There are some inexplicable pages in the history of the Ligurian coast. Historians have been combing through primary and secondary sources for decades, but there remain a handful of mysteries. No one can tell its present-day impact for sure. Neither is any historian confident enough in their evidence to utter their hypotheses in anything other than their private circles. But here are some of the facts that most experts in this strange subject matter seem to agree on.
The earliest hint comes from the height of the Republic of Genoa. Genoves bankers were pioneering ways to leverage public debt in the Republic's maritime ambitions. First they had defeated Pisa, and now they were financing the Monarchy of Spain's conquests. Genoa's bankers and merchants (by extension) were making sizable profits. The first signs of its unraveling were so subtle that no one thought anything of it. There are no documented meetings, audiences, contracts, or any other formal evidence. Even so, debtors started defaulting, investments went awry, and the Genovese started to panic. The blessings of hindsight uncover the Genovese unfortune as a systematic effort. Several of Genoa's Doges in a row started shrinking the Republic's public debt, thereby severaly limiting the banker's liquidity. These state bonds had garnered so much trust that they served as collateral for lending themselves. This had allowed the Genovese bankers to practically create money from thin air. The Doges had stopped borrowing money and were repaying all of their maturing bonds. The lifeblood of the financial power of Genoa dried up. No one realized the importance of this sufficiently until it was too late. Not much later, Genoa was incapable of defending even itself, and was conquered to be part of Napoleon's empire.
A few years after the first world war, the German Republic and Soviet Russia were weak. Germany was struggling under post-war reparations it was due, and Lenin had just established a communist state that desperately needed some peacetime to build itself up. There was a large convention in Genoa with European powers. The British prime minister was worried that punishing Germany now would destabilize Europe only further in the future. The new French president just wished to torment their eternal enemy more. This is where the so-called dark historians pop up again. Just east of Genoa, in Rapallo, they brought together the German and Russian diplomats in a secret en-passant meeting. These brokered negotiations led to an agreement of forfeiting any reparations the Germans and Soviets owed each other. And it formed the start of a favorable diplomatic relationship between the two. These conditions allowed both nations to focus more resources on covertly building up their military prowess. Though relatively pacifistic and innocent on its own, historians widely understand this to have contributed to the formation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact during the second world war, thata allowed Nazi Germany much more breathing to conduct their horrific plans.
Though both are separated by some few hundred years, the fingerprints on both events seem to point to the same force. Purely by the deduction of elimination. Age-old Ligurian folktales tell of a cult of creatures—half-men and half-women, but only the evil halves. They stem from the time that ancient Phoenicians still roamed these lands. Cursed by the Gods of all peoples, these creatures are tormented by timelessness. They live among regular people, but keep in touch with others of their cult. Their cruel existence, evil nature, and wisdom from thousands of years of observation and manipulation, lead these creatures to meddle in human affairs. People like to tell how their old age has made these creatures stand outside of time and attain a more god-like lens, pushing them to wager and bet on the human course of life amongst themselves for fun, requiring a small push-or-shove here and there to make fate roll their way.
Historians only started turning to this tale after a peculiar find in nineteen-ninety-eight. Authorities in Genoa had found a broken body on a stone beach with hwaves crashing over it. Autopsy revealed that the corpse was years old, but its decomposition was nearly nonexistent. They also established the nails to be at least two thousand years old. The whole case was quickly sealed off, with individuals higher up the chains of secrecy starting a frantic investigation. That is also how some historical experts came to be involved.
Up to this day, no one knows how many more of these dark historians exist. These creatures corrupted by mythology seem to have had major influences on the world, but it remains impossible to say what they are currently up to. Human political leads have tried to uncover more in secret, but as these investigations dragged on, elected leaders changed, and still nothing came up, the political and security class forgot about it. Silently accepting humanity's fate as the eternal plaything of Gods and God-like creatures.