"Are we nearly there yet?", whined little Princess Hannibaline. She was not happy. They'd been travelling for what seemed years, and still her two guardians wanted to move on further. Og the industrious but stupid worker and Ag, his pregnant wife, seemed determined to find the BEST location in the whole world to settle down and raise their new family. They had stopped on the edge of a stream, by a forest, and were debating for the hundredth time whether they should cross the river to the north east, or settle on the eastern grasslands, where they could see lush pastures and caught a fleeting glimpse of wild cattle grazing.
The immortal Hannibaline had been told by an ancient wise man called
mad-bax that her destiny was to found a great civilisation to be called neoCarthage, consisting of five beautiful cities. Each city would have its own role in the empire, and the great seer,
leif erikson, had predicted that one would become the cultural capital of the known world. All that seemed a distant dream as they had trudged over the mountain and arrived here.
Hannibaline couldn't really see the point of moving another inch, but the discussion seemed never ending. Eventually the mighty Gotm-God
zamint the third appeared in a dream and told the Princess what she had to do. And she made it so. Og would head south into the forest to check whether there were really cattle in the distance, or if there was any better land nearby. Og's pidgeon soon returned with confirmation of the cattle, and so Hannibaline and Ag headed east to start building Carthage, and a Palace fit for the future Empress of Carthage. When Og arrived at the cattle pasture he first built a path to keep his feet dry, and then started building irrigation ditches with his trusty spade.
For 500 years the little settlement grew peacefully. Princess Hannibaline knew the
alphabet, and had decided to learn, very slowly, to
write. Og and Ag begat children, who begat ... well, you get the picture. A warrior had been trained and sent out to learn about the rest of the world and find out if intelligent life existed outside Carthage. Well, the most intelligent thing he could find in 3000 BC was a
Roman warrior doing the same thing. They sat and exchanged food and drink and taught each other a couple of tricks. The Carthaginian had also trained in stone
Masonry, and the Roman knew a thing or two about how to make bows and arrows and the secret
Warrior Code, though he'd never been trained as an archer himself. So they traded these skills and swapped pidgeons to allow their two leaders to contact each other in future.
As time passed Caesar of Rome helped Hannibaline's people to learn lots more inventions -
Ceremonial Burial, metal working in
bronze for pretty jewelry (and spears, but she didn't see the point of them
), the
wheel, and
pottery. The great mystery was how he managed to learn so much, since he was basically very stupid. However, he was prepared to exchange the first two of these for Writing, which she finally mastered in the year known as 2150 BC, and the others for gold that Hannibaline saved up and stashed away. Hannibaline was very upset after she had spent a lot of cash on the secrets of the Wheel, only to discover that none of her subjects knew where she could get any horses to pull wheeled carts. A classic case of putting the cart before the horse
After she learned to write, the little Princess started to learn about
literature. As she had to create a great cultural city she wanted to build a Great Library to kick it off. By this time she had founded two more cities.
Utica was founded on the west coast in 3000 BC to specialise in military production. She couldn't build charriots, but she knew what to do with bows and arrows as she had read about them. She had founded
Leptis Major on the east coast in 2750 BC to be the cultural capital of the world, and started building the
Great Library there. She had to pretend it was a Pyramid to convince the labourers to work on it, because they didn't know she was learning about Literature.
Two more cities were founded.
Theveste in 1725 BC and
Hippo in 1425 BC on the north coast, completing Hannibaline's five city plan. In 1225 BC she had learned all there was to know about literature, and she announced to an astounded population that the big building with all the shelves being built in Leptis Major was not a Pyramid at all. It was a Great Library! And it would be complete quite soon. Once it was, they would learn everything that the rest of the world knew as long as it was known by two other leaders. That left a small unanswered question. They only knew Caesar, so where would they find another leader to contribute to their knowledge? What they needed was to learn to sail. But Princess Hannibaline had become a complete culture vulture by now, and decided that she would not learn Mapmaking, but
Philosophy. She was pretty sure this would enable neoCarthage to discover a new and better way to manage its political and economic life. She was also confident that her friend Caesar would find out about sailing and tell her all about it. This was a far-sighted lass who had read all the literature in the world!
So in 1050 BC she arrived at the gates of Rome with her great works of Philosophy, and struck a deal. Caesar learned all about Philosophy and Literature, and in exchage the little Princess learned to sail using
Mapmaking. Utica and Hippo immediately switched their mighty factories to producing galleys, and neoCarthage started the search for intelligent life again. In 975 BC the citizens of Leptis Major completed the Great Library. They then built a Temple, and started on a Small Library, where ordinary people could go for paperbacks or to get out of the rain ... or so they thought
Hannibaline had arranged for a supply of local
spices to be delivered to the cities early on, but the growing population was clamouring for more luxuries to make their working lives bearable. The Princess knew that there was
ivory in the north and
wool in the south, but had not been able to spare workers to build the supply lines. However, in 950 BC an archer on patrol in the north reported that Rome had landed a settler, escorted by an archer, near the ivory. The Princess decided the time had come to initiate her plan to cut Caesar down to size.
For some time the Princess had been aware of Caesar's knowledge of iron working and that this meant he could build fearsome Legionaries, equipped with strong armour and heavy swords. It was clear that she needed to prevent him from building a large force and overrunning her beautiful but small empire. She had built a force of archers in preparation for this moment, so she declared war and ordered the brave archer in the north to deal with the invading Romans, which he did, taking two slaves.
Under the masterly generalship of
Captain Buttkick, Carthage's archers razed Antium in 900 BC and Pompeii in 875 BC. In 775 BC Caesar was prepared to give up three more cities if the Captain would just stop hurting him. So within 125 years of the outbreak of the war, peace was restored and Pisae, Hispalis and Neapolis fell under the rule of the Princess. She was delighted of course, and an enormous celebration was held in Carthage. With a total of eight cities in the empire it was possible to persuade the citizens in Leptis Major to switch their construction efforts from a library to a
Forbidden Palace! Only after they'd committed to this change of plan, burnt the library plans, and awoken the next day with hangovers, did the worthy and cultured citizens of Leptis hear that Hannibaline had immediately ordered Buttkick to destroy the three captured cities in order to remain true to her vow only ever to have five.
Having dispersed the Romans from the wool supply Roman slaves were ordered to build a road to deliver wool and ivory to the Carthaginian cities. Colonies were founded to work the supplies of these two new luxuries.
Caesar was reduced to a shadow of his former empire, but Hannibaline knew she would have to put an end to Rome, as he would stop at nothing to rebuild his Legionary army and take over the continent.
Meanwhile the first galleys had rolled down the slipways, and a couple had made brave but fatal attempts to discover new lands across the wild oceans to the west. However, in 750 BC acting galley captain
AlanH set his sails to a favourable wind and they were greeted by the sight of a safe coast and new lands and new friends. The Great Library immediately delivered on its fabled promise, and Hannibaline suddently knew more than she needed to about
Iron Working, Mysticism, Maths and
Horse Riding. Caesar had finally outlived his usefulness as a supplier of new inventions, and was living on borrowed time. Hannbaline could now see that Caesar really was sitting next to the only supply of iron ore on the continent, and in 610 BC he completed the real Pyramids in Rome. These unique assets would provide a fitting trophy when the Carthaginian troops marched into Rome.
In spite of the fact that they were learning lots from the Great Library, Hannibaline continued to work hard, learning about
Codes of Laws, to be ready for her new government, as she really wanted all those economic advantages, and to give the people of neoCarthage the right to vote for her. She started to work on this project in 825 BC and named it
Republic. In 350 BC the Great Library taught them
Construction. It later delivered
Polytheism and
Currency to take neoCarthage into the Middle Ages in 150 BC.
In 250 BC the Romans, having failed to learn a lesson, landed another settler near our ivory, this time accompanied by a legionary. Hannibaline declared war again and put
DJMGator the 13th, who blew into town like a hurricane, in charge of her army of archers, now augmented by catapults. Two archers defeated the interlopers, triggering Rome's Golden Age, and the Princess's army advanced once more onto Roman soil. So by the time Carthage reached the Middle Ages they were at war with Rome again, this time intending to capture Rome itself, along with the Pyramids, and their iron supply, and to put an end to Caesar.
Will they succeed? Who did the intrepid galley captains meet overseas? Have we seen the last hurricane to hit Gator this year? Will Princess Hannibaline achieve her destiny to build a five-city empire to stand the test of time, and a cultural city to be the envy of the world? All this and much, much more in our next transmission. Don't fail to miss the next thrilling installment of "The Princess" by Machiavelli.
![[ptw]](/images/smilies/ptw.gif "PTW Icon [ptw]")
SGOTM4 Team Summary for spoiler 1 for team Bede
players it turns out to work out fine anyways. 
It is also in this turn that we finish the Pyramids. We start producing Mercenaries at full tilt and occupying the mountainous border with Rome.
although I guess this isn't that bad compared to Team tao...
