[LP CYOA] Epic

[Baltika9]

Actually, now that I think about it, why not Constantinople? It is smack-dab in the middle of Hittite lands, bordering on Greece. In our history, it was the ending point of the Silk Road and from it, the goods flowed both ways. It allows for a humongous trade port, location and all, providing further, quick access straight into Europe, the Black Sea and Russian lands, as well as eastwards expansion.
Just look at the trade route maps:

And the Varangian trade routes:

Besides which, it is a rather defensible spot and a good historic place for the east to meet the west.

Since we went for the cultural/economic expansion road, I'd say this would be the better choice, since it allows for far more options in all directions.

Edit: But the problem with both Constantinople and Antioch is that they favor the East of the Empire much more so than the West. Losing influence in Egypt, for one, could end badly. Maybe we should consider one of the central isles? Crete, for instance?

 

[Kattze]

What about Ugarit? A city bordering the Mediterranean, just south of Antioch. Another bonus is that it already existed around 1800 BCE. I think we needed a lingua franca for our Empire so that instead of being just loose confederation of states with Ean as its only connection (Just like the Habsburgs), the people would gradually lose their separate identities as Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek or Hittite and assimilate into one Imperial culture. Maybe we can use a neutral language such as Amorite? or Aramaic (iirc Persians use this as an unoffical common language)? so as not too show favouritism to any of the constituent parts of the empire.

Also, I don't want to turn this into some kind of Jap dating sim or bioware game, so I voted no consorts whatsoever. We could set up a line of succession (Athena - ? - ?), so that the Empire can survive even without Ean and our chosen heir apparent.

 

[Baltika9]

Lingua Franca will be the tricky part, precisely because of favoritism. I think it would be better to put it off until the people think of themselves more as the Emperor's men,rather than the King's. right now, it could be a painful transition. Civil wars were fought for less in Empires that existed for longer.

And since the fight is between adopting Athena or leaving no heirs, guess I'll have to flop. Esquilax, I hope she appreciated Ean's public persona you pushed through, now's the time to test your plan, bro. I might disagree, but I'm with you. To all the rest, 3D is a bad choice, we have no bond except an Emperor, so someone has to take over.

 

[Kukulkan]

The Lingua Franca should be an entirely invented language designed for easy learning and having fucking consistent rules.
Also voting BAC(Athena as heir)

 

[Esquilax]

Kattze, to you. Btw, I didn't see you vote before on this choice, so I think you may have forgotten. Regarding languages, perhaps we can start by expanding our school curriculum to teaching two languages. As for the lingua franca, I'm going to tentatively suggest Egyptian. We would have a Greek heir, a Babylonian/Assyrian capital, and an Egyptian lingua franca.

Anyways, again, what about choice regarding the miasma? This is the important one here, guys. A might get the job done, but we'll definitely take a morale hit from the army. We have a 35,000 strong army with another 30,000 in reserve, so we won't be running out of manpower for a very long time. It would be dickish, but we can certainly afford it and we do need to find that rift ASAP. It would certainly make progress faster.

This is really the toughest choice and the one we should be discussing more. The flipside is that throwing more men into the miasma might yield little more than we already have - we've only mapped out 10% of the area as is. It might be futile. Either we step up efforts and lose a lot of men or we cut our losses and hope we find a more efficient way of navigating the rift (i.e. flares) - while potentially losing the little progress we've made.

This one is very tough to call.

 

[treave]

I'll address the other questions in a while, but would just like to point out you've mapped 10% of the route to the centre of Olympus, certainly not 10% of the entire area. When the mountain fell it pretty much did a horrible number on the surrounding topography.

 

[Anabanana]

Can't we... do both? Send waves and waves of men in, AND pursue scientific advances. We could conduct experiments AND map at the same time.

 

[treave]

A will have you doing both, just that before any advances are made (which you don't know how long it takes, or if it happens at all) the meat grinder will be happy.

Besides that, you could have an ahistoric town where Antioch would be, but not a large city on par with the other capitals.

As for being your heir, I can think of a few reasons why Athena might be inclined to refuse the offer. If you guys are interested in attempting to debunk her logic, I can set it up.

Imperial examinations are a good idea that should appear naturally given the empire's focus on scholarship. There already is one of some sort among the scholars that you recruit, as an entrance test, but it can be developed further.

 

[newcomer]

A will have you doing both, just that before any advances are made (which you don't know how long it takes, or if it happens at all) the meat grinder will be happy.

Besides that, you could have an ahistoric town where Antioch would be, but not a large city on par with the other capitals.

As for being your heir, I can think of a few reasons why Athena might be inclined to refuse the offer. If you guys are interested in attempting to debunk her logic, I can set it up.

Imperial examinations are a good idea that should appear naturally given the empire's focus on scholarship. There already is one of some sort among the scholars that you recruit, as an entrance test, but it can be developed further.

Refuse, eh? Just when I'm thinking of flopping to D + heir... Maybe I'll flop to B1 then?

And treave , I suggest to solve the common identity, we create a new language by fusing all 4 language altogether & creating new form of alphabet (Latin alphabet anyone?)

 

[treave]

Might. If you guys can offer convincing reasons that would change her mind, I'll allow it. That's what LARPy DMing is, I think?

Fusing languages together would be difficult. The Semitic languages might be able to be merged together with less fuss but Egyptian and Greek should pose a bit more of a problem. I'm no linguist though.

 

[Esquilax]

Fusion languages are not going to work, they will take forever to develop. You can't throw a bunch of shit together and call it a language. There is no easy way to unite the people, but we can start by advancing the education system to provide teaching in multiple languages under one alphabet.

As for being your heir, I can think of a few reasons why Athena might be inclined to refuse the offer. If you guys are interested in attempting to debunk her logic, I can set it up.

You mean reasons like "Uh... by the way, you're immortal. When do you plan on having me take over? Never?"

Refuse, eh? Just when I'm thinking of flopping to D + heir... Maybe I'll flop to B1 then?

And treave , I suggest to solve the common identity, we create a new language by fusing all 4 language altogether & creating new form of alphabet (Latin alphabet anyone?)

She's far less likely to marry us than she is to accept being an heir. Athena only gets hot for JUSTICE!!!

Anyways, in the midst of all this Sekhenun shipping distracting us, I think I've developed a coherent plan:

A) Imperial Guard meat grinder. This is going to be a very grim business, but I see no other way. We've made very slow progress, and we are desperate for time and technological advances. But there is one thing that we aren't short of, and that's manpower:

The military of the empire is generally maintained at a standing number of 35,000 ready for battle, whose service is regularly rotated with reserves of another 30,000 men that are stationed within cities and camps throughout the empire. They have 2000 chariots, each able to carry 3 men, and 7,000 archers. The remaining forces constitute of infantry. The breakdown of the standing forces contributed by each kingdom is as follows: Egypt – 9000, Babylon – 12,000, with half of that being Assyrian, Hittite – 11,000, Greece – 3000.

This will be bloody, but necessary. Our army is large enough to withstand the losses.The Chinese Gieloth still stand untouched and the Terasphagos problem must be resolved as quickly as possible. The only way to deal with the latter is to find the rift, and that requires a huge price in lives.

A) A capital in the city that Kattze mentioned/Antioch. Whatever. We've got the road network and the effective bureaucracy to make it happen.

A) This is the only reliable choice. 1A would free up some time and allow us a window of opportunity to sire an heir from Nabukudzur's harem. Although the ruler of a mixed union would be a mortal, it would be a remarkable mortal a la Alexander the Great or Ramesses II.

EDIT: I want to point out that the huge downside with 1A is that our Empire is very focused on scholarship, so we will make an advance of some sort. It would be a huge bummer to have several thousand men die for pretty much nothing. I am very much on the fence about it.

 

[Anabanana]

Fine.

Triple A.

 

[treave]

Hm, firstly, the other kings wouldn't be happy. Sure, they acknowledge the rift as a threat, but making her potential Empress, with all the trappings of power you have already demonstrated, gives her too much power to call on their troops to defend the rift which is conveniently located in her own kingdom. She doesn't have the trust of the other kings the way you do because she is a queen in her own right with an entire kingdom of her own. You pouring their resources into Greece is different from her doing it. Now, both Ean and Athena know that she is going to be fair, but you cannot convince the others of that so easily, that she'll continue to be fair even with all the resources of the Empire at her disposal. They might grudgingly accept due to her divinity, but in the end, she's a foreign god to their people, and this would lead to a worsening of relationships between the client states of the empire.

Next, Athena herself prefers to guide rather than rule. She only accepted queenship in the first place because it was the best available option, but she doesn't plan to be queen forever. Already she is making plans to pass rulership back to mortals within the next century. As per her first point, she thinks making her heir would create more harm than good, sowing discontent among the other kings - and if they do something stupid in their mortal short sightedness... So personally, she has no desires to be marked as heir either. She is willing to guide Emperors, but not become one.

These are the reasons she presents, now troll her till she accepts.

 

[newcomer]

Sounds good Esquilax

Flopping to Triple A

 

[Esquilax]

Hm, firstly, the other kings wouldn't be happy. Sure, they acknowledge the rift as a threat, but making her potential Empress, with all the trappings of power you have already demonstrated, gives her too much power to call on their troops to defend the rift which is conveniently located in her own kingdom. She doesn't have the trust of the other kings the way you do because she is a queen in her own right with an entire kingdom of her own. You pouring their resources into Greece is different from her doing it. Now, both Ean and Athena know that she is going to be fair, but you cannot convince the others of that so easily, that she'll continue to be fair even with all the resources of the Empire at her disposal. They might grudgingly accept due to her divinity, but in the end, she's a foreign god to their people, and this would lead to a worsening of relationships between the client states of the empire.

Next, Athena herself prefers to guide rather than rule. She only accepted queenship in the first place because it was the best available option, but she doesn't plan to be queen forever. Already she is making plans to pass rulership back to mortals within the next century. As per her first point, she thinks making her heir would create more harm than good, sowing discontent among the other kings - and if they do something stupid in their mortal short sightedness... So personally, she has no desires to be marked as heir either. She is willing to guide Emperors, but not become one.

These are the reasons she presents, now troll her till she accepts.

Assuming that you've set the vote and we're committed to this, here is my rebuttal:

• The spy network. There might be discontent, but we will provide her with an ace up her sleeve to steer any rash mortals away from a misguided course of action. She can plant Watchers (as we've done already) inside the rooms of power of her opponents to steer them away from mortal short-sightedness. Watchers are sworn to serve the Emperor, not the King, so they will serve her as they have served us. She can avoid conflict with the moles we've placed.
• The unification of the vastly different ethnicities of the Shin'ari Empire will take time, but it has already begun. We already have the infrastructure in place (i.e. roads, education), and now we have a capitol to bring those vastly different peoples together in a cosmopolitan city. As people become more connected through trade and education (i.e. learning more languages in education) differences will gradually disappear. Things will be tough initially, but if we survived the Terasphagos, we can survive this.
• Athena may be a foreign god, but Ean has a popular cult in Egypt and Babylon, the places that she will have the most trouble governing. If she already has the support of a god of the Sumerian pantheon, it will make inroads into those trouble regions easier.
• We also preferred to guide rather than to rule, as we did in Egypt before. Runi was a simple general serving the pharaoh a century and a half ago. We also only accepted becoming Emperor because it was the best choice available. But with the rift and the Chinese Gieloth threatening all of mankind, responsible immortals who have compassion for mankind can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines. Passing rule back to the mortals can be done eventually, but in the immediate future, we have to take center stage to unite humanity as a whole or we risk the planet.

 

[newcomer]

Esquilax , counter rebuttal for Spy Network:

Isn't the spy network supposed to be secret from Athena herself? Are you planning to give such crucial information to her? And won't it make her suspect we don't trust her and hence planted some mole in Greece?

 

[Kukulkan]

Flopping to Triple A.

 

[treave]

Votes not set, but this'll help clear things up.

The moles will warn of conflict, but if the kings are keen on making life difficult, they could well reduce efforts in places such as troop recruitment. To actually stop them from ever being able to cause problems you would have to be able remove them. So she has to be willing to take that step to consolidate her own power.

For the most part, gods don't adopt other gods either. Now, a divine marriage and attempting to use that as a basis for a combined pantheon could get the people behind the idea. But she would definitely refuse to share your bed even if she somehow agreed to it.

The arguments are sound and I'd be willing to implement it, but I won't guarantee it doesn't cause other issues as we progress the timeline.

 

[Anabanana]

Yeah, let's just go with the personal harem. Sounds like much less hassle in the end - I mean, what could a few puny humans do to us? We have a goddamn spy network.

 

[Tigranes]

I don't think we should go for Athena as consort / heir at all. No matter what 'logic' we use she definitely is not going to have any symbolic authority for the population of the Empire, and amongst the elite, even less. Nobody's going to swallow that shit, the mortals can barely see past their own noses and will only be able to see it as breaking the balance of three kingdoms. It really should be BAD. I don't like the harem either, but OK, it's definitely better than making someone our heir, a needless way to create problems.

Kattze's Ugarit could work but honestly I don't see any difference for us. At least building a city from scratch lets us design it the way we like. We can put in secret passages all over the city, things like that. Building up something like Ugarit or building up a new city, in the long run, has little cost differences for an empire the size of 3 kingdoms. And Antioch is such a cooler name (unless we rename it to Eanland or something).

 

[Esquilax]

Yeah, let's just go with the personal harem. Sounds like much less hassle in the end - I mean, what could a few puny humans do to us? We have a goddamn spy network.

I figure it's going to be a ton of hassle to conceive an offspring considering we average 1 every 100 years with a mixed union. We'd pretty much have to dedicate ourselves to fucking a stable of harem girls non-stop for a few years to ever have a decent shot at siring an heir. It's a shitload of time and hassle. 3D is the only no-hassle option.

And... well, we better pray that our soldiers at Olympus don't find out that their beloved God-Emperor has been doing ribbon-cutting ceremonies and getting his dick sucked by princesses while they've been dying in agony inside the miasma.

I don't think we should go for Athena as consort / heir at all. No matter what 'logic' we use she definitely is not going to have any symbolic authority for the population of the Empire, and amongst the elite, even less. Nobody's going to swallow that shit, the mortals can barely see past their own noses and will only be able to see it as breaking the balance of three kingdoms. It really should be BAD. I don't like the harem either, but OK, it's definitely better than making someone our heir, a needless way to create problems.

Kattze's Ugarit could work but honestly I don't see any difference for us. At least building a city from scratch lets us design it the way we like. We can put in secret passages all over the city, things like that. Building up something like Ugarit or building up a new city, in the long run, has little cost differences for an empire the size of 3 kingdoms. And Antioch is such a cooler name (unless we rename it to Eanland or something).

Yeah, it's the same shit. The site of Antioch is where we'll be regardless. The problem with 3D is that it leaves no heir, though. Of course, the Terasphagos threat and China are far more important than the Empire surviving, but I'd like to ensure a legacy and an empire that will advance human progress if it's possible.

I'm curious, what's your take on the first choice. Why B? Do you think we'll manage to make new advances or what?

Edit: It would be funny to make the Terror Twins our consorts. We'd turn the LP into an episode of Oz.

 

[Baltika9]

Well, apparently leaving an heir will piss Athena off anyway. treave, just to satisfy my curiosity, Sekhenun will only enter this arrangement with a "deal", like when we spared her life, am I correct?

Edit: For the first choice, considering China should take priority over the rift, the better choice would be 1B. Wouldn't want to pop out the portal to a barren hellscape, would we?

 

[treave]

She probably would agree to the arrangement just for the lulz of it. It would also piss off other people, so you'll have to decide whether it's worth it.

 

[Baltika9]

She probably would agree to the arrangement just for the lulz of it. It would also piss off other people, so you'll have to decide whether it's worth it.

Ah well, mutual lulz, hybrids, spymaster regent, bring the two on even better terms. Pity it's not gonna happen. Do the Immortals know about Sekhenun, where she is and what she's doing?
Edit: And the fallout? Lil' E would shut the naysayers right up once he grew up.

 

[Esquilax]

Well, apparently leaving an heir will piss Athena off anyway. treave, just to satisfy my curiosity, Sekhenun will only enter this arrangement with a "deal", like when we spared her life, am I correct?

Edit: For the first choice, considering China should take priority over the rift, the better choice would be 1B. Wouldn't want to pop out the portal to a barren hellscape, would we?

Who said anything about popping into a barren hellscape? We aren't even close to the rift right now, we have 90% of the way to go. 1A just means throwing men into the meat grinder so that we can map it quicker. The faster we map it, the faster we can get the rift situation resolved, and the faster we can settle matters in China. The downside is that our tech might advance between that time making it easier to scout the rift, which would render all those deaths futile. Still, we need to persevere onward - this is a hard choice, but it needs to be done.

China should most definitely not take precedence over the rift. The miasma is spreading, and at this point, we've invested way too much energy to run off into China. We cannot divide our attention between both problems; we have to deal with one thing at a time. A few years ago, tens of thousands of Terasphagos were swarming out of Olympus - it's only a matter of time until they emerge from the rift again in even greater numbers. The rift needs to be closed and Vajra must be recovered before we go to China.

If you want China to take precedence over the rift, 1A is better. We've dedicated ourselves to closing down the rift, and 1A would do that faster (but at the cost of many lives, perhaps in vain).