#achaea

Achaea: The long-lived MUD. I've played maybe 10-20 hours before. I'm interested in it because of how much writing must exist in its many many rooms. I did the tutorial and walked around a pixie village and read all the room descriptions. I've never done that before, defaulting to running around murdering and such.

Achaea is clearly made for the masses. Boring ass class and race shit, each their own superhero. I decided to make a frog alchemist but still hated it

The politics seem interesting (cities and gods are ran by people) but getting to the point of interacting with them is grinding, it seems like.

Harshlands: I thought this was more my shit (hardcore roleplaying MUD, you must role-play and there's permadeath) but the realism of it (you walk slowly between rooms) and the slowness of my typing made my brief experience unbearable. I generated a farmer, walked to an empty forest outside of town, set up a cabin, and organized my inventory. This took maybe 2-3 hours of looking up commands and picking up and dropping items one-by-one.

I was looking for some actual role-play, and I guess I was, but I encountered no people. A little my fault for playing a nomad, I suppose.

The actual room descriptions were rather terse and boring, from what I saw.

Fallen London: My horrible truth is I skip text in games a lot. I skimmed 90% of Fallen London's text in the past but I am slowing down and actually reading and god, this is the shit. I played through an Exceptional Story (one you pay for) and had a great time. The writing was so good.

I do get a little hooked to games like this and I keep picking up my phone to do one more action.

Anyway, the quality of the writing is so high here, it's blown everything else out. Definitely going to continue playing.

Patras, Greece

Despotate of the Morea

The Despotate of the Morea was a semi-autonomous appanage of the later Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines retook part of the Peloponnese in Southern Greece in 1262 CE, but the Morea was only officially governed by semi-autonomous despots of the imperial Kantakouzenos and Palaiologos families starting in 1349 CE. The Despotate of the Morea would end up outlasting the Byzantine Empire itself, and the final part of the territory would not fall to the Ottomans until 1461 CE.

The Byzantine Morea

Following the loss of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire collapsed. Its territory was broken down into a variety of Byzantine and Latin successor states, and southern Greece went almost completely to the Latins, or Franks. The Peloponnese, that peninsula at the very southern end of Greece, went to the House of Villehardouin, which ruled the Principality of Achaea. For over 50 years, the Peloponnese was entirely in Latin hands.

In 1259 CE, William II of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea (r. 1246-1278 CE), lost the Battle of Pelagonia against the emperor of Nicaea (soon to be the emperor of the restored Byzantine Empire after the capture of Constantinople in 1261 CE), Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259-1282 CE), and was captured. The terms of his release were the surrender of the castles of Monemvasia, Maina, and Mystras (aka Mistras) in southern Greece, in the Morea. In 1262 CE, the castle of Mystras, which would be of such great importance to the House of Palaiologos, was now Byzantine.

When it was first occupied, Mystras was an isolated Byzantine outpost in the midst of Frankish Achaean territory. The city of Lacedemonia was still in Frankish hands, and the Greek population of Lacedomonia soon flocked to Mystras, where they could be ruled as equal citizens rather than second-class members of society. A Byzantine expedition tried to recover the surrounding area but was pushed back by the Franks An Achaean army even besieged Mystras, but it was impossible to dislodge the Byzantine garrison. Meanwhile, Lacedemonia was practically deserted since the Greek population had moved to Mystras, and it was abandoned when the Franks retreated. Another city would not rise there until the 19th century CE when modern Sparta (or Sparti in Greek) was built. For the next seven centuries, Mystras was to be the social and political center of the region.

Over the next decade, the whole of that region, the vale of Sparta, came under Byzantine control. Threats and border skirmishes came from the kings of Naples and the princes of Achaea, but the Principality of Achaea gradually fell more and more into disarray until it was no longer a serious threat to the Byzantine possessions in the Peloponnese by the mid-14th century. Mystras was the center of this now secure Byzantine dominion. Monemvasia had originally been the provincial capital, but by 1289 CE, the Byzantine provincial governor had moved to Mystras.

I wanted to say it’s sort of tragic the way Troy is only known for its downfall these days

I wanted to say I’m not really sure it counts as a siege, since both sides are trapped and continuously meeting in the middle, one by walls, the other by the sea, and both by gods

I wanted to say this is a proxy war between the gods

I wanted to say the river that separates them, demarcating where the Trojans and Achaeans stand, is a metaphor for the divide between their people

I didn’t say any of that.

I turned in a painting of a helm on dark sand, blood in the waves.