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Much is spoken of the First Vitelian Empire’s most famous leader, the radiant and great Augustus Superbus. Most of it is praise by traditionalists, mournful pleas for his reimaging to come forth and divest Vitelia of its woes, especially by those who would consider him a Saint who enacted the Will of God. Yet those who called themselves Futurists considered a different aspect of him besides grandiose glory attributed to his reign and his Empire. Emperor Augustus was trained in the classical way by his father, Titianus Superbus, founder of the First Empire, and Augustus authored his chronicle on philosophy and rulership a long while into his famous reign, but that chronicle was also not what Futurists considered. Instead, they examined an apocryphal writing by Augustus, one made in his youth, said to have been written just before he was selected as heir to an empire. Structured as a poetic epic might be, Augustus was far from a talented poet at the time, were said writing indicative of his skill, but the words were those of a sort that led to any claims of authorship being denied and refuted by those who venerated his name most over the centuries.

The poem was part of a collection, an entire story, though it had been long lost or never completed. The individual nature of the poem even lends credence to the widespread thought that it was a forgery merely attributed to a famous name, as it was discovered over two hundred years after Augustus’s death. It described an adventure of a man called Helgo, who was a compatriot of Sversk the Conqueror, though in braving the maelstrom alongside him, he was blown south while Sversk was blown north, Helgo eventually making landfall in ancient Vitelia, where he would form his kingdom.

Helgo was, of course, fictional, as no records whatsoever record him, his voyage, or even being one of Sversk’s companions, but there is also little to imply that Augustus claimed him to be real either. All of that beside the point, interpreted from the remnants of the singular piece of the epic, the poem called Turris Somniorum described Helgo and his followers, numbering over one thousand then, coming upon a great and mysterious tower with a shining beacon at its head, which had been followed out of the Maelstrom. At the tower’s foot was a strange inscription, claiming that one who claimed the light at the top of the tower, would have their wishes granted, if only they could reach so high. All that was mentioned next, in the poem’s incomplete form, was how Helgo returned from the tower’s peak completely alone, and how the tower’s visage was a grim one indeed, but he needed no longer look upon its terrifying height.

Such is the story wrote by a young Emperor to be, and the fascination of Futurists. They wonder themselves; is this Tower of Dreams, the Torre dei Sogni, something that the young Emperor knew one must conquer, no matter the time and place, if they are to forge a path into a greater era?

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