Interesting slice of history.

The crusades alone would have been a veritable buffet of hell on earth; As would be the many bloody feuds and wars in Central America, but a question would be whether they had their own, different kinds of demons…!

Doing some quick math. It appears this is set up-to-date, so mid-2010s. That matches with Stryder and Adrian in the early 1900s.

That puts them in the early 1200s. So what happened in our world in the 1200s?

According to a “history” website (that utterly lacks anything about Africa outside Egypt, or India, or anything in the Americas) … (wait lemme look elsewhere for those areas) … OK, so here we go.

The University of Paris was founded.
The Fourth Crusade was launched. Venice (the only people who could reach Egypt, the object of the crusade) demanded half the loot, plus 85000 gold marks. (That much gold may not have been in France at the time.) The Venetians agreed if the French forces would capture and hold their competitors in the Christian city of Zara. Pope Innocent excommunicated the lot of them for attacking Zara.
Temujin was proclaimed Genghis Khan. He expanded to capture Korea and Northern China, then went on to attack Persia.
Crusaders captured and sacked the (Christian) city of Constantinople. Clearly they were in it for religious reasons. You can tell by how they attack the members of their own religion.
Magna Carta. Not everything was going to hell.
Rockets were first used in warfare in China. Then spread as far as merchants could go.
Muslims recaptured Jerusalem, and the Sixth Crusade followed, and failed miserably.

In northern Africa/Iberia, the Islamic/Moor began to lose their hold on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and in southern and western Africa, the kingdom of Mapungubwe began to decline, eventually replaced by Great Zimbabwe. Both of these kingdoms depended on controlling trade. Ethiopia went through a reorganization of “who is on top”.
Not many of the other (many) empires, cities, civilizations and organizations have dates attached to them in the sources I can find easily. Basically, if it wasn’t already there, Islam spread, sometimes supplanting Christianity, sometimes not.

India – in the 1200s, Muslim conquests (primarily nomadic Muslims but also some organized invasions in the style of Alexander of Macedonia) upset the rule of established elites in Northern India, with consequent resistance that led to massive social changes because the cultures were not completely compatible.
North America – the Cahokia settlement (Across the Mississippi from what is now St. Louis, and certainly NOT the name of the people who actually occupied the city itself) dominated most of the center of America and southern coast. The decline and end of the city correspond to the timing of the Little Ice Age, which can be roughly dated to start in the 1200s. There’s no information given about the east coast of the USA but there were certainly cities there.

Mexico and the rest of what’s called Mesoamerica was going through a transition with the Maya having collapsed about 200 years before due to what appears to have been over-cropping (no ag science at that time) resulting in loss of fertile land. Three cities/societies began to form, and would eventually become the Aztec alliance (but not for a while yet.)

In South America, there were a number of regional states that were eventually (in the 1400s) united into the Inca Empire.

That takes us to 1244, which is probably about the time that Al/Stryder and Malthus got their first or maybe second rings, taking them up in the ranks to ‘thinking creature with its own agency and awareness.’

So, assuming there were some variances from this history in the world of this story, there’s still plenty of room for our pre-Collector and his C-Class pal to have caused trouble in various places. Wonder where they were.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b10b8af442b123ec735220db713b04d18b17450fbedb2369e9968d46bd0f793.jpg Sorry I didn’t check if there was (were(?)) one 7 weeks ago m(__)m