Long Description
Only a moment ago, we were great. The agora, our marketplace, was full of the cries of merchants selling grain from the Black Sea, turquoise from Sinai, copper and tin from Minos, slaves from Illyria. We laughed at the Spartans camped in the dust of the ruined farms outside our walls. The Mediterranean was a Athenian pond! They could burn every blade of grass from here to Thessalonia. The year we took Melos, I held a Melian elder for their general Lysander to see. My commander shouted, "See here what happens to your allies, Laconian!" It was the Athenian Aristeia - The best among us seemed chosen to walk among the athanatoi, the deathless gods.
Now, the worst has happened. Our former allies have turned against us. The Spartans got a lucky break, or bribed the priest of some foreign god, and destroyed our fleet at the Goat Skin River. We starved until the craven cowards among us opened the gates to the Laconian hordes (better to have died!). Thrice-damned Crisias the Collaborator stood in front of us and said our democracy was evil, corrupt, that it had led us into one war after another. We had one choice: tear down our walls, accept a new government, of the Thirty Best citizens among us, or else our great city would be turned into a pasture. We saw the Spartans behind him, row on row, wearing their hair in identical braids, their scarlet cloaks carefully folded over one shoulder, heavy shields and spears polished and ready to take four decades of vengeance on us, and we agreed.
Two years later, our destiny is in our hands again. We have thrown out the Thirty Best and broken the pillars of their estates. Men hold aloft stones from our old city walls now, and urge us to rebuild them. Some walk in groups holding long oars, symbols of our navy, which once held the Known World in awe. A few of the old nobility walk through the streets, servants straggling behind, shaking their heads at us. Though we are not that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are. No one has risen to take our place in the Aegean.
Only a moment ago, we were great.
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In this game players will rewrite the history of Athens and its neighbors from this crucial moment. Will they rebuild the navy that was a cornerstone of their great power? Will they throw out the thousands of immigrants and refugees that the war brought to their shores, or accept them as citizens? Will they take vengeance on those who collaborated with the conquerors?
Verbal engagement was the heart of the Athenian ethos. The emphasis will be on public actions: debates, speeches, the votes of the Assembly, and other conflicts related to different spheres of ancient Greek life. Against this backdrop, characters will play out personal stories of terror, loss, patriotism, piety, revenge, and heartbreak.