Sons of Elissa
I'm going to do something almost unprecedented. I am going to start an AAR well into a game! The year is 190 BC, summer, and the faction is Qarthdastim.
I cannot guarantee this will continue to be updated since my efforts will be primarily focused on EB2 and school/work. But if you guys like it I will try to continue. Also, being late in the game it could crash anytime. (Will upload some screens later)
Sons of Elissa
Prologue
The King is Dead
Summer, 190 BC
Milkyaton Apollonia: Sophene
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Light filtered dimly through the curtains of the palanquin, the only sight of the outside world came whenever a chance breeze stirred the curtains enough to part them. The sickly-sweet smell of death seemed to fill the stale air and it made Milkyaton cringe in distaste. He knew he was the cause of the smell. That damned wound had festered and it prevented him from walking or even riding, which was why he had to be hauled around in this ridiculous palanquin. The men didn't complain of course, the actions of their general had saved them all, brought them through Asia together, and tales of his exploits were still the talk of the camp.
Milkyaton remembered well the moment when he plunged his sword through Eumenes' chest; he'd almost missed when the Babylonian had caused him the wound that now enfeebled him. Yet for all the glory won that day, when his army had fought off twice its number in Hellenes and Asians, he had still failed. The orders from Germelqart and Bodashtart Phameas had been to press on to Arbela, but this damned wound forced him to turn back, not to mention the losses he had suffered. It would not be easy to face Bodashtart, his relief after the capture of Karkathiokerta, but then again, Germelqart was dead now.
It was hard to believe the king was dead, even a year later, but now no one was king. Germelqart had left no male heirs, just a daughter, Ramona, and his closest living male relative, the young Briareus, had fallen ill shortly after his uncle's death and been in no position to make a claim. In the following months Ramona had married, a young man of noble stature named Zamolxis, but he could make no claim having married her after Germelqart's death.
In the meantime Bomilkar, son of Hanno, and his son Hasdrubal had managed to maintain order from Kart-Hadast. Hasdrubal was actually Bomilkar's second born, but his first born, Bisaltes, had proved himself a failure, forced to travel around in the shadow of great men while his younger brother became a prestigious governor and senator in the homeland.
After seven years on campaign, home was a distant memory, and Milkyaton found it difficult to recall exactly what the great harbour looked like, or the temple of Tanit, where the skins of gorilla's still hung on display from when Hanno the navigator put them there. It was strange fate that had placed Milkyaton in command of an army. His father, Thero, had married into a wealthier family and secured a good position for his son. Milkyaton was not particularly quick or charismatic, but he was steadfast and true, so when the orders had gone out to assign commanders and sub-commanders to the invasion force destined for Anatolia and the mighty Seleukid empire, Milkyaton had been paired with several others.
The others had been more adept at management and affairs of state than Milkyaton, and had stayed behind in Lydia and Phrygia as governors. Milkyaton had surprised his superiors as a capable commander, and his loyalty to his men had won him their affection. Many were veterans of the war in Egypt against Ptolemy's successors, but they had placed their faith in a boy from Kart-Hadast.
The palanquin stopped moving and Milkyaton could hear Thucydides, his advisor, ordering that camp be made. They were very close to Karkathiokerta now, but night was coming and it was time to stop and rest.
An hour later saw Milkyaton in his tent with Thucydides, his wife Roxanne and his ever vigilant nanny, Lidia. Roxanne was pale, as she had been the last five years since he had her brought to Asia to be with him. The climate, the food, the people, nothing about Asia agreed with her, but he needed her. She was gifted with a wisdom beyond her years that Milkyaton very much needed.
Lidia was another story altogether. The woman was pushing sixty now, but her jaw was as lean and her arms as strong as they had ever been. It seemed there was no force in the world that could bend her.
Thucydides was talking, “A rider arrived from Karkathiokerta an hour ago, they have received word of your victory in Adiabene. The army there is celebrating even now. Added to your part in the Battle of Lake Tuz, you are fast becoming a hero among the men.”
A frown spread on Milkyaton's face, “The soldiers with Bodashtart haven't seen real combat yet, just a few skirmishes. I wouldn't trust their opinions.”
“It is not just the men in Karkathiokerta my lord,” Thucydides continued.
Roxanne interrupted him, “Every soldier in the camp is talking about you as a saviour. The story of your charge against the Persian Kinsmen and Judean levies grows with each new telling, and the length of your duel with Eumenes leaves little time for you to have fought in the rest of the battle.”
A snort escaped Lydia, “The talk of soldiers is as fleeting as the leaves in autumn. We may be able to get away with falling back to Sophene, but the Xenophanes are aiming at Babylon, and whoever wins will not forgive you if their flank in Adiabene is unprotected.”
With the death of the King and the realization that power could be gained through military prowess, new players were emerging out of the generals in the Asian invasion force. The two most powerful were Xenophanes of Gadir and Xenophanes Barca. The first came from a proud old family, his father was governor of Lilibeo and his grandfather had been a commander in Iberia. The second was from an even prouder family. While his brother was a fool sent to govern the isolated island of Crete, his father was the governor of Rhodes, guardian of the Colossus. Barca's grandfather, Himilcar, had been the most powerful man in Carthage in his day.
And then there was the young Briareus, nephew of Germelqart, to consider. The boy had recovered from his illness and was on his way to Babylon as well. The Xenophanes had a headstart, but there was no telling what would happen once all three armies were in Mesopotamia.
Milkyaton knew he was in no position to make a bid for power himself, yet he had to be careful who he supported. Not securing Arbela, even in spite of his injury, might be mistaken for a deliberate move to support Briareus, or worse, be mistaken for a foolish personal bid for power.
Finally, Milkyaton reached a decision, he grabbed the wooden crutch that lay nearby and forced himself up off his cushions. Roxanne gasped and rushed to support her husband. He let her, for all his bravado he knew he could not support himself for long.
Holding his chin up high and looking as regal as he could, pale and drenched in sweat from this effort, Milkyaton spoke, “Send word to Bodashtart, we are returning to Arbela.”
Roxanne withdrew from him a little, “You are in no fit state to travel, let alone make war my husband, and the army bleeds as much as you do.”
Nodding, Milkyaton spoke over any further protestations, “I will not have my actions mistaken for some form of treason or cowardice. Under normal circumstances I would stop to heal in friendly territory, but these are not normal times. I will capture Arbela if I have to crawl up the siege ladders myself!”
Battle of Lake Tuz: 193 BC
Ramona: Kart-Hadast: Zeugitania
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Ramona climbed out of bed and picked up a towel, sponge and water pitcher off the table. Dipping the sponge in the water, Ramona began to wash the sweat off her body. When she had finished washing she used the towel to dry herself. The manor was well situated on a hill just outside of Kart-Hadast and the cool evening breeze felt good against her bare skin.
Carpophorus rose from the bed and came over to where she stood. He put his sweaty arms around her and held her close. She let him, even though she had just washed. She could always wash again, and there was no point in insulting Carpophorus now.
“Will you stay the night?” he asked in his deep, smooth voice. The feel of his muscles rippling against her back made his offer tempting, but it was important not to mistake business for pleasure, even if the other party didn't know which it was.
“My husband will get suspicious lover, I must return home.” She looked over her shoulder at Carpophorus and summoned every ounce of affection she could place in her eyes. Her hand caressed his cheek, and then she slipped out of his grip gently to wash herself again.
“I leave within the fortnight.” The words were intended to distress her, to make her stay. Words to sway a secret lover. She already knew he was leaving, of course, but it was never a good idea to let others know what you did.
Looking saddened by the news, Ramona glanced back at her lover, “Will you be back before I go to Gaul?” The planned invasion of Gaul was still a year away at best, but Ramona was not supposed to know that.
Carpophorus smiled, “That is the good news, I too am being given a command to go to Gaul. I am leaving to acquire troops from Kirtan and Siga.”
This was almost too easy, Ramona thought. The invasion of Gaul was still being called a preventative measure, yet more and more troops were being levied for the cause and Ramona knew from her father's deeds how preventative measures could turn out. It didn't help that the barbarian client, Gelon Dertosa, had responded to the Gallic raids and military buildup by marching into their lands in Cantabria and daring them to face him in battle.
For a long time the Gauls, Aedui and Arverni both, had been good trading partners, and even allies. But in the last couple years the number of Gallic spies caught in Qarthadastim cities and the number troops in their border towns had increased to the point where it couldn't be ignored.
Carthage had no more fear for barbarians though. Iberia had been conquered long ago and Ramona's father, leading an expedition of only thirty thousand, intended to secure tin trade routes lost in the fall of the Lusotannon, had secured the whole of Albion and Iuerion.
Germelqart of Alalia had already been an impressive man before the invasion, having liberated the old Phoenician homeland and restored its independence. After he conquered Albion he became a legend. He returned to Kart-Hadast, riding through the streets in a gilded chariot with loving crowds throwing flowers from the rooftops. The people had given him a power never truly achieved in Kart-Hadast before, they made him king.
Old man Bomilkar had been less than pleased of course, but there was little the senate could do about it. Germelqart had taken his glory and his fame and gone out east to join the invasion of Asia. But it was his last moment of glory. Age finally claimed Ramona's father and she was left with few prospects and no friends.
Zamolxis was from a family that had moved to Kirtan for the rich prospects there. He was a good man, loyal, charismatic, as much a politician as a soldier. His proposal had been what Ramona needed to climb back up the social ladder that her father's death had cast her down.
She was not a young woman anymore. Her prime years had passed her by as her father denied so many suitors that he deemed unworthy. Still, Ramona had kept herself in good shape and was still regarded as one of the beauties of Kart-Hadast. Which was how she found herself in Carpophorus' bedchamber.
The man may be strong, and popular with the rank and file, but he was an imbecile. Still, Ramona had learned from her contacts within the senate that Carpophorus was to lead the second detachment to Gaul alongside her husband. She needed his support to ensure that her husband would reap the lion's share of the glory in Gaul. It could take years, but Ramona would come back to Kart-Hadast alongside her husband as a queen, and reclaim the glory that rightfully belonged to her father's house.
Looking deep into her lover's eyes, Ramona began to talk of the future.
Gelon Dertosa: Cantabria
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Fate was a strange thing. Gelon could remember the time when he was a rebel, passionately opposing the Qarthadastim in Bastetania; rumour had it a new group of bandits had recently sprouted up there. Yet the Qarthadastim's silver was persuasive, and now Gelon was the commander of their regional army in Iberia. There was no going back now. Many of the nobles and country folk who had supported him, both secretly and openly, as a rebel, now wished him dead for his betrayal.
With any luck, Gelon would soon be far away from them. A year back, news had reached him in Edetania, where he was with the army patrolling, that the Gauls in Cantabria were massing forces. Having taken the army north, Gelon discovered it was true. The uneasy peace, as the armies stared at each other across a border that was marked in no way, had gone on for two seasons before Gelon had sickened of it. When the winter snows had melted and spring had come Gelon marched into the Aedui controlled lands and sat himself on the river that supplied Vellika with fresh water.
No move to pollute or divert the river had been made yet, but that was because Gelon was hoping to lure the Gauls into attacking his position. Gelon was no fool, and he knew that if he could take Vellika intact, all of Cantabria would be his. History had proven that Kart-Hadast was happy to let generals sit in a territory they had conquered as long as they kept the peace and supplied taxes. The story of Akbar at Kyrene was proof enough of that.
Gelon had few ambitions left, with no friends but the money in his paychest. Capturing Cantabria and settling there, far away from the men who wanted to kill him, would be a fair enough retirement.
There was also the larger picture to consider. The threat from the Gauls spread along more borders than just the one he had crossed, and he knew Kart-Hadast was mustering its armies for war. Even Bodashtart Adys had been recalled from Greece to bring his army to Massalia. The man was not particularly remarkable, but he was a good soldier from what Gelon had heard.
When the invasion occurred, and it would occur, it would leave Gelon well within friendly territory and he would not have to worry about angry, vengeful Gauls descending upon him
Abydos Rusucuru: Mikra Skythia
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Abydos set down the reed stylus and rubbed his sore eyes. It had been a very long day and paperwork was not something he wanted to do right now, especially not by candlelight aboard a rocking ship, anchored in a bay in Skythia. He had been dispatched here to delay the Pontic king, Intraphrenes Herakleotes.
Pontus had decided to declare war on the Empire of Kart-Hadast, and Intrephrenes had taken the royal army north to attempt a conquest of the Bosphoran Chersonese. Although Pantikapaion remained under the protection of the Sarmatian horselords, Chersonesos had been a ward of Kart-Hadast for over a decade now.
Word had also come in Chersonesos that Intraphrenes' son had attempted to besiege Mazaka, but had fled at the coming of Bodashtart Tunis and Theopropides, a Sidonian and a Galatian, both of equal ill-repute, yet they commanded a large enough army to press on and reverse the siege onto Amaseia.
Intraphrenes had abandoned his northern campaign and set out to save his homeland, yet with no ships he had to take the land route. Abydos had taken ships and sailed his army into the delta north of Kallatis, from which he marched to the nearest major river and blocked the fords and bridges.
The move had worked as planned and Intraphrenes had been forced to take an even more circuitous route than before. With no hope of reaching his home in time, and lost within barbarian lands, Intraphrenes was not much of a threat. Now Abydos merely had to wait with his ships and his army in the delta and observe what Intraphrenes did.
Ancient Chrysippos Solios looked up from his own set of papers and regarded Abydos with curiosity. The Stoic philospher was ninety years old and still writing more in a day than Abydos ever could. The old man was a valued counsellor and tutor.
“What are you writing old man?” Abydos had a good relationship with his mentor and teased him oft about his age.
“I am in the process of writing the truth about the downfall of the King.” His voice was perhaps a bit wheezy, but it was still strong, and carried authority and wisdom with it.
Abydos scoffed at his mentor's statement, “How can you write the truth of his downfall if you are to be yourself? You are ever poised between hypotheses, an arguer of both points of view.”
Chrysippos chuckled dryly, “True, true. And Karneades will never let me forget that. Yet it is a question that must be addressed. The King's death is currently disputed to be from one of four causes, yet which is true?”
Stylus went to table and hands folded together as Chrysippos settled in to lecture his pupil. “That the King passed away of illness is undisputed, but the source of this illness is the mystery, for he was always a lion of a man, as full of strength and vigour when he arrived in Anatolia as he was when he departed for Albion.
'There are some who say an assassin poisoned him, others who say the illness was contracted in some manner from his nephew Briareus, even though they were leagues apart at the time, and still others who say it was a result of his sacrilege at Troia, when he plucked the Doru of Achilles himself from its resting place.
'Yet there remains the possibility that none of these theories are correct, and that Germelqart succumbed, as many of us must, to the passage of time.”
Silence stretched for a moment as the ship rocked slightly in the waters of the bay. “And which do you think it is old man? Why did our King die?”
Chyrsippos smiled at his pupil, “The truth is that our real world is sometimes more boring or more exciting than that we create in our minds. In this particular case I do not believe that gods struck the King down for picking up a rusty old spear, but rather that he drove himself too hard to maintain his glory, and the victory he forced himself to win at Side would always have been his last.”
Karneades the Academic: Atiqa
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Bomilkar was ranting again. He often did these days. Whether it was about the ruin Germelqart's invasion of Asia had put upon the Empire, or about that upstart daughter of his, or about how Gelon Dertosa was going to start a war soon, it was always quite the rant to hear.
At only twenty-three years of age Karneades was honoured to be heading the Academy at Atiqa, as well as paying visits to the one in Kart-Hadast. He had been encouraged to come over from Athens to instruct Bomilkar's son-in-law, Carthalo Ebusus, in the manner of rhetoric and Stoic philosophy. He had made a good enough impression since then to be given rule over the whole school.
Ever since the Qarthadastim had taken Greece from the Antigonids they had been dragging Greek instructors, philosophers and even soldiers over to Kart-Hadast and Atiqa to improve the education of their youth and their social status in the Hellenic world.
Although Karneades was tutoring Carthalo, Bomilkar often invited him to his manor, on what passed for an Akropolis in this town, to discuss matters of state. Two days ago it had been about the looming war with Gaul. Today it was about politics in the east.
Roughly ten years past the Qarthadastim had cornered the last Antigonid in Bithynia, and shortly thereafter the Seleukids had declared war. It was a clash of empires on a titanic scale. The Qarthadastim controlled Greece, Egypt, Italy, Iberia, Africa and even distant Albion. The Seleukids ruled an empire stretching from Anatolia to India. In recent years the Seleukids had crushed two major revolts on their eastern fringe. The first had been from the horsemen known as the Parni, or Pahlava, the second from the Baktrian satrapy. Both revolts had failed and the Seleukid's control of their empire had solidified immensely.
Word had arrived that day that an army levied in Egypt had been sent against the last Ptolemaic stronghold, Petra. While three armies, all bent on power and glory, rushed to seize Mesopotamia. The armies were led by the two Xenophanes and the young Briareus.
Bomilkar was furious about this course of events. Not only was the invasion of the Sinai unsanctioned, a direct insult to his control of the realm, but the armies in Mesopotamia were bound to cause problems. Whoever seized Babylon would try to make themselves king, just like Germelqart did eight years before.
It was a day Bomilkar often reminisced about, how Germelqart had strolled into the Hall of Judges as if he owned the whole world, and how the world had proven him right. The whole time Bomilkar had sat silent, brooding among his colleagues in the senate, unable to make a move against the mighty King. Yet time had determined the winner.
Nowadays Bomilkar was the most powerful man in the Qarthadastim Empire, and his son Hasdrubal looked set to succeed him, assuming he wasn't forced to submit to one of the three generals vying for power in the east, or even worse, to Ramona, the daughter of the late King.
Expansion was all that held the realm together now. If the wars stopped, if the armies stopped moving outward, then they would come back in, and civil war would ensue. Karneades hoped that didn't happen, civil war would likely lead to his death since he was with Bomilkar, and Bomilkar ruled through force of law, not force of arms.
For now he was content to listen to Bomilkar rant about the situation in the east. Soon enough an army would be departing for Gaul, and then the subject would change again.
Menestheus the Crippled: Sinai
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The desert heat beat down on Menestheus as he lay bleeding in the sun. What a strange day it had been. Word had already come that Damaskos had fallen, and the revolt in Marmarike had failed to oust the governor, Yutpan Gisgo, from his seat for long. The army that had marched into Edom from Egypt had been made up of Egyptian and Nubian levies, hardly a worthy army, but it had outnumbered Menestheus' forces by a decent margin. Menestheus and his father had taken to the field against the enemy, confident of victory, even if over half their army was levies like the enemy's, the Ptolemaioi still had a crack centre of Phalangites and a devastating wing of heavy cavalry.
He had never expected the enemy to hold, but they had, and then the Arabian levies under Menestheus had broken and run, like sheep! The enemy's right flank had folded around the phalanx and cut it off from retreat. That was about when the spear of the levy, a stupid barbarian savage from the lands of Aigyptoi, had gutted his horse. He struggled to his feat and looked for his father's familiar crested helm, but it was nowhere to be seen.
There was no way Menestheus could have fought them all off, there were too many savages and too few bodyguards around him. They stabbed him, and stabbed him, over and over; and then they left.
It was with a dim awareness that Menestheus saw the eagle land on his chest. The bird looked quizzically at him, as if surprised to find him here. It was as if the spirit of his ancestor Ptolemy was looking down in disappointment at him. With a final breath Menestheus closed his eyes and went to join his ancestors in the afterlife.
The King, Germelqart Alalia, and his second in-command on the Asian invasion, Abascantus Haedus, also deceased in 192 BC.
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donated by Brennus for attention to detail.
Originally Posted by Blxz
x30 From mikepettytw for showing how to edit in game text.
From Brennus for wit.
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