Saturday, May 5, 2018

Call me Deacon Blues

That's how back-burner thinking works. You let the problem simmer, dropping new ingredients in randomly as you come across them and not really paying attention to what's really starting to look like stone soup. Cold stone soup.

And then one day it boils over, and you can hardly write fast enough to take down all the insights as everything starts to fall together. And there went that metaphor...just couldn't keep it all in the pot.

Was re-reading the discussion in Eric Cline's 1177 about the archaeological (and paleobotanical) evidence for drought and subsequent famine around the time of the LBA Collapse in the Aegean. I'd been thinking of the story of Hathor's wrath as described in the first part of the Book of the Heavenly Cow, and inspired by the Red Weed that appears in later parts of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, I'd been thinking of something symbolic, some kind of invasive species or something, that could be thematically linked to the wave of destruction and chaos.

And there's one available. A literal crimson tide; a harmful algal bloom. It's dinoflagellates, occurs in a variety of colors including red, may be climate-linked, and contains a variety of neurotoxins.

And it just keeps getting better. It's red, linking to the Hathor myth and echoing many Biblical and Homeric descriptions of rivers running red with blood and blood staining the seas. And specifically one of the Plagues of the Bible. It contains neurotoxin that can cause memory loss, seizures, and death as well as behavioral changes; off the California Coast there was the famous "Chaotic Seabirds" incident -- tentatively linked to domoic acid -- that inspired Hitchcock's The Birds. And oh yes; it is particularly concentrated in shellfish, making a weak link to certain dietary laws.

As soon as I'd set that down I read that the palatial economies may have been peculiarly susceptible to disruptions of trade. Which for the palaces is largely luxury goods. Conveniently, my Kes, as a skilled weaver, is employed by or for the palace and thus is part of the creation of those goods. Which are traded with, among other places, Egypt. Meaning a possible official reason for Setna to be visiting, who (since Egypt is largely self-sufficient) has an outsider's perspective to the impact and vulnerability of this luxury trade.

Which leads to the particular impact piracy had on Mycenae, who as a warrior culture (who might even have some of the drawbacks of the later Spartan system, oppressed underclass and all) really suffer from Peak Tin. (Amusingly enough, there are multiple scenes in The Illiad where a bronze weapon breaks and no spare is readily available, leading the heroes to attack with rocks and fists).

So is the Trojan War then an attempt to secure trade routes, particularly to that essential tin? Could this be similar to or part of the documented trade embargo imposed on "Ahiyawa" by the Hittite Empire? So either attacking the Hittites in the Troad or trying to open up better routes around them by going after Wilusa? And could the pressure of the old embargo become suddenly critical because pirates have started blocking other trade routes? Or maybe they pulled a dirty trick at Byblos and the loose-knit "Phoenician" peoples imposed their own embargo?

And these pirates. Perhaps the peasant revolt on Crete succeeded, perhaps it failed, but either way there is the start of movement of people and some of them are taking to ships. And even though they may be speaking a different Greek dialect and have their own peculiar variations in material culture this only echoes the "Dorian Invasion" -- which if it took place at all, took place hundreds of years later. But it is still a way of looking at the changes, of migration and of revolution, that are spreading across the Peloponnese and up into the Greek Mainland.

And for some reason this brings me back to gods. I'm reversing myself sort of. No gods will appear in person in the narrative. The characters will act as if their existence and their acts are obvious. However! There will be things that do not have a strictly rational explanation, and they will fall outside that which can be explained away.

Kes is going to keep her ability to see texts from the future, although I've been modifying how that works and how she interacts with it as my understanding of my nerdy, upbeat little goat-girl is ongoing. The Red Tide gives a thin excuse for some weird behavior, including specifically some convenient cultists who show up with literally uncanny prescience to harry the protagonists. And lastly I'm really thinking of having a certain god talk anyhow; but through a shaman. But again, not a deniable magic; the shaman will distinctly say things that she has no good reason to know.





All in all a very productive morning. I've got a doctor's appointment later today and I'm really hopeful I'm going to be able to clear up my breathing problems and that's going to really improve my work on the trumpet. No plans to learn to play the saxophone, though. Not yet. (Not saying I'm not really tempted by Yamaha's Venova....)

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