Remove ads

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

Reader mode
Mmm, I was just thinking about how all the quotes in the begging were in a interview format, and I just got a connection: Was Mrs. Baxter the woman who compiled those interviews?
 
Remove ads
New Sparta (Part 1)
  • Threadmarks

    • "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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • New Sparta (Part 2)
  • Threadmarks

    • 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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • People under-estimate the value of having even a basic uniform for your troops. It's psychological.
     
    New Sparta (Part 3)
  • Threadmarks


    • 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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Urgh. The sad part is that Sparta probably sounds like a sweet deal for many uptimers and their descendants. Getting your own personal fief with slaves is an attractive thing when backbreaking labor is the alternative.

    Being part of the aristocracy is nice if you aren't overy concerned with morals.
     
    They'll have the same weaknesses as the original Spartans though- all the military focus cripples you in other areas, and sooner or later there will be a major Helot uprising when you're focused on an external enemy...
     
    Anchises said:
    Urgh. The sad part is that Sparta probably sounds like a sweet deal for many uptimers and their descendants. Getting your own personal fief with slaves is an attractive thing when backbreaking labor is the alternative.

    Being part of the aristocracy is nice if you aren't overy concerned with morals.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Make the Downtimers do the backbreaking work so I don't have to" Is a dangerously appealing thought when you're barely getting by in a crude Log Cabin out in the middle of 'state' that's only sort of keeping itself together.
     
    kaazmiz said:
    When you lack the smarts to make simple tools to turn hard labour into merely common work.
    Eh. So much open uncontested space, and everyone just keeps fighting over others crap.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    One city was ISOTed. You obviously won't have neither the tools nor the industrial base to accomplish that.

    Even with a steel plough farming is fucking hard work. Tractor, advanced chemicals and harvesters are not going to happen ITTL for a while. There isn't really a way to avoid the backbreaking work.
     
    Anchises said:
    One city was ISOTed. You obviously won't have neither the tools nor the industrial base to accomplish that.

    Even with a steel plough farming is fucking hard work. Tractor, advanced chemicals and harvesters are not going to happen ITTL for a while. There isn't really a way to avoid the backbreaking work.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    There's a scene in Island in the Sea of Time that in part inspired this. Basically it's Nantucket's first harvest since the Event and the Machine they built to do the actual harvesting has failed miserably so this year and this year only they're going to have to bring it in purely by hand, with Steel Scythes. The People of Nantucket are complaining pretty bitterly about the work, because it's horrible and most of them aren't used to anything like this sort of labor, even though they've got a pretty decent system worked out. Meanwhile Swindapa is basically outpacing most everyone and wondering why everyone's complaining considering she's used to doing this annually with worse tools.

    So imagine you're a former accountant or something of that nature and you're stuck in this situation. You're spent most of your life working towards where you were before the Event only to have it taken all away from you and now you're facing a life of breaking your back just to get enough to eat every year. There's no tractor coming, there's not harvester, not for decades at least. And certainly no chemicals. You're probably taking in the Harvest using Steel, maybe even Bronze Scythes. We're talking 16 hour days of hard menial labor doing something you almost certainly consider far beneath you. But you know there are Downtimers out there, people used to this kind of life, people who could do this kind of life without any complaints. And these people, they don't have the education you've had, they don't know the things you do. Why should you have to suffer when you can just use those ignorant people? It's not like you're making things worse for them in the grand scheme of things. If anything you're making things better for them with all the new knowledge and tech you're introducing.

    Early farming was grueling, labor intensive and brutal on health. I have to imagine a lot of people would want to avoid it if possible, even if it meant doing some rather nasty things.
     
    Teen Spirit said:
    There's a scene in Island in the Sea of Time that in part inspired this. Basically it's Nantucket's first harvest since the Event and the Machine they built to do the actual harvesting has failed miserably so this year and this year only they're going to have to bring it in purely by hand, with Steel Scythes. The People of Nantucket are complaining pretty bitterly about the work, because it's horrible and most of them aren't used to anything like this sort of labor, even though they've got a pretty decent system worked out. Meanwhile Swindapa is basically outpacing most everyone and wondering why everyone's complaining considering she's used to doing this annually with worse tools.

    So imagine you're a former accountant or something of that nature and you're stuck in this situation. You're spent most of your life working towards where you were before the Event only to have it taken all away from you and now you're facing a life of breaking your back just to get enough to eat every year. There's no tractor coming, there's not harvester, not for decades at least. And certainly no chemicals. You're probably taking in the Harvest using Steel, maybe even Bronze Scythes. We're talking 16 hour days of hard menial labor doing something you almost certainly consider far beneath you. But you know there are Downtimers out there, people used to this kind of life, people who could do this kind of life without any complaints. And these people, they don't have the education you've had, they don't know the things you do. Why should you have to suffer when you can just use those ignorant people? It's not like you're making things worse for them in the grand scheme of things. If anything you're making things better for them with all the new knowledge and tech you're introducing.

    Early farming was grueling, labor intensive and brutal on health. I have to imagine a lot of people would want to avoid it if possible, even if it meant doing some rather nasty things.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Oh fully agreed. I was trying to say that the stuff you need to actually make farming work that is acceptable to 21st century Americans isn't going to be available or easily reproducable.

    Especially because everything just collapsed quickly and there was no great effort to use Tucsons ressources in a coordinated way.
     
    Anchises said:
    One city was ISOTed. You obviously won't have neither the tools nor the industrial base to accomplish that.

    Even with a steel plough farming is fucking hard work. Tractor, advanced chemicals and harvesters are not going to happen ITTL for a while. There isn't really a way to avoid the backbreaking work.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    It's a matter of perspective. For a downtimer for example:
    When someone thinks of a plough, most people see a giant wedge of mental (or wood), slowly dinging through soil.
    But what if instead you could dig in a few thin angled blades (or wooden spikes) in, and make a small motion up to dig them out?

    When someone thinks of harvesting, they imagine being bent down or on their knees ,and slowly cutting stalks down with a scythe, one or a few at a time.
    But what if instead you had a stick with thin ropes attached along its length, and spin that against the stalks.

    When someone thinks of threshing, they imagine hitting the grain stalks against the floor, and then slowly collecting the seeds.
    But what if instead you had a few thin pieces of wood, arranged into something resembling a post fence (only tightly packed, wider up top, narrowing down).

    This is something that uptimers should be able to logically figure out, to use that knowledge that supposedly makes them better, to make those existing harvests bigger, and easier to collect. Less energy and time spent on planting two fields, mean you can plant one more. While also eliminating the "backbreaking" from labour.

    Granted, I fully understand that initially they had no choice in the matter, as survival took precedence. But a year later? Two? Five?
    These solutions are simple, but applications of simple physical principles, and the tooling they already posses as evidenced by their 'tools of war', could have led them into solving any future food crisis in one or two years.

    And then I sincerely doubt that absolutely nobody in any of those groups heard of raised beds, no-till, or straw growing.
    Heck, just dividing the pastures would yield a raise in the number of animals and meat size+quality.
     
    Last edited:
    kaazmiz said:
    It's a matter of perspective. For a downtimer for example:
    When someone thinks of a plough, most people see a giant wedge of mental (or wood), slowly dinging through soil.
    But what if instead you could dig in a few thin angled blades (or wooden spikes) in, and make a small motion up to dig them out?

    When someone thinks of harvesting, they imagine being bent down or on their knees ,and slowly cutting stalks down with a scythe, one or a few at a time.
    But what if instead you had a stick with thin ropes attached along its length, and spin that against the stalks.

    When someone thinks of threshing, they imagine hitting the grain stalks against the floor, and then slowly collecting the seeds.
    But what if instead you had a few thin pieces of wood, arranged into something resembling a post fence (only tightly packed, wider up top, narrowing down).

    This is something that uptimers should be able to logically figure out, to use that knowledge that supposedly makes them better, to make those existing harvests bigger, and easier to collect. Less energy and time spent on planting two fields, mean you can plant one more. While also eliminating the "backbreaking" from labour.

    Granted, I fully understand that initially they had no choice in the matter, as survival took precedence. But a year later? Two? Five?
    These solutions are simple, but applications of simple physical principles, and the tooling they already posses as evidenced by their 'tools of war', could have led them into solving any future food crisis in one or two years.

    And then I sincerely doubt that absolutely nobody in any of those groups heard of raised beds, no-till, or straw growing.
    Heck, just dividing the pastures would yield a raise in the number of animals and meat size+quality.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    All of that is still super hard work for uptimers. And most refugee groups probably don't have someone who knows that stuff.

    Without fertilizers and pesticides yields will still be painfully low.
     
    Arcadia
  • Threadmarks


    • "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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Very cool involving the pre-dark ages old gods!
     
    xa na xa said:
    Very cool involving the pre-dark ages old gods!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Part of the reason I chose the Bronze Age, besides my love for the era, is that I wanted to play around with things are at least somewhat familar (Classical Greek Myth and Ancient Egypt) and have them at a time when they'd be more unfamiliar. So Egypt is controlled by the Hykos and Mycenaean faith is actually quite different from Classic greek myth even though many of the same gods are around, at least in name.
     
    Currency in the Post Event World
  • Threadmarks


    • 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.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Nice. Are promissary notes/cheques in use? Seeing as not everyone will want to haul around a bunch of coins or commodities, one would expect a few fledgling banks to be experimenting with the earliest form of paper money.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top