Monday, March 16, 2020

Witness the Birth of Alchemical Warfare

Heroika: Skirmishers – Witness the Birth of Alchemical Warfare

With the release of Heroika: Skirmishers, each contributor ... and one of their characters... is being interviewed by the Library of Erana. Hear directly from the Apollonius of Tyana, read “The Naked Daemon” by S.E. Lindberg, and experience alchemical warfare. Click on the link for the full interview. Below are teasers for "The Naked Daemon"

With SE Lindberg:
  • How would you define a Skirmisher? Any soldier roaming ahead of the core army, usually shield-less and including heroic civilians caught behind enemy lines.
  • What about your story?: "The Naked Daemon" pits the mystic Apollonius of Tyana (deceased ~100 CE) against zealots who destroy what remains of the Alexandria Library. In life, his principles had been aligned with those of the pacifist gymnosophists (a.k.a. naked philosophers); hundreds of years past his death, Apollonius finds himself reborn as a daemon empowered with Hermes’s Emerald Tablet. He observes the Roman oppression over pagan scholars and is challenged with an urgent need to defend knowledge. Will Apollonius rationalize war by unleashing the power of alchemy to do harm? Will he become an angel or demon? How will alchemy transform?

Apollonius
 With Apollonius:
  • Tell us a bit about yourself. Many claim you are a miracle worker, rivaling your contemporary Jesus: “No need to compare one man, or woman, to any other. Misunderstood powers, used for good or ill, flow through we hierophants. In this respect, I am merely a conduit. A magos.”
  • You look at your hands. How do you view yourself? “As a bloody daemon, for certain.”
  • Are you an angel or devil? “In my life, I was angelic. Judgment awaits for what came next.”

 
Alexandria Library

More Interviews From Skirmishers!

This follows Sean Poage's interview. His story engaging, tragic war story in his "A Handful of Salt". Below is his forward... click on the link to learn more about him and the story through the eyes of Gocha, an elder warrior of the Zurah tribe of Taochi region:
"At the dawn of the fourth century, BC, Cyrus the Younger hired an army of ten thousand Greek mercenaries to challenge his brother for the throne of the Persian Empire. His Greeks were victorious, but he was slain and the Greeks were stranded deep inside the Persian Empire without supplies. Their only way home was to fight their way north through the mountains of eastern Turkey to the Black Sea, as described through the eyes of one of their leaders, Xenophon.
It is considered one of the greatest feats of military history and has often been recounted and reimagined, but never through the eyes of their adversaries, the Persians, or the ancestral tribes of eastern Turkey. One event, in particular, is haunting and tragic. Today we struggle to understand the mind-set of ancient cultures, often making the mistake of seeing their world through the filter of our own values. This story is an attempt to understand a heroic perspective alien to our own."

Thanks to Alex Butcher for the interview hosting, editing, and skirmishing.