The City States of Greece

You have violated the judgements of MY father Agamemnon Megakyrios who mandated your banishment under pain of death should you return.

Your actions are treasonous and against the syntagma in that, presuming true ignorance of my existence, you violated the succession laws mandated should the Megakyrioi ever lack an heir, where claimants for the throne must contest in a trial by combat to the death to see who the gods deign as worthy to recieve the mandate of the gods that is rightly the Megakyrioi's.

As to emulating your brother, that is plainly oobvious in that you attempted to claim power that is not rightly yours and in your general lack of wisdom.
 
ooc: he can try ;)

Oh and Dirk I am already in my place, at the top of the totem pole :mwaha: although as per usual that coveted position is likely to be shared with others once we get more people and more cities.
 
This wont be updated at least until Friday. Sorry, really busy week. But, good news! Soon I will be done with a certain time consuming extra curricular, and will have more time to update!
 
:popcorn: RP :popcorn:

Another week has come and gone for the poor bored overworked commoners of Athens. Times were going from bad to worse. The noble houses had slaughtered each other and the age of intelligent peaceful leadership seemed gone forever. No new immigrants had come to the capital lately and very few children were born within the dry and dusty town. The city was growing very slowly and foreign threats were all around. Was Greece meant to stand the test of time?

As always the humble masses end their weary toilsome days around the communal campfires and tell stories that take their minds far away. There are several popular stories now about the great characters of Mickster and Ekvallei. There are also the classic stories of the once admired Palla King, and the tales of a younger Athens full of promise called the Athenead.

But tonight the tales are from the Aaronyssey. A part of the tale reserved for late at night, when the flames are low and the red coals smolder, and the children are fast asleep.


Part V: Recovery

Spoiler :


I awoke to a buzzing sound around my ears. I was in a hut, reclined on a central pad above the floor, and there was a fly buzzing around me. Even the dim light hurt my eyes at first. My left arm wouldn’t move, my ribs hurt on my left side, and my right leg was excruciatingly painful when I tried to move it. I began to recall the battle that led to my injuries and wondered what I had done to deserve this medical attention. Outside I could hear two voices, both female, arguing in muted tones. The conversation was quiet but understandable to me if I could get the stupid fly to buzz off. Whatever they were saying, it sounded like one of them had prevailed b/c I could hear one of the women walking away, chastising as she went, while the other appeared at the entrance to the hut.

I pretended to be asleep as she entered but tried to watch her through the narrowed slits of my eyes. It was uncomfortable because she was staring at me pretty intently as she circled around my raised platform. Suddenly she jabbed her finger into the bandage covering my thigh. The pain was instantly excruciating. I yelped, opening my eyes wide and trying to move away from the assault. The woman merely smiled at my reaction, but at least she didn’t poke my wound again. What happened next I can hardly describe to civilized ears. In another very simple movement the woman grabbed me again, but in a very different place. One moment I was thinking of terror and pain, the next moment I was utterly astonished at what this woman was daring to do. Before I could even think she was straddled over me and well… let’s just say that she left a moment or two later as quickly as she arrived, and I was left wondering what exactly had just happened. Slowly it dawned on me exactly what had happened, and I realized that in the most unlikely of manners, I had just performed the duty of a man. Was I married now? A slave?

Outside I could hear the woman’s voice from before. She mentioned offhandedly to someone that I was “in usable condition” as she walked away. There was some muttering at this, and then nothing for a few minutes. A little later another woman came in, this time with a bowl of water and clean dressings. She rinsed me all over and tended to my wounds. After this, she presented a smaller bowl of water to my lips to drink. I did not realize how thirsty I was until I tasted the water in my mouth. I drank the entire bowl and asked for another, which she fetched from a pitcher. Next she presented me with a bowl of gruel, and some kind of delicious elongated yellow fruit, which she peeled prior to feeding me. She did not say a word to me until the conclusion of the feeding, at which point she merely said “Rest now. You are going to need your strength.”

As delicious and restorative as the food and water were, I was terribly weak and dizzy, and in a good deal of pain. At some point I drifted off into a disturbed sleep. The next memories were more like a dream then wakefulness, and only appear in snatches of time, sometimes during darkness and sometimes during the day. In the dreams sometimes the first woman would visit me and repeat her exercise from before, sometimes the second woman would feed me or change my dressings. There were other women that appeared in my dreams, who performed similar acts to the first, but the recollections of these events were very vague. The next clear memory that I have was of the woman who had been changing my wounds. “Can you hear me?” she asked. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She repeated her question and I nodded. I tried to speak but my voice would not respond. “Drink this”, she said as she put the bowl of water to my lips. “We were not sure if you would survive. You have been in a delirium for the last few days. How do you feel?”
I mentally checked my wounds beginning with my arm. Could I feel it? Yes. Could I move it? No, not really. I could feel my muscle in the arm but I could not make it move. My fingers however were moving, as was my wrist. My ribs now felt much better, as long as I didn’t breathe too deeply, or attempt to move from side to side. My leg still hurt, but even when the woman helped me to bend my leg, the pain was not as terrible as it had been before. The woman encouraged me to use my good arm to move my injured one, and to attempt to move my injured leg as much as I could bear to. She even helped me to sit up, and encouraged me to try to do so myself if I felt well enough. Sitting up however made me dizzy again, and as soon as she was finished rinsing my back I endeavored to lay back down. “What is your name?”, I asked. The woman simply smiled to herself, gathered her materials, and immediately left the room.

No sooner had she left me than another strangely familiar woman entered the room. “What is YOUR name?”, she asked me immediately upon entering.

“My name is Aaronius. I come from the small island of Atalantia. Our village was famous for its perla, and we have traded with your island in the past.”

“My name is Aegea. I am the ruler of the Amazon. You Aaronius are a prisoner of the Amazon, and will do as you are told. I do not know of your island, nor how you came to attack this village, and I do not wish to have my head filled with your lies.” With the conclusion of this speech, Aegea spit into her hand, handled me momentarily in the same way as the first woman had, dismounted and left without a backwards glance.

Other than the woman who was tending to my wounds, I didn’t see anyone for the rest of the day or night. I asked again what her name was and she finally whispered to me that her name was Cyme. She encouraged me to whisper as well, and when I did so, she turned out to be quite conversable, kind and informative. She reaffirmed that I was a prisoner of the Amazons. I did not know what this word meant or who the Amazons were, but she simply shushed my line of questioning. “As long as you do as you are told, your life is not in danger. You are very valuable to the village at this moment in time.”

In bits and pieces during her tending of me, always in a whisper and with covert glances towards the entrance, Cyme continued to speak to me. It turns out that every man in the village was murdered by the raiders from our boat. The oldest boy in the village was eight. In the zealousness of the moment and the desire for vengeance, the Amazons had thoughtlessly killed all but a few of the men from the boat. Of the half dozen or so men left alive, all were wounded, and four had already died. The fifth man was in the hut next to mine, and Cyme tended to him in addition to me. Unlike me however, he had not yet regained consciousness. His wounds were to his guts and it was not clear whether he would live much longer. He was also not “in usable condition”. It was becoming very clear to me what this phrase meant, and where my value as a prisoner lay.

Over the next couple of days more women visited my tent. None of them spoke to me, and some of them ordered me to look away from them. Each of them used me in a similar fashion and left without a word. After each session, Cyme would return to cleanse me and I had several more opportunities to learn from her. I learned for example that there were two distinct factions of women in the village. The first group consisted of native Lesbians. This group had been more or less scraping by with very few men among them, raising their children and hoping the raiders such as me would never return. Over time, the women had become quite adept at the traditional male duties, including hunting, fishing, and defense. When the children were grown there would be a few more men to restore balance, but in the meantime the women were preparing a trade canoe to Atalantia. Their plan was to trade their delicious yellow fruits and useful stones, except this time they would ask for men rather than perla in exchange. Before the trade mission could launch, a new raid came from the sea; not by men similar to myself, but by a warlike tribe of women hailing from a great land to the north.

These amazon women had arrived in a flotilla of outrigger canoes, and though they were greatly outnumbered by the people of the village, their weapons and prowess in using them had allowed them to take control. Originally, the Amazons came looking for men to capture, but they soon realized that the island had already been stripped of almost its entire male population. After some discussion among themselves, the Amazons decided to teach the Lesbians the secrets of their military prowess, deputizing the women of the village as a part of the Amazon nation. Their plan was to lay in wait for more raiders from the south, to capture the men and their ship, and to return to the Amazon lands in the north in triumph.

The Lesbians and the true Amazons had performed remarkably at defeating my ship of raiders. However, discipline among the Lesbians was lacking. Early in the battle it was simply kill or be killed. Later in the battle however, the Lesbians and some of the Amazons were still not taking any prisoners. The original battle in the village had left more than half a dozen men alive, but the women were in a spitting rage, stabbing the men where they lay on the ground. It appeared that the memories of past raids were just too much, and most of the female warriors would not listen to reason. An independent group of Lesbians hunted down the men who ran from the ship down the beach. As the Amazon leaders were restoring order in the village and trying to save the last surviving men, the Lesbians had mounted over the bows of the ship and were slaughtering the men inside. Just as I was about to be cut down Aegea finally reached the ship and stopped the slaughter, but it was too late for all but a few men.

I explained to Cyme that all of the men on the ship were slaves, that we were taken from other villages, and that we had no desire to fight or to hurt the people of Lesbos. I described to her the difference between the twenty or so men with the turbans, and the nearly naked and far more numerous slaves. She seemed to understand me, but I don’t know if she believed me. I also asked her who the other survivor was. She described him as looking like me, with long blond hair, tall with broad shoulders, but a bit older. “He looks like your older brother”, she said, smiling playfully. I realized that she must be referring to my uncle, and I remembered last seeing him on the ship, down and holding his wounded belly.

“What is all this talk in here?” Cyme immediately stopped smiling, lowered her head, and grabbed her things as she backed away from me. Aegea entered the room with a fierce look on her face. “Did I give you permission to speak, prisoner?” she asked me. I shook my head in response. “You travel to these islands to ravage women and to steal men, and you think that now you are set up to live a life of luxury. Is that what you think? You certainly seem to be in a conversable mood with your captors.” At this point several other women entered the tent and Aegea moved directly in front of me. “We have discussed your crimes and the clan of Amazonia demands justice. We are here to hear your story and to determine the extent of your punishment, whether your death should be fast or slow. Speak now, for it will be the last chance you have to use your poisoned tongue.”

I swallowed with some difficulty and began to relate my story to the five women. They stood in a semi-circle around me, staring menacingly as I spoke. I began my tale by speaking of my family and community, and my occupation with harvesting perla on Atalantia. When I spoke of the eruption of the earth, there were significant looks among the council of women. When I spoke of the Neriedes, there were even more looks among the women, and I realized for the first time that there must be other women gathered outside; quite a few in fact, because a great deal of murmuring could be heard when I mentioned the presence of Calypso around my little skiff. I described my suffering on the skiff, the storm on the final day, and the galea that came upon me in the middle of the sea. I then related my tribulations on the galea, and the life of a slave aboard the craft. I was very careful to emphasize the distinction between the twenty or so men who ran the ship and the hundred or so slaves that powered it. I mentioned that these craft had raided my island as well, and that three of the other slaves on the ship were men of my village, including my uncle, who I had last seen five years ago. I also explained how the slaves were tied down until the last moment of the battle in the village, and I begged them to recognize that we were unarmed, unclothed, and very poorly fed. I implored them to recognize that the slaves were victims of the raiders, just as the women of Lesbos had been.

Clearly my words had some effect because the general muttering was quite loud outside the tent. The council of women in the tent looked fairly shaken as well.
“Tell me more of this Calypso” Aegea commanded…





Previous Chapters of this and other stories can be found in the wonderful collection of Greek literature in the former house of Fotismenos... :shifty:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=4897
 
ooc: the end of peaceful rule I give you, the end of intellegent rule is highly questionable. Even Tambien admitted in context that the reign of Archon Agamemnon (me) was illuminated :p.

Oh and excellent story by the way :goodjob:, I look forward to the the point in the plot where you actually enter the game.
 
ooc: the end of peaceful rule I give you, the end of intellegent rule is highly questionable. Even Tambien admitted in context that the reign of Archon Agamemnon (me) was illuminated :p.

Oh and excellent story by the way :goodjob:, I look forward to the the point in the plot where you actually enter the game.

OOC: Thanks. I am hoping these stories help the current noble houses forget about my foolish campaign against the settler motion, so I don't die on the same turn I am born :scared:
 
ooc: I am i born in game?
 
Why dont you get rid of the deserts with IGE for us. It may be "Cheating" but it's a politik that is severely flawed with this type of terrain.
 
ooc: Dirk does have a valid point. Divine favour on greece in the form of say an oasis, would be a pleasant surprise. (although on the downside it means that I wouldnt be able to give Christos or some other irritant the "Sacred desert of Hermes", for the cruel pleasure the giving of such a fief would bring)
 
OOC: we always have the sea :p
 
OOC: we always have the sea :p

It's not about sustainability, it's about the fact that people are introduced with a population point, and if we keep this terrain, no one will ever be introduced.
 
Well don't forget that it will start growing much more quickly when you get more cities. It would also help if I could update more, but just a warning this will probably go pretty slow until after next week.
 
Well people will be introduced, it will just take a rather long time, which of course is less than optimal for the people on the waiting list. Although Dot does indeed have a point in that other cities shall in time produce population at a faster rate (although that divine intervention to de-desertify a part of athenian territory would be a pleasant occurance :p)
 
Top Bottom