Mercenary Mentality Part ii: Hoplite Organisation Is VICTORY!
Ave young Slinger! You’ve gone from taking wolf bites, slings and arrows to throwing a javelin of competence into the cogs of the The Empire.
I’ve been lying to you… any Barbarian can throw a rock, or cast out the demands of others to the McBurgertown Chef; you’ve just learnt to be more deadly with your aim.
A little deception to hide the easy path is the key to conquest.
After all, we can’t have The Persians just waltzing up to Sparta knowing we’ve really got just 300 sacred homosexual prostitutes of the Temple of Ares and a lucky goat to hold off all of deepest oiled up Asia?!
Trust is earned, like respect, good old Iron Age respect,not the watered down wine by which they mean equality. In despair such is lobbed in jugs to the Karenthian Plebeians at the festival of Hips (and) Stirs more despair, more fake festivals to fight it- a battle against themselves becomes suicide.
Everyone is equal in a wine fueled orgy, fake happiness gets’s dark quickly, you usually have to hide an orgy in a night time field. You’re as equal to get a feel of hairy clay-like man breast, as a supple yoga mom bosom; with the ever full wine of equal despair you’ll hardly know the difference!
The glorious light of Contentment is a whole other sensation.
NB: You’re a mercenary, you reject equality outright, you were born a wolf snack, you know it in your aching bones, you’ve got to be superior to the wolf, but the beast has learned deception and now so have you.
I digressed to fetch some water of wisdom on the desert path…now BIG BRONZE SHIELDS.
You’ve learnt to attack whilst on the outside (and dodge a few stray arrows) you’ve even caught a few on your 4 inch, lime-wood pelte (small wooden shield) that was surprisingly easy; it’s because they were slow and really not meant for you.
You’ll be bouncing blotted skies of poisoned iron tips soon! I’ll teach you to be a Hoplite, not any old kings grunt either but one that can discard his armour when work is done (!) you don’t belong to anyone… you’ll be a mercenary hoplite after all.
Offence is the best defence?!!!
Notes on Pathetically Courageous Celts:
This is freshly farted sacred bull manure a chariot is an offensive weapon, they’ve been mostly off the battlefield for 200 years, we’re modern ancient Greece of 337 BCE or something! What beat those Cannabis smoking Celtic cart pushers? Organisation.
No! High out of his tiny mind in the Illirian hills (a very high altitude place) tattooed, naked and axe swinging runs at a wall of spears and gets well…speared! Straight through his pin prick pupil eye socket, or maybe a thrust through his courageously screaming mouth and out with a twist through his drugged fogged brain stem; that’s attacking for you! F to pay respecc.
Don’t feel too bad, they drown babies in swamps…seriously.
Alas that’s a single CEO, or the cat collecting wannabe Helen of Troy 30 something (well past Middle aged for Ancient Greece) in the HR Department, or even Customer on a bad day… running with single minded courage, and maybe drowning a few babies (before they grow strong enough to usurp them) to get to keep the office chair (or a chair if you stand up and smile for a living) with the padding I.E: The Throne.
It’’s worth noting a poor choice of CEO (like The Celts) are also fans of bravery induced by hard drugs.
Notes on Medusa at HR:
It is not absolute power that corrupts, it’s partial power! (Again, Bull manure-sounds sacred, sells temple wine Etc Etc) Why would full power corrupt? The King of Amerika-donia has got ever-y-thing (unless He actually hasn’t? ay? hmmmm), but that’s for the Mages to ponder.
…It’s thou Pleb, a backwater Temple Priest to the God of Stubbed Toes/A Teacher/A Scribe with a knock off papyrus set but official shoddy purple robes! They answer The Kings messenger but never brave enough to venture the forests beyond the city walls; you know the one- if you don’t you’re it.
It’s the tiny really solid shard of the Empire that twists souls, guarded jealously by Medusa, you aren’t getting to the hoplite training field unless you get passed Medusa “You gotta fill out the form SIR…” or she’ll stab you with her tiny but very poisoned shard all day.
It’s her job, she’s a cave beast-accept that’s her purifying role.
You can’t debate a cave beast, they’re stupid stomachs on talon’ed (not talented) heals she eats potential Princesses like your crush intern in Sales on their first day (!)…know this and have cheer you’re not a fanged, scaled, freshly weaved snake haired pox scabbed rotting Slave Whore of the bottomless stinking scroll pit.
Hey… and give a little grin to Virginthya if she’s still around, she might answer your phone call some day.
Fools chase power, rulers make themselves worthy of it.
Contentment is seeing Virginthya smile:
You’ll never have to glance up again-the naive expectation for kindness and beauty gone you can stroll on passed for your shield . Medusa only looks forwards to the next victim.
The 300 Madlads (and ladesses) of the Phalanx can come back later… Virginthya is still sat in her crampt tower darning her stockings, give her an encouragement smoke signal! She can make the coffee great again, even if she has a boyfriend everyone needs a Princess to cheer them on and cheering is more fun than darning stockings. Dum Spiro Spero!
Maybe in Part 3 atop a steel tusked War Elephant-Medusa will look so smol then.
……
Note on Client Kings and Petty Tyrants:
A King of a Client State,( a wolf’s bitch of the real thing) a CEO of the Kingdom of Walmart-athoi, also only has maybe a few shards and will take it out on Medusa and Medusa can’t kill Client Kings quite as quickly, but she can strangle a Slinger like you!
Now, you young man, are not a teenage Slinger (nor a baby), you’ve passed some defense.
Shields Up?!
First, you need a larger shield, pick it up, heavy right? Now, here’s where that truthful deception comes in. It is true, that is to say real that hoplite shields are heavy and make you look as mighty and rippling as Aphrodite’s rose pink ass, (especially with a gleaming helmet), it is false that you had to pick her up…the shield.
You’ve got to convince a stranger to help, fortunately they too want to look strong enough to carry solid metal (and sex goddesses) too….
Help doesn’t come through asking, it comes through offering up your other arm… your spear, you’ll easily find the heft of a single spear in part one you were throwing hundreds of heavy javelins as a Psilio earlier.
This isn’t about ‘sharing the burden’ but distributing the awesome gift a bronze shield gives between two literal shoulders, allowing not one hefty spear but two to be offered to the enemy.
Note, this is nothing to do with ‘being good’, you’re not asking and they are not offering out of the kindness of their heart but something far more ancient real virtue, a route word of the Latin ‘Veritas’- real time tested truth something very different from a statistic on an Office Exel graph.
Both of you in reality have to protect your literal heart and other squashy bits from attack, or being fired…upon, by sharing the weight of the task it leaves the other arm free to the duty of kick ass phalanxes -phalanxes need organisation.
Whole rows of shoulder to shoulder, half protection on half protection creating a whole gigantic shield, or against any angry customer, steadfastly, slowly bouncing arrows and metaphorically skewering a frantic CEO so he realizes he needs to stop, calm down and leave the middle management, the core of the army to it for a while.
Most importantly a row of glinting metal is far more impressive than our rock throwing Celt, it merges into a beast of bronze with iron tips a mile wide with that prepared you’ll usually never have to fight a real battle…they’ll either run or better yet want to join this jagged juggernaut of Organisation on mere rumour of such a site.
If you’re tired of marching- you’ll have your stallion next week.
…..
Thank-You,
End of Part II, you’ve enjoyed this! Feel free to drop a few coins to thy Paypal. We’re both fortune seeking Mercenaries now. Welcome Shield Bearer. For the end of the journey; I assume you want my advice! :)
