In the Shadow of the Old Pueblo-Tucson ISOTed to the Bronze Age

[Teen Spirit]

The Fall of Malias And Zakros

After her coronation, Wilson's hold on power was not nearly as secure as she would have liked. While she had Knossos, the largest and wealthiest of the Minoan palace-states, she only had less than a third of Crete's total land. She had the most advanced army on the island, but an ever dwindling supply of pre-event ammo that could not be replaced and a supply of black powder that would take some time to replenish. Finally not all of her fellow conquerors were particularly thrilled about her self-promotion to Anax. While Rachel had made it clear she would be in charge of whatever state they created and some mention had been made of a monarch, there were still a few who found the whole thing absurd. The Anax needed a show of strength to secure her power.

After consulting with everyone from her friends to the local merchants, Wilson declared war on Malias while inviting the other Palaces to send observers to travel with her army. It was risky, letting enemies that close to her forces, but she didn't want to risk having to conquer every palace one-by-one. Malias would be the example, the one that suffered so the others would see reason. She had picked the palace-state because it was closest to Knossos and was near to the shore, meaning they could bombard the palace directly with their mortars instead of just using them on the harbor like they had at Knossos. It was also the most expendable of the palace-states from what Rachel could tell, while crushing it might not send as strong a message as crushing, say, Phaistos would have, it also didn't risk any vital administrative centers like Hagia Triada. With luck, it would be the last major battle she would have to fight.

Malias' docks proved easy enough to take, mortar fire sending the light garrison scattering after a few shots. After that most of Wilson's forces docked and formed a defensive line around the harbor as workers struggled to unload their sole cannon and prepare it to fire. Meanwhile one ship remained off shore, carrying several minor priestess and merchants who were kept under guard, there to observe Malias' fate. Rachel herself was on the docks, directing the battle as she stood near the cannon. Her appearance had changed considerably- while most of the Americans in her army were wearing ragged jeans and other modern pants, Rachel was dressed in a modified version of the dress worn by so many Minoan women and priests. The skirt had been shortened, and the normally exposed middle covered with rich purple fabric. The only thing missing was her crown, which was still being made back in Knossos. Wilson was determined to make it clear what she was now, that she wasn't just some thug with a gun or a refugee;

She was Anax, King of this island.

With some black powder purchased from a traveling uptime merchant they had enough ammunition for fifteen shots for the cannon plus an emergency reserve for their homemade firearms. Rachel would end up firing thirteen shots, all but one of which tore through the Palace of Malias, each shot ripping open a new hole. The King of Malias ordered a counterattack but the attack faltered in minutes after Minoans were hit with Molotov cocktails filled with grain alcohol. By the end of the day the Palace of Malias was standing but it was heavily damaged and parts of it were on fire. The King of Malias was executed by the Anax's forces and his family exiled to Akrotiri on the island of Thera (surely a safe place for them to live out their lives long-term). Rachel then had the priestesses and merchants brought ashore and told them simply "Surrender and prosper or refuse and share the fate of Malias".

The reaction was considerably more mixed than she had expected. Gourina knelt quickly. The King of Phaistos fled along with much of the local nobility, hoping to avoid the fate inflicted by American warlords on so many villages in Anatolia. The High Priestess of Phaistos quickly took control, preventing the palace from falling into chaos. Her messengers informed the Anax that she would agree to bow to Knossos, provided Wilson allowed Phaistos a fair amount of autonomy under the reign of one of her fellow priestess' brothers. Only Zakros, on the far eastern side of the island, remained defiant.

Taking Zakros in battle would push them to the brink in terms of logistics and a rapidly dwindling stockpile of ammunition. But taking all but one of the palaces had done a lot to at least quiet the voices of dissent for the time being, leaving Wilson comfortable enough to pursue a different tactic; instead of taking Zakros by force she wouldstarve them out. Not physically- Minoans made good use of polyculture agriculture and Zakros had plenty of fishing nearby- but economically. All roads to Zakros were blocked, all ships heading to or from there were diverted to other ports. Some slipped through but not enough. Zakros was the gateway to the Eastern world for Crete, its people wouldn't starve, but they'd soon run out of saffron, copper, tin, and textiles, to name a few of its trade goods. The very economic livelyhood of Zakros was threatened, and while it never reached the point of a complete blockade, it didn't need to. Financial anxiety combined with general fears of the American invaders triggered a series of riots. In the end the King of Zakros surrendered to Wilson after three months of economic warfare. For his resistance he was banished from the Aegan entirely, and his family forced into exile on the island of Ios.

The conquest had been far less smooth than she would have liked, but never the less it was complete. Gone were the palace-states of old, replaced by a single Minoan Kingdom lead by one Anax, one King, Rachel Wilson.

Consolidation and Appeasement

Even before the surrender of Zakros, there was much talk among the Uptimers of what was to come next, as even those who had joined late had a sense that the Minoans were only the first stop on a larger plan. Most assumed they would prepare for some time before seeking conquests in Anatolia- maybe even Troy itself. Then they could conquer their way back to Tucson and use its resources to fuel a mighty empire. When someone brought this up at a feast celebrating the surrender of Zakros, Wilson's answer was a surprisingly blunt no. She had plans for conquest of course, once things were secure here. But she had no interest in returning to Tucson.

This baffled many of her supporters, even her friends found her attitude a bit weird. Despite everything Tucson was still undeniably the best source of modern technology and rare resources, and absorbing the survivor states could strengthen their numbers. Wilson still refused. She feared ruining everything they had trying to take a collection of cut up automobiles and rough cut log cabins. New America was still going strong at that point and it seemed possible that many states like it would soon arise out of the collection of villages surrounding Tucson. Wilson didn't want to gamble everything they'd accomplished and any legacy that they (any legacy that she) might create on whatever struggle would ensue between rivals claiming to be America's true successor. Better to trade with whoever won than to risk it all on a war they might lose.

To most gathered it was clear that it wasn't just about the risks, her evasive words and references to legacy, along with her general behavior before during and after the conquest made it clear that this was a matter of ego. As much it was about giving her friends a good life it was also about making a name for herself. Rachel Wilson didn't want to be remembered as just another warlord among the dozens dominating the American survivor states. She wanted to remembered by this history the way history remembered the likes of Cyrus the Great and Ramses the Second. She wanted history to record her as a great leader and the founder of a kingdom that would last for generations.

On a more practical level she also worried how long she'd be able to keep calling herself king if she held American territory. If there were any in Anatolia at that time who had been brave enough (or mad enough) to declare themselves kings she wasn't aware of them. Even a number of her supporters had all but sneered at her when she declared herself King, while the Minoans whispered that her arrival and conquest must have been divine in some manner. She believed that if her kingdom were to become American dominated either by population or culture, then the legacy of the enlightenment would cost her a considerable amount of power and influence. Whereas with the Minoans, she at least thought, she had more authority over them both as a society and a culture.

Beyond all of that though, Wilson personally just didn't want to go back to Tucson or Troy. What she did in the opening days of the event and in the Fall of Troy haunted her. She hated what she did, she hated forcing her friends to take part in her actions, she hated that she hadn't been smart enough to avoid murder and complicity in the Massacre of Troy. At least here she saw her actions as having meaning, not just killing to survive another day.

The refusal to return to Tucson was controversial, and some of her supporters protested strongly. Though many did privately share the King's unease about returning to Tucson, everyone had ghosts there to some extent. Eventually her girlfriend Jessica proposed a comprise. Trying to conquer any of the survivor states would be a messy and bloody affair, and Tucson was far from the shore. But surely there must be survivor states out there with access to Tucson who would be interested in alliance. Having a partner on the mainland would help fuel their plans for expansion and give them steady access to advanced materials without putting everything at risk if war where to break out. Wilson relented and began making plans to find an ally in Anatolia.

But finding such an ally would take time and she had far more pressing concerns at the moment. Before anything could begin obligations had to be fulfilled, rewards distributed. Everyone had been promised a life of luxury free from back breaking labor, but that didn't mean everyone was going to be rewarded equally. Some had contributed far more than others and some were simply far more capable, and those two didn't always match up. Rachel wanted her supporters to form the backbone of a new nobility for the Kingdom. One powerful and skilled enough to help her rule the island, but not so powerful they would be a threat to her or future generations. That was the idea anyway. She was working with former college students, high school teachers, ex-army, even a couple ex-cartel, and most of them had shown promise when Rachel recruited them but whether that promise would amount to anything was a question that weighed heavily on her mind.

First she had to decide what to do with Zakros and Malias. Whoever controlled those cities would be among the most powerful lords in ner new kingdom. Zakros and its command of eastern trade went to Carmen, who had lead the return trip to Tucson and gathered caches of supplies, materials, and important books. Rachel first offered Malias to her brother for his work on the cannon but he refused, only wanting some property near Knossos to begin setting up his forge. Malias would instead go to Fritz Pope, a former high school teacher who had been able to provide Rachel with a large number of guns and several boats both uptime and downtime. For the rest, those who showed an affinity for more mercantile affairs were given a large house and control over several merchants as part of a 'royal corporation' (taxes on these corporations were light but Wilson expected those in charge to expand Minoan trade networks when possible). Most would end up with either governorship of one of the islands or even just large manors with servants and a fair amount of land. Her girlfriend, Jessica Kilpatrick, was only given ownership of the the docks of Knossos along with servants and fine jewels, but as she was now de-facto consort and the King's most trusted adviser, she was probably the second most powerful person in the kingdom.

While her initial efforts were focused on appeasing her Uptime supporters, Wilson did not neglect the locals. It was true that her conquest had been fueled in large part by a desire to use their labor for her own benefit, she wanted very much to avoid being hated. Hated Kings didn't tend have long dynasties after all. For the common people she instituted a grain dole similar to those used by the ancient pre-event Romans. She also sponsored numerous celebrations and festivals across the kingdom, and nearly injured herself when she tried to take part in the bull-leaping. For the merchants she unveiled plans for new boats with copper sheathed hulls that could travel further and hold more than any ship currently sailing the Aegan. She also directed them to begin trading with various survivor states along the Anatolian coast, which proved richly profitable for all involved and helped to establish diplomatic contact with many of the survivor states

She hit a stumbling block when it came to appeasing the priestesses. The priestesses were powerful, being a borderline nobility in their own right, and many of Wilson's reforms had lessened their power in ways she made it clear she had no intention of undoing. The King attempted to bribe them with gifts and a promised ban on any uptime proselytism, this proved of only middling success as it failed to address the underlying issues the priestesses had with their new king. To put it simply, women could not be Kings. While Minoans of both sexes interacted freely in normal life, when it came to one's profession certain positions and careers could only be held be one gender. Men could not be priestesses or homemakers, and women could not be merchants or Kings. And yet here Rachel Wilson was, a square peg who had somehow forced her way into a round hole. The priestesses found themselves at an impasse. Rejecting her would mean risking a war with a woman who had already brought low the four great palaces of the island. Accepting her would mean declaring that Asasarame, the main goddess of the Minoan religion, was wrong.

A growing number of priestesses were starting to wonder if Wilson and the other new arrivals had some other god or goddess supporting them. While few of the Minoans knew about Tucson in detail yet, they were largely aware that the Americans had suddenly appeared in Anatolia, and even they lacked a real explanation as to why that happened. Surely it was proof divine influence. This talk would enrage the more conservative members of the priesthood, none more so than Rusa, the high priestess of Asasarame at Knossos.

Her rage would play a large role in first major domestic crisis the Kingdom would face, the mysterious death of the former King of Knossos.
/
So yeah, I have a lot to say when it comes to the Minoans and Rachel Wilson. I'm probably going to get wordy with a number of other nations as well but probably not to this extent.

 

[Teen Spirit]

The Phaistos Conspiracy

The Former King of Knossos had been living in a manor in Knossos basically under house arrest since he'd surrendered the city to Wilson. He had proved a surprisingly useful source for advice on how to run the city. He hadn't been the most popular before the conquest, as most who dealt with him quickly realized just how much he was under the thumb of the High Priestess Rusa, but he had his supporters and Wilson generally found the idea of murdering him for the sake of politics distasteful. She had hopes to eventually win over his loyalty and integrate him into her new nobility, which left her rather shocked one morning when he was found in his bed with his throat slit.

The priesthood was quick to blame Wilson for the murder, Rusa personally used it as justification for claiming that there was nothing divine about Wilson's rule. Rachel Wilson in turn immediately suspected Rusa and tried to have her arrested, at which point the Priestess promptly fled with most of the Knossos Priesthood. The thing about the Minoan Religion was that the palaces were only one part of the religious structure, most of the important rituals and festivals involved the use of peak sanctuaries and cave shrines, both of which gave the priestesses plenty of places to hide and plan. The priesthood's abandonment left the city enraged, with many citizens fearing that the goddesses had abandoned them. Protests rocked the city for days.

In truth neither Wilson or Rusa had anything to do with the murder of the former King, rather his murdered was orchestrated by one Donald Norton, a former Chemistry teacher and the then-governor of Anafi island. Donald had joined this venture with the general assumption that Wilson would eventually stumble and fall from power, allowing someone older and wiser to take her place. That none of her missteps had yet removed Wilson from power frustrated the man until he decided to take more direct action to ensure her downfall. He was able to form an alliance with the new Under-King of Phaistos and together they convinced Rusa to ally with them. Their plan was relatively simple, use Phaistos as a base to organize a series of protests and small revolts around the island, forcing Wilson to spread her military forces thin. Ideally that would give them an opportunity to storm Knossos and take out Wilson along with her main supporters. Ideally with Wilson gone, Norton could force his way onto the throne to prevent chaos from consuming the island. From there he wouldn't be able to roll back Wilson's agenda completely but it would be enough to shift things back more towards how the Priesthood preferred things. Norton would be in charge but the priests would regain much of their old authority. Unfortunately, Rusa would have to go into Exile, but that was unavoidable at this point.

The plan went well at first with the numerous riots stretching the Minoan military to the breaking point. But things hit a snag when it came to the raid on palace itself. Jessica Kilpatrick feared someone pulling something similar to what Wilson did at Troy, and so when Rusa left Knossos she began preparing for the worst. As a result the men hired by Rusa and Norton found the palace more heavily defended than expected- the fighting was vicious and would last most of the night. By daybreak the battle was over and the coup had failed, but not without cost. The biggest loss for Wilson and Kilpatrick personally was the death of their friend Clark Brown, a close friend of Rachel's. Grief left her nearly catatonic for the next few days, during which Jessica acted quickly and began preparing a manhunt to find whoever hired the thugs who attacked the palace. Luckily for her the failure of the coup fractured the alliance in Phaistos.

One of the priestesses, a minor one who knew some details of the coup but was only tangentially involved, revealed the involvement of Phaistos and Rusa in exchange for immunity and power. Norton fled with his family before anything could be tied to him. (He disappeared completely, though years later there were rumors of a strange looking family of five taking control of a Terramare village along the Po River.) The rest would not be so fortunate. Rusa, the Underking, his sister and a number of other priestesses and nobles had their throats cut and their bodies mounted to the posts around the palace of Phaistos. The palace had it's autonomy revoked and was place under the rule of Clark's brother.

The priesthood quickly learned to fear Jessica and began worrying Rusa had led them into a war. But a war was the last thing either Wilson or Kilpatrick wanted. A war with the priesthood would devastate the island and cripple Wilson's plans. But, the priesthood could not be trusted. they had to be restrained somehow. After weeks of discussion and debate, Wilson, Kilpatrick and Kitani (the Priestess who turned on Rusa) came up with a risky solution.

The New God

Roughly a month after Clark's death Wilson finally left the Palace. Striding out courtyard with a bronze spear in her left hand she announced to those gathered that her Patron, the goddess who had brought her here and made her conquest possible, had finally revealed herself and told her what needed to be done for the Minoans to face the future. The Goddesses' name was Aphrodite Areia, or Aphrodite the Warlike, goddess of love, beauty, sex, war, justice, and political power. Very quickly a new priesthood was formed with Kitani at it's head, and it was made clear to all that Aphrodite Areia was the new paramount goddess of the islands. The old ones weren't gone, but she was now in charge.

Aphrodite Areia was modeled on both the Aphrodite of pre-event history (As Aphrodite in any form did not exist in Mycenaean Greece) mixed with elements of her little known Spartan incarnation, along with elements of Athena and the Assyrian Goddess Ishtar. Her stories were taken largely from the first two, though modified to fit the Minoan religion and make her seem wiser than Aphrodite tended to come across in Classic Greece. She was also given tales that involved her having female lovers. The intent was clear, while the Minoan gods didn't give the new Anax the right to rule, Aphrodite supported her completely. Centers of her worship were kept near the palaces and her new priesthood would be firmly under the thumb of the Anax. Worship of the other goddesses didn't stop, but it was weakened.

Notably, the Anax made it very clear Aphrodite Areia was nothing more than her patron and she specifically avoided claiming any divine heritage. Rachel had caught wind of a few more out there priestess taking to worshiping her directly, and that terrified her. Both because even with her growing ego that was more than she ever wanted from anyone, and because she firmly realized such a cult could spread out of control in dangerous ways and make her allies think she'd gone mad. (More so than they already had at least.)

Aphrodite was controversial with both downtimers and uptimers. For downtimers she was a foreign god forced upon them, and while some were quick to accept her, others hated her with a passion. For uptimers many accused the Anax of being mad, or of wasting people's time with what they saw as little more self indulgent mythological fan-fiction. But Wilson was not willing to budge, if people questioned her right to rule it would not be because some god told them, and few wanted to risk Jessica's wrath at this point. Though a number of uptimers would acknowledge the new cult could be a useful way to keep the population placated, Aphrodite Areia would remain conversational for the decades to come.

The Kingdom Between Wars

Peace would come to the Kingdom after those chaotic first months. Trade flourished, temples and numerous schools were built. While the Anax wanted to preserve the Minoan Language and Linear A she realized English would dominate the region if not the world eventually, and so the people needed to learn it. She even introduced a new calendar; albeit a modified version of the old pre-Event calendar that just used the Event as it's starting point. Now history would be defined by whether it was B.E (Before the Event) or A.E (After Event).

Then a year after her Conquest, the Anax announced she was marrying her longtime partner Jessica. Only a few short months after the ceremony, she revealed she was pregnant, to the shock of her Minoan subjects.

Rachel would remain evasive on who the father was, answering with anything from a shrug to "Jessica". Most of the uptimers were aware however, that she had tracked down and hired an uptime doctor a few months before and several Minoan men had been bribed for "donations" and placed under a vow of secrecy upon pain of exile. Rachel laid down a clear succession rule in case the pregnancy took a turn for the worst. If the baby lived, Jessica would serve as regent for them until they came of age. If it didn't, then Jessica would serve as Regent for her brother's young son Mark (As her brother had made it clear he would refuse to be on any throne) until he came of age.

This turned out not be needed as Rachel survived and give birth to a healthy baby girl who was given the Minoan name of Ariiniros, which both her parents general shortened to Ari. Between Ari and her brother's three kids with his Minoan wife, Rachel felt the matter of succession was finally secure.

For five years, the Anax focused the Minoan Kingdom on trade, improving technology, and building up both their navy and their army. She prepared for the next phase of her plan- dangerous expeditions to Tucson and the Invasion of Mycenaean Greece. For five years Rachel spent every day worrying that this would be the day Thera erupted and her kingdom suffered She needed more land to feel secure and Mycenaean Greece seemed the best place to start expanding. And after five years she felt she was ready.

Unfortunately others had already beaten her to the punch.

The Mycenaean Invasion and the Later Years.

The Minoans were not blind to the outside world, quite the opposite in fact. Trade kept them well informed of current events in the region. Anax Wilson heard the Second Wave of American Migration was beginning, that dozens of groups numbering in the hundreds if not thousands were beginning to expand in all directions, and carve out new states. Some of their efforts were born out of frustrations similar to what Wilson had experienced in Troy, other were motivated by simple desperation. So news of triple invasion of the Mycenaeans didn't come as a terrible shock when it first arrived, although it was certainly annoying. Wilson looked at those invading Greece; Socialists, Neo-Nazis, and thugs calling themselves New Sparta, and she wasn't impressed. Sure they had modern weapons and ammo, but those would run out soon enough. By now the Minoans had an army carrying flintlock muskets and even a few experimental breech loaders, while their naval was composed of fast warships armed with cannon. She assumed the 'Spartans' would prove easy enough to deal with and after that it would just be a matter of wiping up what remained of the other invaders and the Mycenaeans.

This proved to be a gross misjudgment.

By the time they landed in Peloponnese, the Minoans found that Spartans had dug in at the Mycenaean cities they had conquered, turning each into a fortress, and what Wilson expected to be a quick victory turned into a series of bloody sieges. To further complicate things, someone had armed the Mycenaean cities with cannons and muskets, giving the downtime powers in the region some considerable teeth. After a year of fighting Wilson ordered an end to all offensive operations on the mainland, and refocused efforts on claiming and holding as many Aegean Islands as possible. A few more invasions over the years would give her chunks of the mainland but nothing resembling the total conquest she had hoped for. The sea would belong to her, but the mainland largely proved elusive.

During the invasion of Sparta the Minoans came in contact with the Catholic-dominated Republic of Baja Arizona. Despite their different ideologies, the two nations quickly became close as the Minoans provided Baja with desperately needed food after a failed harvest, and Baja provided the Minoans with a reliable path to Tucson.

Twenty years after The Event, the Minoan Kingdom is a prosperous power, but an uneasy one. Thera is going to erupt sooner or later, nothing they can do will change that. The Minoans have riches, they have their hands in almost all the trade in the region, their children read books printed in both Linear A and English, and they even have a few steamships in their harbors. But how much of that wealth and power will survive the eruption? The now graying Anax is determined to ensure that whatever happens, her kingdom will endure what is to come, what she cannot answer is how to achieve that.

The Minoans are divided on how best to press forward. Wilson still dreams of invading Greece but is doubtful if that is even possible. Her daughter wants to push west, expand the settlement on Malta and begin colonizing Sicily. Others lobby for an invasion of Egypt, or even a return to Anatolia.

Soon enough the Minoans will return to war, the only question is where.

 

[Teen Spirit]

"We thought them beasts, little more than animals whose only strength came from their weapons. What attacked our walls were not beasts, but men, men who had thousands of years of war to learn from. If they ever united they would be unstoppable."
-King Alektruon, Mycenae

"The first wave destroyed what we once where. The second wave was when we started to figure out what we had become."
-Consul Sophia Maddox, New Roman Consulate

The Second Wave

The Second Wave of American Migration began either in late 1 A.E (After Event) or around 5 A.E with the Sanford Expedition, depending on if one counts the Minoan Conquest as part of the Second Wave or not, and is arguably still ongoing as of 20 A.E. The Second Wave saw the uptime Americans expand in all directions away from the area surrounding the ruined city of Tucson, dozens of groups determined to forge their own paths. Most of these nations we will cover in detail later, so for now we will only look at the basics of the event.

The Second Wave was caused by a number of factors, the largest being general unrest with in many of the early survivor states. New America's collapse was only the most extreme example of the problems most of the early states near Tucson faced. Leaderships unprepared for the challenge of running a nation, religious unrest, territorial strife between groups, banditry, and farming difficulties plagued these ephemeral countries. Despite the advantages Tucson provided, the area around the field of bones had become too crowded and infested with bandits and raiders. This combined with the fact that many found themselves being ruled by people they felt were inadequate, the growing unhappiness for many at their new living conditions, and the looming possibility of famine with every harvest, drove many to simply leave the first survivor states, sometimes departing in groups of hundreds . Many of the early survivor states ended up collapsing simply because there weren't a lot of people left living there.

The Second Wave of American Migration differed from the first in numerous ways. Whereas the First Wave had been a chaotic affair borne of desperation that had turned the Tucsonians into little more that a starving horde, the second one was a series of endeavors that were generally well-organized and well-planned. It was rather spread out as well, taking place over decades instead of months as early expeditions inspired later ones. Fortunately the fighting was also far more restrained compared to the First Wave, with only the most extreme groups trying to kill downtimers outright. Most instead sought to rule over the natives of the region and integrate them into new states, as Rachel Wilson had done. The second wave of conquerors also used different weapons than the first, pre-event firearms were largely either held in reserve or used black powder ammunition that required far more cleaning. Most had been replaced with muskets and home-made firearms, and cars were all but gone as the remaining pre-Event gas had long since expired, replaced with downtime horses and wagons. And while the First Wave had created its fair share of ideological factions, almost every invasion of the Second Wave was motivated on some level by ideology, from the far left to the far right and everything in-between.

The largest expeditions of the Second Wave headed north, stabbing at the wounded heart of the Hittite Empire. Many others went west instead, towards what would have been Istanbul, only to discover elements of the Air Force had survived their last flights out of Tucson and had claimed part of the strait. Mycenaean Greece suffered three invasions in a short period of time, with a fourth one landing in the northern part of the region a few years later. Others pushed south towards Cyprus and even traveled as far afield as Egypt.

Unlike the First Wave, the Second Wave had decidedly mixed results. On the one hand the Hitties were all but destroyed by the Sanford invasion , pushed out of their own capital and reduced to a weakened remnant barely surviving in the south. On the other hand the invasions of Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt did not conquer as much as their participants hoped. Mycenaean Greece proved a tough nut to crack as the invaders found themselves fighting each other and the Minoans and the native Mycenaean city-states. Despite repeated efforts many of the Mycenaean states remained standing, including Mycenae itself. The invasion of Cyprus was also be a rather chaotic affair, as the invaders were pitted agasinst fighting settlements formed during the First Wave and the forces of Mycenaean and Minoan nobles who had fled their respective homelands.

But it was in Egypt where the Americans would first taste real defeat. Two major and three minor invasion attempts targeted Egypt, the first major one a religious group determined to take what would have been pre-event Israel. The second was aimed at Egypt itself, hoping to copy what Anax Wilson had done with the Minoans. Both the Crusaders and the Man-Who-Would-be-King found themselves utterly defeated after being outnumbered and outfought by the Egyptians under the reign of the Hyksos-born Pharaoh Khyan. The smaller invasions suffered similar fates as well. Like many of the Mycenaeans, the Pharaoh had an additional advantage the invaders had not expected, modern technology in the form of cannons. People had left Anatolia long before the Second Wave proper, lone wanderers or people traveling in small family groups, looking to find a new life. Many of these uptimers wound up in royal courts across the Mediterranean, and some brought with them knowledge of gunpowder and iron forging. The uptimers still held a tech advantage over the downtimers by a considerable margin, but the playing field had become noticeably less unbalanced.

The Bronze Age was all but over and something new was starting to take its place.

 

[Teen Spirit]

Wanderers
There are Uptimers who for one reason or another never settled down in one country or tribe, either because they couldn't or didn't want to for various reasons. Some of these wanderers would rise to fame or infamy, changing the Mediterranean world in various ways. For now we will look at a few of them and the impact they've had.

Alpha to Omega
The World's Last Band. That's how they bill themselves at least. In truth they're more an alliance of various bands, each band named after a letter in the Pre-event Greek Alphabet. Alpha to Omega has traveled around the Mediterranean, first appearing New Washington around 7 A.E. Formed from a collection of out of work friends who decided to try and revive their pre-event music careers. The bands playing a mix of covers to their own original work, with various bands covering different genres from Korean Pop music to Country. At first many of the sub-bands were only considered to be of moderate talent with only a few real stars mixed in. Still the group proved popular, though never really profitable as most of their funds went towards expeditions to Tucson to get more supplies to repair their equipment and the various generators and Solar Panels used to power them, on more than one occasion they only survived because of patronage from one of the survivor states . 13 years on and the group has reached the height of their popularity but is likely soon facing it's end. Most of the bands have retired for one reason or another; mostly age, new families, illness and equipment breakdowns. Some have been replaced by their children or successors, such as Eta; which is now an all-girl, all Mycenaean Rock Band. But only four bands remain as of 20 A.E; Alpha, Eta, Pi, and Omega. Still they continue to draw crowds, both among those trying to recapture some part the world they lost, and among the newer generation who are trying to get a glimpse of a world they would never know.

Elicia Baxter
The self proclaimed Herodotus of the New World, a title that has earned her some mockery among former Academics. Elicia, a former classics major at University of Arizona, is on a mission to record as much as she can about what happened during and after the Event. To ensure future generations know the truth of what happened, both the good and the bad. This has earned her a fair number of enemies and twice nearly got her executed. Despite this she has been able to travel all across the region, speaking everyone from Merchants to Pharaohs. Her work, The World Since the Event, is finished and currently being printed in Globe. She is already preparing for her next project, a trip east to study the Indus Valley Civilization.

Corbin Armstrong
Depending on who you believe, Corbin is either a master storyteller or a man pushing his own fanfiction upon an unsuspecting world. Corbin had been an Bus Driver before the Event but after the chaos event he was able to focus on his passion, storytelling. He traveled mostly among native cities, being the first contact many of them had with an uptimer. He picked up languages quickly and soon became to tell stories in public, acting as a oral storyteller. Some of his stories were little more than retellings of pre-event works such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, modified to fit his audience and his personal taste. But as time went on he's gained a passion for creating whole new stories or taking current events and spinning them into Epics. His most famous being Wilusan and The Fall of Knossos. Retellings of the Fall of Troy and Conquest of the Minoans, with numerous liberties taken such making Troy seem like a pitched battle with both sides nearly matched, the gods directly intervening at several moments. These stories have greatly frustrated both Troy and the Minoan Kingdom.

Constantino Cole
Cole and his husband Andrew have one of the most dangerous careers around, recovering books from Tucson. Several times a year they and their heavily armed escorts brave the journey with a small homemade wagon pulled by an uptime horse. Once there they'll hit whatever bookstores haven't been picked clean and load up as many salvageable books they can find. Then they travel around the Mediterranean looking for buyers. They mostly stick to fiction and less useful non-fiction these days. While more technical works, particularly those on steam engines, farming and firearms, had proven to be very profitable, they were also very risky to obtain and quickly came to attract the wrong sort of attention as faction backed expeditions started targeting them. Still even works of pure entertainment can fetch a fair price. The two have tried to retire several times but each time the thrill of braving the dangers of Tucson draws them back in.
/
Author's Note: Now that I'm up to the Second Wave I'm occasionally going to wander off and do updates like this that are focused less on specific nations or events.

 

[Teen Spirit]

"Depending on who you ask, Sparta is either two weeks away from collapse or two months away from conquering all of Greece. The truth, as in most cases, is somewhere in the middle."
- Elicia Baxter, 'The World Since the Event'

New Sparta, officially the Spartan State, was the first and most successful of the three invaders of Mycenaean Greece, having conquered a significant portion of Peloponnesus and threatened to take Mycenae itself. However failed attempts to win over the native population, Minoan invasion, civil war and an unexpected resurgence by Mycenae stopped it in its tracks. Now Sparta controls less than half of what it originally conquered, and with over 3/4ths of it's populations reduced to enslaved helots, suffers from perpetual unrest. Despite its weaknesses Sparta is still considered to be a respectable military power even by its enemies.

It has to be, because without its military power Sparta wouldn't survive the week.

Origins

Captain Raymond Lang was a member of the Arizona Air National Guard before the Event. While most of the Air National Guard and Air Force would either attempt to assist in evacuating civilians or just flat out flee the city during after the breakdown of the chain of command, Lang chose to hunker down with his family alongside several others. Taking over a small gated community near midtown, Lang's community survived in large part thanks to the considerable stockpile of weapons he and his family had owned pre-event, a collection that only grew as Lang sent out armed patrols to search for supplies. For two years he and his survived, their gated homestead proving to be a mixed blessing as it protected them but also gave them little room to farm, forcing Lang and his followers survive through rations and limited trade with other Tucson communities. The former Captain realized that this wouldn't last forever, so when a group of scavengers offered him assistance getting his community out of Tucson in exchange for help with a job, he jumped at the chance.

The scavengers put Lang in contact with their employers, a group of people who had taken to calling themselves "The Coalition". The Coalition was a formerly twelve-, now thirteen-member group living in one of the many survivor states inside of the Field of Bones. They had only one goal; to leave. The leader of their small survivor state had proven frankly psychotic, and the farming and fishing in the area hadn't been very successful, prompting them to consider other options. The Coalition had heard of Wilson's conquest of the Minoans and was eager to try something similar. As most of The Coalition members had some level of military experience, they figured such a conquest would prove far easier for them than it had for an overly ambitious college student, particularly with Lang's large supply of pre-event guns and ammo. The only question was what their target should be; southern Anatolia was already too crowded and too devastated by the First Wave to make an invasion practical, and few wanted to make the long trek north.

It was Lang who first proposed southern Greece, having heard talk about the Mycenaeans and their walled city-states from other scavengers. He figured such a target would be easier to conquer piece by piece, with each city hopefully serving as a bastion against reprisals and invasions. Shortly after the Mycenaean Plan was agreed upon, another member of the Coalition by the name of Alejandro Martìnez, a former member of the US Army, brought up Sparta. Sparta had been an ancient Pre-event Greek City-State of the classical period, its military reputation fairly well known even in modern times. Martìnez believed that Sparta, or at least what he believed he knew of Sparta, presented a solid blueprint for what they needed for their new state to survive. A highly militarized society with a underclass of serfs, known as helots, to work the fields and do other mundane work. While their knowledge of Sparta was limited, the Coalition did find Martìnez's ideas compelling and after some heated debates, agreed that their Conquest would become a New Sparta, a military power that could make the whole region tremble before it.

The Coalition's departure was a rather straight forward affair, as they surprised the self-declared President of the region in the middle of the night, killed him, and then rallied together much of the nearby population and offered them a choice; remain here in squalor and eke out a living as fishermen and farmers, or join them and become part of something far greater- an army that could bring civilization to this barbaric land. A great many joined, largely to escape the brutal existence they had found themselves in. From there they set sail in a number of boats, both native and pre-Event, and made their way towards Greece.

The Invasion of Laconia

While the voyage of The Coalition attracted some attention from the Minoans, Anax Wilson was far too focused on internal matters to make any serious efforts to stop them, assuming these 'Spartans' would utterly fail in their efforts. The Coalition made landfall in southern Greece in late 3 A.E. Their first conquests would be simple enough, taking over numerous small fishing and farming villages before finally coming upon the city of Menelaion.

Mycenaean Greece was centuries away from the golden age they would have experienced in the pre-event world. They were towards the end of the middle Helladic period, and many of the things Mycenaean Greece would have become known for were either just beginning or did not exist. Though their boar tusk helmets were being made, what would become Linear B was limited to Seals used primarily on shaft graves. The small but fortified palace cities of the later Helladic did not exist but many of the features that would become common to them did. Anaxes held court in their individual Megarons, a type of great hall, and almost every major settlement had a central area protected by a citadel of thick cyclopean walls made of massive limestone boulders that were roughly fitted together. Their defenses were crude by American standards, but enough at that point in time to deter all but the most desperate and resourceful.

Yun Shi-Eun was a South Korean who moved to Tucson with her family when she was seven. The now twenty-year-old was one of the few non-military and one of its youngest members of The Coalition. Her membership in the group hinged on two key factors, her knowledge of explosives and the rather alarming amount of bomb making material she had. No one is quite sure where she learned her craft, and the whys and wherefores of it were something The Coalition agreed were better left unexplored. Whatever her reasons, she had bombs and the ability to make more for the time being.

Menelaion's Anax had been preparing for an invasion for sometime, some Minoan refugees had entered his court a year prior and warned him about the dangers of Rachel Wilson. But with the Minoans all but cutting off trade, that left him little ability to modernize or do anything but train more soldiers. When these new invaders came, he hoped the walls would be enough to outlast them in a siege. Such hopes where dashed when the main gate was destroyed by an IED. While the coalition's forces where small, they had a large stockpile of pre-Event weapons and a solid core of trained soldiers. The Mycenaeans were quickly felled and the Anax was killed along with a number of nobles. The Spartan State now ruled Menelaion.

The Spartans expanded quickly, though the rugged forests of Arcadia did prove challenging. Nevertheless they were able to conquer numerous settlements including Pylos and a citadel-town on the site of what would have become Sparta. After over a year almost all of Peloponnesus was under their control, save for the city of Mycenae itself. Their conquests had been slowed down in part by a hostile native populace.

The Spartans made little efforts to ingratiate themselves with the Mycenaeans and what efforts they did make were clumsy. Some of the members had told the populace, through translators that their invasion had been divinely ordained by Zeus himself, and made efforts to invoke the Greek Pantheon several times to quell the populace's anger. The problem is they were invoking Pre-Event Classical Greek Mythology, and while the Mycenaeans did worship several of the same gods and goddesses as the Classical Athenians, their views and worship of them was rather different. The Mycenaeans placed far more importance on Chthonic gods, with Poseidon being the main deity of the Pantheon under his earthshaker epitaph. Zeus was a fairly minor sky god to them, their attempts to invoke him felt childish and ham-fisted to the Mycenaeans. This was only a minor problem though, the larger issue was how the self-declared Spartans treated the Mycenaeans. The Coalition saw the natives as barbarians and left any concerns about integrating or "civilizing" them for later. At that time the Greeks weren't slaves, but only just. Nevertheless the strength of the Spartan army allowed them to dominate Peloponnesus and soon they set their sights on Mycenae.

Mycenae was the largest of the Mycenaean cities and its walls the strongest. The Spartans worried that taking it would consume too many of their dwindling weapons and hoped their rapid conquest of the rest of the region would convince the Anax of Mycenae to surrender, opening up the path to the rest of Greece. They called for a meeting, the Anax agreed. The delegates sent to Mycenae soon found themselves quite surprised as they discovered a bronze cannon mounted on the walls of the city, and it was an American woman who met them at the gates. Mycenae was far stronger than the Spartans had expected.

To further complicate things, their spy on Crete had come back with a report; Rachel Wilson was headed towards Greece with an army at her back.

 

[Teen Spirit]

A War on Three Fronts
The woman who greeted the Spartans at the Gates of Mycenae was one Diana Chard. She, along with her brother Fredrick, had spent the past few months helping Mycenae prepare for an attack from the Minoans. It was her brother in fact who had made the cannon now manning the walls of the city. Despite the presence of an American, negotiations did not go well- If anything Diana's presence inflamed the situation. Raymond Lang called her an idiot for siding with savages and against her own kind, while Diana said he was nothing but a thug with dreams of glory. Chard made it clear that any attempt to assault Mycenae would bleed the Spartans dry and the city was more than prepared for a siege. Lang kept up his siege for two weeks anyway, before withdrawing.

Mycenae would have to wait for now.

The Minoans invaded with hundreds of troops, most armed with newly made flintlock rifles and wearing actual uniforms of green cloth. It was something new, not one of the ragtag groups of American survivors, or the undisciplined warriors of the bronze age world. While the Minoans knew the Spartans would be dangerous, the assumption was that they had overextended themselves and would quickly run out of pre-Event ammo (the Spartans had heavily favored pre-Event firearms until this point after all) and Anax Wilson figured her greater supply of black powder weapons and superior numbers would be able to overcome them. This proved a critical misjudgment as it turned out the Spartans had a decent stockpile of black powder (created by the Coalition in their years in Anatolia) and homemade firearms held in reserve, but that was not the biggest problem for the Minoans. Wilson's greatest challenges were the many fortifications the Spartans occupied.

The Mycenaeans favored defenses on even small villages, and with every place they occupied the Spartans went to work improving the bronze age fortifications, using Mycenaean labor to apply mortar to the walls, extending them, making them thicker and adding multiple layers of defenses. The Minoans had cannons, but limited experience with using them particularly when it came to siege warfare. Jessica Kilpatrick had trained the Minoan Army as best as she could, but she was one of the only people in the Minoan Kingdom with pre-Event military experience, compared to dozens of veterans among the Spartans, and her forces were relatively inexperienced. What Anax Wilson hoped would be a simple conquest turned into a series of sieges with little land being gained.

These sieges also put a strain on the Spartans, spreading their forces dangerously thin and expending vital pre-Event resources on defense. To further complicate things Mycenae went on the attack. Their armies were still largely bronze age, with only a few guns among their ranks. But they didn't try to lay siege, instead they raided supplies and burned fields, doing what they could to make the Spartans miserable.

With the Spartans over-stretched and under siege on two sides the inevitable happened; the Mycenaean subjects of the Spartans rose up in revolt, frustrated at their mistreatment by these strange foreigners. Now facing two enemy nations and an internal revolt, New Sparta's collapse seemed unavoidable. But the Minoans lacked the ability to push further, and Mycenae received word of a new invasion to the north. Mycenae eagerly signed a peace treaty and the Minoans stopped offensive operations, focusing on defending what few places they had gained. The Spartan advance was stopped, but they were alive.

With their two man enemies no longer breathing down their neck, the Spartans turned to the natives in revolt, preparing for a brutal crackdown against the native populace of Peloponnesus. And it's here that the Spartan State fractured in two.

 

[Teen Spirit]

Division, Repression, the rise of Arcadia, and the fall of Lang.
The plan for dealing with the Mycenaean rebels was relatively simple, if brutal. A large number of those who revolted would be culled, the rest pressed into virtual enslavement as part of the newly made Helot underclass. Those natives who had proven their loyalty would be offered citizenship. Most of the Coalition agreed with this, the Helots would provide the manual labor needed to enable the Citizens to focus on running the country and building a military, but some were starting to waver. For many the native revolts were a sign they had gone too far, some were horrified by what they had done to the natives, others simply feared being on the wrong end of a slave revolt. These dissidents argued that the best path forwards was one of integration, making the Mycenaean populace feel like a vital part of the Spartan State.

This was unacceptable to many in the ruling Coalition, Alejandro Martìnez in particular had come to view the Mycenaean as an backwards people with clever ideas but abhorrent morals and beliefs. He feared Sparta would become something like the Minoans, with an American ruling class but a distinctly native culture, if the Mycenaeans were shown mercy. He, Lang and others resisted any notions of tempering their efforts towards the rebels. This created a rift among the Americans, because though a slim majority favored a more merciful approach to the natives, only a few among the ruling Coalition shared their opinion and they were quickly voted down.

The Spartans went to work, they and their few native allies crushing the various revolts in Peloponnesus, slaughtering those who resisted and enslaving those who didn't. Rather quickly, Lang noticed something odd, a number of revolts seem to be having unusually good luck. Now some of the revolts had been getting supplies from Mycenae and even the Minoans but this was different, they kept finding rebel camps that had been abandoned, seemingly quite recently like someone had tipped them off days or even hours before the attack. Suspicion began to take hold among the more militant members of the Coalition who thought some of the more 'soft-hearted' citizens might be tipping off the natives. Then a patrol of five was hit by an IED, killing three of them. From there things escalated rapidly.

Yun Shi-Eun was arrested, charged with murder and treason. She defended herself strongly, arguing that using an explosive would have been the stupidest act possible for her and that clearly someone had framed her. There were protests against her imprisonment, Martìnez threaten to arrest those protesting, and disagreement became outright civil war.

The rebellion began with one Annie Greenwood. Annie was a nursing student attending Pima Community College before the Event and had a rather strong interest in Greek Mythology. She had been the one to spearhead the early misguided efforts to try and convince the Mycenaeans the Spartans had divine favor. While these efforts failed miserably, they did give her a strong appreciation for Mycenaean culture, so much so that she found herself hating the entire Spartan idea. She moved quickly and quietly, rallying together those who had come to dislike the Spartan ideology the Coalition was trying to promote. Yun's arrest proved the perfect catalyst, allowing her to convince many that Coalition were tyrants interested only in their own power.

The civil war was a chaotic and brutal affair, making it possible for the rebels (With Mycenaean help) to secure most of Northern and Central Peloponnesus, in particular the remote mountainous region of Arcadia. They had less success in the more secure south, though Greenwood did manage to free and recruit Yun Shi-Eun .

The conflict dragged on for over a year, with Sparta holding onto to Laconia but unable to expand much beyond it. Eventually Greenwood and the Coalition agreed to a rough ceasefire. The agreement heavily favored the newly born Arcadia, who took most of what Sparta had held before the Minoan invasion.

The ceasefire would be the downfall of Martìnez, as most of the blame for the civil war and native revolt was put on him. He ended up giving up political power to focus purely on military matters, which allowed Lang to rise to the forefront of Spartan Politics.

For six years Lang dominated Sparta politically, ensuring the Helot system was fully implemented. He managed to take a state on the verge of collapse and reforge its army into one of the most feared in the region. The Coalition had given way to a Lang Administration that held complete control over Sparta. Then he pushed it too far, announcing plans to name himself King of Sparta.

He tried to phrase it as a way of legitimatizing their rule, of appeasing the natives without actually having to give them anything, and he insisted he was not trying to take anymore power than he already had. His attempt still backfired utterly, as most of the former Coalition found it stupid and absurd. Lang had overestimated his popularity and underestimated how much his fellow Spartans had come to dislike the Minoans and their self declared Queen. The Spartans didn't want an Anax, and so they arrested the would-be king. Martìnez briefly returned to power to establish a ruling Council of Five, which he named the Council of Ephors, after the pre-Event Spartan group of the same name. The Council of Ephors was largely made up of Coalition members, the civil war and years of serving Lang having quelled some of their zeal.

Sparta Today
New Sparta Circa 20 A.E is a nation with universal conscription. Every Citizen, man or woman, is part of the army and for at least some of the year they are expected to serve, either on garrison duty, Tucson expeditions, or helping put down Helot revolts. Those unsuited for fighting are trained to work the forges or act as supervisors for helot labor. Even when not on duty, Citizens are expected to maintain a high degree of military readiness. Almost every part of Spartan life is focused on the military, from education to entertainment. Lang's ideal was to make every Citizen a warrior, and despite his disgrace most of his policies have been left in place. Citizens are also encouraged to have kids, lots of them, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status.

Despite these onerous responsibilities, Citizenship comes with hefty benefits. All Citizens are given a portion of farmland when they reach adulthood with helots to work it. Taxes are low and military wages are decent, most Spartan adults have jobs outside of the military but an additional career isn't necessary for survival.

For the Helots it is a far different story. While the New Spartans don't regularly declare war on them, nor are Spartan children expected to kill one as part of becoming an adult, they are viewed with great wariness. Any hints of revolt are brutally crushed, families are regularly broken apart and moved around, and their education is very limited. Most Helots living a life of back-breaking labor, either in the fields, in the forges, or in the mines. They are given no rights and abuse is common, as Citizens are allowed to do just about anything to a Helot, although it's strongly encouraged not to do anything that would push the population into open revolt. Despite outnumbering the Citizens seven to one, the Helots have been unable to mount any revolt close to the strength or size of the first one. Most simply try to flee to Arcadia, with increasingly mixed success.

The Council of Ephors still rules, though only two of its original members remain, the rest having died or retired. New members of the council are elected by majority vote from the other members of the council. The council's power is all but unlimited, held in check only by non-council generals.

While Sparta's warfare has been limited to dealing with Minoan invasions, expeditions, and Helot revolts for the past decade or so, everyone knows it's only a matter of time before the Council decides it's time for round two against the traitors in Arcadia.

 

[Teen Spirit]

"There's a fine line between faith and madness."
-Princess Ariiniros Wilson, The Minoan Kingdom

"We changed Arcadia, and in turn it changed us."
-Protector Yun Shi-Eun, Arcadia

A Shaky Peace

Victory against the Spartans did not bring the security Annie Greenwood had hoped it would. She had won most of the contested territory, she had even managed to secure a pretty decent mansion in Pylos, even if it was cruder than the Palace of Nestor that Pre-event archaeologists uncovered. But she was now one of a very small minority of uptimers in a land that was home to tens of thousands of native Mycenaeans. While many of them were grateful towards Greenwood and the other Uptimers who joined her, they hadn't forgotten that they were all involved in the initial conquest, and that the Americans had played a role in everything they had suffered. To further complicate matters, the Anax of Pylos, along with most the nobility of the region was dead or enslaved by the Spartans, leaving Greenwood without the knowledge and assistance they could have provided.

A number of solutions were suggested, from crowning Greenwood (rejected strongly by every Uptimer) to some manner of alliance or even union with Mycenae (rejected largely due to Pylosians disliking the the city-state and Uptimer fears of retribution). Eventually an arrangement was made to have Pylos as simply the first among equals, with Arcadia serving less of a nation and more of a confederation of towns and cities. The Uptimers would take control of Pylos, with Greenwood leading the City as Chief Magistrate and Yun-Sh-Eun appointed it's "Protector" (commander of the armed forces). Below Greenwood was a twenty-member city council that largely managed the day to day affairs of the city.

This partially placated the Downtimers but they still saw the Uptimers as foreigner conquerors (which they pretty much were, Pylos did have the most power in Arcadia). Greenwood knew she needed something that could unite the two groups, something that would bridge Americans and Natives and help make the Uptimers seem like they were a part of the Mycenaean Culture rather than apart from it. To do this she turned to religion. Her earlier efforts to use the Greek Pantheon to win over the Myceneans had failed miserably but she never gave up her interest, indeed it expanded as she came to learn more and more about the Mycenean Pantheon and the differences between it and the Classical one she was more familiar with. She believed the Mycenean Gods were the best way to win over the Downtimers, she just wasn't sure how.

After a year of shaky rule, Greenwood announced that she and a small number of Uptimers and Downtimers were going to visit the more central locations of their nation, the actual Arcadia region that gave their confederation its name.

The Flute and the Bow

Arcadia was a rugged region, mountainous and heavily forested with only a few fertile valleys, that was considered old and mysterious by the Myceneans. It was here the Mycenaeans had given the Spartans the most grief and even now Greenwood had only a nominal control over the region. While her cohorts worked to improve ties with the villages in the area, Greenwood turned towards matters of faith, particularly the shrines that dotted the mountains and caves. It's here she first encountered serious worship of the God Pan.

Pan was an old god dating back centuries, originating in the original Proto-Indo-European mythology. The Mycenaean version of the figure was the god of nature, shepherds, flocks, and mountain wilds, heralds, travelers, boundaries, roads, thieves, and trickery. Many of the latter elements would split off and become Hermes in the Pre-Event world, but here the two were one and the same. While Pan had little popularity outside of Arcadia proper, Greenwood believed that by focusing on certain aspects of him- particularly his boundaries and travelers aspects- she could claim his favor in securing their victory. But she knew she needed more, so she turned to Artemis.

Artemis, alternatively called Artemitos in some regions, was a much more recent divinity than Pan. Unlike the refined asexual Huntress of Classical Greece, the Myceneans depicted her as a savage figure. To them she was a mountain huntress more commonly associated with bears than deer (a number of people even worshiped her as some sort of were-bear capable of turning into a massive she-bear). In this as well Greenwood believed she found something she could use.

Annie Greenwood spent months in the mountains of Arcadia, consulting with priests, talking with the locals, and consuming both downtime and uptime narcotics. Eventually she hit upon an idea, writing down pages and pages of notes. She returned to Pylos with a fire in her eyes, and plan.

What she presented to the Council of Pylos was not a new mythology but rather a rearrangement of the existing one. She would claim to the Mycenean people that it was both Artemis and Pan who had brought them victory. As Pan had been enraged by the Spartan's disrespect of his boundary stones- the Herms (the Spartans had destroyed a number of road markers during their conquests)- and together he conspired with Artemis to bring down the heathen Spartans. That's why Arcadia proper had been where the Spartans faced the bloodiest resistance, because that was the home turf of Pan.

The Council agreed to this idea with the understanding it was just appeasement of the Downtimers and not actual belief. They considered it a ruse to secure their rule. Surprisingly the idea took hold rather quickly, the Myceneans being more than willing to accept that the gods had been the ones to secure their freedom from the Spartans. While things weren't perfect, the seeming conversion of the Uptimers and the tales of Pan and Artemis's victory did a lot to soothe tensions between the two groups.

From Policy to Belief

After Greenwood's return from the mountains things were relatively peaceful for Arcadia. Most efforts were spent on improving the big three; Infrastructure, Weapons, and Ships. Arcadia's borders made return trips to Tucson Difficult so a focus was placed on newer ships that could sail around Sparta. This caused some conflict with the Minoans, particularly once they started grabbing the Ionian islands, but things never escalated beyond harsh words and the occasional privateer. Arcadia didn't want to risk a war with Sparta still at their border and the Minoans were more focused on fighting the Spartans.

While all of this was going on there was a slow but steady change among the Arcadian leadership, both downtime and uptime, particularly concerning matters of faith. Though all of the uptime leadership had been largely dismissive of the Mycenaean Faith (Greenwood's interest was largely personal curiosity combined with manipulation of the Mycenaean people) this changed over time. Gradually the private mockery slowed down and then stopped almost all together, other uptimers started making more than just the minimum effort with prayers, and priests went from borderline shunned to welcome at court in Pylos.

Manipulation gave way to genuine belief for many of the uptimers, with Greenwood leading the way. Outsiders claimed that the drugs had gone to her head or that the strain of everything since the event had finally broken her mind like it did to so many others. Greenwood strongly insisted she was no more insane than any other ruler around. To her the Mycenaean faith explained so much. True it didn't provide direct answers to why or how the Event happened, but it offered far more than any of the old faiths or even science did. She had spent years trying to explain to herself why this all had happened, she thought an all knowing god wouldn't have caused an ISOT and some freak of nature would not have acted so specifically. The imperfect, almost primal gods of the Mycenaeans made more sense to her mind. Had it not been for the ISOT the Mycenaeans would have been wiped out by the Bronze Age Collapse, their culture replied with a radically different Greek Culture with its different interpretations of the gods. But now through Arcadia, through Mycenae and the other surviving city states, there was a chance it could survive.

Greenwood's faith quickly turned fanatical, the atmosphere among the Council becoming borderline cult like. One or two uptimers fled but most stayed on, even those few who hadn't bought into the cult (such as Yun Shi-Eun, who maintained her Pre-Event Atheism) realized that they really had no where else to go, Sparta would certainly kill them the moment they stepped over the border. However much the new faith unnerved them, Arcadia was their home now.

It didn't take long for that fanaticism to turn in political change. In late 13 A.E, Greenwood announced that the divine favor that Arcadia clearly possessed demanded a more faith-based state. The government and the priesthood were reorganized to become one and the same. Instead of Magistrates and Anaxs, the cities and towns would be lead by a council of priests and priestesses. Greenwood adopted the title of head priestess of Artemis, acting as joint head of state alongside the Head Priest of Pan, a downtimer named Hektor. This change served two main purposes. First it consolidated power in the hands of the priesthood, who Greenwood enjoyed a far better relationship with compared to the downtime Magistrates. It also gave her a guiding hand in matters of faith, allowing her to steer religious doctrine to her own purposes.

This change was not without controversy, revolts dotted the countryside but years of preparing for another Spartan invasion had honed Shi-Eun's military skills. She stamped out the revolts quickly, though she was never able to stop the discontent completely.

Religion became the biggest aspect of Arcadia life. Everything was controlled by one of the priesthoods; all border guards were sworn to Pan, all hunters had to pay tax to the priests and priestess of Artemis, the Navy was lead by the High Priest of Poseidon. The gods had saved them from Sparta and the Minoans, the gods were what kept Arcadia alive

Arcadia Today

Opinion on Arcadia among its fellow nations is divided. Sparta has more than once called them the North Korea of the new age. To the Minoans they're useful idiots who keep the Spartans busy. Myceane itself views them as odd but probably the only uptime nation that treats them decently and trade has become regular between the two.

The average citizen of Arcadia enjoys less freedom than the average citizen of Sparta but has far more than any helot. You can own your own business, marry who you want, travel where you want (within Arcadia), and are mostly free to pursue any path you want... provided you pay respect to the proper temples and pay taxes in both gold and labor to said temples.

They're not the strongest around and many of their guns are still simplistic matchlocks and flintlocks, but they're strong enough that Sparta hasn't moved against them yet.

There are growing concerns though. There is discontent among some of the downtimers, particularly in the north-east where the population has struggled against Greenwood's fanaticism since the beginning. Far more pressing is a matter known only to a few. Annie Greenwood is slowly dying from cancer. While she has already arranged for a successor to her role as head priestess (a woman named Poulxeria), many wonder if uptimer unity will hold once she passes. It was Greenwood who inspired them to revolt, it was Greenwood who took command, it was she who lead them to their new faith. Without her many worry the less faithful of the uptimers, particularly Yun Shi-Eun, will either abandon Arcadia, or worse, attempt to take power for themselves.

 

[Teen Spirit]

America before the Event was a Capitalistic society that placed a great deal of importance, for better or worse, one how much material wealth one had. For a time the Event made such things irrelevant, even the best well off were now scrounging for food and what economic activity did exist during the early days of the First Wave was limited largely to barter. Early leaders paid their followers in tents and small rations as they lead them out of the ruins of the old pueblo. For some of the worse off villages this has largely remained the status-quo for the past two decades. But for most settlements and nations, stability and contact with tightly connected trade of the Mediterranean have brought need and demand for the return of a monetary system.

The Failure of Paper Money
Early on many Uptime settlements and nations simply tried to use Pre-Event American currency. This quickly ran into problems both practical and psychological. On a practical level, only the foolish really put a lot of thought into taking money with them when they fled Tucson, and the foolish rarely lasted long. So most survivors only had maybe a bit of pocket money with them. Some considered using expeditions back to Tucson to gather more money but in every case it was considered a waste of time. Why bother looking for old currency when there was always far more useful stuff to find. Additionally, US paper money generally has a shelf life of ten years at max. What Pre-event paper money survives usually has either been purposefully protected or left forgotten in sealed safes, most dollar bills have long since fallen apart by 20 A.E

On a psychological level, while some don't accept it, the old united states was gone. The currency was no longer backed by anything. For most it was just a painful reminder, both of the event and the fact that most of their pre-event wealth was now gone, their credit cards now just useless bits of plastic. Why should a dollar bill be any different?

Pre-Event coins have fared somewhat better, with many states accepting them as a secondary currency and most living within Tucson still use it as their main currency. Though being made of relatively non-valuable metals has greatly limited their use in trade as both the Minoans and Egyptians refuse to accept them.

For those who tried to print new forms of paper currency after the Event quickly ran into problems. Fiat money required the confidence of the people in their government, which was a rare thing even in the most stable regimes. And Representative money had to be backed by something, Something the American Empire discovered painfully after their brief attempt at a paper currency ended in failure when the public realized there was far more money in circulation then there was gold and silver backing it. Additionally the paper or cloth needed for making such currency was in short supply, particularly early on and often reserved for more more important things. leaving those who tried paper money with simply not enough money in circulation. Finally there was the issue of counterfeiters. No one post-Event has had the level of tech needed to match the level of the United State's counterfeit protections. A simple Pre-event copier and printer is more than enough to create a good copy of any post-event paper currency, as the Hattusa Republic discovered when they found their market flooded with counterfeit money from the New Pueblo. For these reasons, almost all who have attempted to print their own paper money since the Event have more often than not quickly scrapped such efforts.

Commodity money
The Bronze age world lacked any real coinage. But what it did have was Commodity money, objects that have value in themselves as well as value in their use as money. Gold, silver, and particularly barely were all popular forms of commodity money in the Mediterranean. Another example would be the oxhide ingot which was just starting to become a common thing before the Event, as it made not only transportation easier but also made it far easier to trade due to the standardization of size.

Since the event the most common form of commodity money has been steel scrap, as it is both needed by every Uptimer state and highly desired by the remaining downtime nations. While some steel has been made since the event, Pre-Event steel is far more sought after due to it's quality and quantity. Steel is so highly sought after that many scavengers and traders operating in Tucson have taken to using bottle caps from Beer and Mexican soft drinks as a kind of currency, as even the limited amount of steel in a bottle cap will still fetch a decent amount on the market. And many have noted that so many steel kitchen knives have come out of Tucson that they're almost a currency in and of themselves.

Plastic, Glass, Livestock, Iron, Copper, Silver and Gold are all also popular forms of commodity money.

The Importance of a Coin
The most common kind of currency in circulation in the Mediterranean as of 20 A.E is Specie, currency made of a precious metal such as gold or silver. While the downtimers lacked any sort of coin before the event, convincing them of the value of a coin made of gold or copper proved simple enough. The rise of actual coinage has actually been a fairly recent development that many nations have pushed independently, as they've come to see coins not just as an economic tool, but a political and social tool as well. Using the coins to create a shared sense of national identity, and as a sign that things are finally stable enough that the government can worry about more mundane things instead of just survival. Electrum, Silver and Copper are more common, Copper particularly due to the market being flush with the metal. But there are a few nations out there with gold coins and other metals.
In terms of quality the coins are not as precisely made or uniform as Pre-Event American coins but are generally far more standardized in shape and size than classical Greek or Roman currency would have been.

The Minoan Kingdom boasts proudly (And repeatedly) that they were the first to create a new monetary system after the Event, basing their coinage on that of classical Greece, their coins ranging from the tiny obol to the egg sized Dekadrachm. The coins depict the Anax, the crown princess and other members of the royal family , with the verus either being an animal, a cannon, or a ship. Aphrodite Aeria being absent from any of the coins. In contrast the Arcadias wear their religion proudly on the few coins they mint, with both sides of every coin being depictions of one of the various gods. Designs and motifs vary drastically across the Mediterranean. From the American Iconography of the Silver Dollars of Globe, proudly displaying the face of Thomas Jefferson, to the simple crossed spears that mark the head of the New Roman Consulate's copper Dupondius.
/
So I had originally planned to an update on Tuscon but I kind of hit writer's block with that so I decided to focus on an idea I had talked about a while ago with EBR. Hopefully this is interesting.

 

[Teen Spirit]

November 19th, 4 A.E
The Settlement of Iron Horse, Somewhere North of Tucson.

David Haynes awoke from his restless sleep to the sound of gunshots in the distance. He scrambled out of his cot. Nearly falling over as his body struggled to move. He grabbed his rifle that was hanging from one of the tent poles and pulled out his boots. All but staggering out his tent, still dressed in a dirty T-Shirt and sweat pants.

It was early, barely enough sunlight to stain the sky orange. The air was cold, not cold enough to be uncomfortable for him but cold enough than most of the settlement would start complaining about it in almost every conservation. Tucsonians acted like anything lower than 75 degrees was cold.

Haynes pushed his way towards the outer edge of the settlement, past rows of tents, converted trucks, and the occasional native building of stacked stones and thatched roofing. It was far more orderly now than it had been when they first arrived but the whole place felt more like a tent city than a real town. There where plans to build real homes but so many other things took priority.

David made his way to the western edge of the settlement, marked by a roughly constructed wooden fence and with a small watchtower made out of logs and car parts near the main gate. A small crowd was gathered near it. They were focused on something past the gate but no one had their gun drawn. Which was a good sign. He gently pushed his way through the crowd until he saw the focus of their attention, five bodies strewn about the countryside not far from the gates, blood staining the dirt.

They were locals, the tunic and bronze weapons made that clear. They'd been driven from the village years ago, as they had been from pretty much every bit of farmable land anywhere near here. But that didn't mean they were all gone. Some had tried to trade or beg for food, but most had turned to some form of raiding to survive. Five was admittedly a bit small for a raid though. Scouts maybe?

"What happened?" Haynes asked. It felt like a redundant question but clarification never hurt.

A figure emerged from the watchtower, it was Elizabeth Sloan. A young woman, not even twenty, she was one of Iron Horse's de facto milita.

"Spotted them lurking around the winter rye field. Told them to stop, they didn't stop. Told them to stop again, still they keep moving. So I took care of it." Sloan said with cold indifference, her eyes focused on the bodies.

"You can't expect them to understand English"

It was Ilalilka who spoke up. Ilalilka was one of only two natives of the region who remained in village, the other being a 5 year old girl now named Clara. Ilalilka had been invaluable during their first months and had adjusted well to American culture, for the most part.

"I can expect them to understand that someone shouting generally means they're doing something that someone else doesn't care for." Sloan replied back.

"They weren't here to trade." Haynes agreed.

Elizabeth climbed back into the watchtower as some of the crowd began to disperse. Haynes approached Ilalilka who was pacing in distress.

"Did you know them?" Haynes tried to comfort him.

"No." The man replied in accented English.

Haynes turned towards those who were still lingering about.

"Get some shovels, makes sure these men get a decent funeral." Haynes ordered with a sigh.

Where they just looking for food or where they scouts for a larger raiding force? Either way it would be tense the next few days. More patrols, more guards, more sleepless nights. He hadn't even had breakfast yet and already Haynes felt tired.

"We got incoming!" Sloan shouted

Haynes pulled his rifle forward, his body tensing up as everyone around prepared to either fight or run.

"More locals?" David asked

"No." Sloan paused for a long moment. "It's a wagon being pulled by a team of horses...with solar panels in the back."

Well that was certainly different.

Haynes watched with bemused confusion as the wagon traveled along the dirt trail, getting closer and closer to the settlement. The wagon was small, clearly made after the Event. And the small horses weren't exactly making great speed. Still, the tech they were carrying made it undeniably clear they were fellow Tucsonians.

The wagon pulled to a stop just outside the gate, Haynes was there to greet them. Two people where in the wagon, a man dressed in plaid and jeans and a woman dressed in the blue camouflage uniform of the US Navy.

"Greetings." The woman replied as she stepped off the wagon.

"Hello, welcome to Iron Horse. Such as it is" David said in a friendly manner "what brings you out here?"

"Oh it's quite simple my friend." The man said as he shook David's hand "I've come here to offer you and your fine town a chance to join in on the venture of a lifetime"

"What sort of venture?" David replied with unease. They had been plenty of conmen and mad preachers in the years since the Event, he was hoping these two weren't more of the same.

"Why the only venture that matters friend." The man replied "A venture that could return us all to civilization."

/
There was a small platform of stone that served as the de-facto town hall for Iron Horse. Right now their two visitors, one Sophia Maddox and Thomas Sanford were using the area to step up a power point presentation. Most of the settlement was gathered, staring at the portable screen the visitors brought in as Sophia fiddled with her laptop.

"You people have done pretty well for yourselves." Thomas began, does his best to project his voice "You've managed to endure hardships that have brought low most of our former neighbors. But that's just it, you've endured, you've survived, but you haven't really thrived have you?"

The brought a low muttering of agreement. David looked at the dozens of families gathered. The years had not been kind to any of them. 4 years of farming and strict rations had left even the most vibrant among them looking tired and exhausted.

"No, you haven't. No one has." Sanford went on "We survived the worst disaster in human history and what do we have to show for that? Tiny hard scrabble farms that we had to bleed for? We were part of the greatest nation the world ever knew and now we're refugees who can't even find a place to flee to."

He paused for a moment looking down at his shoes, shaking his head.

"I know that what I'm saying is nothing new." His voice had a soft edge to it. "I'm just telling you what you've been telling yourself now. Well I didn't come here make you miserable, I came to offer you hope, a chance for a better future."

He pressed on a remote in his hand, a picture appeared on screen. It was a photo of some city, though nothing like like Haynes had ever seen in person. It was primitive, unmistakably something of this era. But it was large, it's walls were so high and stretched for so long that even from the high angle the photographer was at, it was still hard to see the city behind those walls.

Ilalilka got twitchy but kept his silence.

There was something about Sanford that Haynes was really starting to dislike, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it.

"This was a photo I took four months ago of a city named Hattusa. It is the Capital of the Hittie Empire. It is massive, it is well stocked with grain and other food, and more importantly for us; it's spent the past few years dealing with a rather nasty plague. "

An unmistakable grin appeared on Sanford's face. "Yes it appears that for some, our arrival has been just about as deadly as Columbus's arrival was for the Americas. The Hitties have a vast empire reaching from central turkey to Syria, with over a dozen cities nearly as big as Hattusa. And they're weakened, a shadow of what they once where. Their cities could give us all a better life, not one as great as what we had before, but far better than what we have now. But a life where we can actually live, worry about more than just survival. We can use Hattusa to rebuild civilization. Even one day reclaim Tucson and rebuild America. This is not just about your lives and comforts, but about generations to come. What we can build for us, and for our children."

Bold claims, unmistakably bold claims. But how on earth did he intend to get through those walls?

"Now naturally this would be a serious undertaking." Sanford went on. "But rest assured a great deal of work has been put into this. You are not the first village I have approached in this endeavor, or even the 11th."

The Screen changed again, revealing pictures of Sanford and Maddox standing next to cannons, horses, piles of what appeared to muskets, and dozens of armed men and women with green patches stitched into the shirts. Some in the audience gasped in surprise.

"I know many of you are likely sick of fighting, of war. And the thought of more walking makes you want to cry. But I know you're also tired of worrying about harvests, about if they'll be enough rain, or if raiders will come tomorrow and end everything you've spent years build in one fell swoop. Together we can build more than just a country for us, but a real future. A future better than the world we have today. Now who here wants to join me and who here needs more convincing?"
/
Starting a new story section here. Though we may one day do more stories on Wilson