Although historians would only later append 'the Younger' to the name of Prince Cyrus--to distinguish him from his father--he was worthy of that epithet already. He was barely twenty-two. He kept a short black beard, the best he could manage in his youth, and the Persian habit of painting his eyes with kohl. He sat a horse loosely and without effort. At close quarters one could see the scars, white and ridged where his coat opened at the neck and where his sleeve met his hand, which were rumored to have been earned in deadly contest with a bear. He was, from his birth, serious and thoughtful. Often, he sent wine or meat from his own table to men who pleased him. Men who displeased him left his court short a hand, a foot, or an eye.His seat was in Sardis, the old Lydian capital at the foot of Mount Tmolus. The timber and mud-brick houses of Sardis crowded around the narrow Pactolus, whose sands had once made Lydian kings rich. Above them the acropolis ascended a sheer ochre crag, so that the city seemed to be shaded by a fortress. Lydian craftsmen, Greek traders, Persian officials, and soldiers from half a dozen countries jostled in its markets. It was prosperous and ancient, but not peaceful by nature. Cyrus the Great had taken it from Croesus, and Greek rebels had burned it a century before. Its present tranquility was yet another anomaly of the age maintained by Persian spears.It was there, in Sardis, that Cyrus ordered his scattered Greek contingents to assemble. Two thousand men gathered by his guest-friend Proxenus of Boeotia, fifteen hundred hoplites, another five hundred light-armed men with javelins, slings, or bows. The Peloponnesian War had ended only three years before. Many among them faced the prospect of neglected farms, inherited debts, or cities which disdained their return, and so had not yet left the service. Their present task, so they were told, was to put down the hill tribes which were troubling the Prince's lands in Pisidia. It was to be a short and predictable campaign, no more than a season's march, with a few villages spoiled and plundered, some Pisidian barbarians butchered. A common enough kind of war, and to many, a last chance at redemption or glory or fortunes, before the inevitable retirement.
It was not until they passed Iconium, that they grew suspicious. Pisidia lay behind them to the southwest, among the broken ridges of Taurus, but Cyrus kept the columns moving east across the open Lycaonian plain. They proceeded easily on broad roads while the rough mountains they had supposedly come to subdue dwindled behind them. Even the most innocent or empty-headed had but to ask an Ionian in the ranks or a trader in the market to know that he had been decieved, to know that Cyrus had not abandoned his schemes--the same schemes for which Tissaphernes had denounced him at Artaxerxes's coronation in Pasargadae, accusing Cyrus of hiding in the sanctuary to murder the new King while he changed into the robe of Cyrus the Great, a treason for which he would have been executed, except that his mother, Parysatis, had thrown her arms around him, wound her long hair about his body, and wept until the King relented. Humiliation had done nothing to temper his ambitions and the men knew Cyrus marched them towards Artaxerxes, the Great King, and when they reached Tarsus, they refused to go any further. They hurled insults and protestations and in some cases even stones, upon Cyrus for having decieved them. Cyrus and his generals answered, sheepishly, that they were only going after Abrocomas, an officer of the king, who was encamped a mere twelve marches away. It was not that they had decieved the men but that their priorities had changed. Cyrus cajoled and taunted and finally resorted to that penultimate argument of kings (which often precedes the last) and resolved the matter at once: he raised the monthly pay from one gold daric to one and a half.But at Thapsacus there could be no more doubt. Flat-roofed mud-brick storehouses crowded the western bank of the Euphrates. Along the landing: only the black ribs of the ferries Abrocomas had burned. Across the river: the long march through Arabia and the desert, down the Euphrates toward Babylon.The soldiers cursed their generals, spat upon the name of Cyrus and upon the whole duplicitous race of Persians. Now Cyrus made no further to attempt to hide his intentions, but promised five silver minae a head when they stood beneath the brazen gates of Babylon, and full pay until he returned them safely to Ionia. This time he did not stir their passions, but spoke plainly of his brother's cowardice, negligence, heedlessness, incompetence--and united, in the men's mind, all these weaknesses with his brother's immense wealth. A fool and his fortune are soon parted, so they said. And thus they pressed on to Babylonia. The plain lay flatter than the sea, scored by irrigation ditches and canals. Reeds and date palms rose whereever water ran; everywhere else the earth baked to hardness beneath their sandals. The scouts reported Artaxerxes somewhere ahead with the royal host. Captured deserters (treated as honored guests by Cyrus, to the disgust of some) claimed his men were beyond counting.
Greed and fear are as oil and water in a man's blood, and Cyrus, so close to his vaulted ambitions, resorted once more to flattery and covenants. He claimed for himself but one fear: that victory would leave him with more land to give away then with friends worthy to recieve them. And to the common soldier he offered, if not friendship, then the consolation of a gold crown per head. Thus did oil overmaster water.The Great King, however, was not as eager for battle. He had his men dig a trench wide enough to lay five grown men head to heel across it, and deep enough for three men to stand on one another's shoulders. It left only a narrow passage beside the Euphrates. They marched through, alert to the sudden hail of arrows or the earthly thunder of horses or chariots. But there was nothing, only tracks leading away. Still they marched. Cyrus rode ahead in a wagon behind the six hundred Persian horsemen of his guard, men in corselets and helmets whose horses were also armored over brow and chest. The remainder of the army had fallen out of formation. Shields, spears, and armor that should have been close at hand, had been loaded into ox-drawn carts or lashed upon the backs of asses. The men grumbled about food and shade and the swarms of gnats rising from the ditches, and boasted that the so-called Great King had a deer's heart within his royal breast. You count yourself among them, of course.
Choose background:>ARCADIAN HOPLITE: You hail from a farm outside Tegea, where barley fields fill a high plain ringed by the dark mountains of Arcadia. Arcadia is no single kingdom but a knot of rival towns. The upland farms are small, and many men earn more campaigning abroad than tilling their own soil. Your first campaign was during the final winter of the Peloponnesian War. You helped close the roads into Athens while Lysander's fleet sealed Piraeus until the city starved. Three years later you took service under Proxenus. You carry the titular round hoplon, which covers you from chin to knee. You carry the bronze spear and the short sword and wear a linen corselet, and a helmet and greaves of hammered bronze. This panoply represents not only your trade but your rank and fortune as well. If your shield is ever lost, you will bear the epithet of coward till your death. (Skills: Melee +20, Foraging +10, Navigation +10, Scouting +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Proven +8)>IONIAN PELTAST: You hail from Ephesus, where the Cayster passes through reed marshes into a harbor crowded with merchant hulls, and the marble columns of Artemis rise above the tiled roofs. Persian clerks people the citadel while Greek dockhands, Lydian traders, and hired soldiers pack the streets below. During the last years of the Peloponnesian War, you served in one of Cyrus's garrisons. When Proxenus called for men, you answered. You carry a crescent-shaped pelte, javelins, and a short sword. The extent of your armor consists merely of the clothes on your back, but what you lack in protection you more than make up for in mobility and speed. There is no dishonor in retreat for the skirmisher, their task is to harrass and scout the enemy, not to engage or pin them down. To press forward unarmored--and often alone--into the battlefield requires its own sort of courage even if it is not always as valued as that required for close battle. (Skills: Marksmanship +20, Scouting +15, Melee +10, Navigation +10, Foraging +10, Rhetoric +5, Languages +5; Standing: Known 5) >RHODIAN ATTENDANT: You hail from a family of shepherds in the sun-whitened limestone hills above Lindos, where sheep and goats pick through thyme scrub among terraces of olives and vines. The immense temple of Athena overlooks on the sheer acropolis above Lindos's harbor; at the island's northern point, masons are still raising the new city of Rhodes, founded only seven years ago. Here, admist the waririors of Proxenus, you carry baggage, run messages, and scrounge for supplies, moving between the captains' tents and the mess fires, invisible to all except to employ you to their errands. Your only weapons are a knife and a shepherd's sling, with which you hunt pigeons, partridges, hares, and the occasional bustard to supply the officer's table or the common mess pot. (Skills: Marksmanship +20, Foraging +15, Languages +15, Navigation +10, Scouting +10, Melee +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Unproven +0)
QM Note: Welcome to Anabasis Quest. The system we will be using a simple 2d100 percentile based one. The first d100 is your skill die and is modified by the relevant skill. The second d100 is the support die which is modified by pretty much everything else. More mechanics will be explained/revealed as we go.
>>6455445>ARCADIAN HOPLITESing, O muse…
>>6455445>ARCADIAN HOPLITE: You hail from a farm outside Tegea, where barley fields fill a high plain ringed by the dark mountains of Arcadia. Arcadia is no single kingdom but a knot of rival towns. The upland farms are small, and many men earn more campaigning abroad than tilling their own soil. Your first campaign was during the final winter of the Peloponnesian War. You helped close the roads into Athens while Lysander's fleet sealed Piraeus until the city starved. Three years later you took service under Proxenus. You carry the titular round hoplon, which covers you from chin to knee. You carry the bronze spear and the short sword and wear a linen corselet, and a helmet and greaves of hammered bronze. This panoply represents not only your trade but your rank and fortune as well. If your shield is ever lost, you will bear the epithet of coward till your death. (Skills: Melee +20, Foraging +10, Navigation +10, Scouting +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Proven +8)
>>6455445>RHODIAN ATTENDANT: You hail from a family of shepherds in the sun-whitened limestone hills above Lindos, where sheep and goats pick through thyme scrub among terraces of olives and vines. The immense temple of Athena overlooks on the sheer acropolis above Lindos's harbor; at the island's northern point, masons are still raising the new city of Rhodes, founded only seven years ago. Here, admist the waririors of Proxenus, you carry baggage, run messages, and scrounge for supplies, moving between the captains' tents and the mess fires, invisible to all except to employ you to their errands. Your only weapons are a knife and a shepherd's sling, with which you hunt pigeons, partridges, hares, and the occasional bustard to supply the officer's table or the common mess pot. (Skills: Marksmanship +20, Foraging +15, Languages +15, Navigation +10, Scouting +10, Melee +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Unproven +0)
>>6455445>>IONIAN PELTAST: You hail from Ephesus, where the Cayster passes through reed marshes into a harbor crowded with merchant hulls, and the marble columns of Artemis rise above the tiled roofs. Persian clerks people the citadel while Greek dockhands, Lydian traders, and hired soldiers pack the streets below. During the last years of the Peloponnesian War, you served in one of Cyrus's garrisons. When Proxenus called for men, you answered. You carry a crescent-shaped pelte, javelins, and a short sword. The extent of your armor consists merely of the clothes on your back, but what you lack in protection you more than make up for in mobility and speed. There is no dishonor in retreat for the skirmisher, their task is to harrass and scout the enemy, not to engage or pin them down. To press forward unarmored--and often alone--into the battlefield requires its own sort of courage even if it is not always as valued as that required for close battle. (Skills: Marksmanship +20, Scouting +15, Melee +10, Navigation +10, Foraging +10, Rhetoric +5, Languages +5; Standing: Known 5)
>>6455445>IONIAN PELTAST
>>6455445>ARCADIAN HOPLITE
>>6455445>>RHODIAN ATTENDANT: You hail from a family of shepherds in the sun-whitened limestone hills above Lindos, where sheep and goats pick through thyme scrub among terraces of olives and vines. The immense temple of Athena overlooks on the sheer acropolis above Lindos's harbor; at the island's northern point, masons are still raising the new city of Rhodes, founded only seven years ago. Here, admist the waririors of Proxenus, you carry baggage, run messages, and scrounge for supplies, moving between the captains' tents and the mess fires, invisible to all except to employ you to their errands. Your only weapons are a knife and a shepherd's sling, with which you hunt pigeons, partridges, hares, and the occasional bustard to supply the officer's table or the common mess pot. (Skills: Marksmanship +20, Foraging +15, Languages +15, Navigation +10, Scouting +10, Melee +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Unproven +0)I find this the more potentially interesting narrative choice. If it's a tie between the scout and hoplite:>ARCADIAN HOPLITE: You hail from a farm outside Tegea, where barley fields fill a high plain ringed by the dark mountains of Arcadia. Arcadia is no single kingdom but a knot of rival towns. The upland farms are small, and many men earn more campaigning abroad than tilling their own soil. Your first campaign was during the final winter of the Peloponnesian War. You helped close the roads into Athens while Lysander's fleet sealed Piraeus until the city starved. Three years later you took service under Proxenus. You carry the titular round hoplon, which covers you from chin to knee. You carry the bronze spear and the short sword and wear a linen corselet, and a helmet and greaves of hammered bronze. This panoply represents not only your trade but your rank and fortune as well. If your shield is ever lost, you will bear the epithet of coward till your death. (Skills: Melee +20, Foraging +10, Navigation +10, Scouting +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Proven +8)
>>6455445>RHODIAN ATTENDANT
Vote closed. Will try to update later tonight.
>>6455441>ARCADIAN HOPLITE: You hail from a farm outside Tegea, where barley fields fill a high plain ringed by the dark mountains of Arcadia. Arcadia is no single kingdom but a knot of rival towns. The upland farms are small, and many men earn more campaigning abroad than tilling their own soil. Your first campaign was during the final winter of the Peloponnesian War. You helped close the roads into Athens while Lysander's fleet sealed Piraeus until the city starved. Three years later you took service under Proxenus. You carry the titular round hoplon, which covers you from chin to knee. You carry the bronze spear and the short sword and wear a linen corselet, and a helmet and greaves of hammered bronze. This panoply represents not only your trade but your rank and fortune as well. If your shield is ever lost, you will bear the epithet of coward till your death. (Skills: Melee +20, Foraging +10, Navigation +10, Scouting +5, Rhetoric +5; Standing: Proven +8)This is a very cool quest and I love the OP art
Missed the vote but will be reading, we need more Classical quests.
OK I have the update written but need to do some heavy editing before I can post. It's late now so I'll do this tomorrow.
>>6455811That's fine, sounds like a neat quest, thank you for running
In the ninth spring of the Peloponnesian War, Athens, wishing for respite to contain the revolts led by the Spartan general Brasidas, asked for a brief armistice. The Spartans agreed in the hope that negotiations would secure the return of the Spartan citizens captured at Sphacteria. The war was not ended. The Peace of Nicias, and the release of those captives, would not come until two years later, and the war itself would not conclude for another nineteen years. But your mother, an Elean from the country near Olympia, had always taken your birth, which supposedly happened on the very day the herald had arrived in Tegea to announce the truce, as a good omen. She told this to no one, of course, for in those days your grandfather still had the full strength of body and mind and mouth (which he has since lost) and because his eldest son, your uncle, had been killed earlier that winter during Brasidas's first assault on the Athenian fort at Lecythus, which the defenders repelled. Despite all this, you have heard pass from your mother's mouth to your father's ear, more than once, that you were a blessing of Ekecheiria, Truce Herself.Your childhood did nothing to disenchant her of that notion. As a boy, you were the very picture of contentment and, if you did not possess the loud, winking cheerfulness of your father, your silence lacked also your grandfather's particular species of melancholy. This, however, did not stop him from rearing you in the manner of his forefathers, and, almost as soon as you could walk, you were deemed worthy, indeed, destined, to inherit his hoplon--which none of his sons, and certainly never your father, ever had the honor of flaunting--despite all the seemingly contrary signs surrounding your birth.Your time and your heart divided between the hoplomachic mysteries and the common labors of the farm: herding the sheep in the oak woods, dozing upon a high place with one eye cast upon the grazing valley, following your father's ox-drawn plow with a mattock, and when harvest came, marveling with him at the pale-gold ears bowing under their grain, or else grieving with him when the frost arrived too late or the rains departed too early--divided amongst these pursuits and your grandfather's tutelage, your parents elected to produce further aid in the form of two more children, your younger brother and sister. Neither seemed to inherit your serene disposition however, taking instead after your father, and thus filling the house with new, endless noise.The house stood on a stone footing, close enough to the fields that often the chaff would blow beneath the door during the threshing. In winter, rainwater streamed off the tiled roof into wide-mouthed pithoi set beneath the eaves. You and your family slept in two rooms beside the byre, where the two plow oxen ruminated at night.
>>6456068You were seventeen when Tegea summoned men once more to serve in the campaign against Athens ("the last" as they had said many times before, though this time it would prove true). Your father, without the counsel of anyone, not even your mother, with whom he had always been of one mind, borrowed silver from the wealthiest landowner in the city against the lower barley field and the next year's harvest, and with this considerable debt, bought a long ash spear, a short sword, a linen corselet, and a helmet and greaves of finest hammered bronze. Even now the memory of your mother rubbing oil into the leather handgrip of your shield, careful to wipe her tears before they could fall and mix with it, summons an unanswerable anguish. You recall your brother begging to hold the spear and dropping it instantly from the weight, while your sister chased this humiliation with merciless teasing. Your grandfather seemed to say all with his eyes, confined as he was upon his bed and within his body. Your father meanwhile was nowhere to be found, which you only later understood was because he wished to shed in secret his unmanly (so your grandfather would have said, if he still possessed the power of speech) tears. He returned at the very last to guide your arm through the porpax and to embrace you--but so briefly and roughly it was as though he did not trust himself to let go. Your mother had no such qualms and wept openly upon your shoulder until she had to be torn away by your father, and only by a stern remonstrance--which your father had never, in all the years you've known him, resorted to with anyone--had she uttered the cold refrain attributed to Spartan mothers and wives (of which she was neither): either this, or upon this.King Pausanias brought the Peloponnesians through the Isthmus and camped outside Athens among the olive trees of the Academy. King Agis came down from Decelea. Lysander's ships sealed Piraeus while the land army closed the roads. Within their walls the Athenians were untouchable, and no one wished to pay the blood-price for a futile assault. Men joked of wooden horses but hunger proved the more effective and cheaper weapon.Most of the campaign was guard duty. You stood beside roads churned to mud by winter rain, searched carts, chopped wood, and at night watched smoke rise beyond the long walls. Sometimes Athenian horsemen or foot soldiers tested the approach, desperate, enraged by the sight of the distended bellies of their starving children and at their own uselessness. It was in one such fight that you earned the epithet you bear to this day.
>>6456075On a wet morning in the Academy, the horsemen struck your post before the levy could rally to the spot. The Tegean beside you took a spear at once through the thigh. The rest stepped back as another horse bore down upon them and, at the same moment, you noticed that the dew had been knocked from a narrow trail through the olive trees. Athenian foot soldiers were moving along it toward the sleeping camp.>STRONG-SHOULDERED: You lifted the wounded Tegean across your shoulders and carried him, his shield, and your own behind the closing line, then returned to your place before the next charge. (Trait: Strong-Shouldered +20 when lifting, carrying, bracing, or forcing)>KEEN-EYED: You warned that the horsemen were a diversion and pointed out the foot soldiers on the olive trail before they reached the sleeping camp. (Trait: Keen-Eyed +20 when detecting something distant, concealed, or easily overlooked)>STEADY-HEARTED: You stepped into the gap and held your spear level until the oncoming horse swerved, giving the rest of the file time to close beside you. (Trait: Steady-Hearted +20 when resisting fear, panic, or intimidation)
>>6456076>>STEADY-HEARTED: You stepped into the gap and held your spear level until the oncoming horse swerved, giving the rest of the file time to close beside you. (Trait: Steady-Hearted +20 when resisting fear, panic, or intimidation)
>>6456076>KEEN-EYEDIt's what you don't see that kills you
>>6456076>STRONG-SHOULDERED: You lifted the wounded Tegean across your shoulders and carried him, his shield, and your own behind the closing line, then returned to your place before the next charge. (Trait: Strong-Shouldered +20 when lifting, carrying, bracing, or forcing)Strength is always useful. Even if it isn't THE most useful thing we could've done in this situation.
>>6456076>KEEN-EYED: You warned that the horsemen were a diversion and pointed out the foot soldiers on the olive trail before they reached the sleeping camp. (Trait: Keen-Eyed +20 when detecting something distant, concealed, or easily overlooked)Do you by any chance know what this name would be in greek? Cause that would be cool to know
>>6456082If you mean the epithet of keen-eyed, it'd probably be eúskopos (εὔσκοπος) which Homer often uses to describe Hermes (the keen-eyed slayer of Argos). Also steady-hearted should have been lion-hearted (θυμολέοντα thūmo-léonta) as used to describe Achilles. Will correct if it is chosen.
>>6456076>KEEN-EYED
>>6456076>KEEN-EYED: You warned that the horsemen were a diversion and pointed out the foot soldiers on the olive trail before they reached the sleeping camp. (Trait: Keen-Eyed +20 when detecting something distant, concealed, or easily overlooked)We can always get stronger trough lifting heavy rocks, so it's either bravery or perception, but now I believe we can save more lives if we alert the camp of the incoming attack.This is also the option that earns us the most good-boy-points from our officers.
>>6456076>>KEEN-EYED: You warned that the horsemen were a diversion and pointed out the foot soldiers on the olive trail before they reached the sleeping camp. (Trait: Keen-Eyed +20 when detecting something distant, concealed, or easily overlooked)
>>6456076>KEEN-EYEDThe others are pretty situational, while this can be used pretty much for everything (detecting danger and traps, cold reading people for intentions and lies, finding weak points in enemy formations, etc...)
>>6456068> hoplomachic mysteriesI’m uneducated. What does this mean? Being a good hoplite?
>>6456134I think this means all the religious rites and folklore connected to being a hoplite. For example, taking part in processions and sacraficial rituals. But these are only guesses, OP probably knows more.
>>6456134>>6456139It's just a bit of a hyperbole/rhetoric. I.e your grandfather's martial instruction was imparted with such ritual and gravity it's as if you were being initiated into a mystery cult.
>>6456093Neat!
>>6456076>KEEN-EYED: You warned that the horsemen were a diversion and pointed out the foot soldiers on the olive trail before they reached the sleeping camp. (Trait: Keen-Eyed +20 when detecting something distant, concealed, or easily overlooked)
>>6456076>STEADY-HEARTED: You stepped into the gap and held your spear level until the oncoming horse swerved, giving the rest of the file time to close beside you. (Trait: Steady-Hearted +20 when resisting fear, panic, or intimidation)Handy in a shieldwall and extended combat. Leave the ogling to the scouts. It's there job.
Vote closed. Update coming shortly.
You understood instantly that the horsemen were merely a diversion, and raising your spear high above you, you shouted for attention and pointed the spear towards the Athenian infantry creeping forward among the olive trunks. Euphron, your portly, wide-browed file leader, sent a man sprinting toward the camp, then ordered the rest of you to close shields and brace against the oncoming horsemen. The runner flew among the tents shouting men to arms. Sleepers stumbled outside while dragging on helmets, some leaving their armor aside while they thrust their arms through shield bands and snatched up spears. Seeing the men they intended to slaughter now awake and arming themselves, the Athenians wavered, then retreated hastily back through the path they had come. At midday, Euphron broke a barley cake and passed to you the larger half--a great honor, if only because he parted with food so dearly. He raised a cup of watered wine and the men raised their eyes. "Because he saw them before they reached the tents, I call him Keen-Eyed." By next watch, it had all but become your name.That spring Athens sent envoys to Sparta to learn the terms of their peace. Sparta's five ephors summoned an assembly of the allies. Corinth had fought Athens over Corcyra and Potidaea. Thebes had fought Athens for influence in Boeotia, and neither of the delegates from each city wanted its defeated rival to recover. Men around the campfires spoke of Erianthus the Theban who demanded that Athens be leveled and Attica left to sheep. The Spartans, however, refused not only to raze the city but also to enslave its people. Athens had fought beside them at Salamis and Plataea, they said, while with whom had the Thebans allied themselves? The Spartans would not destroy a city which had served Greece in its greatest danger, and certainly never for the pleasure of those who had served its enemies."Spartan honor," you had said, when this news reached your ears, and not without a little pride, for your grandfather had always claimed descent from one of their race, even if, as you had later learned, that ancestor was an exile."Yes, it is true that Athens fought beside them," replied Euphron. "But also true that Athens must fight for them now, and that Thebes and Cornith grows no stronger."The terms required Athens to surrender all but twelve triremes, recall its exiles, follow Sparta by land and sea, and pull down the Long Walls linking Athens to Piraeus together with Piraeus's fortifications.Lysander, commander of the Spartan fleet, led his triremes into the harbor, took possession of the surrendered ships, and ordered them burned. You still remember seeing the columns of smoke rising from the coast, as your file climbed one of the Long Walls. How strange it felt to wield again the mattock, but now to drive its iron blade into the sun-dried brickwork, instead of the soil, and kick the broken blocks down onto the limestone footing below.
>>6456404Outside the city, pipe players from Athens joined the women already in camp. The high notes of their double pipes rose to the walls even as they came down, and men about you, wearing wreaths cut from olive sprigs, shouted that Greece was free. You could not help but shout with them, for it made the work lighter, but when one tune ended, your spied a player, one of those summoned from the city, lower her pipes to draw breath, and saw that the famine had left her cheeks sunken and hollow. She looked no older than your sister. And when the men's voices rose to shout again, yours did not join them.Athens had surrendered under Spartan terms, so no general sack followed. Your company received no allotment of captives or silver. When King Agis later withdrew the land force from Decelea and dismissed the allied contingents, most of the Tegeans started home with whatever coins they had not lost at dice or slipped to wine sellers and prostitutes around the camp.You could have followed them. You knew with absolute certainty that no one, not even your grandfather, would have begrudged you that return. Yet, to crest the last hill, to clap eyes on your father's low barley field, to smell the garlic in the lentils simmering in your mother's cookpot, and then to embrace your father once more, to laugh at your mother's happy weeping, your siblings dancing about you and taking your hands, and yet, in the end, to place a few obols, mere ration money, in your father's hand later that night, and to have him thank you for it--that was unendurable.And so, at Euphron's invitation, you sailed north with Clearchus the Spartan. He had persuaded Sparta's ephors to authorize an expedition against the Thracians attacking Greek settlements around the Chersonese and Perinthus. When they gave the order to recall him, he refused and sailed for the Hellespont anyway. You remember asking Euphron why Sparta had changed their minds. It was the only time you had seen Euphon's pleasant, cheerful face darken. Clearchus had once governed Byzantium and kept its grain for the Spartan garrison while its women and children starved; Euphron thought the ephors might have remembered that.The Spartan authorities condemned Clearchus to death in absentia for disobeying the recall. Now an exile, he went to Cyrus. The prince gave him ten thousand darics, and Clearchus used it to hire more men. Cyrus was preparing his revolt even then, and the war against the Thracians gave Clearchus a public reason to maintain an army until Cyrus summoned it.In the campaigns that followed, you fought Thracian bands driving Greek settlers from their farms in the Chersonese. You were proud of the defense of men like yourself and your father. When Clearchus defeated them, the cities he protected sent money to support his troops, who in turn sold what they captured. You spent your meager shares on food and new sandals. When your spear shaft split, its replacement consumed whatever else remained.
>>6456408Clearchus was one of those commanders men wanted when the enemy was near and deserted when danger had passed. Without a battle before them, his heavy punishments became harder to endure. Once the Thracians had been driven from the Greek farms, Euphron left his service, and you followed him. Word reached the Chersonese that Proxenus of Boeotia was gathering hoplites for Cyrus's campaign against the Pisidians. The offer was one gold daric for every month under arms, with a share of whatever the army could win from the Pisidians who raided the Prince's lands. Men expected to divide captured flocks. Anything of bronze could be sold, as could prisoners who failed to raise a ransom. You dreamt nightly how you would spend those riches. First clear the debts with your father's creditor. Then buy the field and the all the fields surrounding it outright, and servants and slaves to man them. You could furnish your sister's marriage portion. Your brother would have his own plot to do with as he wished. And as for your grandfather, you wanted Hieronymous and Proxenus to speak your epithet before all the assembled soldiers, so that the men returning to Tegea would carry your name well before your arrival, and do honor to it.In pursuit of these lofty visions, you marched into Babylonia.On that morning near Cunaxa, the endless peace had grown almost tiresome. Shortly before full-market time, in midmorning, wht the day's stopping place only a short distance ahead, the men drifted out of their ranks and began untying tent rolls and cooking gear from the baggage wagons, expecting the order to halt. Euphron stepped beside a dry irrigation cut and lit a small fire. He arranged three pieces of broken mud brick around it, set his bronze pot across them, and stirred millet meal into water. Then he added the last of his chopped dates, as dear to him as his own scattered misbegots.You laid your shield against the bank and wondered aloud, "Cyrus will pay us what he promised after he wins, won't he?"Euphron scraped meal from the side of the pot. He was forty-five now, leaner through the waist than he had been at Athens, his beard longer and whiter, but still holding doggedly to his old routines. He always prepared hot food whenever the soldiers halted long enough. The men in his file called him Uncle. "I don't know," he said, spooning up a bit of the broth to his fat, shiny lips."I knew though you knew everything?""And what fool put that thought in your pretty head?""As I recall, it was you."
>>6456410"Well, then trust me when I tell you that I don't know." He tasted again the porridge from the stirring spoon and added a pinch of salt. "It can't be known. Just consider: he owed us more than three months' pay in Phrygia. But when finally he scrounged up the silver, he paid four months together. Then at Tarsus he raised the wage again. Perhaps he'll find the money again too. But then, perhaps not. Cyrus is a fisherman. Every time we turn away, he dangles fresh bait. Now we have swallowed his hook to the gut. Just consider: what will he do with us when he gets his brother's throne?""He will still have his brother's friends to contend with," Onasimos said, Onas, as he was known by all. He knelt beside his medicine bag, wrapping dried herbs he must have collected on the road, in scraps of linen. "The new king cannot dispose of the soldiers who put him on the throne so easily in their midst. Paying us will cost less than sending us away angry or having as enemies."Simos looked up from tightening the straps of one of his greaves. Even at seventeen, he had mastered the formality his tutors had taught him, that curious blend of arrogance and wheedling servility that seemed so out of place in the mess. The men called him Lordling, not always unkindly--for they liked his earnestness--but never to his face. "The Prince shall reward Proxenus, who shall leave the division to Hieronymous. Our concern must be whether Hieronymous remembers us when the prizes are partitioned.""Now there's some comfort for you," Euphron muttered. "If you can't trust a Persian, trust a Greek. Not as if we're known for trickery or anything. Hand me that bowl."Simos passed it to him. Euphron filled the bowl and passed it back, taking another from your hands. Then he looked around the fire. "Where is Hawk?""Theotimos said he found tracks beside the canal," you reply. "He thought he might put up a hare.""May Apollo give him the hare and Hera give him a white-armed wife. The dried meat is all gone, and I am tired of millet. If Hawk brings a hare before this pot is empty, he shall have the larger half." He looked around at the men as if daring them to challenge him, but, of course, all were only too pleased to defer to his authority. Not to mention, no one would dare get on Theotimos's bad side.You saw Theotimos beyond the baggage wagons a short time later. He was running toward you with one arm raised. Euphron stood at once and reached for his knife."He has caught meat," he said. But Theotimos's hand was empty. He was pointing men toward the wagons as he ran.He reached the irrigation cut and bent forward. Dust covered his shins, and sweat had soaked the neck of his tunic. After two breaths, he spoke. "Arm yourselves now! The King is coming. The whole army is formed for battle. To arms! To arms!"
A moment later, Pategyas himself galloped along the road and shouted the same warning in Greek and Persian. Men dragged their shields out from the carts, scrambling. They shouted for missing file-mates. Officers shouted orders, calling every man to his assigned place. No one could see the King's army, which made the fear the greater: every soldier expected the first arrows to fall any minute, before their shields were raised in formation. Euphron reluctantly dumped the uncooked porridge over the fire and took up his shield. Men overturned packs around the wagon in a panic, and you lost sight of your own armor and spear. Proxenus's line was forming to the right, beside Clearchus and the Euphrates, and men already blocked the quickest way to it.What do you do?>FORM: Recover your own arms, abandon the mess's loose property, and reach your assigned place beside Euphron as quickly as possible. (Navigation, DC 50; time: short; favors immediate readiness and Standing at the risk of food, baggage, and stragglers)>RALLY: Help Euphron collect the rest of his scattered file, recover the equipment they need, and bring them together to Proxenus's line. (Rhetoric, DC 60; time: long; favors Relations and cohesion at the risk of late deployment)>PROVISION: Help Onas secure the medicine bag, fill the water skins, and take enough food for the mess before joining the line. (Foraging, DC 60; time: normal; favors supplies and endurance at the risk of Standing and a poor place in the formation)>OBSERVE: Climb the nearest loaded wagon, use your keen sight to locate the approaching army, and report its direction before you arm. (Scouting, DC 60; Keen-Eyed +20 applies; time: normal; favors warning and preparation but risks being caught unarmored and separated)>WRITE IN.
>>6456416>RALLYIf somebody convinces me I might change it to Observe to use our ability, but I am not sure how would this help us? We know the enemy is coming and our boss's scouts probably know a lot more already
>>6456416>OBSERVE>>6456432>boss's scouts probably know a lot more alreadyThe enemy is already bearing down on us and I don't think the scouts will be here in time to tell Fat Man, our boss, what's going on. Though, honestly my first instinct is to have us hauling ass to the armor because of classical quest trauma I've sustained.
>>6456416>>OBSERVE: Climb the nearest loaded wagon, use your keen sight to locate the approaching army, and report its direction before you arm. (Scouting, DC 60; Keen-Eyed +20 applies; time: normal; favors warning and preparation but risks being caught unarmored and separated)Intel before the manoeuvring and clash is really important so you can do those two things as favourable to your side as possible.
>>6456416>RALLY: Help Euphron collect the rest of his scattered file, recover the equipment they need, and bring them together to Proxenus's line. (Rhetoric, DC 60; time: long; favors Relations and cohesion at the risk of late deployment)
>>6456438>>6456463Okay, iam changing it to Observe. We are the unofficial scout of the battalion anyway
>>6456416>OBSERVE: Climb the nearest loaded wagon, use your keen sight to locate the approaching army, and report its direction before you arm. (Scouting, DC 60; Keen-Eyed +20 applies; time: normal; favors warning and preparation but risks being caught unarmored and separated)
Using tripcode as my ID might be different.Vote closed. Update later tonight, but in the meantime, let's do a name vote for our fledging protagonist.What did your parents name you?>IPHITOS (Iφιτος), meaning Mighty>ECHEMOS (Eχεμος), meaning He who holds fast>LYSIMACHOS (Λυσίμαχος), meaning Battle-ender>WRITE IN
>>6456609> LYSIMACHOS (Λυσίμαχος), meaning Battle-ender
>>6456609>LYSIMACHOS (Λυσίμαχος), meaning Battle-ender
>>6456609>ECHEMOS (Eχεμος), meaning He who holds fast
>>6456609>LYSIMACHOS
>>6456609>IPHITOS (Iφιτος), meaning Mighty
>>6456609>LYSIMACHOS (Λυσίμαχος), meaning Battle-enderGiven our mother's premonition about us, this makes sense in two ways.
Now for the first roll of the quest!Please roll d100. The first two valid rolls will be used.Reminder:The first die is the skill die: add +5 from Scouting and compare the total with DC 60. The second die is the support die: add +20 from Keen-Eyed and compare that total with DC 60. Scoring equal to or more than the DC is one success. A natural 1 on the skill die always fails.Two successes achieve the intended result. One achieves it with a cost or complication. No successes produce a setback but also immediately improves the skill by +1.
Rolled 10 (1d100)>>6456797
Rolled 75 (1d100)>>6456797Nat 100
Looks like a success with complication. Will need to push the update to tomorrow as I need to be up early in the morning.
Bracing one foot on the wagon wheel, you grab hold of the rope binding the tent bundles and start to hoist yourself up. Someone shouts nearby and the ox, startled by the sound, jerks in the yoke. The wagon lurches. Your foot slips from the wheel and your knee hits the wooden underside, hard. You clutch the rope with both hands, kicking until your toe finds the wheel again, then pull yourself swiftly onto the piled bundles, futilely cursing the oblivious ox.A few weeks earlier, Theotimos had shared with the mess a first hand account of a story which had been circulating through the camp. Earlier that day, the wagons had gotten stuck in such a narrow stretch of mud that the whole column had been arrested. Cyrus sent some of the soldiers ahead to free the wagons, but when they delayed, he did not hesitate to order his own nobles to aid them. Knowing well how their Prince rewarded the least dissent, they at once threw off their purple cloaks, dismounted their horses, and waded doggedly into the muck. Theotimos had rendered this account with the utmost indifference, as though it were most natural, no more then men allied against a common obstacle. Euphron had roared with laughter until he could not breathe. The absurd image of those refined men, grunting and sweating against the carts amidst lowing oxen, spoiling with common sludge their fine Persian tunics and trousers and gold bracelets and gold necklaces, will bring a smile to his lips even now. Simos, on the other hand, immediately went red and snapped that they were nobles! And how could Cyrus have done such a thing? It was unsubstantiated gossip that should not have been repeated (never mind that Theotimos had seen it with his own eyes). He turned to Onas, expecting reinforcements, but Onas had merely shrugged and answered that Cyrus did right not to spare his own, it was a kingly gesture. This sprung the ordinarily restrained young Simos to his feet and sent him pacing and muttering darkly to himself. From your vantage on the cart, you gain now a clear view of the field. Proxenus's men are still moving into their places on the line. Clearchus's division is moving closer to the Euphrates. Cyrus seems to have left his chariot, for you do not see him or his Persian guard about it. They appear a little further off, the horsemen still buckling armor onto themselves and their mounts.But no royal army to speak of. No broad dust rising beyond the road foretelling their approach, no sunlight glinting on spearheads. Pategyas, if he was speaking the truth, must have reached the Greeks well ahead of the Great King.You cup both hands around your mouth. "No enemy in sight! Proxenus has time to form! Take time to arm yourselves!"
>>6457017The men nearest the wagon hear you and obey. One of Proxenus's officers runs up to accost you of the matter and you repeat what you see, and he sends runners along the rear of the forming line to relay the message, though many seem to quickly disappear among the horde. Some men who had started forward without their helmets or swords stop now to fasten them. Others pull corselets over their tunics rather than leave their armor unused beside the baggage.Your own gear had been kicked beneath the wagon by the men dashing to position. You must lie on the dirt and pull out your linothorax and your ash spear, but your hoplon you never leave unattended and it is soon fastened onto your arm. In the midst of these labors, Simos arrives, apparently sent from Euphon."He's at the front and told me to get you into any open place I could find," he explains.As if to corroborate him, a passing file leader you do not know strikes the rim of your hoplon with his knuckles, and gestures to an open gap behind him. Euphron stands--you know not where--certainly further ahead, with men quickly filling the gaps between.What do you do?>REJOIN: Take Simos through the forming files and force a path back to Euphron. It will take time to find him among the men already closing ranks, yet it is better to fight beside a comrade than a stranger, even if the two of you are embarrassed by a late arrival.>HOLD: Take position in the gap the other file leader offered you and keep Simos at your side. Better to be armed and in place when the King comes, whoever be at your side.>RELAY: Relay your report along the rear of Proxenus's line while the files are still forming, helping stragglers to arm and form. Men need to know they still have time to do so, but this will undoubtedly carry you farther from Euphron and leave others to claim the open places.>WRITE IN.
>>6457023>HOLD: Take position in the gap the other file leader offered you and keep Simos at your side. Better to be armed and in place when the King comes, whoever be at your side.Can't pay dad's debts if we're dead.
>>6457023>HOLD: Take position in the gap the other file leader offered you and keep Simos at your side. Better to be armed and in place when the King comes, whoever be at your side.>>6457060Hopefully we can scavenge enough bronze to repay our debts and make more armour for ourselves. Either that or get lucky with looting some silks and gems.
>>6457023>HOLD: Take position in the gap the other file leader offered you and keep Simos at your side. Better to be armed and in place when the King comes, whoever be at your side.
>>6457023>HOLDI guess an order is an order. Maybe we can make new comrades and allies among the rank and file. We need allies if we want to become a proper philosopher king and pimp out our dad's farm (gold plated yoke for our oxen)
