rising floodwaters. It became rapidly clear to all concerned that the old port cities were no longer worth holding, and Spanish and Catholic forces begin to split off to the South, taking the fight to France and the European mainland, as Royalist forces begin to retreat North and turn their attentions to those Catholics still fighting in the Midlands and Northern territories.

But in the first weeks of the Civil War only the port of Bristol remained firmly in loyalist hands. William Milton, Duke of Somerset, had been concerned about the shortages in England’s arsenals even before the outbreak of fighting; ships of his fleet had begun landing stocks of powder and other military supplies. The regiment of the Duke had fought recently in the Dutch Republic, and in stranger circumstances in Hertfordshire, and de Vries realised that Bristol represented the best rallying point in the South. Milton risked bankrupting the Crown by buying in foreign gunpowder at massively inflated prices; however Lord Richard Molyneux’s sterling financial efforts ensured that the kingdom didn’t fall too heavily into debt.

With gunpowder scarce, many Alchemists' talents - including those loaned by the city-state of Prague for the emergency - were particularly useful creating explosives for use by Royalist forces. One in particular, Geraldus Iphengesis, was particularly valuable. He created potions to provide the Dragoons with the strength of a bear and the eyes of a hawk, tipping the balance in many battles. His explosives were used to great effect in the Battle of Stratford. An ambush by Catholic forces was reversed by judicious destruction of chunks of landscape, allowing Dragoon reinforcements to outflank the enemy forces and destroy them almost to a man.

The angel Alexandros' most famous intervention was at Bristol, but he acted to defend Somerset and the Milton Institute at times too, and the Angelic assistance kept most of the fighting out of this area of England in later years.

Despite little skill at the arts of War, Thomas d'Asoyne managed to gather together the previous Baron of Daresbury's significant number of tax-gathering troops and led them (under the command of the Dragoons) in the war effort. Indeed, Thomas was awarded an honourary Captain's rank at the end of the first Civil War for his sterling work.

In immediate terms, peace in the South was effected by a combination of natural and man-made circumstances. The Dragoons and the forces from Prague were immensely helpful in maintaining peace and order and attempting to prevent witch-hunts; the mood of the South was dramatically anti-Catholic, with most people blaming Catholic Theurges for the unnatural weather and flooding, or suggesting that it was God’s wrath for tolerating the Papish stain upon their country for so long. By the mid-point of the war in the winter of 1607-1608 (which was particularly harsh, given the precipitation; many died of exposure and starvation, having been flooded out of house and home), it was essentially impossible to be a peaceful royalist Catholic in England. Nevertheless, the calming efforts of the Dragoons under de Vries ensured that - at least for some Catholics - exile, rather than murder, was the fate of those found to be practising Catholicism.

Oxford remained under siege for most of the civil war; however, Catholic forces knew they had no real chance of taking and holding the city, so the siege was more an attempt to keep Royalist forces pinned down and penned up in and around the City walls. Most of the actual fighting occurred elsewhere; although occasional sorties and conflicts occurred around Oxford, the area was remarkably peaceful (though tense) for most of the war.

As the wars continued, it became rapidly clear to the Masters of Oxford that the city was increasingly under threat from rising floodwaters. The Isis and Cherwell were bursting their banks on an all-too regular basis, and the finest astrologers the Colleges could muster saw nothing but watery doom in the future if Something was not Done.

In what was later heralded as the finest work of cooperative magic ever to be performed publicly, Sir Theodocius Dawkins, Rabbi Rebecca Lanik, Sir Edward de Vries – recovering temporarily in Oxford from terrible injuries sustained during the defence of the country, but not to be prevented from his alchemical researches by a little surgeon-ordained bedrest – and several of the leading lights of the Invisible College undertook to raise Oxford itself and the land for several miles around by a staggering number of yards, taking it quite clear of even the worst of the floodwaters over the next decade. The Island of Oxford, as it soon, tragically, became, was a haven for learning and peace in the strife; although countless attempts were made to take and hold the city, it remained staunchly Royalist and staunchly loyal to Elizabeth. Once it became clear that London could not be saved from the rising waters, and indeed that there was little there worth saving after the depradations of the first, most furious battles of the war, Elizabeth elected to move her court wholesale to Oxford; by the end of hostilities in 1616, it was the official home of the English court, and the pretender Charles’ execution was carried out on the steps of Oxford castle mound.

In 1608, as London continued to suffer under the floodwater and the last few military generals sadly shook their heads and declared the city past saving, the Invisible College vanished once more from its traditional location. When it reappeared, Christchurch College launched several official complaints concerning the ownership of Christchurch Meadow, the appropriateness of the new location of the Invisible College, and the fact that Invisible College students kept using Christchurch quads as a shortcut to their lectures at Cain's. Invisible never incorporated into the University of Oxford, which remains a happy subject for academic contention, financial wrangling, and the occasional fireball as the more erudite and learned of the College’s scholars become particularly incensed with the Vice-Chancellor’s office. Luckily, the Vice-Chancellor, having studied at Prague, spends most of his time in the more Celestial reaches of his office, which remain quite free from Sorcerous scorch-marks.

While De Vries, Dragoons and the other forces were fighting the good fight on the mainland, Luca Braganza and Michael Gerard turned their attentions to Ireland. The priority was ensuring control of the Eastern coastal towns, to prevent a supply chain forming from Catholic Europe, to rebels in Ireland, to rebels on the mainland. This went moderately well, with the well-trained Royalist forces superior in tactics if not in numbers to the rebels. Eventually, facing heavy losses and Catholic reinforcements from Europe, the Royalists were forced to withdraw entirely to Eastern Ireland, and eventually began fortifying a large strip of land along the coast, from Dublin, Kildare and along the coastal regions.

Meanwhile, Hans Franzberg had worked on a slew of new death-dealing devices, many of which were fired at Ireland from the Franzberg Cannon in Somerset. The first attempts only caused moderate destruction, mostly in rural areas; the razing of large areas of County Cork was one of his first attempts. Later creations involved fires that were almost impossible to extinguish between Cavan and Monaghan, a mass of flaming death which bounced across the country from Waterford to Galway, and even a lucky hit on Dublin by a small church uprooted from near Wicklow.

Indeed, large portions of Ireland were made uninhabitable; however, the later flooding sank most of these areas. The subaquatic status of Franzberg-affected terrain is as yet unknown, but locals tend to mutter darkly about fish with six heads and bubbles of lethal greenish vapour rising to the surface on moonless nights.

Sporadic fighting continued over the next decade, especially as the waters continued to rise and strategically important sites become a premium; officially, the entire nation is under Royal control; unofficially, the lands North and West of the Pale, as the new line of border-forts came to be called, are effectively under the control of a series of Catholic-funded warlords and the occasional Puritan Scottish import.

Luca Braganza’s son Archibald was set up as the Minister for the Irish Territories, with the official job of ensuring that the entire archipelago was kept within Royal control, and the unofficial job of maintaining England’s strongholds and occasionally sending out sorties to keep the Fenians in line.

The waterways around Ireland are some of the most dangerous in Europe, with unexploded Franzbergs, dangerously poisoned waters and intermittent repeated explosions still occurring to this day.

Tensions continued until late 1612, with the political landscape heavily informed by the fact that the North of Britain, particularly Scotland, suddenly contained a lot more usable land than the rest of England. In August 1612, King James died suddenly and unexpectedly, apparently of poison. The Scots court promptly blamed everyone it could, but mostly Elizabeth, since she clearly stood to inherit, and civil war broke out once again, assisted by Jesuit spies and agitators within both factions. James’ son, Charles I of Scotland, affectionately known as Prince Charlie, led his loyal Highland regiments and the lowland Lairds in an extended campaign against the “Pretender” Elizabeth. At this stage, Europe was largely too embroiled in its own troubles to interfere, the scandal of the undead Pope having recently broken in Rome and most of the European mainland states, Catholic and Protestant, too busy tearing chunks out of each other to notice England’s troubles. The one exception this was Prague, whose supply of guards, magicians and grain shipments to England has bolstered them through the war, and continued to bolster them through the Succession Crisis - apparently asking little in return but acceptance of their Jewish agents throughout the country.

Charles made good inroads through the first years of the war, eventually coming so far as to land a force on the Island of Oxford from the north and parade less than three miles from the City itself. However, making much the same mistake as the Catholic forces had, he allowed himself to become bogged down in attempting to besiege the heavily fortified city, and gave the Lord-General Edward de Vries the time he needed to muster an elite force of dragon-mounted troops recently trained at a secret location in Royalist Wales (which became ideal at this stage of the war as a dragon-training ground, having one of the largest expanses of reliably dry ground), break the siege and scatter Charles’ forces. The ensuing fight was bloody, but Charles eventually surrendered at the battle of Norwich Bay, and the resultant treaty named Elizabeth Queen in her own right over the Archipelago of Albion (comprising what was once England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) was largely masterminded by her loyal Prime Minister, William Milton. By 1616, Albion had begun the slow road to recovery from a decade of constant strife.