King Arturius and Bowdig

BACKSTORY

King Arturius was born on Arturia (then called Pritani) around 1500 years before Inquisitor Rhys invaded Aurea. Despite being born in Castle Pritani in the Pritanian Capital of Caerbannog, he was conceived in Tintagel Castle when his mother, Queen Gwinyvyr of Pritani, was raped by the God Dyeus. Gwynyvyr tried to keep the whole thing a secret, claiming that the baby she was carrying belonged to her husband King Uthyr of Pritani. Arturius generally got along well with his (unknowingly) adoptive father, but his mother completely despised him becase of how much he reminded her of that night despite her efforts to forget it. When Arturius was 7 years old, Gwynyvyr couldn't take it anymore and committed suicide. 

Upon reading Gwynyvyr's suicide note, Uthyr learned everything (except for the rapist's godly identity, which even Gwynyvyr didn't know) and kicked Arturius out of the castle for being a bastard. Arturius spent the next few years wandering the countryside of Seaxe. Due to this lifestyle he was forced to lead, he grew up sickly, picking up scarlet fever, whooping cough, and other illnesses at various points in his childhood. As a result of his homelessness, his status as a bear (a species not native to Pritani in sentient form), and his almost constant state of illness, Arturius was frequently attacked by bullies and thugs. However, his resilience in the face of these events inspired a young human girl about his age from the town of Iceni named Bowdig to come to his aid. 

The two became best friends, and when Bowdig discovered that Arturius was essentially homeless, she offered to let him come live with her and her father and do various errands to earn his place. However, Arturius walked back to the makeshift campsite in the woods he had set up and asserted that he was fine on his own. Bowdig followed him back to his campsite that night and, after seeing that it had been wrecked by bullies, repeated her offer to him, saying they would "stick with each other to the end". With basically no choice, Arturius went to the town of Iceni to live with Bowdig. Bowdig's father, a man named Llewelyn, proved accomodating and was happy that his normally shy daughter had finally made a real friend, even if he was a "street urchin".

It was Bowdig who first taught Arturius how to use a sword, training him to help him better defend himself from the bullies that plagued his childhood. Both Arturius and Bowdig soon became quite skilled with weapons of all sorts, with Arturius being able to hit a deer in the eye with an arrow from 100 yards away by the time he was 12.

The two got involved in all sorts of mischief together as they grew up, such as one night when they snuck behind their neighbors' cottage and carved their names in the wooden wall, and one day Bowdig convinced him to sneak with her into another neighbor's house and steal their whiskey. Arturius begrudgingly went along with Bowdig's plan, and the two drank together, despite being 12 (in ancinet Pritani, the water was so filthy that it was customary for children to be given a very weak ~2% alcohol beer known as the "children's mash", but whiskey was completely out of the question). As a result, they got so extremely drunk that they made quite a bit of noise, which almost got them caught. Luckily, they were able to escape through the window, though Arturius injured his leg a bit in the process due to their drunkenness.

Both of their lives would change forever once they hit puberty and their demigod powers (Bowdig's absentee mother was, unbeknownst to her, the Goddess Sakhma) began to manifest themselves. When Bowdig was 13, she accidentally almost killed a tree after a brief spat with one of her and Arturius's friends named Medrawt caused her to use Storm Magic. This caused many of their friends to view Bowdig with fear and jealousy, prompting them to shun her. Arturius comforted Bowdig, reminding her that they would "stick with each other to the end". A few months later, a similar incident happened to Arturius, who was yelling at some kids bullying Bowdig when, in his anger, he used Life Magic to rip a branch out of a tree and fling it at one of the bullies, barely missing. 

Eventually, through a couple months of training on their own, Arturius and Bowdig figured out the basics of Elemental Magic, getting their friends back in the process by offering to teach them whatever they could figure out. While harder to train due to their lack of demigod blood, Bowdig and Arturius eventually managed to teach them somewhat successfully. However, Bowdig wanted to learn Elemental Magic from an actual master, so she sought out Pritani's Druids, the highest magical authorities on the planet and asked them to tutor her, Arturius, and their other friends. However, the druids proved extremely strict and chastised Bowdig and Arturius's innovations they made on their own, calling them "unorthodoxy". Fed up with the Druids' strict dogmatism, she convinced Arturius and all of their friends to join her in stowing away on a trade ship to find another planet where they could learn Elemental Magic.

One night, Arturius, Bowdig, and their friends all snuck out of Iceni and reached the Pritanian Capital of Caerbannog, where Arturius had not been since he was a small boy. The memories of his past hit him all at once and his friends caught him staring multiple times at places there he recognized from his childhood. Once they had stowed away on the trade ship, Arturius had no choice but to reveal his tragic childhood to them. Eventually, they reached the Planet Iteru, where they were trained by the Anubian Priests in Elemental Magic. The Anubian Priests were far less dogmatic than the Pritanian Druids, and appreciated the innovations Arturius, Bowdig, and their friends had made on their own. Within another year, they had all mastered Elemental Magic.

However, during this time, Arturius and Bowdig began to grow more distant, as with puberty came romance. Bowdig developed feelings for Medrawt, while Arturius, though hiding it, had developed quite the crush on Bowdig. Tensions reached a boiling point when Arturius caught Bowdig and Medrawt making out under a date palm after a training session. This resulted in Arturius becoming very passive-aggressive towards Medrawt and he could barely bring himself to talk to Bowdig anymore.

Soon, Arturius's other friends noticed he was acting "weird" and tried to ask him what was wrong, but he'd always make up some kind of lie to continue hiding his feelings for Bowdig and jealousy of Medrawt. However, the coupling of Medrawt and Bowdig did not end well, as Bowdig discovered Medrawt was cheating on her with an Iteru local. Upon hearing this, Arturius, filled with rage, challenged Medrawt to a duel. This type of seemingly completely-out-of-character behavior all but told all his friends about his feelings for Bowdig. While Arturius humiliated Medrawt in the duel and basically kicked him out of the friend group, Arturius would return to his group of friends only to hear relentless teasing for his crush on Bowdig.

The next time Arturius and Bowdig had any alone time would be stowed away in a hay shimpent en route back to Pritani, while their friends were in another trade ship in the convoy. Bowdig was crying about what happened with Medrawt and Arturius comforted her, reminding her again of their promise to "stick with each other to the end". When Arturius and Bowdig returned home, Bowdig's father was both glad to finally see them again and completely furious with them for disappearing unannounced for basically an entire year. He had spent the first month of their absence searching for them and the other 11 months thinking they were dead, and punished both of them severely.

That night, Bowdig asked Arturius if the rumors she heard from their friends about Arturius's feelings for her were true. Arturius basically had no choice but to confess. Bowdig tells him that her attraction to Medrawt was almost completely physical, and that she regretted her relationship with him, adding that it was Arturius who had just always been there for her and she had feelings for him too. Arturius and Bowdig then shared a kiss, thus beginning the longest documented romantic relationship in galactic history.

Around this time, Arturius's father Uthyr began ruling Pritani much more tyrannically. Taxes on the peasants skyrocketed, and taxes on the rich elites plummeted. In addition, he was starting to cut deals with King John XI of the uber-imperialist Ishgas, who wanted to turn Pritani into the breadbasket and lumbermill of their empire. Bowdig's father felt the pinch, and he was publicly beaten so badly by government officials for failing to produce his taxes that he died soon after. With his last words, he revealed to Bowdig her true demigod heritage.

After the funeral, Arturius began to--based on the fact that he developed his Elemental Magic powers at roughly the same time as Bowdig and just as out of nowhere--suspect that he was a demigod as well. Bowdig suggested that he return to Castle Pritani, demand answers from his father, and take back the throne that should be his. Arturius refused, however, citing the fact that doing the latter part would probably require killing his adoptive father, which he was not willing to do.

Meanwhile, a trade dispute between Pritani and Ishga resulted in John XVI declaring war and sending a massive force of soldiers to the planet (the Ishgas and Pritanians were still relatively even technologically at this point, as this was before the Ishga industrial revolution of later centuries). After the Ishgas humiliated Uthyr and his army outside of Caerbannog, he forced Uthyr to sign the Treaty of Caerbannog, which put the region of Seaxe under direct Ishga rule and exiled Uthyr to rule the rest of the planet from Scone in the Cowlands. Ishga customs and law were enforced throughout Seaxe, including the town of Iceni where Arturius and Bowdig lived. The people of Seaxe were forced to learn the Ishgas' Galactic Basic language, which Arturius picked up rather quickly but Bowdig struggled with before eventually learning it. 

Arturius figured that soon, Uthyr, who had no heir, would simply die an unsuccessful king and he could take the throne peacefully. However, it soon became clear that the Ishgas wanted the entire planet for themselves when they established a puppet government in Caerbannog in the form of the Pritannian Parliament. 

As a result, Bowdig urged him to simply accept that proactive violence was the only way to not either let his inept father rule Pritani or let the Ishgas conquer the planet. Arturius and Bowdig assembled their old friends they had learned Elemental Magic with and formed the Knights of the Square Table, a secret society dedicated to completely removing the Ishga presence from Pritani. As this was happening, the Ishgas began to assert indirect authority over most of Pritani's feudal lords, clans, and the lands and people they controlled, even outside of Seaxe. Within 10 years of the Treaty of Caerbannog, the Ishgas controlled (directly or indirectly) all of Seaxe, most of Westershire, around half of Skellig, a third of the Cowlands, and a quarter of Pritenheim. To convince local leaders to accept their suzerainty, the Ishgas would perform gestures such as offering to pay off their debts, using military force to check personal rivals, and arresting high-profile criminals in their lands. 

Within another two years, all of Pritani (except the Aurean Exarchate of Amorica) was under at least some form of Ishga control, though in many cases (particularly in rural areas) the control was only in name and most of the local lords and clans were de facto independent. In fact, it was these lords and clans who Arturius and the Knights of the Square Table traveled around the land recruiting for the plan that Bowdig had concocted: they would have a massive revolt across all of Pritani, and Arturius would seize Caerbannog and declare himself king in the confusion. 

On May 12th, 1466 BR, dozens of Pritani's local lords, clans, and their armies rose in revolt against their Ishga ovelords, particularly in Seaxe. The rebels' first target was Falmouth, a valuable port in Seaxe where the road to Caerbannog began. The Ishga Government there had mistreated the locals, and Bowdig wanted to make an example of it. The city was poorly garrisoned and the rebels stormed the city easily. It was here that Bowdig's complete lack of forgiveness or respect for the Ishgas was made apparent: all Ishgas and Ishga-ized Pritanians who did not leave the city before the rebels' arrival were slain on the spot. While the Ishgas writing the historical accounts of this definitely had a strong anti-Pritanian bias, they indicate that Ishga nobles were treated the worst of the lot, being subjected to brutal torture before being drowned in the local harbor.

Almost the entire city was burned to the ground before the rebels moved on towards the small village of Caliburn, about halfway on the road between Falmouth and Caerbannog. Arturius was horrified by the violence Bowdig had authorized during what became known as the Falmouth Massacre, but Bowdig tried to reassure him that it was necessary to make an example out of the Ishgas to scare them into leaving the planet for good. 

When the rebels arrived in Caliburn, the locals were mostly spared, as almost everyone there were peasant Pritanians and the Ishga presence in the countryside was very low. Notably, Bowdig showed a slight change of heart this time, allowing extra time for most of the Ishgas to escape the city before the rebels arrived.

With Caliburn under rebel control, there was nothing standing between the rebels and the city of Caerbannog. The Ishgas, without enough troops in the area to defend it, had no choice but to abandon the city, evacuating the Ishgas they could in the process. As with Caliburn, Bowdig begrudgingly allowed the Ishgas extra time to escape, and by the time the rebels arrived, almost all of the remaining inhabitants were native Pritanians who were not subject to mass slaughter. However, things took a nasty turn when the leader of Clan MacLeod and his army entered the Pritanian Parliament building, slaughtered all the MPs they found inside, and burnt the building to the ground. Upon reaching the abandoned Castle Pritani, Arturius was crowned King of Pritani, giving the rebels a massive morale boost and giving Arturius what he had longed for all these years: a real home.

However, it would not last, as the Ishgas soon brought reinforcements to the planet, massed their troops in north-central Seaxe, and crushed the rebels at the Battle of Caliburn. Realizing they would certainly be executed if the Ishgas captured them and that in the event of a siege of Caerbannog they would lose, Arturius, Bowdig, and the Knights of the Square Table fled into the wilderness, resulting in Caerbannog falling back into Ishga hands.

Now, the Knights' situation became dire, as they were essentially fugitives on their own planet. However, the Ishgas were in a sticky situation as well: they were now the de facto rulers of a planet who largely saw Arturius as the legitimate ruler, wherever he was hiding. The lords and clan leaders they captured at the Battle of Caliburn were generally executed or stripped of all their titles and privileges, and as a result, their lands became vacant. Here, the Ishgas saw a huge opportunity: in order to establish a large base of people on Pritani loyal to them, massive numbers of Froudlings, natives of the older Ishga colony world of Hosea, were brought to live on Pritani, particularly in Skellig and the Cowlands, where a disproportionate number of the revolt's leaders had come from, becoming the majority population in parts of northeastern Skellig and the western Cowlands.

The Pritannian Parliament in Caerbannog was also reinstated. As most native Pritanians lived in rural communities and had very little education, it was made up disproportionally of Ishgas and Froudlings. One day, a Pritanian member of parliament angry at this tried to assassinate another member of the parliament. While he was arrested and executed, the Ishgas used this as an excuse to pass new laws restricting the rights of native Pritanians: they couldn't vote or hold public office, they couldn't attend universities on Pritani, Ishga, or abroad, the Pritanian language was banned from public and private education, they couldn't be admitted to the bar as lawyers, teach school, marry an Ishga or Froudling, or own land. All land held by native Pritanians was turned over to Ishga and Froudling landlords, who charged exorbitant rents that the population could scarcely afford.

Through all this, all Arturius could do was sit and watch from hiding. Bowdig, however, had a plan as always. As Bowdig was a human, a sentient species not native to Pritani but native to Ishga, she was able to assume the fake identity of Bridget, claiming to be the daughter of two Ishga colonists who had settled in the Cowlands. This way, Bowdig was able to buy a countryside estate there with practically no Ishga oversight where she, Arturius, and the Knights of the Square Table could operate in hiding. 

A few years later, the potato, a food crop native to the distant world Aztlan, had begun to travel the galaxy, and the Ishgas brought it to Pritani. Just like the rest of the galaxy, potatoes proved an extremely popular crop all across Pritani, particularly in places like Skellig whose poor soil was not very conducive to growing other crops (potatoes can grow even in places with garbage soil quality). As Arturius and Bowdig spent the next century languishing in hiding and depression, the Pritanian population gradually began to learn Galactic Basic, and within 80 years of Arturius and Bowdig's failed rebellion, most of the population was bilingual in Basic and Pritanian.

Around 40 years after Arturius and Bowdig's failed rebellion, identical laws were proposed in both the Ishga and Pritanian Parliaments called the Acts of Integration. These laws would abolish the Pritanian Parliament and annex Pritani into the Ishga realm completely. Despite public outcry from the now voteless native Pritanians, the laws passed in both parliaments (albeit only by two votes in the Pritanian Parliament) and thus Pritani was abolished as a political entity and was fully incorporated into the Ishga realm.

Most native Pritanians lived in the countryside as tenants on Ishga or Froudling-owned land, growing potatoes and raising pigs and cattle to feed themselves and pay the rent. However, as the native Pritanians became poorer, cattle disappeared, replaced by the cheaper pigs. Little by little, fish, beef, milk, and vegetables disappeared from their diet, replaced by more potatoes.

As all this was transpiring, Bowdig, under her alias of Bridget, put the next part of her grand plan into action by beginning her political career, running for and winning a seat in the Ishga Parliament, representing a rural area in the northern Cowlands. While Bowdig sat in Parliament, Arturius held the Knights of the Square Table together, replacing members who died of old age with new recruits. To avoid suspicion, Arturius changed his alias every two decades. As Artuius's name faded from the Ishgas' field of view, native Pritanians began referring to the planet as "Arturia" as a means of covert resistance against the regime they found themselves living under.

Meanwhile in Parliament, Bowdig began phase three of her plan: restore the rights of native Pritanians. As it had been 80 years since the murder that triggered the laws suspending native rights, Ishga public opinion, while still mostly against reinstating Pritanian rights, was beginning to shift. However, the position remained extremely unpopular with Ishgas and Froudlings on Pritani, as they were the ones who benefitted the most economically from the continued suppression of native rights. If Bowdig attempted to enact reinstatement of native rights but failed completely or even failed to secure voting rights, she would almost certainly lose reelection. 

Knowing this, Bowdig used party politics to her advantage and in closed-door meetings with the rest of her party (the Ishga Workers' Party or IWP) convinced party leaders and other MPs in her party that restoring native Pritanian voting rights would allow the party to sweep all of Pritani's constituencies and cost the IWP's main rival, the IWHP (Ishga Whig Party) dozens of seats in Parliament, as all of Pritani's constituencies were then represented by the anti-native and imperialist IWHP. As the IWP was in the minority at the time, however, Bowdig would have to sway a few IWHP MPs to vote for a bill restoring voting rights to native Pritanians.

While Bowdig was spending more and more time away on Ishga campaigning for native Pritanian voting rights, Arturius kept occupied by training the Knights of the Square Table in Elemental Magic. However, Arturius and the knights were having a harder and harder time finding recruits, as most native Pritanians were too busy working as de facto serfs on potato farms to join. Arturius, however, decided to come up with a bold new plan that involved stealing a ship from the Ishga Navy and using it to recruit off-planet.

This plan actually proved far more successful than Arturius first thought it would be, although the ship could only fly at night to avoid the scrutiny of the Ishga Navy. Although Arturius struggled at first to pitch the Knights' values to non-Pritanians, he eventually succeeded by approaching children and teens with high Elemental Magic potential and offering to train them. In addition to the 4 Pritanian Knights he already had at the time, he soon had a group of 25 intelligent and highly-trained warriors from all across the galaxy. This would go down in history as the Knights' most famous lineup, with particularly famous names such as Sir Ortiz of Rinascita, Sir Fezzric of Vigam, Sir Bruce of Pritani, and Sir Sigurd of Ryu 108. 

Meanwhile, Bowdig (still under her Bridget alias) was having some success on Ishga getting a few members of the Ishga IWHP to vote for a bill restoring voting rights to the native Pritanians, but the Pritanian IWHP only doubled down on their anti-suffrage stance, even going as far as floating conspiracy theories that Bridget was secretly the same Bowdig from long ago who had killed so many people in her revolt. While these theories further entrenched the Pritani IWHP in their opposition, this backfired spectacularly when the news reached the Pritanian countryside, as it rekindled hope in the native Pritanians, who viewed Bowdig as a national hero rather than a murderous rebel.

Farmers stopped paying their rents or even growing potatoes at all, demanding that they be granted voting rights. While the Pritanian IWHP was otherwise still completely unified in opposition to voting rights for the native population, one of their MPs, a Froudling from the Cowlands, grudgingly agreed to vote for the bill once he realized that he would starve if his tenants kept refusing to grow crops. Since this MP joined three MPs from Ishga's IWHP in voting for voting rights, the bill passed by one vote and native Pritanian voting rights, and also the right for native Arturians to hold public office, were granted once the Ishga King gave his stamp of approval.

The next year, a new political party, consisting almost entirely of native Pritanians, ran for office en masse and swept all of Pritani's constituencies except for a few IWHP holdouts in majority-Froudling areas in northeastern Skellig and the western Cowlands. This new party called itself the Arturian Independence Party, and its platform called for complete and total independence from Ishga of Pritani (which was now almost universally referred to as Arturia by the Pritanians), and was able to form a coalition government with the IWP, giving them a combined majority in the Ishga Parliament. One of these new MPs from Arturia was in fact Arturius himself, after learning the Skellig Language and using a Skellig alias of Dubhghlas O Gaibhin. Over the next few years, Arturius and Bowdig worked together to craft new bills that restored more and more rights to native Arturians. First, the bans on university attendance and landowning were lifted, then the ban on native schoolteachers and lawyers was overturned, then the interethnic marriage ban and finally the ban of the Arturian language in public schools were repealed.

This was a massive success for native Arturians, who began to slowly trickle into the middle and upper classes of Arturian society again, but this was happening at a very slow pace, as most native Arturians were still de facto serfs. Frustrated with the slow pace of progress, calls for complete independence from Ishga began to escalate. Reading the writing on the wall, the Ishga King Henry XI issued a royal decree repealing the Acts of Integration that tied Arturia and Ishga together, just as Arturius and Bowdig had begun drafting a bill that would have done the exact same thing.

Almost immediately, Arturius and Bowdig revealed themselves and Arturius's claim to the Arturian Throne, and formally declared independence from Ishga. As the Ishga Military had already left the planet, there was no force left on the planet that could stand up to them. On June 24th, 1322 BR, Arturius was crowned King of Arturia in Castle Arturia (formerly Castle Pritani) in Caerbannog. Less than a week later, Arturius proposed to his girlfriend-of-several-centuries Bowdig, repeating once again that they should "stick with each other to the end". Exactly a year later, Arturius and Bowdig were married in Southend Abbey in Caerbannog.

While all seemed well on the surface, unrest was brewing in parts of Skellig and the Cowlands, as the Froudlings, enraged at the idea of Arturian independence without their consent, secretly prepared to revolt. While the Great Froudling Revolt that ensued was easily crushed by a zealous new army of mostly native Pritanians (by this time almost universally referred to as Arturians) who saw the fight as one to maintain their independence, the Froudlings seethed in defeat, fomenting rebellion after rebellion in the areas of the countryside they lived in, never quite seeing themselves as Arturians. Shortly afterwards, despite Arturius not wanting to out of humility, the name of the planet was formally changed to Arturia after Bowdig encouraged him to, realizing how effectively tying Arturia's national identity directly to Arturius secured their rule.

  Once all of the realm his long-dead father once ruled was under his control, Arturius issued some massive land reforms that put Arturian lands back in the hands of native Arturians and ended what was left of the system of de facto serfdom that had existed under the Ishgas, much to the chagrin of the Froudlings, who revolted again (and were quickly crushed again). Additionally, Bowdig set her sights on Amorica, the last piece of the Planet Arturia that was not under Arturius's control. Amorica had been a part of ancient Arturia, ruled by Arturius's distant ancestors, but existed in Arturius and Bowdig's time as an exarchate (essentially colony) of the Aurean Dominate, a large but declining semi-democratic empire based on the Planet Aurea a couple systems to Arturia's south. Unlike the rest of Arturia, Amorica had been under Aurean rule far longer than the rest of the planet had been under Ishga rule, with it being the last remnant on Arturia of Aurean Dominus Alexandros Magnus Maximus's meteoric conquest of large portions of the galaxy some 3,000 years before Arturius and Bowdig were even born.

The Aurean Dominate glad to see the Ishgas off their northern border. However, this was because this gave the Aurean Dominate what they saw as an opportunity to conquer it, as they essentially viewed all of Arturia as a rogue province that they would one day regain, with native Arturians returning to being one of their many subject peoples. Since the Ishgas were gone, they saw the ascent of Arturius and Bowdig to the throne as an ample opportunity to strike. Amassing a large force along the border in Amorica, the Aureans invaded Arturia in the year 1295 BR, crossing the Arturian Alps along the border into southern Seaxe. The Aureans made substantial progress at first, but failed to take Caerbannog after a lengthy siege and were harassed all along their retreat south by Arturian charioteers and cavalry. Although Bowdig counterattacked, this failed to penetrate deep into Amorica and the situation between Arturia and the Aurean Dominate would essentially calcify at the Arturian Alps for the next millenium. While a peace treaty was never signed and warfare with the Aureans would be common throughout Arturius and Bowdig's reign, this never amounted to anything more than border skirmishes in which a handful of mountain forts would change hands. Bowdig eventually tried to seize Amorica with a naval expedition, but this ended up deep fried due to the Arturian fleet lacking any counters for the absolute wonder weapon that was the Aurean ships' Centralian Fire. 

During the debacle, Bowdig was captured by the Aurean Dominate and taken to Aurea, where she was humiliated in an Aurean victory celebration known as a triumph, in which she was paraded on a chariot naked through the streets of the Aurean capital of Astras as a trophy. However, when the time came for her execution, Bowdig was able to escape using elemental magic, only narrowly avoiding being raped in the process as well. Unbelievably enraged this, Bowdig used elemental magic to murder the Aurean Dominus and his entire family on the spot, and burned down large portions of Astras, indiscriminately massacring Aurean civilians, saying she would not stop until everyone who had seen her nude was dead, before the sheer numbers of the Aurean Army were able to capture her again and lock her in a remote prison deep in the mountains of the Pagomenos Range.

The new Aurean Dominus reacted to the murder of his predecessor by deploying all available troops to Amorica and ordering a massive invasion of Arturia, even larger than the first, with an absolutely livid Arturius left to deal with the crisis on his own. The Aureans quickly broke through the defensive lines in the Arturian Alps and had Caerbannog under siege within weeks. As all of the armies of native Arturians Arturius had sent against them had been destroyed, Arturius was facing an acute manpower crisis. With no other options, Arturius made a deal with the Froudlings, granting them land and some of the unique privileges they enjoyed under Ishga rule in exchange for providing him with warriors to help repel the Aureans. Eventually, Arturius was able to crush the Aureans at the Battles of Lorient and Truro, with the troops Arturius was leading given specific instructions to capture the Aurean Dominus. While Arturius almost killed the captured Dominus out of pure rage, he restrained himself, instead agreeing to return the Dominus to Aurea in exchange for Bowdig, cleverly insisting that the Dominus remain captive at Castle Arturia until Bowdig was returned. The Dominus agreed, on the condition that the situation returned to status quo ante bellum and that Amorica remained in Aurean hands. 

After that crisis was solved and Bowdig was returned to Arturia, Arturius proposed to Bowdig the idea of having children, which Bowdig at first was enthusiastic about but soured on the idea when she realized that two immortal demigods having children would create a race of immortal superchildren that she was not sure she wanted to bring into the world. Additionally, barely escaping the Aureans with her life and nearly being raped by their Dominus made Bowdig feel very weak and afraid, and as a result, her and Arturius took to traveling the galaxy whenever they had time to spare in order to learn from masters and hone their magical abilities to the point where no mortal could challenge them.

Arturius and Bowdig spent most of the next three centuries traveling the known galaxy, studying ancient sources and training under what masters of the old magical ways still existed. Ruling duties over Arturia were rotated between Arturius, Bowdig, and various trusted Knights of the Square Table depending on simply who was available on the planet at the time.  However, they soon realized during their travels that those able to teach them the secrets of magic were by this point old and dying, as knowledge of how to perform advanced magic had been slowly fading ever since the aftermath of Alexandros Magnus Maximus's rampage across much of the known galaxy a few millennia earlier, and those well-versed enough in magic to make use of it in combat were nearing extinction. By Arturius and Bowdig's time, only a handful of masters of most magical disciplines remained, and each took years, sometimes decades to track down, often in very remote locations. Although priests and interplanetary sailors held onto enough knowledge of magic to perform their professions, they were nevertheless incapable of any substantial magical feats outside those contexts and lost any knowledge of how to apply it in combat.

While they learned a great deal firsthand from these masters, what truly captivated them were hundreds of ancient magical texts scattered throughout the galaxy that they acquired over the course of their travels that would otherwise have been lost to history. These texts formed the basis of most of Arturius and Bowdig's knowledge of magic as used in combat, and through them, the basis of most magical combat that exists today. To preserve them for posterity while keeping magical knowledge away from the wrong hands, Arturius and Bowdig, over the course of their travels and training, sent them back to their private library in Castle Arturia. However, these texts would become much of the basis of the textbooks Arturius and Bowdig later started using to educate young Knights of the Square Table. Although magic-oriented texts were the main focus of Arturius's and Bowdig's preservation work, many ancient historical texts were uncovered by them as well. While these were taken back to Castle Arturia for safekeeping as well, the less sensitive nature of their content, as well as the recent advent of printing press, allowed Bowdig and Arturius to have many copies of them made and distributed throughout the galaxy. It is through these copies that much of the galaxy's earliest history (especially regarding the Planets Awal, Atlantea, and Aztlan) was rediscovered after being lost for millennia.

During their studies, both directly from their masters and from reading the texts they found, Arturius took a more strictly magic-oriented path, while Bowdig focused more on mastering all the ancient forms of sword combat and finding a way to work magic into her technique. Nevertheless, both Arturius and Bowdig grew to be extremely skilled in both fields, with each maintaining a slight edge over the other in the field they chose to emphasize. 

While Arturius and Bowdig would both eventually discover Shadow Magic and collected a few texts on it, they both agreed that it was too dangerous and difficult to control to teach to even their own students, and hid these texts away in their library's restricted section only they could access. By Arturius and Bowdig's time, the only other practicioners of Shadow Magic left in the galaxy were the Anubians of Iteru the two had learned Elemental Magic from centuries ago. However, the Anubians were fairly responsible with their use of Shadow Magic, only using it for religious rituals and never teaching it to outsiders, so Arturius and Bowdig were not too concerned with that knowledge leaking out to the wider galaxy.