Five hundred years after the fall of Mankind, tribes of animal-people remember humans mostly for the excesses that led to their disgrace, downfall, and decimation.Tay of the wolf-clan wants nothing more than to serve his people, the Animal-Clans of the Pacific Northwest, as a healer and the youngest Alpha to ever lead his tribe.But a dying stranger arrives in Tay's peaceful, mixed-clan village, bearing a small, featureless black cube, and with an army snapping at his heels.A new tribe has risen, worshipping humans as Gods. That tribe has become an army, and the army has become a Crusade -- the White Crusade -- and Tay finds himself holding the power that the White Crusade needs to achieve their terrifying destiny.Accompanied by Sonac, a young wolf-clan loner obsessed with ancient human technology, and Zack, a coyote-clan trader and footloose wanderer, Tay must rise beyond his modest ambitions to become a leader not just for his people, but for the future of the world.The White Crusade is a futuristic fantasy adventure, set in a post-apocalyptic setting, where humans are no longer the dominant species on Planet Earth. Tribes of animal people must vie against the forces of ancient and even alien technology in order to survive.

Five hundred years after Man's downfall, the ascetic Animal-People have rebuilt the world in their image. Tay of the Wolf-Clan is a healer and leader whose only ambition is to spend his life in service to his people, but now he must launch a hasty expedition across the changing landscape of tomorrow's America, to recover the secret of a manmade artifact that threatens the future of his world.

When the Human-Orion war to end all interstellar wars collapses into an uneasy peace, mistrust and fear swells on both sides. Responding to hails from a patrolling Orion sentry, a ship using ancient human codes from a long lost colony appears and opens fire on the Orions in a quest to free Holy Mother Terra.

This book investigates into the Polish participation in the Crusades to the Holy Land, as well as the organisation of the campaign of preaching of the Cross and the collection of resources for the support of the Crusades by the Church. By broadening the scope of enquiry to consider the application of the motifs of crusading against Poland’s pagan neighbours, local heretics or political opponents of the Church it provides conclusions which may interest the international reader. Finally, it shows the wider context of the Crusades, looking at the influence of the crusading ideology on different areas of life in medieval Poland – one of the countries of ‘young Europe’ (to use J. Kłoczowski’s term) – thus making an interesting contribution to our knowledge of European culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Forgotten Crusaders, being an attempt to take a wider look at the relationships between Poland and the crusading movement, therefore has the potential to make a valuable contribution to the state of research.

This book takes a decidedly different look at the crusades in that the focus is upon the crusaders and not upon the political or religious causes of the crusades. I concentrate on the men and women themselves, some of whom sacrificed family, lands, titles, wealth, and their lives to go forth for what they believed was a holy cause. Admittedly, some sought those very things and that was their motivation. Some were great. Others had greatness thrust upon them. Some were failures.This is not a book about the rise and fall of kingdoms, colonization, societal changes, the Great Schism, but a book of the lives of the people who sacrificed much to gain either eternal or worldly riches, glory, or found dynasties.The purpose of this book is to breathe some life into the people who went on crusade. Their motivations varied, but included a quest for heaven, earthly glory, plunder, or to simply escape overbearing in-laws. Over the course of these pages, I will present biographies of approximately five hundred crusaders that I have identified. Longer biographies will be presented for those who are most famous (or infamous) while others will only have a paragraph or two and are people who have been generally lost in the mists of time over the six to nine centuries since they lived and died. A full biography of the most famous is beyond the scope of this work, but will hopefully motivate further, detailed study.The crusades lasted from the middle of the twelfth century to the sixteenth century. The crusades to the Holy Land are known to almost all people. Many of the places that are in the news in 2010-2020 are the same ones that haunted Europe from 1050 to 1350. However, the crusades were not limited to the Holy Land. The Albigensian Crusade in the area known as Languedoc where southwestern France and northeastern Spain join on the Mediterranean coast saw significant campaigns, not against the Saracens, but against the Cathars who were considered heretics.Even before the First Crusade to the Holy Land was called for Christians in the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula had been fighting against Moslem invaders for over two hundred years. Though not considered a crusade, the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D. stopped the advance of Islam into the heart of France and Europe. However, much of what is modern Spain had been overrun and the small Christian kingdoms there were limited to a narrow strip of land on the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquest or "La Reconquista" of the Iberian Peninsula is known to students of medieval history. However, the Northern Crusades are little known in the English-speaking world. This book will touch on them. During the crusading period, the fight against pagans that were much closer than the Holy Land gained the same papal indulgence, sanctions, and sanctifications as those waging Holy War in Palestine. I have been a student of history my entire life. Even as a little boy my imagination was filled with dreams and images of knights in shining armor. There are many books and sources which cover the campaigns, politics, and the religious fervor on both sides of this conflict. I will touch on these subjects only briefly to give some background to the times in which these men and women crusaders fought.Any errors in this work are entirely my fault and not the fault of the reference books I have consulted.I hope you find these people as interesting and exciting as I do. Source documentation is presented for each person listed.

Set in the late twelfth century at the time of King Richard I's crusade to win back Jerusalem from the Saracens, the story deals with timeless issues - with the moralities of warfare and fundamental religion, the abuse of power, the heights of martial fervour and the depths of disillusionment The writing blazes with colour (literally in the case of the printed edition, which makes groundbreaking use of colour throughout). It pulses with life, capturing the sights and sounds, the very smells of medieval life. At the novel's heart is the relationship between Garon and Elise - the story of an arranged marriage which rapidly develops into something deeper, to challenge a young husband's strongly held beliefs and set him on a long and painful journey to self-realisation, to break and finally restore a woman's spirit as she battles for recognition and for justice in a brutal man's world. And then there is the Berge dal becce; a character who is surely more than he appears?