New historical events
Now that dvk has fixed the historical events, I tried to write some of my own, and after a couple of CTDs, I finally got the hang out of it. I think these events are a cheap and easy way to add to the immersion of the game, teach players about some aspects of history you often don't find in books, and provide more "new stuff to discover".
So here is an opportunity for all of you to list the historical events you'd like me to write. I'd appreciate a source of some kind, so I can read about the event and know what I'm writing about (wikipedia is fine, I think). Keep in mind that history is pretty much over when you hit "end turn" for the first time, so unless the event takes place near the starting date, we can't have stuff like "birth of Julius Caesar" or "battle of Carrhae", since these events are likely to never happen in our campaigns.
Here's what I have in mind so far:
A Captured Messenger (summer 215BC): Roman soldiers have recently arrested some suspicious, foreign-looking men who turned out to be macedonian ambassadors sent by their king to negotiate an alliance with Romes arch-enemy, Carthage. Although Macedon will most likely soon send other diplomats, the romans are now warned and additional warships have been dispatched to the Adriatic Sea in order to prevent any invasion of Italy by unrefined greek wannabe-Alexanders.
Lex Oppia (summer 215BC): A roman tribune has instituted a law that clearly forbides any roman woman to show off her wealth in public. These measures were deemed necessary after the war against Carthage on roman soil dragged on, with brutish barbarians ravaging the countryside, forcing many honest italian citizens to seek refuge behind the walls of Rome, and leading to a severe strain on food supply and the roman economy in general. The people are tense, afraid and hungry, and it would have proven difficult to rationalize the many sacrifices they have to make while others seem to continue living so comfortably.
The Rosetta Stone (summer 196): The high priests of Egypt have ordered a stele to be erected in honour of their king, who has recently granted additional privileges to temples all across his realm. In exchange, the clergy has promised to further support the king and his policies, especially the merciless slaughter of rebellious egyptian peasants. This stele is a little different from others in that the inscriptions that tell of the many kind (and not-so-kind) deeds of the king have been set into stone in several languages. Nobody knows as of yet that this monument will one day become a major stepping stone towards the understanding of egyptian hieroglyphs.
Trackway in the Bog (summer 146BC): One or two years after the tribesmen on the island of Hibernia have completed the Corlea Trackway, an odd road made out of wooden planks, that same road has already sunk into the bog it was supposed to lead through, pushed down by its own weight. Nobody really knows whether the people there went through the trouble of building one or two miles of trackway for some obscure religious reasons, for the sake of crossing the bog, or for any other reason. Whatever it may be, the locals show little motivation to build yet another one.
The Road goes ever on (summer 100BC): For ages, the Amber Road has mainly followed the great rivers of eastern Europe, Vistula and Dnjepr, to the ports of the Black Sea, from where Amber was then shipped to the markets of Greece, and even to such far-away places as Egypt. However, with the sudden increase in wealth and importance of the Italian peninsula, the main routes increasingly lead straight South, across the Alps to the Adriatic Sea.
If this were common knowledge, italic merchants would certainly joke and claim that nowadays, even the stones know where the wind is coming from…
No more Elephants (summer 100BC): Elephants have begun to become an increasingly rare sight in the near east, and it is probably only a matter of time until the last one of them is hunted down for his ivory, for sports, or simply for being a nuisance. Farmers consider this a good riddance, since the big beasts will no longer ravage their fields, while military commanders will curse their bad luck and import foreign elephants at high costs. And some rare scholars will be laughed at for claiming that the world has now lost a bit of its magic.
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Originally Posted by dvk901
