worldbuilding – Page 11 – Sharrukin's Palace

The Curse of Steel: Rough Timeline

March 29, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

To review the bidding: I’m working up some background notes for a novel I’ve started but gotten stuck on, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. Last time I set down some ideas for specific peoples and ethnic groups to be found in the setting – rather Tolkienesque, with quite a bit of input from the paleontological fantasy of Michael Scott Rohan. Today, here are some notes about a rough-draft timeline that can serve as a high-level framework.

Age of Myth (until about 9000 years before present):
- The world spends many thousands of years in a deep glacial age. Gods hostile to human life dominate the world, led by a powerful and malevolent deity (the first Great Enemy). Benevolent gods come to the mortal world to battle the hostile deities, eventually killing them or driving them into the outer darkness.
- During the wars, the benevolent gods ally with Elders and Smith-folk, helping them to create the first sophisticated kingdoms (but not civilizations, since they don’t involve cities) in the world. In response, the malevolent gods create the Beast-folk to serve as shock troops. Humans and the Sea-folk remain primitive, barely surviving in small refugia and taking little or no part in the wars of the gods.
- Once the malevolent gods are finally defeated and the world begins to warm, the Elders withdraw to the divine plane to live with the benevolent gods. The Smith-folk remain behind, some of them reverting to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, others looking for opportunities to practice their crafts now that the wars of the gods are over.
About 8700 years before the present: Several groups of Smith-folk settle in a region analogous to the Fertile Crescent, striking up a mutually beneficial relationship with the human hunter-gatherers of the region. The Smith-folk teach humans primitive agriculture and Neolithic-level technologies, helping to build large cult-centers (megalithic architecture).
About 8200 years before the present: Rising sea levels encroach upon a low-lying region in the far northwest, undermining the connection between the continental mainland and a “Northern Isles” region that will eventually become analogous to the British Isles.
About 6700 years before the present:
- Foundation of the world’s first pseudo-city, a Neolithic population center on the edges of the “Fertile Crescent” region which grows to about ten thousand inhabitants. The settlement remains organized along hunter-gatherer lines, with no social stratification, civic cult, or record-keeping.
- A malevolent goddess, the second Great Enemy, enters the mortal world, remaining hidden, spying out the state of the world. She becomes disgusted with the “crowding and swarming” of humans, and seeks out ways to eradicate them through infectious disease.
About 5700 years before the present: Farming communities begin to spread slowly in all directions from the agricultural urheimat, possibly driven by the need to avoid crowding and disease. While they migrate across the Great Lands, these farmers intermarry with and displace the original hunter-gatherer peoples.
About 5400 years before the present: A large landslide takes place adjacent to the northern seas, causing a massive tsunami. The last remnants of the “low country” are overwhelmed, and the Northern Islands are cut off from the continental mainland.
About 4900 years before the present: The first great pseudo-city collapses, wracked by disease and social upheaval. The collapse accelerates the spread of Neolithic technologies and society across the Great Lands, as farmers seek to spread out and bring more land under intensive cultivation.
About 4200 years before the present: Neolithic peoples have reached the far northwest of the Great Lands, and the coasts of the western sea. Farming expansion pauses for about a thousand years.
About 3700 years before the present: With the aid of the Smith-folk, a small population of Neolithic farmers in the central Great Lands develops bronze metallurgy. The technology is jealously guarded and fails to spread.
About 3200 years before the present:
- Human farming societies cross the strait to settle in the Northern Islands, also spreading into far northern regions. The Great Lands are now dominated by farming communities, although the older hunter-gatherer populations still survive in reclusive enclaves. The Smith-folk thrive in this environment, setting up small communities and bands of itinerant craftsmen, offering technical services and maintaining long-distance trade networks.
- Just as farmers come to dominate the Great Lands, the second Great Enemy reveals herself, openly seeking to do away with humans and return to the world to its “natural” state. Her first gambit is to encourage a series of plagues in the Neolithic populations, decimating many communities. Human populations throughout the Great Lands remain depressed for centuries afterward.
- The incipient Bronze Age society in the central Great Lands is a victim of the Great Enemy’s activity. Bronze metallurgy is lost for several centuries before being reinvented in the “Fertile Crescent” region.
- A large contingent of the Elders departs the divine plane to pursue the malevolent goddess, resulting in several centuries of warfare in the northwestern region of the Great Lands. The Elders recruit Neolithic-level humans as adjuncts in their war, sometimes as soldiers, more often as serfs who can raise food and supplies for the war effort. Humans still benefit from the relationship, learning a great deal from the Elders and coming to speak a pidgin version of their language.
About 2700 years before the present: Humans in the Fertile Crescent analog develop Bronze Age metallurgy, with some help from local Smith-folk communities. First development of true civilization (intensive agriculture, record-keeping, social stratification, organized religious cult, cities). Bronze Age technologies begin to spread across the Great Lands.
About 2600 years before the present:
- The war ends with another intervention of the benevolent gods, who deliver a final defeat to the second Great Enemy. Some of the Enemy’s lieutenants (minor gods and demigods) escape the defeat and hide in the mortal world for centuries to come. One comes to lurk among the nascent civilizations of the Fertile Crescent analog.
- With the enemy defeated, most of the surviving Elders return to the divine plane, although a small remnant population remains in the Great Lands for many centuries.
- The human societies who directly aided the Elders in their war are rewarded with the opportunity to migrate to a very hospitable minor continent amid the western sea. There, they develop their own civilization based upon all they have learned from the Elders and the benevolent gods.
About 2500 years before the present: In the wide plains east of the Great Lands, a human pastoral culture domesticates the horse. This development gives these humans an advantage over their neighbors, and they begin to spread more widely.
About 1600 years before the present: Another of the malevolent gods (the third Great Enemy) begins to actively interfere in the development of human civilizations in the “Fertile Crescent” region. This deity is more subtle than his predecessors, seeking to manipulate humans and rule them rather than eradicate them. His activities provoke no obvious response from the divine plane for many centuries.
About 1500 years before the present:
- First Bronze Age societies appear in the northwestern region of the Great Lands, and in the Northern Isles.
- The first ships from the mid-ocean civilization begin to visit the Great Lands, although they make no permanent settlements and never remain for long. Contact with the Bronze Age tribes of the region is friendly and mutually beneficial.
- The first human empire is established in the “Fertile Crescent” region, with the third Great Enemy lurking in the shadows behind the human kings.
About 1200 years before the present: The horse-breeding people in the plains east of the Great Lands develop a new set of technologies, including the spoke-wheel chariot and the composite bow. These Chariot People discover they have an immense military advantage over their neighbors, and their society becomes structured to exploit that advantage. They begin a centuries-long process of moving into new regions, taking over as a warrior elite, then imposing their language and customs on the prior farming societies they have conquered.
Present Day:
- The peoples of the Great Lands, especially those in the “cradle of civilization” regions, have made the transition to an Iron Age technology. Only in a few very peripheral areas are some people still lingering at a Bronze Age (or Neolithic) level.
- The Chariot People have invaded and infiltrated as far as the Northern Isles, and have come to dominate the Great Lands. Krava’s people are among these later arrivals, resembling early Celts (Halstatt culture).
- The third Great Enemy remains hidden, slowly building up the power of the human empires under his sway.
- The mid-ocean civilization is the great power of the world, sailing all around the planet, trading with everyone they find. In recent centuries they have contacted the Sea-folk and have done much to spread the “little people” all over the planet. Unfortunately, they have also gotten a taste for power, and their relationships with other cultures are becoming less gentle or benevolent.

Okay, with that I’m ready to start working on a revised version of the map, focusing on the “Great Lands” regions. If get really ambitious, I may use that map to construct a variant board for a tabletop game that I can use to generate the history in a bit more fine-grained detail. With any luck, that will help me envision Krava’s world more fully, so I can get that novel unblocked. More to come.

The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

March 27, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The setting for The Curse of Steel is a region whose name will translate as The Great Lands (the constructed-language word is probably something like Mortalani). This is a region roughly analogous to western Europe (or north-western Middle-earth, if I’m being honest) which has just about completed its transition to the Iron Age.

The primary inspirations here are Tolkien’s legendarium, and the fantasy of another British author: Michael Scott Rohan. From Tolkien will come the general shape of the world map, and a few pieces of back story. From Rohan will come a more Darwinian approach, in which the divine powers aren’t all so benevolent to humans, and societies are rooted in the long prehistory of a world that wasn’t created for their benefit.

The Peoples

At present I have five “races” (more accurately, hominid subspecies) in mind for this setting.

Elders

The Elders are a very ancient population, ancestral to all the others. Think of these as highly evolved and sophisticated homo erectus.

Elders tend to be shorter and more gracile than humans, but they are strong and quick for their size, and are immune to aging or disease. They are not by nature more intelligent than humans, but they have many ages of traditional wisdom to draw upon, and they have considerable natural talent with magic. Their natural lifestyle is that of intensive hunter-gatherers. When they have the opportunity, they will sometimes maintain small sedentary communities in order to practice more advanced arts and crafts.

The Elders are almost extinct in the mortal world. Most of them departed from the world long ago, to live in the divine sphere with the benevolent gods. Some return from time to time on specific errands, always apparently arriving by sea, so individual Elders and even small groups are sometimes seen.

Smith-folk

The Smith-folk are about as tall as humans, but they are stocky and extremely strong. Think of these as resembling homo neanderthalensis, although with better manual dexterity and more advanced material culture.

The Smith-folk learned advanced crafts from the Elders in ages past and are now known as the best stone-workers, wood-workers, and metal-smiths in the world. They are very clannish and insular. They tend to live in small communities within reach of agricultural society, where they can trade their craft-work for food. When that doesn’t work out, they will often revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (or turn to brigandage).

Sea-folk

The Sea-folk are small hominids, about half the size of humans, not very strong but quick and nimble. Think of them as homo floriensis who have taken to more advanced tools.

Sea-folk originally evolved on a chain of islands far away on the other side of the world, where they followed an intensive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Centuries ago they encountered human sea-farers, and took to that life with great enthusiasm, making themselves so useful that every sea-captain sought them out. Today, they can be found in coastal communities everywhere.

Sea-folk are very gregarious, curious and imitative, good at picking up languages and mimicking local customs. They are superb sailors and fishermen, but are also known as thieves and rogues.

Humans

Humans are the default population from which my protagonist and most of her peers and rivals come. They are biologically and sociologically identical to homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans from Earth. They are the most diverse of the peoples of the world, following many lifestyles and living at a wide range of levels of technology.

In ages past, some human populations interacted with the Elders and learned a great deal from them. Transplanted to a minor continent amid the Western Sea, these were among the first to develop an advanced civilization. Today they are great sea-farers, traveling all over the world to trade with the peoples they find. In the Great Lands, they have begun to establish permanent settlements on the coasts, and their relationship with the indigenous peoples is turning greedy and exploitative.

Other humans developed civilization independently and are beginning to establish large empires of their own, but these have generally fallen under the domination of cruel and greedy gods. My protagonist is from a more “barbarian” culture, technically advanced but still at a tribal level of organization. Most human societies in the area where the story takes place are blended from ancient hunter-gathers, farmers who moved into the area in more recent millennia, and a warrior elite who arrived even more recently with their distinctive customs, language, and military technology.

Beast-folk

Beast-folk are the “youngest” of the major hominid subspecies, bred by malevolent gods in the last few thousand years. They have no close analogue in our own prehistory.

Beast-folk were bred to be carnivorous pastoralists, living on herds of horses and cattle on the broad plains east of the Great Lands. They’re also not above eating members of the other four subspecies when opportunity arises. They are larger and stronger than the other peoples, and raised from birth as warriors. They don’t make particularly good soldiers, since their logistical requirements don’t allow them to form large armies. On the other hand, they make excellent raiders and shock troopers.

Beast-folk were created to be destroyers of civilizations, and many of them remain hostile to all outsiders, feared and hated. They are somewhat variable, however; some beast-folk are less necessarily hostile, and a few have even assimilated into human societies.

Final Notes on “Races”

Yes, if you tilt your head and squint, you end up with “elves,” “dwarves,” “hobbits,” “men,” and “orcs,” but I’m hoping to play those themes in a different key, as it were.

One note: when it comes to who can interbreed with whom, humans and the Smith-folk are the ones who have been known to intermarry, while the Elders and the Sea-folk are more biologically distinctive. No one is quite sure whether the Beast-folk can interbreed with any of the others; no one really wants to make the experiment.

Villains

The stories I have in mind are likely to have a variety of villains and conflict-sources. Given that I’m aiming for a pulpy, Conanesque feel, there should be plenty of corrupt kings and evil wizards to go around. On the other hand, the big, world-shaking villains are all going to be gods.

Most spirits and gods are benevolent – or at least not interested in interfering with the mortal world. Occasionally one of the gods decides to be malevolent, emerging onto the mortal plane to pursue their own goals, actively interested in killing, tormenting, or just ruling mortals. The Elders call these malevolent beings the Great Enemies. So far in history there have been three of these:

The most powerful of the Great Enemies, a god of deep cold and ice. He fought to preserve the mortal world as a place of quiet, austere beauty, free of the “corruption” of sentient life. Held sway for many thousands, if not millions of years, and was only defeated by the direct engagement of more benevolent gods.
A goddess of disease and pestilence, who thought of herself as a champion of the natural world. She sought to protect forests and animal life around the world by using virulent plagues to eradicate sentient life. Opposed by the Elders, and eventually by a brief period of divine intervention.
A god of fire, iron, and warfare, who seeks not to eliminate sentient life, but to rule it “for its own good.” Currently active in the world in the present day, not apparently opposed by the Elders or by the benevolent gods.

Okay, that’s a taste of the backdrop. Next time, some notes on the initial draft timeline for the setting. Then I’m going to start working on a new version of the map, which I may also use to set up a worldbuilding-by-simulation exercise to develop the timeline in more detail. More to come over the next few days.

Reviving an Old Project

March 17, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 3 comments

I’ve been rather blocked for the past month or so, as witness the lack of updates in this space for about that long. So I’m going to try something that often works for me: turn to one of the other projects that’s currently on the back burner, and see if I can push it forward for a while. By the time I run out of steam on that, I usually find I can turn back to the first project and make progress with it once more.

One of the items I’ve had on the back burner for a while is a novel, possibly first in a series, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. This is a foray into writing Robert E. Howard-style pulp, set in an Iron Age world that’s reminiscent of our own prehistory without being tied to it.

The protagonist is Krava, “the Raven,” a female warrior from a pseudo-Celtic society, kind of a younger Boudica. After a battle against orc-like raiders, in which her father is slain, Krava comes into possession of a magic sword. She soon finds it an uncomfortable weapon to own, one which pulls her into a struggle of ancient magic and foreign gods. Eventually she leads her people in a fight for their freedom and independence, against several more “civilized” nations.

I have maybe 25 kilowords of the first novel down, including a first chapter that I posted here a while back. Unfortunately, I got blocked on that because I couldn’t converge on a consistent picture for Krava’s world beyond her immediate homeland. Back in 2017-2018 I tinkered with several concepts, including a late Stone Age Europe in our own world, and a completely new world map, but none of those quite came together to my satisfaction. I also did some language construction, which will probably be useful eventually.

Yet as often happens, since I’ve left that set of ideas on the back burner for a while, now I think I can clarify and push them forward a bit. I’ve got a plan to develop some back story and a more focused map, enough that I can move ahead with the first novel when time permits. The plan involves some research, and a little worldbuilding-by-simulation, and I’ll be working on that and making posts about it over the next two or three weeks.

Status Report (9 February 2019)

February 9, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’m still plugging away on Twice-Crowned, although I seem to have lost some of my momentum on that project. I may spend a few days working on other items so as to stay fresh, then get back to the novel.

In particular, I’ve taken the first steps to move all of my archived content out of the Sharrukin’s Archive site and into this WordPress framework. For the moment, all I have is a parent page (visible on the sidebar to the right, under the “Sharrukin’s Worlds” link). I plan to hang several child pages from that, each covering a specific project or setting that I have in the process of development. For example:

The most recent draft sections for Architect of Worlds
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for the Human Destiny space-opera setting
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for Ancient Greece and the Danassos historical-fantasy setting
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for the Tanûr planetary-romance setting
World-building articles I’ve written that aren’t tied to a specific setting
Any new projects that rise to the point of active development

This should give interested parties a chance to look at the content I’ve developed without having to dig through months of blog posts. It should also be far easier to maintain than the Sharrukin’s Archive site, which is frankly a royal pain in the nether regions to do anything with. Finally, I suspect this kind of structure might also be a convenient way to collect content on the way to developing books for publication via Amazon or a game-centered platform like RPGNow. Watch this space for further developments.

Thinking about Danassos

January 15, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

More forward progress on the rough draft of Twice-Crowned. As of this morning I’ve got just over 17 kilowords down.

I’ve been going back to the beginning of the story, to set up Alexandra’s situation and the reason why she has to flee from her home city to Athens. I think the first section of the novel is going to take place all in a single day, beginning with Alexandra about to succeed to her mother’s throne, and ending with her fleeing for her life with a single companion.

I’m still evolving my novel-writing technique. Decades of being a failed novelist have shown me several approaches that don’t work, at least not for me. Now I think I’m getting somewhere with the strategy of just dumping scenes and bits of business onto the page, with the assumption that I’ll whip the results into a coherent story later. When I work from extensive outlines and world-building notes, I tend to over-think everything.

One result of this strategy is that I don’t always see potential conflicts and themes until I’m already in the middle of them. That seems to be happening here. A bit of explanation may be in order.

This story has always been driven by the idea of writing a “return of the true king” tale, while turning the usual trope on its head. My protagonist is a very young woman who would be pretty helpless in a battle. She has to think her way through situations, calling upon her mental and magical talents, instead of just charging forward with a big shiny sword.

So, how do I get a story set in Classical Hellas, in which a woman has any chance of being a ruling monarch? I mean, that did happen once in a great while – we have the example of Queen Artemisia of Karia – but it was extremely rare.

I did it by setting up an alternate history, based on some of the more sensational interpretations of Bronze Age Greece. It’s not clear whether Minoan Crete or the pre-Greek societies of mainland Hellas were ruled by women, and it’s not very likely. Still, if you go with Robert Graves or Riane Eisler, those societies were probably more gender-egalitarian than the Hellenic culture that followed them. (Admittedly, this would not be at all difficult.) So let’s arrange for a survival of pre-Greek civilization into the Classical era. As I’ve documented elsewhere, what I ended up with was a city founded at the end of the Bronze Age by Minoan refugees, at the site of what we know as Syracuse. Although this city (Danassos) eventually became more or less Hellenic in culture, it remains the most gender-egalitarian society in the Greek world, and it tends toward female rulers.

Meanwhile, Robert Graves gave me one possible model for how a pseudo-Hellenic society might manage female rulership. That’s the idea of a “year-king,” in which the ruling queen selects a different male partner each year. That way, no one man could dominate, and the queen could keep various factions among the people in line by favoring one, then another. At least it might work that way in theory. No doubt, in practice, the system would tend to break down whenever a particularly ambitious year-king came along. Mary Renault’s novel The King Must Die, which is based heavily on Gravesian speculation, does a good job of showing us how such a system might fail.

There’s even some precedent in real-world Greek political structures. In Athens, for example, there was the office of the archon basileus (the “king archon”) who was elected or appointed each year. The archon basileus didn’t have that much of a role in actually governing the city, but he (and his wife) took care of some of the religious duties that had once been carried out by the kings.

So in Danassos, at least in Alexandra’s time, there is a ruling Queen who is essentially a constitutional monarch. She is the foremost religious and legal authority in the city, she has an important role in forming foreign policy, and she presides over meetings of the democratic assembly. Each year, at the spring equinox, she selects a new year-king; no man is permitted to serve more than once. The kingship doesn’t carry a lot of authority, but it’s considered a great honor, especially if the partnership results in the birth of a new member of the dynasty. Meanwhile, the city’s other administrative and military offices are filled by some combination of royal appointment, selection by lot, and democratic election. The whole structure is probably rather baroque; most Greek city-states had pretty complex systems of government.

At the beginning of the story, Alexandra is just days away from becoming the new Queen of Danassos, with all that implies.

So far, so good. It occurred to me, though, that in the real world this kind of monarchy would have rather unsettling implications. Just how does the Queen of Danassos select a king each year? She probably has lots of political implications to think about. Does she select a man from this faction or that one? Which candidate will do the most to support her rule and defend the city from its enemies? What if the best candidate for the city is a man she finds personally repugnant? What if a given Queen just isn’t all that fond of men in the first place? Does the Queen ever get a chance to pick a candidate just because she is attracted to him, or because she loves him? And even if she does, it’s just for a year, and she has to give him up at the next spring equinox.

Are the Queens of Danassos the most powerful women in the Hellenic world, or are they the most expensive prostitutes?

I’m going to have to think about that, while I keep working on the rough draft. There’s some good conflict there, and good potential for character development for my protagonist. There are also a lot of land-mines I’ll have to watch out for.

2018 in Review

January 1, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I remember the night that I very nearly turned my back on writing for good. I abandoned my writing blog, shut down my Facebook and Twitter accounts, put away every project I was working on at the time and didn’t even think about any of them for months. One of my best fan-fiction stories, in particular, got an enormous hiatus. Tuesday, 8 November 2016.

It wasn’t just the election and the results of that, although that certainly did feel like a blow. I’d been getting increasingly frustrated with what I was doing as a writer, too.

Story after story was almost getting into the short-fiction markets, getting immediate attention from lead editors who were sending me non-boilerplate feedback, and yet I couldn’t actually seem to close the deal and sell something. The best opportunity I seemed to have gotten was from a literary “contest” that vanished like a thief in the night, claiming the rights to my story but never actually doing anything with it. Even my fan-fiction was getting less and less of a response, although at least people seemed to still be reading it . . . silently. It was beginning to look as if the height of my creative career would be a handful (as in, less than five) nominating votes for the Campbell Award one year.

In short, I wasn’t in a very good place even before my fellow countrymen chose to elect the most manifestly corrupt and unfit candidate in a century to our highest office. After that, I pretty much lost all interest in creating anything. For months I went silent. I concentrated on my family and my day job, went weeks at a time without writing a word. It didn’t help that the Sharrukin’s Palace domain name lapsed and some domain squatters grabbed it for a year. The thought of starting a writing blog over from scratch just made me tired.

I got better, of course. I eventually finished the fan-fiction story I had abandoned in mid-stream (with an ending I would never have written before, but which I think is actually superior to what I originally had in mind). I started working on other stories again, off and on. I picked up the Architect of Worlds project again and started researching and revising that.

I suppose it helped that, although the world has been going down a lot of dark and very dangerous paths in the past couple of years, the worst has not happened. Come on, I’m a student of history and a speculative-fiction writer. I imagined a lot of things that – well, let’s be honest, they may yet come to pass. But they haven’t yet, and there are signs that a lot of decent people are pissed off and starting to fight back. So I began to feel creative again.

In March of this year, the Sharrukin’s Palace domain escaped the grubby paws of those domain squatters who had grabbed it. I pounced on it and brought it back into my own control. By April, I was ready to start this iteration of my writing blog. I self-published a novelette, and at least started a few other writing projects before I settled on the one I’m currently working. I did a bunch of new work on Architect of Worlds.

In short, I’m back in business. There’s some balance back in my life, between my family, my day job, my health, and the chance to do creative work. Let’s hope that lasts.

So, with respect to this blog, let’s look at the top ten posts for 2018:

None of that counts the large plurality of visits to the blog (about 45%), which just hit the home page and scroll down from there.

I can probably explain most of these results by observing that posts which get linked from Reddit seem to do well. So do GURPS-related posts that get linked from Doug Cole’s Gaming Ballistic blog – thanks, Doug! Still, I keep getting perennial visitors to the site looking for the Architect of Worlds project. Also, the biggest worked example of worldbuilding that I did all year also keeps getting hits months later.

Noted and logged – I’ll have to see if I can push Architect forward in 2019, and do some more extended examples. But tomorrow is the big day to look forward and maybe make some resolutions, so I’ll come back then.

In the meantime, I hope the coming year is fruitful and productive for all of us.

Revisiting GURPS Greece: Incomes, Status, and Prices

December 13, 2018 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Twenty-plus years ago, when I wrote GURPS Greece, a lot of what went into the Characters chapter was educated guesswork. I had a limited set of sources available, and I hadn’t built up very much skill with the sort of analysis that needs to go into any description of money, prices, wealth, and social status in a game setting. I can do better than that now. The scantiness of primary sources is still a problem, but at least I have access to more of them today, so I can perhaps produce a better quality of guesswork.

A small warning here: among other things, I am going to be discussing the mechanics of slavery in classical Hellas. Those of us who idealize the Hellenes would do well to remember that their civilization was thoroughly founded upon the institution of slavery, with all the brutality, callousness, and injustice that implies. Without exception, every large fortune was based on the labor of slaves. Sometimes a lot of slaves.

In any era, it’s easy to become rich when you arrange things so that you can steal the labor of others with impunity. Something always to bear in mind when we consider the accomplishments of Hellenic civilization. Or our own.

Money and Incomes

Okay, let’s start with a well-established data point. The price of wheat in Athens in the late 4^th century BCE fluctuated, but usually hovered close to 6 drachmai per medimnos. A medimnos was roughly a “bushel” of grain, enough to feed a family of five (man, woman, and three children) for about 15 days at the subsistence level. Thus, considering food alone, a laborer’s salary needed to be about 12 drachmai per month.

In ancient times, living at a subsistence level meant that about 50% of your expenses went to food. The rest went to cheap housing, shabby clothing, and what few tools and housewares you would need. That suggests the typical unskilled laborer’s salary needed to be about 24 drachmai per month, and that would cover expenses for himself and a family.

Assuming the unskilled laborer made about a drachma per day on the job, that suggests working about 24 out of every 30 days, which makes sense. As it happens, a drachma a day was so typical for unskilled labor that it’s sometimes thought of as “the standard salary” in classical times. That’s a considerable oversimplification, but for fictional purposes it’s not bad.

Fitting this to the GURPS figures, let’s assume that a typical unskilled laborer is Struggling and at Status -1. Then his cost of living is $300 per month (Characters, p. 265). If we assume this covers his family’s needs as well, that equates one drachma to about $12.50 in GURPS terms. Let’s adjust that figure slightly, to make the other denominations work out to whole numbers, and run with it:

1 chalkos = $0.25
1 obolos = $2 (8 chalkoi = 1 obolos)
1 drachma = $12 (6 oboloi = 1 drachma)
1 tetradrachmon = $48 (4 drachmai = 1 tetradrachmon)
1 mina = $1,200 (100 drachmai = 1 mina)
1 talenton = $72,000 (60 minai = 1 talenton)

Notice that this estimate doubles the purchasing power of all these coins and measures, compared to the estimates I published in GURPS Greece. Here’s an example of how the guesswork has improved; back then, I didn’t work from a basic assumption about the price of staples.

As a cross-check, the $675 given as typical monthly pay for TL2 (Campaigns, p. 517) equates to just over 56 drachmai, which would be about two drachmai a day with almost no days off. In fact, two drachmai per working day was a very typical wage for a skilled laborer, someone who in GURPS terms would be at Average wealth and Status 0, with cost of living of $600 per month. So that fits too.

Of course, most Hellenes would not have worked every day for pay, so a more typical monthly wage would probably be a bit lower. Let’s assume that the typical monthly income for someone at Average wealth and Status 0 will be $600, or $7,200 per year.

Social Classes in Athenian Society

Under the constitution of Solon, the Athenian citizenry was divided into four social classes by their annual income. These were defined in terms of how many medimnoi of wheat they could afford in a year, assuming they purchased nothing but the wheat. This makes sense if we consider that the whole system centered on farmers and land-owners. Such men would produce grain or other agricultural products, and trade some away for whatever else they needed.

In the Solonian system, the baseline income was what we’ve defined as the typical income for Average wealth and Status 0: $7,200 in GURPS terms, 600 drachmai, or 100 medimnoiof wheat per year.

The four classes were as follows:

Pentakosiomedimnoi or “five-hundred-bushel men” had incomes equivalent to at least 500 medimnoi of grain per year. This is exactly five times the baseline income we just defined, so status as a pentakosiomedimnos very precisely fits the Wealthy advantage.
Hippeis or “knights” had incomes equivalent to at least 300 medimnoi per year. This is exactly three times the baseline income, above the minimum for the Comfortable advantage.
Zeugitai or “yoked men” had incomes equivalent to at least 200 medimnoi per year, and so exactly twice the baseline income. Zeugitai are at least Comfortable.
Thetes or “serfs” were the rest of the citizen population, those with Average wealth or below. These included small-scale yeoman farmers, as well as craftsmen and others who worked for a wage.

So far, the Athenian system doesn’t seem to consider anyone well above the minimum for pentakosiomedimnos status, what GURPS might define as Very Wealthy, Filthy Rich, or even Multimillionaire. Just how wealthy did Athenians get?

The wealthiest Athenians we know of were the ones who leased large numbers of slaves to the silver mines at Laurion. Xenophon reports that the state paid such slave-brokers an obolos per day per slave, amounting to 60 drachmai per year per slave.

The largest such labor force we know of was provided by our friend Nikias, who maintained about a thousand slaves at the mines. This would have provided an annual income of 10 talents,or $720,000 in GURPS terms. That implies that Nikias qualified almost exactly for the Filthy Rich level of Wealth, but not for Multimillionaire.

Let’s look at another case, and see how it fits in. Some Athenians made modest fortunes by operating small-scale manufacturing enterprises. Usually they would purchase slaves skilled in some trade, then profit from the difference between what the slaves subsisted on and the value of the goods they produced.

Assume that a slave can survive on about one obolos per day. That works out to only 10 medimnoi of wheat per year, but the slave almost certainly doesn’t have anyone but himself to feed, and he doesn’t need to buy his own tools and housing. Throw in two more oboloi per day for tools, raw materials, and any other overhead costs. Then a typical manufacturer could probably make about half a drachma a day of profit per slave. Quite a bit more than Nikias was making, but here we’re considering a trade-off of quality for quantity.

Typical sizes for a large enterprise would be on the order of 60-120 slaves, which would imply 30-60 drachmai per day in profit. Not quite on the same level as Nikias and his fellow plutocrats, but factory-owners could reach into the upper strata of society too.

If we compare all these incomes to the Cost of Living table in the (Fourth Edition) Basic Set, and assume income matches cost of living, it appears Nikias fell somewhere between Status 4 and 5, while other wealthy Athenians often reached Status 4. There just wasn’t much room in classical Hellas for anyone to reach Status 5 or higher. Maybe the tyrants of Syracuse would have made the cut, or an Athenian named Kallias who was known as the wealthiest man in mainland Hellas, but I kind of doubt it even for them. I’m beginning to think that the Status table I developed for GURPS Greece wasn’t quite flat enough.

Consider the following as a replacement, with no Hellene coming in any higher than Status 4:

Status	Notes	Cost of Living
4	Kings or tyrants of major poleis, Filthy Rich citizens	$60,000
3	Kings or tyrants of minor poleis, Very Wealthy citizens	$12,000
2	Pentakosiomedimnoi, Wealthy citizens	$3,000
1	Zeugitai and hippeis, Comfortable citizens	$1,200
0	Thetes, Average citizens, skilled craftsmen	$600
-1	Thetes, Struggling citizens, unskilled laborers	$300
-2	Slaves	$100

I may have to adjust some of the GURPS writeups I’ve already done for prominent Athenians, to bring their Wealth and Status in line with what I’ve worked out here.

The Cost of Slaves and Return on Investment

We know something about the prices of slaves from our primary sources.

Xenophon gives the typical range of prices for a slave as being between half a mina ($600) and ten minai ($12,000). The lower end of that range would have been typical for older, weaker, or partially crippled slaves, the kind that might be purchased to work as a household servant. The higher end would represent young, healthy, highly skilled slaves.
Xenophon mentions a going price for slaves to work in the silver mines, about 180 drachmai or a little over $2,000. This might be considered typical for a strong but unskilled laborer.
The most expensive mine-slave Xenophon mentions is an overseer, for whom Nikias paid a full talent ($72,000). This was clearly a strong, loyal, and highly skilled individual.
Another primary source is the orator Demosthenes, who began his career by bringing a lawsuit against the guardians of his father’s estate. At one point he mentions that his father owned two small factories. One of them employed slaves as sword-smiths, who were worth about five or six minai each on the average (between $6,000 and $7,200).
The other factory manufactured couches and beds. It employed slaves as cabinet-makers, which the elder Demosthenes acquired for about two minai each ($2,400). There’s some indication that these slaves were acquired as payment for a bad debt, so their actual value might have been higher.

Overall, we can probably assume that a slave purchased for household work could cost as little as $600, a typical unskilled laborer would cost around $2,000, and skilled craftsmen would usually cost two or three times that. A few extraordinary slaves might come at very high prices.

If we assume an unskilled laborer at the silver mines usually cost about 180 drachmai and would return about 60 drachmai per year, that implies about a 33% return per annum. Skilled slaves working in a factory would cost two or three times as much. On the other hand, given our assumptions above they would also make two or three times as much profit, so again the return per annum would be about 33%.

Slaves were apparently a very good investment, if one was interested in making a profit. In GURPS Greece I suggested rates of return of about 30% for slave-leasing, and 40% for factory workers, so I wasn’t too far off. Demosthenes suggests somewhat lower rates of return, though, so we probably need to be cautious. Rates of return in the area of 20% to 30% were probably more typical.

I note that the prices I gave for slaves in GURPS Greece are probably too low by about a factor of two. One could acquire relatively inexpensive slaves for household work, though, so at least some Average-wealth households could probably afford one.

A Check on Prices for Adventuring Gear

Let’s work up one more data point. We know that in classical Athens, anyone of zeugitai status or better was expected to serve in the city’s army as a hoplite. As we saw above, that implies someone of at least Comfortable wealth.

The Basic Set implies (p. 27) that the base starting money for an Average character at TL2 is $750, therefore starting money for a Comfortable character would be $1,500. One-fifth of that is usually considered to be all one can spend for adventuring gear; I suppose it makes sense that no one is going to sink more than 20% of their wealth into a set of armor and weapons they won’t use very often. So, the question arises, can we build a bare-bones set of hoplite gear for no more than about $300?

It turns out that we can. The absolute bare minimum for a hoplite would have been the heavy spear (doru) which is priced in Low-Tech at $90, and the Argive shield (aspis or hoplon) which costs $120. That comes to about $210, or about 17-18 drachmai, less than a month’s wages even for an unskilled laborer. Wealthier citizens would have been able to afford more of the full panoply, including Corinthian helmet, bronze cuirass, bronze greaves, and a shortsword (xiphos). There was not a lot of standardization in the hoplite ranks, and many (if not most) of the soldiers would have been going into battle with very little.

So, at this point I’m confident that my analysis holds together, and that the prices in Low-Tech (and in the Basic Set) aren’t going to be too far out of alignment with the actual state of affairs in classical Hellas. Which doesn’t surprise me – the guys who wrote Low-Tech did their homework too, and I’d be willing to bet some of them looked at the same sources.

(Hah! I just glanced at the title page for Low-Tech and realized I got “Additional Material” credit. I’m sure someone at SJG mentioned that to me at the time, but it slipped my memory. Must have been some of the work I did for GURPS Greece, still showing up in the product line fifteen years later . . .)

Sources

Demosthenes gave several orations Against Aphobus and Against Otenor, as part of his lawsuit against the trustees of his father’s estate, all of which we still have. The figures used above are from Against Aphobus 1.

Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Ways and Means both serve as primary sources for some of the above discussion. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that one of the most stubbornly practical writers of the ancient world would be one of the few to talk about wages and prices at all.

A superb secondary source is William T. Loomis, Wages, Welfare, and Inflation in Classical Athens (University of Michigan Press, 1999). Loomis has painstakingly gone through every single reference to wages in the primary sources, compiling an authoritative overview of the whole question.

Memnon

December 11, 2018 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Something of a departure this time. Most of the characters I’ve drawn up so far have been upper-class Athenians, or people who would naturally have associated with them. This fellow is very much from the lower classes, what the Athenians would have called thetes, “serfs” or poor freemen. When Memnon arrives in Athens as Alexandra’s guardian, both of them poor as church-mice, it’s not nearly as far a fall for him.

Memnon of Danassos (200 points)

Age25; Human; 6′ 2″; 170 lbs.; Tall, brawny man, tanned skin, dark hair and eyes, neatly trimmed beard.

ST 14 [40]; DX 13 [60]; IQ 12 [40]; HT 13 [30].

Damage 1d/2d; BL 39 lbs.; HP 14 [0]; Will 14 [10]; Per 12 [0]; FP 13 [0].

Basic Speed 6.5 [0]; Basic Move 6 [0]; Block 8 (DX); Dodge 10; Parry 10 (DX).

Social Background

TL: 2 [0]. CF: Hellenic (Native) [0]. Languages: Dorian Greek (Native) [0].

Advantages

Combat Reflexes [15].

Disadvantages

Code of Honor (Soldier’s) [-10]; Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) [-5]; Status (Ordinary craftsman) -1 [-5]; Vow (Always protect Alexandra) (Major) [-10]; Wealth (Poor) [-15].

Quirks: Dislikes wealthy and arrogant people; Frequently swears “to the crows with it”; Has an unspoken crush on Alexandra; Loves farming and hunting; Proud [-5].

Skills

Area Knowledge (Danassos)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Armoury/TL2 (Melee Weapons)-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Bow-12 (DX-1) [1]; Brawling-15 (DX+2) [4]; Carousing-13 (HT+0) [1]; Climbing-12 (DX-1) [1]; Cooking-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Farming/TL2-13 (IQ+1) [4]; First Aid/TL2 (Human)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Hiking-13 (HT+0) [2]; Intimidation-14 (Will+0) [2]; Leadership-12 (IQ+0) [2]; Running-12 (HT-1) [1]; Shield (Shield)-14 (DX+1) [2]; Shortsword-12 (DX-1) [1]; Soldier/TL2-13 (IQ+1) [4]; Spear-14 (DX+1) [4]; Strategy (Land)-10 (IQ-2) [1]; Streetwise-12 (IQ+0) [2]; Survival (Plains)-12 (Per+0) [2]; Swimming-13 (HT+0) [1]; Tactics-12 (IQ+0) [4]; Thrown Weapon (Spear)-15 (DX+2) [4]; Tracking-12 (Per+0) [2]; Weather Sense-12 (IQ+0) [2]; Wrestling-14 (DX+1) [4].

Character notes for Memnon:

Since Memnon is a fictional character, I have no imagery for him yet. At some point I’ll need to fire up Daz Studio and see what I can build for him.
Memnon’s name is indicative – it means, more or less, “steadfast.” He is that – big, strong, tough, brilliant but far from stupid, and devoted to protecting his royal charge.
Memnon comes from a farming background, and he’s most comfortable seeing to his crops, hunting, or otherwise living off the land. Unlike most thetes, he has seen plenty of military service and has some of the requisite skills. He’s a competent if not exceptional leader, and with some experience could serve as a strategos in any of the Hellenic city-states’ amateur armies.
Not a lot of character advantages here – Memnon is quick, rarely caught off-guard, but that’s about it.
Memnon most closely resembles Alkibiades as far as character design goes, but the two men are poles apart in personality. I suspect Memnon is not going to get along with Alkibiades when the two of them meet, given how he feels about wealthy aristocrats of any kind. Not to mention what’s likely to happen if the Athenian tries to charm Alexandra’s peplos off . . .

Juggling Calendars

December 10, 2018 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

In my day job, I develop and teach short courses in cybersecurity. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been overseeing a pilot offering for a new course, which implies nine- and ten-hour days at a minimum. This week in particular I’ve been “on the platform,” lecturing and leading classroom sessions. All of which is to say, I’ve been coming home in the evening and crashing hard rather than getting any writing done. Today was spent mostly just resting.

I did get one interesting task done today, though. Over the past few weeks, I’ve worked out an overall timeline to support the story of Alexandra’s adventures – essentially an alternate history of the Peloponnesian Wars. That’s a little coarse-grained, though, mostly just a bullet list of the most important handful of events to take place each year. Now that I’m getting close to starting to write, I need a more fine-grained timeline on which to hang the plot. Which means I spent today juggling calendars.

Most of the first novel is going to take place in and around Athens, in the years 416 BCE to 414 BCE. Alexandra is going to be involved in the life of the city, its religious festivals, civic observances, and political debates. All of which means I need to deal with the Athenian calendar. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single, consistent, well-designed Athenian calendar.

The Athenians kept track of religious festivals with a lunar calendar, each year starting on the first new moon after the summer solstice, with 12-13 months per year. A fairly rigorous lunar calendar existed in the period I’m writing in, based on the calculations of an Athenian astronomer named Meton. However, the actual festival calendar seems to have been maintained by the city magistrates, who were not astronomers and just based an ad hoc reckoning on whenever someone spotted the new moon every month.

Meanwhile, during the period I’m working on, the Athenians maintained a completely separate solar calendar to keep track of the workings of the polis government. They broke the solar year (365 or 366 days) into ten roughly equal prytania of 36-37 days, with a different set of citizens overseeing the government in each. These divisions, of course, never lined up with the festival calendar in any consistent way.

Meanwhile, I’ve already invented my own calendar for Alexandra’s home country, the Etos Kosmou reckoning I mentioned in this post. Meanwhile, for my own sanity, I need to relate everything back to the Gregorian calendar so I can keep track of things.

It was actually a challenge to figure out the dates of new moons, full moons, and the four points of the solar year that far back in history. I spent an hour or two this afternoon messing with my usual planetarium software (a copy of Starry Night 7 Enthusiast), but that was kind of imprecise. Finally I found a couple of useful links:

Since both of those sources matched the few dates I had already worked out by hand, I felt inclined to put some trust in them. Those sources enabled me to quickly set up a spreadsheet comparing Athenian festival calendar, EK reckoning, and Gregorian reckoning for the roughly two-year period I need:

Off to the right, I have columns of the table marking (some) of the prytany beginning dates (important if I need the government to change hands, or for the timing of an ostrakismos). I’ve also worked out some of the most important plot events and placed them on the timeline too. Another useful source: I found an online interactive database that tracks the most likely travel times between most of the important sites in the classical world. Really useful when my characters have to go somewhere and I need to know about how long it will take . . .

Neat exercise, this, and it should lend the story some verisimilitude. I can’t guarantee that this is exactly how the Athenians reckoned those two years in particular, but then their calendars were maintained on the fly. Since this is alternate history, a slightly different set of magistrates might very well have decided to arrange things differently. Hopefully, the result is good enough that any classical experts in the audience (all two of them) will let it pass.

(Whenever I write in this period, I keep having nightmares that involve Harry Turtledove reading the story and shaking his head sadly . . .)

Alexandra

December 5, 2018 Sharrukin Comments 1 comment

Okay, having worked up some historical figures, and sketched out the details of the Danassos setting’s magic, I think I can finally put together some of my leading characters. Here’s the protagonist of the first story, as she is just after she arrives in Athens. Back at home, she’s a member of the royal family, a goddess-touched priestess, and a magician of uncommon talent. Once she sets foot in the Piraeus, though, she’s just another young foreign woman without an obolos to her name . . .

Alexandra of Danassos (300 points)

Age 16; Human; 5′ 1″; 115 lbs.; Petite young woman, curly black hair, dark eyes, strong eyebrows, well-groomed but wearing shabby clothing.

ST 10 [0]; DX 12 [40]; IQ 14 [80]; HT 12 [20].

Damage 1d-2/1d; BL 20 lbs.; HP 10 [0]; Will 16 [10]; Per 14 [0]; FP 12 [0].

Basic Speed 6 [0]; Basic Move 6 [0]; Block 7 (DX); Dodge 9; Parry 9 (DX).

Social Background

TL: 2 [0]. CF: Hellenic (Native) [0]. Languages: Dorian Greek (Native) [0]; Punic (Accented) [4].

Advantages

Ally (Team of aurai, nymphs of the breeze) (100% of starting points) (12 or less; Group Size (6-10)) [60]; Appearance (Attractive) [4]; Blessed [10]; Clerical Investment [5]; Medium [10]; Rank (Religious) 2 [10]; Ritual Magery (Path/Book) 3 [30]; Ritual Magery 0 [5].

Disadvantages

Enemy (Melissa, usurper of Danassos) (Equal in power to the PC) (6 or less) [-5]; Honesty (12 or less) [-10]; Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) -1 [-5]; Status (Ordinary craftsman) -1 [-5]; Vow (Celibacy until becoming Queen) (Minor) [-5]; Wealth (Poor) [-15].

Quirks: Broad-Minded; Enjoys intellectual debate; Responsive; Shy around attractive or handsome men [-4].

Skills

Area Knowledge (Danassos)-14 (IQ+0) [1]; Current Affairs/TL2 (Greater Hellas)-14 (IQ+0) [1]; Dancing-11 (DX-1) [1]; Diplomacy-14 (IQ+0) [4]; Dreaming-14 (Will-2) [1]; Finance-13 (IQ-1) [2]; First Aid/TL2 (Human)-14 (IQ+0) [1]; Fortune-Telling (Dream Interpretation)-15 (IQ+1) [4]; Hidden Lore (Spirit Lore)-13 (IQ-1) [1]; History (Danassan)-13 (IQ-1) [2]; Knife-14 (DX+2) [4]; Law (Danassan)-14 (IQ+0) [4]; Literature-12 (IQ-2) [1]; Occultism-14 (IQ+0) [2]; Path of Dreams-15 (IQ+1) [2]; Path of Elements-15 (IQ+1) [2]; Path of Health-15 (IQ+1) [2]; Path of Knowledge-15 (IQ+1) [2]; Path of Protection-15 (IQ+1) [2]; Path of Spirit-16 (IQ+2) [4]; Politics-13 (IQ-1) [1]; Public Speaking-14 (IQ+0) [2]; Religious Ritual (Hellenic)-14 (IQ+0) [4]; Ritual Magic (Hellenic)-16 (IQ+2) [4]; Savoir-Faire (High Society)-14 (IQ+0) [1]; Singing-12 (HT+0) [1]; Swimming-12 (HT+0) [1]; Theology (Hellenic)-14 (IQ+0) [4].

Some notes about this writeup:

No imagery this time, since Alexandra is an entirely fictional character and I haven’t worked up a model for her yet.
Alexandra is escorted by a team of six aurai, minor air-spirits built on a base of 300 points each, as defined in the writeup from my last post.
Alexandra has no Patron advantage. She has a close relationship with a goddess, but the goddess doesn’t offer help on demand as such. Instead, she has Blessed (representing divine advice on occasion), Clerical Investment (formally making her a priestess), and Ritual Magery (representing the power investiture that permits her to work magic).
Alexandra has two levels of Religious Rank, which is about as high as that advantage will go in a Classical Hellenic setting. That makes her the equivalent of the head priest of a large temple. If and when she ever returns to Danassos as Queen, she’ll probably bump up to a third level of Religious Rank.
When Alexandra arrives in Athens, she has effective Status -1 and is Poor. Part of the story is going to involve her finding ways to advance in Status and Wealth even in Athenian society. Of course, once she returns home to Danassos and retakes her throne, she’ll reach as high as Status 6 and some level of Multimillionaire . . .
With a high IQ, most of Alexandra’s skills are scholarly or social in nature, along with a solid phalanx of ritual-magic skills. Even as a very young woman, she’s a competent diplomat and jurist. She has no skill in Philosophy yet – the Danassan royal family doesn’t go in for tutoring from sophists – although that may change if she spends much time associating with Sokrates.