The City States of Greece

Yay, I dont know more than few words. In fact, it was quite logic that demandros meant man of the people, but because of that, I mistakenly assumed that you wanted to have something to do with democracy.

Well, and on aristandros I didnt really know that ut meant anything, although I expected everybody to undersee a link to aristocracy. Obviously, I forgot that I knew what it meant. I wanted to be more a "man of the best".
 
Who do you think I am? Christos? :p
Aristocracy is technically 'rule by the best', of course it tends to end up as something different.
 
I know what aristocracy is :p
I'm for Aristoclean Aristocracy. (Aristocles=Plato)
 
I think that aristocracy in this games paradigm would manifest itself as a series of benevolent autocrats ruling over the city states with their wisdom, and working together in council in an oligarchical league consisting of all the hellenic city states.

However naturally not all people playing could qualify as aristocrats. I'm thinking of a certain overly enthusiastic firebrand greek nationalist here and to a lesser degree of those nasty and decieved souls who insist on upholding to abridged and simplified theorems deriving from the errors of the so-called "enlightenment" (Which loses whatever limited merit it possibly had in the context of these sort of games)
 
I'm thinking of a certain overly enthusiastic firebrand greek nationalist here ".

yeah where is he... I would have thought he was the first to join?
 
I must of scared him off :p oh and thats no problem Dot80, it gives you time to compute all the necessary information relating to the turn.
 
Public Speech:

I, Aaronius beseech you, oh wise and charitable nobles of the sun-kissed Athenian City. :worship:

Hear my tale of woe and grant me safe harbor within thy blessed borders. For I have traveled far and eaten far too little oh these latest cursed years of my once blessed youth.

I have heard from among the common voices that a new city will be settled soon. Those that seem to carry the hearts and minds of the crowd claim that the best spot for the 2nd city is the riverside hill directly west of the wine. The aggressive nature of the settlement towards Japan, and the ****olding of their geographic ally seems entirely to the way of thinking of the land and power hungry masses that populate the dry and dusty streets. War seems inevitable with this exotic and frightening Japanese culture.
 
ooc: It doesn't say anything about there not being slaves either ;)
 
OOC: Slavery is a natural condition, one deriving from the natural need of a labor force. And why, might I ask, would you use the members of your own tribe when there are others out there to pull on for labor, free and unending labor too!

When humanity pulls itself out of the barbaric ages, it kept slavery as a matter of course. That is because, as civilization grows, cheap labor needs increase!

With the invention of machines to do man's work, the condition of slavery simply shifted away from man and to the machine.

Slavery shall always exist, one way or another.

And anyway, slavery is one of the social conditions possible in the rules.
 
Thank you oh wise and noble king for hearing my plea. I feel my fortune will improve soon in this sun-embraced land.

As it turns out I am a slave of sorts, but not to any of you...
 
ooc: No if you were my slave you would be in perpetual servitude rather than simply dead, as killing you would give you the opportunity to ressurect an actually be a threat ;)
 
Good nobles and citizens of Athens. Perhaps you would care to listen to the tale of a stranger from a faraway land... :popcorn:

Spoiler :
I was born into a house of high standing, in a shining sun-kissed city, on a tiny island within the great middle sea. My people referred to our home as Atalantia.
My people were masters of the coastal bounty, and lived a life of contented ease. Our family accumulated wealth by the production of a kind of beaded jewelry of an iridescent white, but reflecting the colors of the rainbow upon close examination. It was the most beautiful ornament our people could produce, and the women of our community valued the trinkets that we called perla above all things. In my service to my father I assisted with the collection of the stone-like creatures we called ostreos, from which the perla were procured. I would submerge to the seabed collecting the ostreos in my father’s net, which I would hand up to him in his tiny skiff. There he would carefully pry open the shells revealing the perla, and he or I would eat the meat of the ostreo before returning the shell to the sea, or on rare occasions, saving the shells for other purposes. As I grew older I became a powerful swimmer with a love and fascination for the sea.

The cycle of the sun to the north and to the south had repeated 15 times when my father presented me with his old skiff and net. “You are a man now Aaronius, and in time my net must become your net, my knife your knife, and my skiff your skiff. You must soon choose a wife, and produce a son of your own, so that one day your net may become his.” His words were mildy disturbing to me and I was unable to stop thinking about them until I broke thru the quicksilver surface of the water on my first dive to the sea floor. I had never been so grateful to see the old familiar ostreo waiting for me in their simple silence. When my father and I returned home that evening, my mother was waiting for us with the most beautiful strings of perla she had ever produced. “When you choose a wife, this ornament will be a symbol to your wife of your ability to protect her and to provide her security and ease.” I was starting to feel very anxious and this made my mother smile and my father laugh out loud. “Of course you need not choose a wife tonight”, my father said. “Come and let us eat this feast that your mother has prepared in your honor”.

Of course, the phrase “choose a wife” was a bit of a stretch considering there were only two girls on the island anywhere near my age. Haepha was a few years my senior and lived in the house next door. In my eyes she was the very definition of female beauty and I spent many a spare moment in my yard trying to capture covert glances at her, and feeling very strange indeed. I rarely spoke to her and she rarely even looked in my direction. The only other prospective wife was her annoying younger sister Astree, who was always standing where I needed to walk, always speaking when I needed to think, and always pestering me to attend to some trivial thing. Although I had of course spoken to our neighbor’s entire family on many occasions, I tended to keep my own company as a child and rarely began conversation with others that did not have a set purpose. I desperately wanted to speak with Haepha, but I found the prospect of asking her to marry me to be absolutely terrifying. Suddenly I found that I was the one standing where she needed to walk, speaking to her when she was working alone, asking her questions that made no sense to either of us. For some reason I could not ask her to marry me, but I went to bed each night in frustration and confusion, swearing that the next day would be the day.

The moon had not completed a single phase of my 15th year when fortune abandoned my village and my destiny was changed forever. You see, my small island was alive beneath our feet. From time to time it would remind us of its discontent with rumblings beneath us and effusions of gas into the air above. On this fateful day our beloved island awoke as never before with rumblings that caused our very walls to crumble. There was a release of smoke and rock and the very blood of the earth itself. I was diving for the perla at the time, collecting the osteos in the small wooden skiff. Words cannot express my fright and confusion. The water became cloudy with filth, and in places nacreous bubbles and heat rose from cracks in the once placid sandy sea floor. The air became choked with smoke and dust, stones of all sizes fell around me, and the surface of the sea became agitated so that water air and earth could hardly be discerned. I survived somehow by clinging to my little skiff and hiding in its shadow from the falling rock.

After what seemed an eternity, perhaps no more than a day, the sun rose again over a desolate and unrecognizable landscape. I tried to return to the shore but vast stores of heated earth lay hidden beneath several feet of the finest black powder. Alas, I could not set foot on land without burning myself, and even so there was no longer any life on the island, nor even much sign that there ever had been. The tide was on the rise, and each wave that lapped the shore excavated vast quantities of the fine black sediment. So much so in fact, that the entire sea was still black and opaque all around me. I did not know what to do or where to go so I sat in my skiff, exhausted in the baking sun, staring at the desolate shoreline that was once my home. As the tide reached further up onto the shore, the waves began excavating bodies. Some bodies crouching where they had been standing, unaware of what to do or where to go. Some bodies seemingly in the act of running, trapped in the soil until freed by the penetrating waves. Other bodies floated in the blackened waters, invisible sometimes until they bumped into me or my skiff. So thick and cloudy was the sea, and so abundant were the bits of floating debris that once made up my homeland. The last body to be excavated by the rising tide was that of my beloved Haepha. Her pose was one of a crawl towards the sea, with her mouth agape and her arm outstretched in desperation. It is an image that will haunt my mind until my dying day…

With a heavy heart and a clouded mind I turned away from my island and all that I had ever known. I began to row in the direction of the setting sun.


If the tales of my youth are of some small amusement to the fair people of Athens I could share with you the more recent events of the "odyssey :mischief:" that has brought me to these shores...
 
@Aaronius:Why don't you keep those stories in your pocket until your character "comes to life"? That way your character can benefit from them :) If you want to write stories I would advice to write about an ordinary citizen who lives in Athens or something like that.
 
@Aaronius:Why don't you keep those stories in your pocket until your character "comes to life"? That way your character can benefit from them :) If you want to write stories I would advice to write about an ordinary citizen who lives in Athens or something like that.

ooc: That's a good point, and I appreciate the advice. Did you read the story?

It looks like some culture points were awarded to Joshua before his character came to life. If so, I thought I might take a stab at some similar maneuver.

Also, I am practicing my writing, and trying to develop a fun character. I am a noob to RP, but a steady participant in the CiV GOTM series, so I'm a bit over-eager here. Hopefully my story is entertaining to some of you, and not annoying anybody.
 
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