Point 10 of In Case They Scoff

More notes from my Continuum campaign. I was very concerned that my players wouldn't swallow Troy being in England. Turns out to be an unwarranted fear. If the players could handle Greys inheriting the earth, Atlantis as spaceship, and St Germaine as a paradox-causing time-travelling supervillain, they could probably handle relocating Troy by a 800 years and a couple thousand miles.

Points 1-9 I beat to death in other posts. Point 10, on the other hand, is unique to the Continuum perspective. It was a cool coincidence I was able to inject with meaning. If you're already familiar with Wilkens' theories, just skip to point 10, below, and my observations following it...

In Case They Scoff: Here’s the simplified facts put forth by Iman Wilkens to support his theory. Spanners don’t need them, after all they can just see that this is Troy. But for the players, here’s some data to reinforce the versimilitude.

1. Names of the Factions. Homer never uses the Greek word for “Greeks”, nor the word for “Barbarians” that the Greeks were so fast to apply to “lower” cultures. Instead, the two sides in the Illiad share the same culture.
2. Name of places. Most of the Homeric place names can be dated to the reign of Alexander the Great. As he conquered, he renamed new greek colonies after the marvels of the heroic age.
3. Oceans. Homers ocean descriptions are not of the gentle blue Mediterranean which rests next to Greece. He describes the wine-dark swelling waters of the Atlantic.
4. Weather. The Illiad describes ceaseless rains, heavy fog, and a good deal of snow. That does not describe Turkey, it’s a far better match for England.
5. Vegetation. The plants he describes are from temperate northern europe. The descriptions are far too lush for Turkey.
6. Chariots. The Greeks fought exclusively on foot or on ship prior to Alexander. The Celts, however, have been fighting from Chariot-back since 2000 bc.
7. Cremation. All the dead of the Illiad are burned, but Greeks buried thier dead with gold funeral masks. The celts burn their dead, however.
8. Religion. Like the Romans and the Assyrians, the Greeks adopted the Gods of other cultures they encountered, so as to not offend any supernatural being.
9. Hisserlik and Schliemann. The ruins in Turkey that leveller archaeologists claim are Troy are of a city the size to hold 2,000 to 5,000 people. Not so epic. As you can see, the real Troy is much larger. In the next few days, they will mobilize a defense of over 50,000 warriors.
10. Ants. O’Killey is a Spanner. Homer mentions Achilles’ Myrmidons, which is the greek word for Ants. This is a civil war (see point 1), with spanners on each side. Therefore, Homer is a Narcissist intriguer. Not following? Antedessertium and Crasher Subculture both call the Continuum “The Swarm”. We’re everywhere, we work together, we descend en masse upon their incursions to societal space time. From their point of view, we are are a hive mind.

I am particularly proud of the implications of point 10. Basically it means it's no coincidence that History gets it wrong and from the Greek Dark Age onward everyone thinks Illium is in the mediterranean. Either Homer carefully constructed wrote the most famous chronicle of the war to hide the truth, or else some Narcissist came along and messed with things to plant that account in the wrong culture's history.

Either way, it makes a perfect remnant of a failed Antedessertium attempt to Frag the future out of existence. By establishing "facts" that aren't true, they muddy reality and cause all sorts of problems for Ariesian-era spanners. It suggests such time-combat tactics as Cobwebbing and the Cheshire/Statue-of-Liberty gambit.

I suspect it went right over the heads of my players, which is a shame, but there was so much going on in that game, I can't blame anyone for missing odd bits here and there. While I did have Izzy make comments about it, it's not like I drove the point home by having a blind bard span in and attack them. That's saved for the sequel. :)