Ancient history

Ancient history is the aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the Postclassical Era. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC.

The term classical antiquity is often used to refer to history in the Old World from the beginning of recorded Greek history in 776 BC (First Olympiad). This roughly coincides with the traditional date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome, and the beginning of the Archaic period in Ancient Greece. Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the most used), the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, the death of the emperor Justinian I in 565 AD, the coming of Islam or the rise of Charlemagne as the end of ancient and Classical European history.

The Witcher

The Witcher (Polish: Wiedźmin, Polish pronunciation: [ˈvʲɛd͡ʑmʲin]), by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, is a fantasy series of short stories and novels about the witcher Geralt of Rivia. In Sapkowski's books, "Witchers" are monster hunters who (with training and body modification) develop supernatural abilities at a young age to battle deadly monsters. The books have been adapted into a film and television, video-game and graphic novel series, and the series of novels is known as the Witcher Saga. The short stories and novels have been translated into several languages, including English.

Books

The Witcher short stories were first published in Fantastyka, a Polish science-fiction and fantasy magazine, beginning in the mid-1980s. The first short story, "Wiedźmin" ("The Witcher") (1986), was written for a contest held by the magazine and won third place. The first four stories dealing with the witcher Geralt were originally featured in a 1990 short-story collection entitled Wiedźmin—now out of print—with "Droga, z której się nie wraca" ("The Road With No Return"), which is set in the world before the Witcher stories.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is a high-fantasy, action role-playing video game set in an open-world environment, developed by CD Projekt RED. Announced in February 2013, it was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on 19 May 2015. The game is the third in the series, preceded by The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which are based on the series of fantasy novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Played in a third-person perspective, players control protagonist Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter known as a witcher, who sets out on a long journey through the Northern Kingdoms. In the game, players battle against the world's many dangers using swords and magic, while interacting with non-player characters and completing side quests and main missions to progress through the story. The game was met with critical acclaim and was a financial success, selling over 6 million copies in six weeks. The game won multiple Game of the Year awards from various gaming publications, critics, and game award shows, including the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards, becoming one of the most awarded games of all time.

The Ancient

The Ancient is a novel by R. A. Salvatore set in his world of Corona. The Ancient is the sequel to The Highwayman. It is about a crippled man named Bransen Garibond, also known as the Highwayman. After being kicked out of Pryd Holding, Bransen is searching for his long lost father, traveling with his wife Cadayle, and her mother Callen.

He gets tricked into fighting a war against the Samhaist leader, Ancient Badden. On a lake just below Badden's Magical Ice Castle, there are societies in the middle of their own conflicts, unaware of Badden's plan to destroy them. Bransen becomes the only person able to save all of the lake's inhabitants, and stop all of northern Honce from being under Badden's Control.

References

Civilization IV

Sid Meier's Civilization IV (also known as Civilization 4 or Civ4) is a turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the Civilization series. It was designed by Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and his video game development studio Firaxis Games, and then first released in North America, Europe, and Australia, between October 25 and November 4, 2005.

Civilization IV uses the 4X empire-building model for turn-based strategy gameplay, in which the player's main objective is to construct a civilization from limited initial resources. Most standard full-length games start the player with the a settler unit and/or a city unit in the year 4000 BC. As with other games in the series, there are by default five objectives the player can pursue in order to finish the game: conquering all other civilizations, controlling a supermajority of the game world's land and population, building and sending the first sleeper ship to the Alpha Centauri star system, increasing the "Culture ratings" of at least three different cities to "legendary" levels, or winning a "World Leader" popularity contest by the United Nations. If the time limit for the game is reached and none of the previous goals has been fulfilled by any players including game AI players, the civilization with the highest total game score is declared winner. A large departure from earlier Civilization games is a new graphics engine created from scratch, based on the Gamebryo engine by Numerical Design Limited (NDL).