alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
OOC: I will resend as well.
DaNES II: When the Stars Fall
- Thread starter Dachs
- Start date
Very regretfully signed by that Sophidosios dude too.
Espoir
Warlord
And uh, why does that mean they get to arbitrarily decide which cities have Ierophantoi? I could come up with some kind of doctrinal gobbledegook too if it places my officials at the top of the hierarchy.
Yeah, but I would ignore it, since I've approved what they came up with, and I'm the mod, and it seems more reasonable to me. Also I was consulted as to what cities actually ended up having these religious leaders. 
I'm pretty sure this got addressed in the rules.
I'm pretty sure this got addressed in the rules.
Darkness had almost fallen on Hekatompylos when the Areian host was seen on the horizon by the Watch. But only the captain, standing at the top of the greatest and hundredth of the famous gates, could see the army arriving in the yellow glare of the Hyrcanian sunset.
This was because the other men were dancing in the streets, military discipline spurned in the joy of the triumph of the king of the Areians. The agora was filled with the whole populace of the city, and in the middle, a huge fountain sprayed wine for feet on every side. The divine glow of the flame of Achoura Maznta was shining from the terrace that went all around the market, which was surmounted by magnificent towers of gold and bronze.
It was nearly the second watch when the first of the cataphracts, gleaming in polished bronze, entered through the great gate to the cheering of the wine-sodden people in front of him. A drunken cheering arose from the marketplace, and another few men came in, and a herald mounted the western end of the terrace:
"People of Hekatompylos! The war is over, and the glory and everlasting flame of Achoura Maznta shines even on the fair shores of the Tigris! Be silent, and hear the words of the conqueror!"
The drunken shouting echoed throughout the west of the city and over the hills. The king, outside, wondered if it were even to be heard as far away as the Caspian.
"Keep holy silence, and hear your King!"
--------------------
At the third watch, the King and the army arrived at the North gate of the city. There was no wine fountain, and the calm was discernible. But for the neighing of horses and the plodding of now tired feet, the night was as still as at the furthest peak of Hyperborea. Only one brazen fire-temple blazed and crackled in the still darkness.
But as the king mounted the terrace of the fire-temple in this, the poor quarter, the city began to crackle with more excitement than the fire could ever muster. Before even bring the whole cavalry troop was in the city, the northern agora was full of jubilant citizens, all cheering, but soberly, and as truly and enthusiastically as any such joyful crowd ever could.
The speech was dull, clichéd and long-winded, but what Areian could care on such a night? The crowd acclaimed him over and over again as Megas Basileus before they all went to sleep until the middle of the next day. The king and the army encamped in the marketplace under the shadow of the temples cast by the gleam of the fires on top of them, waiting for the games that were to happen on the next day.
-----------------
Delegates from all the nations of the Oikoumene are invited to witness the triumph of Platon, the victorious Megas Basileus.
This was because the other men were dancing in the streets, military discipline spurned in the joy of the triumph of the king of the Areians. The agora was filled with the whole populace of the city, and in the middle, a huge fountain sprayed wine for feet on every side. The divine glow of the flame of Achoura Maznta was shining from the terrace that went all around the market, which was surmounted by magnificent towers of gold and bronze.
It was nearly the second watch when the first of the cataphracts, gleaming in polished bronze, entered through the great gate to the cheering of the wine-sodden people in front of him. A drunken cheering arose from the marketplace, and another few men came in, and a herald mounted the western end of the terrace:
"People of Hekatompylos! The war is over, and the glory and everlasting flame of Achoura Maznta shines even on the fair shores of the Tigris! Be silent, and hear the words of the conqueror!"
The drunken shouting echoed throughout the west of the city and over the hills. The king, outside, wondered if it were even to be heard as far away as the Caspian.
"Keep holy silence, and hear your King!"
--------------------
At the third watch, the King and the army arrived at the North gate of the city. There was no wine fountain, and the calm was discernible. But for the neighing of horses and the plodding of now tired feet, the night was as still as at the furthest peak of Hyperborea. Only one brazen fire-temple blazed and crackled in the still darkness.
But as the king mounted the terrace of the fire-temple in this, the poor quarter, the city began to crackle with more excitement than the fire could ever muster. Before even bring the whole cavalry troop was in the city, the northern agora was full of jubilant citizens, all cheering, but soberly, and as truly and enthusiastically as any such joyful crowd ever could.
The speech was dull, clichéd and long-winded, but what Areian could care on such a night? The crowd acclaimed him over and over again as Megas Basileus before they all went to sleep until the middle of the next day. The king and the army encamped in the marketplace under the shadow of the temples cast by the gleam of the fires on top of them, waiting for the games that were to happen on the next day.
-----------------
Delegates from all the nations of the Oikoumene are invited to witness the triumph of Platon, the victorious Megas Basileus.
~Darkening~
Weep, Mother.
Have any kind of funeral rites or celebrations for the Sophists been established? (Is there a common procedure, or method of worship for a death?)
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Strategos, it is an honor. Very well, if you will have me speak plainly. You have heard my reputation as a talker. A witness, of sorts. I write down the names of all the men I know who die. Yes, I can write as well, many talented I am. So, strategos, you want me to tell you about war. I know not why, you have seen enough battles. But I obey.
It is brutal.
It's hard for men to understand, until they see it. This is not the quaint contest of the gymnasion. There are no wars in the empyrean, they say. So war is a brutal thing of our own invention. The struggle of the beast. The locked tusks. We add our own cruel twist on it, in the mass of numbers, the hunter's cool dispassion as he nocks an arrow, lets it fly across the intermittent air to lodge in the body of an enemy. Though, perhaps that is the nature of war, dispassion. For us, it is a business, a gamble, like everything else. For soldiers, it is a job. An easy job. March here, march there, salute, take orders, disobey orders, fight when you absolutely must. It is a cold, grim, occupation.
Now, let me explain rage. For we know the warrior's rage all too well. The fury of Herakles, the grief-tinged horror of Achilles upon seeing the body of Patroklos. War itself, is natural. It is a settling of accounts between states who, like punch drunk brawlers, have decided to abandon discussion in favor of violence. We soldiers are the fists. The fists don't have feelings, they simply do what the mind tells them. It is the kings, the oligarchs, the leaders who feel such impassioned rage for a cause for which they will never have to fight. Like the tyranny of the body over the mind, so too the tyranny of a nation's leaders over its soldiers.
But war is slightly different. These fists, swung against each other with no personal grievance, have feelings of their own. They have families, or hope to have them. This man, this Chaonian levyman, who is coming at me with a spear, he has a family. What right do I have to take away his lands, to make myself his king, to impregnate his daughter and take his silver ornaments passed down since the time of Sophophoros? I have no such right. But neither does he have a right to stick his spear through my midriff, to let my haima leech out into the ground. We stand, rooted, with no choice, the other an irreplaceable monster, each one incomprehensible in his desires. He has no right to kill me! So I kill him.
All the ugly excesses are shown in war. Have you ever seen a battlefield the day after? I have. Half in desire to find the corpses of my comrades, or my half-brother's cousin, or whoever, and half in hope that one of the fallen has a pair of boots better than my own. Good boots are hard to find. But, strewn across the plain, is a mess of sodden pennants, broken spears, dead horses, twisted breastplates and helmets, and men. Or, what were once men. The old pagan tales once said that the shades of Hades were twisted, according to the manner in which they had died in life. It warms my heart to know that the souls of these poor dead wretches are pulled back into chaos and made anew by Hagia Sophia, for such a fate, having half your skull cloven off for eternity, is too terrible to contemplate.
War is not glorious. It is never glorious. The wretched truth is that, in time, your skill becomes satisfying. Your ability to survive, to see the wide stroke of the swing, to parry, to stab, to kill. Just as, perhaps, the butcher takes pleasure in the quality of his cutting. Any good butcher wishes his animals to die quickly, lest their fear taint the quality of the meat. So too with a good soldier. I do not want my enemy to be a cripple, living out the rest of his life in misery. I want to end his life, with as little pain as possible, lest he curse my stroke for the rest of his life, and bring me some other misfortune.
Winching the crossbow, seeing a kataphractos in all his plumed glory crest the hill, aiming just so, letting fly, seeing the arc of the bolt, and then the man falls from his horse, and your side lets out a shout. And ten years of training and experience falls to the ground, dead. But ah, the shout. It may not be glorious, but the rush of pleasure from that shout of victory becomes satisfying, in time. To make yourself the master, do we not all seek that in some way? We seek mastery. In the jeweler's craft he becomes the master of intricate metal and gears. The Archimedian seeks to become master of numbers and pure forms. So too a soldier. Fight, win, advance, become a general, survey with a grim gaze your ranks, and know their obedience rests upon your absolute mastery of command.
You can, if you will, connect your soldiering position to great values and lofty ideals. In the end, however, we fight for simple ideals. We bring havoc to another man's lands to protect our own. Or, at least, to protect the land that we might have. There is an implicit promise behind the work of a soldier. Do your job well, fight with skill, and be lucky, and you can go from nothing to something. The chance to father children, who will grow up in prosperity, and look at you with love, rather than hate in their eyes. That is the ultimate dream, some verdant future.
It is mostly a lie, of course. But, without some nascent dream, of some heretofore-unreal wife and children, some plot of land, and servants and food and drink and rest, without those promises safely lodged in the back of the soldier's mind, he will not fight for you.
Duty, and the steel in the eyes of a decent commander, will take your soldier to the battlefield. A reason to survive the battle will bring your soldier beyond it.
Remember that, strategos.
It is brutal.
It's hard for men to understand, until they see it. This is not the quaint contest of the gymnasion. There are no wars in the empyrean, they say. So war is a brutal thing of our own invention. The struggle of the beast. The locked tusks. We add our own cruel twist on it, in the mass of numbers, the hunter's cool dispassion as he nocks an arrow, lets it fly across the intermittent air to lodge in the body of an enemy. Though, perhaps that is the nature of war, dispassion. For us, it is a business, a gamble, like everything else. For soldiers, it is a job. An easy job. March here, march there, salute, take orders, disobey orders, fight when you absolutely must. It is a cold, grim, occupation.
Now, let me explain rage. For we know the warrior's rage all too well. The fury of Herakles, the grief-tinged horror of Achilles upon seeing the body of Patroklos. War itself, is natural. It is a settling of accounts between states who, like punch drunk brawlers, have decided to abandon discussion in favor of violence. We soldiers are the fists. The fists don't have feelings, they simply do what the mind tells them. It is the kings, the oligarchs, the leaders who feel such impassioned rage for a cause for which they will never have to fight. Like the tyranny of the body over the mind, so too the tyranny of a nation's leaders over its soldiers.
But war is slightly different. These fists, swung against each other with no personal grievance, have feelings of their own. They have families, or hope to have them. This man, this Chaonian levyman, who is coming at me with a spear, he has a family. What right do I have to take away his lands, to make myself his king, to impregnate his daughter and take his silver ornaments passed down since the time of Sophophoros? I have no such right. But neither does he have a right to stick his spear through my midriff, to let my haima leech out into the ground. We stand, rooted, with no choice, the other an irreplaceable monster, each one incomprehensible in his desires. He has no right to kill me! So I kill him.
All the ugly excesses are shown in war. Have you ever seen a battlefield the day after? I have. Half in desire to find the corpses of my comrades, or my half-brother's cousin, or whoever, and half in hope that one of the fallen has a pair of boots better than my own. Good boots are hard to find. But, strewn across the plain, is a mess of sodden pennants, broken spears, dead horses, twisted breastplates and helmets, and men. Or, what were once men. The old pagan tales once said that the shades of Hades were twisted, according to the manner in which they had died in life. It warms my heart to know that the souls of these poor dead wretches are pulled back into chaos and made anew by Hagia Sophia, for such a fate, having half your skull cloven off for eternity, is too terrible to contemplate.
War is not glorious. It is never glorious. The wretched truth is that, in time, your skill becomes satisfying. Your ability to survive, to see the wide stroke of the swing, to parry, to stab, to kill. Just as, perhaps, the butcher takes pleasure in the quality of his cutting. Any good butcher wishes his animals to die quickly, lest their fear taint the quality of the meat. So too with a good soldier. I do not want my enemy to be a cripple, living out the rest of his life in misery. I want to end his life, with as little pain as possible, lest he curse my stroke for the rest of his life, and bring me some other misfortune.
Winching the crossbow, seeing a kataphractos in all his plumed glory crest the hill, aiming just so, letting fly, seeing the arc of the bolt, and then the man falls from his horse, and your side lets out a shout. And ten years of training and experience falls to the ground, dead. But ah, the shout. It may not be glorious, but the rush of pleasure from that shout of victory becomes satisfying, in time. To make yourself the master, do we not all seek that in some way? We seek mastery. In the jeweler's craft he becomes the master of intricate metal and gears. The Archimedian seeks to become master of numbers and pure forms. So too a soldier. Fight, win, advance, become a general, survey with a grim gaze your ranks, and know their obedience rests upon your absolute mastery of command.
You can, if you will, connect your soldiering position to great values and lofty ideals. In the end, however, we fight for simple ideals. We bring havoc to another man's lands to protect our own. Or, at least, to protect the land that we might have. There is an implicit promise behind the work of a soldier. Do your job well, fight with skill, and be lucky, and you can go from nothing to something. The chance to father children, who will grow up in prosperity, and look at you with love, rather than hate in their eyes. That is the ultimate dream, some verdant future.
It is mostly a lie, of course. But, without some nascent dream, of some heretofore-unreal wife and children, some plot of land, and servants and food and drink and rest, without those promises safely lodged in the back of the soldier's mind, he will not fight for you.
Duty, and the steel in the eyes of a decent commander, will take your soldier to the battlefield. A reason to survive the battle will bring your soldier beyond it.
Remember that, strategos.
Here is what me, Thlayli, Kentharu, Dachs, and other people on #nes have discussed as to the orthodox Sophist doctrine. This is mainly dealing with the belief side as opposed to hierarchy or ideology, etc. What do you fellow Sophists think?
* There is one true deity, a Goddess, Hagia Sophia, also known as Athene. She is omnipresent and omniscient. She is the Demiourgos - the one who fashioned and shaped the universe, as well as its sustainer although she did not create it. She is the first being arisen the Chaos, and meld the universe and all of its beings from the Chaos.
* The revealed text is named the Theophaneia, a divinely inspired text ushered in by the prophet Niketas Sophophoros ("wisdom-bearer") Athenaios.
* The ultimate goal of the religion is to achieve hyperbatikoteta ("transcendence") with Sophia. In such a state, one achieves a pure spiritual form akin to that of the Demiourgos herself.
* Hyperbatikoteta is obtained by obtaining akriboma – true knowledge. There are various odoi with which one may achieve hyperbatikoteta – gnosis, eusebeia, and techne are among the primary odoi.
- Arete - Virtue. It is not an odos per se, but it is necessary for each odos to be successful – without arete, each odos can be used for evil ends; in a sense, this is an odos more important than the others.
- Gnosis - Ineffable, secret, privileged knowledge about the spiritual nature of the cosmos. Specialized among the monasteries and philosophers.
- Eusebia - Piety - reverence and devotion to Sophia. Specialized among the priesthood.
- Techne - Craft - in attaining mastery, one obtains wisdom. Specialized among the general population, such as warriors (craft of battle), artisans, et cetera.
* All people need arete, techne, and eusebeia in some measure. Each person specializes in one path, but they have consubstantiary knowledge of the others. The doctrine of consubstantiation is a good way of describing how people should act – that you can move on multiple paths simultaneously. A particular technique to fulfill one of the odoi is called an methodos.
* If an individual is vicious, upon death he suffers in a state of agnoia, ignorance, and is not nearly as happy or exalted as an individual who has achieved hyperbatikoteta. Evil individuals are cast back into the Chaos.
* The osioi are individuals who are believed to have achieved hyperbatikoteta within their lifetimes, similar to the christian concept of saints.
- Hyperbatikoteta, agnoia, odoi, and osioi are sometimes illustrated using more materialistic metaphors, using heavenly city imagery, as the ultimate reality is beyond comprehension (being gnosis) yet comprehensible.
* There is one true deity, a Goddess, Hagia Sophia, also known as Athene. She is omnipresent and omniscient. She is the Demiourgos - the one who fashioned and shaped the universe, as well as its sustainer although she did not create it. She is the first being arisen the Chaos, and meld the universe and all of its beings from the Chaos.
* The revealed text is named the Theophaneia, a divinely inspired text ushered in by the prophet Niketas Sophophoros ("wisdom-bearer") Athenaios.
* The ultimate goal of the religion is to achieve hyperbatikoteta ("transcendence") with Sophia. In such a state, one achieves a pure spiritual form akin to that of the Demiourgos herself.
* Hyperbatikoteta is obtained by obtaining akriboma – true knowledge. There are various odoi with which one may achieve hyperbatikoteta – gnosis, eusebeia, and techne are among the primary odoi.
- Arete - Virtue. It is not an odos per se, but it is necessary for each odos to be successful – without arete, each odos can be used for evil ends; in a sense, this is an odos more important than the others.
- Gnosis - Ineffable, secret, privileged knowledge about the spiritual nature of the cosmos. Specialized among the monasteries and philosophers.
- Eusebia - Piety - reverence and devotion to Sophia. Specialized among the priesthood.
- Techne - Craft - in attaining mastery, one obtains wisdom. Specialized among the general population, such as warriors (craft of battle), artisans, et cetera.
* All people need arete, techne, and eusebeia in some measure. Each person specializes in one path, but they have consubstantiary knowledge of the others. The doctrine of consubstantiation is a good way of describing how people should act – that you can move on multiple paths simultaneously. A particular technique to fulfill one of the odoi is called an methodos.
* If an individual is vicious, upon death he suffers in a state of agnoia, ignorance, and is not nearly as happy or exalted as an individual who has achieved hyperbatikoteta. Evil individuals are cast back into the Chaos.
* The osioi are individuals who are believed to have achieved hyperbatikoteta within their lifetimes, similar to the christian concept of saints.
- Hyperbatikoteta, agnoia, odoi, and osioi are sometimes illustrated using more materialistic metaphors, using heavenly city imagery, as the ultimate reality is beyond comprehension (being gnosis) yet comprehensible.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
As per our discussions, I sign off on this.
Tree151
Warlord
The Treaty of Adulis
1. Sophidosios, basileus Aigyptou, will cede the territory demarcated below to Gersem of Aksum.
2. Sophidosios, basileus Aigyptou, will pay an indemnity of 100 talents to Gersem of Aksum.
3. This treaty shall be in force until the death of one or both of its royal signatories.
Signed, Negusa Nagast Gersem of Aksum
Outside of what was mentioned in the update, it's mostly a bunch of nonsensical aphorisms and prophecies. The Dhu al-Qarnayn millennialist stuff is probably the most objectionable to 'orthodox' Sophism, but that Ghassan guy also talked about 'other deities' of various sorts, about which he was pretty vague but which seem to be amalgams of local gods and Greek pantheon deities.
The Galatians mostly died out or were assimilated by the second and third centuries. A few Galatian groups served on various sides of the Seleukid civil wars as mercenaries, and what was left of them had a bit of a 'last stand' in the Sophist wars.
The Galatians mostly died out or were assimilated by the second and third centuries. A few Galatian groups served on various sides of the Seleukid civil wars as mercenaries, and what was left of them had a bit of a 'last stand' in the Sophist wars.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
It says that a Messiah-figure (essentially Alexander the Great reborn) will come to purify the Sophist faith. You can see the details in the last update. (Also, what Dachs said.)
At least use Akkadian or something. 
