I really, REALLY like a lot of maps here, so I decided to learn how to use paint.net and see how it goes. The biggest benefit, though there are many, that I see over regular paint is LAYERS. Holy FUCK are they useful. Combine them with transparency and text rotation (two other new tools) and BAM, something in thirty minutes you couldn't make without literally a thousand hours in paint. It is a bit sloppy. Obviously I have far to go to even touch the toes of some of you, but I'm proud of it.
I'm bummed that I made a mistake, but I didn't save the map as a .pdn file. I just let fly and flattened it to .png
So excuse the name on Egypt and Syria. Using ancient Greek numerals and names of course!
APOLLONIDES
In the thirty-second year from his birth, the divine Megas Alexandros, son of Zeus, was assassinated by some of his generals and officers. Men who, being men, were low, cunning, and deceitful. Unable with their shortsighted mortal eyes to see Alexandros's grand vision of a united kosmos, they killed him and fought and slaughtered each other over the corpse of his empire.
There was one certainly not party to the plot. Another golden haired demigod, and son of Apollo, the victorious Seleukos Nikator. As he lay dying, Alexandros transferred his unconquerable will to Seleukos and bade him guard his empire. Seleukos had no delusions. He had armies of men against him. He was not gifted with superhuman strength nor skill in battle such as the ancient Myrmidon Akhilleus. He had only the favor of his father Apollo, god of knowledge and oracles, the Pythian soothsayer-god and averter of evil. And that would have to do.
It took Seleukos more than fifty years of his life to make his divine cousin proud. In the process he had cut a swathe through many enemies, and destroyed those pretend friends of his cousin's who hadn't already been destroyed by each other. The last was crafty Lysimakhos, Basileus of Thraki and Asia. However his most interesting relationship was with the diadokhos Ptolemaios Soter. Often a friend but sometimes a foe, particularly over the province of Syroi, Ptolemaios was the only diadokhos with whom Seleukos did not make war. Some say that it was Ptolemaios's spirit that protected Seleukos, when Ptolemaios's own son Ptolemaios Keraunos attempted to assassinate Seleukos and seize the throne of Makedon. Seleukos and his bodyguards interrupted and dealt with Keraunos, and Seleukos moved on to Pella, the ancient seat of the Makedonian kings. There he was acclaimed Seleukos Nikator, the victorious, finally bringing much needed peace to the homeland.
Seeing his home after fifty-two years abroad, venerable Seleukos wept. He knew his decision had been right, to hand the governance of his empire to his son Antiokhos in Seleukeia. Seleukos retired to govern his home of Makedon.
With a stable empire, eventually Antiokhos gazed to the final target of any descendant of Alexandros's: Aigyptos. Claiming that Ptolemaios B, younger son of Ptolemaios Soter, had sent his wicked brother Ptolemaios Keraunos to Seleukos with the express mission of assassinating him, Antiokhos took Aigyptos to war. It was a long and difficult fight over Syroi, and Antiokhos might not have prevailed without war elephants from India. It took three years of fighting to wear Aigyptos down, to get Ptolemaios B and his family to flee to distant Syrakousai.
Antiokhos invited his father to the city of Alexandreia on the Nile, THE Alexandreia, to look upon the crystalline tomb of his divine cousin and wonder at the opulence. Seleukos came and wondered and when he left, embraced his son forcefully. They both knew it was to be their final meeting. Shortly after returning home Seleukos died peacefully on a stream fishing trip while resting against a large stone. He was the last known person to die who had personally known divine Alexandros, forty-eight years after his death, at the age of eighty-three.
Now it came to Antiokhos to rule the empire, but not alone. By 48 MA (Meta Alexandros) his son Seleukos was a valiant young man and ready to prove himself worthy of his name. When the contentious Hellenes inevitably rebelled it was young Seleukos who led the Makedonian phalanges against them. Raised with a more eastern mindset than his father or grandfather, Seleukos determined to put an end to the bothersome Hellene rebellions which had plagued Makedonia since the days of Megas Alexandros's mortal father Philippos B. Seleukos's forces brutally sacked every town which did not immediately submit to him, with his own wholehearted encouragement. He was not sadistic and did not go out of his way to see others in pain. Simply he was callous in the extreme, and thought nothing of having children killed or even tortured to terrify his enemies. So long as it had a purpose, Seleukos would do it. His final great action of the war was to destroy the city of Athenai for always being foremost to rebels. The stones of its acropolis were levered apart and carted to the sea, then taken by ship to the middle of the Aegean, there sacrificed to Poseidon and cast into the depths.
After the reduction of Athenai there was no resistance to Seleukos. The Basileus of Epeiros, Megas Alexandros's cousin Pyrrhos, voluntarily submitted to Seleukos. He became a subject king, with some obligations to but also much support from Antiokhos's great empire. By this time there was the question of what to call the realm. Makedonia did not fit any more, as the Apollonides ruled over hundreds of nations of people. Some suggested Kosmos, as an extension of the Babylonian title King of the Universe which was used by Seleukos and Antiokhos, but the rulers settled on Oikoumene. Originally meaning "the inhabited world", as the limits of what was possible expanded with each stride of Megas Alexandros's armies, the word had morphed to mean "known world" or "our dominion" or "our civilization". Thus Antiokhos and his son Seleukos B were kings of the Oikoumene.
Antiokhos, enjoying the climate and greatness of Alexandreia, remained in the city, administering the great empire. By this time his second son, Antiokhos, had come of age and was eager to prove himself his brother's equal. Antiokhos the younger undertook campaigns in Kous and Arabia to eradicate piracy which had been mercilessly plaguing the Red Sea trade since the days of Megas Alexandros. The intelligent young man created a network of mutual client tribes and kingdoms along the coasts to protect Oikoumene trade. They also served as waypoints for Makedonian navies and Hellenic traders, and allowed them to more easily sail around Arabia. Instead of marching across Syroi, Mesopotamia, Persis or Media, and all the way on to the east, troops could sail in effectively half the time.
Antiokhos took advantage of this, sailing with his troops around Arabia and conquering the spice- and perfume-rich lands of eastern Arabia. He moved on to Seleukeia in Mesopotamia and there found a letter left by his father, anointing him Antiokhos B. The Oikoumene now had three kings, and all competent men. The presence of Antiokhos B so close by disturbed the eastern satraps who had grown used to relative independence. Also too the young man's western upbringing, too willing to openly seek the counsel of his companions as Megas Alexandros had, was disturbing to the satraps. The Persian satrap of Media, Atropates, was first to revolt. He was soon followed by most of the other upper satrapies. Seleukos B raced to his brother's aid and spent years pacifying the vast, wealthy, open eastern parts of their realm.
Weary of the east, Antiokhos bade his brother farewell and returned to the west. And just in time, for their father was ailing despite the clean warm air of Alexandreia. Antiokhos Soter had been forty-nine years old when his own father died. He was now sixty-six and had been in a retiring mood for decades, leaving the campaigning to his sons, and truly wishing he could leave the governance to them as well. He now did so, resigning the kingship and exhorting Antiokhos B to support and care for his brother. He had no need to worry on that account for the brothers had become fast friends in the east. He passed away in 69 MA.
Antiokhos B began a family of his own and took as his capital Antiokheia in Syroi, a glorious and new city established by his grandfather Seleukos in honor of his mortal father, Antiokhos's namesake. There he administered the empire and its many problems, and organized the taxes to support the Oikoumene's great armies. He oversaw the great expansion of army and navy that took place in preparation for the realm's greatest triumph to date: the conquest of India. For years it had rankled with Seleukos B that his grandfather had been forced to abandon India by the Mauryan emperor so many years ago. He was determined to take it back, and save the Makedonians and Hellenes who might still be living there, and to reestablish the cities on the Indus and in Gedrosia that Megas Alexandros established.
Sailing forth from Seleukeia in 72 MA after years of preparation, Seleukos was a man in his prime. He took the decaying Mauryan empire, riven by court factions and rival claimants to the throne, by storm. The disciplined and professional Makedonian phalanges, composed mainly by Persians and Medes, easily cut through the hastily raised Indian levies. The westernmost Mauryan claimants begged for peace, and Seleukos mercifully gave it. The Indus River belonged to the Oikoumene once again. For his victory in India Seleukos was acclaimed as another son of Apollo, and so took the name Huios Theou. Responding to a call for help from the satrap of Baktria, Seleukos turned north then and marched his armies through the mountains of the Hindu Kush to war against the riders and raiders of the dry steppes. There he left his son Seleukos, called Lampros, the radiant, for his personality and hair, a young man confident that he could subdue such enemies when he and his father had just conquered India.
In that time, in the west, Antiokhos responded with force when supply lines to his brother in the east were threatened. The kings of Pontos and Armenia, and the tribes of Albania, had opportunistically raided the richly laden wagons meant for Makedonian armies. With quick decision he invaded and installed compliant kings, in a more complex version of his decades-ago organization of the Red Sea coast. He left his son Alexandros to do the same for the rest of the Pontos Aixenos coast when he received a call for help from the elderly king Pyrrhos of Epeiros claiming Hellenes were being oppressed in Italia and Sikelia. Sailing beyond the western edges of the Oikoumene, he found the Hellenic cities of Italia under danger from both Rome and Carthage. For some time he had trouble with the style of warfare native to Italia, until his troops adopted that style from Samnite allies in exchange for protection against the voracious Romans. For this aid Antiokhos granted the Samnites independence and friendship in perpetuity from Makedonian or Hellenic interference. Turning then south, Oikoumene navies destroyed the fleets of Carthage, and Sikelia was quickly brought under control along with the coast of western Libye. This served to protect the heavily Hellenized Kurenaike. The power of the tyrant of Syrakousai was reduced, so freedom was restored to the cities of the island.
In Syrakousai Antiokhos also found a wealthy family whose men mostly bore the name Ptolemaios. From Antiokheia he had heard of them, the descendants of Ptolemaios B who had been driven from his throne by Antiokhos Soter. Antiokhos was a gentle man, more perceptive by far than his callous brother. However in this case he had to harden his heart. His family had ruled the world for almost fifty years. He could not allow his conscience to ruin that. For the great of all men, he told himself, he had the family put to death due to the threat they posed.
In that time his son had followed his instructions to the letter, bringing the entire Pontos Aixenos coast, especially its rich grain-growing northern land, into the Oikoumene. For this his son was called Alexandros Eupeithes, Alexandros the dutiful. He called his son back to Antiokheia, and there both received a summons from Seleukos in Seleukeia. In that city, the capital of the world, eighty-one years after the death of diving Megas Alexandros, a great Alexandros was anointed once more--for Alexandros Eupeithes became a king--and the kings discussed what the future would hold. At the end of a long week, the state of the Oikoumene for the foreseeable future was known:
As I said, I fucked up the name in my head and put Antiokhos Soter over Egypt and Syria instead of Antiokhos B
Oh well, it's just a low effort map for now.
