Explanation: In the early 7th century AD, the Sassanid Persian Empire and the Byzantine Empire were the two greatest powers in the world, rivaled only by (distant) Tang-dynasty China. Surely, such immensely powerful states would be immune to all attackers, and last forever!
… but after a ~3 decade war between the two of them, a bunch of strange folk from the Arabian Peninsula championing some newfangled religion called “Islam” arrived, fresh and ready to (holy) war. The preceding ~3 decades of mutual butchery had left both Persia and the Byzantines too weakened to fight off the Arab Muslim coalition, whose previously-divided tribes both empires had previously ‘enjoyed’ using as vassals, catspaws, and meatshields on account of their obviously superior, infinite, and everlasting power.
The Byzantine Empire would have around half of its territory shorn from it by the resulting Muslim Rashidun Caliphate, while the Sassanids would be destroyed entirely, and their lands occupied.
OK so when will the next sea people/steppe barbarians/desert tribes come to fuck up the current empire and from where?
I’m not saying it’s gonna be aliens
BUT
Year 2789: in the great DVDtheque of New Mbabane, a scholar finds a forgotten documentary called “Pepsi ads 2027-2051 compilation” which alludes to ‘space lads’ coming to Nevada on ‘space boars’, laying waste and pillaging casinos (places of worship during the empire of the USA era)
@PugJesus most sadly thing.
Sad about the Sassanids, but the Byzantines were decaying anyway tbqh
