It is the year 1453 AUC, 600 AD by our calendar, in an alternate timeline where Julian the Apostate, the last pagan Roman Emperor, defeated Persia and succeeded in his attempt to reverse the momentum of Christianity and establish Roman Paganism not just as an identity of various groups with traditional beliefs, but as the powerful and institutionally strong religion of the Roman Empire. The Empire survives in the East with the variously Germanic groups having taken over the largely abandoned west, the Eastern Roman Empire even stronger than in our own timeline due to its dominance over Mesopotamia. Yet, its border to the south with the groups they call 'Saracen' is suddenly threatened by a charismatic leader calling himself, "Muhammad..."