2005-11-21

Megabazos

More words, Nano-frenzy, whooo!

$ cat nano/Inaros_advancing_20051121.txt | perl wc.pl
W: 66287 (MP: 265.148, PP: 132.574), %: 55.2391666666667

Bagâbigna a.k.a. Megabazos is in Sardes, capital of the satrapy of Frigia, with his team of gay fellows (in the old, original sense of the word, maybe I should use merry, as in Robin Hood's stories), from there they will move North, to the Pontos Euxine (a.k.a. Black Sea) --or maybe to some place in the Ionian coast, going up all the way to get back by sea is a bit too costly to create a good cover--, and from there to the Peloponnese, heading to Sparta.

It will be fun, indeed... :-)

OTOH, Megabazos is raising as a very interesting character, and I'm starting to think I should switch the Persian POV from Megabyzos to him... Having such a central POV will make it harder to write, and it should be easier to show the genius of Megabyzos's from a third person's POV, not from his... Besides, I think I like this character, his devoted to his leaders and people, idealistic, great commander, probably a great strategist, definitely a good leader of men, from a very noble and righteous Persian family...

Introduced a series of secondary characters to go with him in this part of the story --a Ionian Greek, a Canaanite (helmsman), and five soldiers disguised as sailors--, I'll let you know how it goes when I have them interacting, at this moment they are before Artabazos, satrap of Phrigia, with a message from Megabyzos, as the previous step to Sparta.

Cheer up every Nanoer!

Kallisti!
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2 comments:

xibalba said...

I just sent you my stuff about Justin. I hope you got it. I sent it to your regular e-mail.

I agree with you that showing Megabyzus through a third person is a good idea. Its rather hard to deal with someone about whom so little is known and yet appears to have been extremely clever in terms of creating a convincing first person persona. For example how he pulled trapping the Greeks on Protopitis is a mystery, which I hope you have a creative solution for how he did it. I have no idea although I suspect it was really clever.

03:17
Excalibor said...

Thanks for the stuff about Justin, it'll take a time to digest, I'll comment on it through email...

Ah, you're way ahead of me, that'll happen in Part III... :-)

Yes, pushing that huge army to the Prosopitis island must have been an enormous feat of cleverness. I haven't thought about it, although I have some ideas (actually I started writing that part, a couple of years ago, when I first thought of this crazy project).

I think the best candidate for the time being is something in this line: phoenician ships blockading the Nile after Prosopitis, and armies in both riversides... the Greeks cannot go forward, nor backwards, and cannot get to the sides... Actually, I think getting them in Prosopitis was carefully planned but it kind of backfired, as the Greeks were able to defend their position better than calculated, and thus forced him to push for a huge engineering project... But I am thinking way ahead of myself with this...

As for shifting the POV away from Megabyzos it definitely looks like the right kind of move... Besides, having such a character as Megabazos (a.k.a. Bagâbigna) will allow me to be, basically, everywhere in terms of Persian action. And knowing nothing about him but his name will be helpful in re-creating a more convincing character, as well...

Thanks for all, I'll comment on your email later on this day...

10:16

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