Throne of the Grey Tide
Legends are figures of myth carried over by the tide from another world. Generals lead your marches and hold your city; officials make your city produce more; many have a specialty of their own. Only some are awake when a world opens, and more wake with every new age.
The Grey Tide does not only take. It also brings.
It rises from another world, and when it ebbs it leaves that world's legends on the shore: Hannibal, who led elephants over snowy mountains; Caesar, who crossed the Rubicon; Guan Yu, who slew a champion before his wine went cold; Zhuge Liang with his feather fan; Joan, who carried her banner into the flames… They wander the Realm, weighing every lord who plants a banner; and each time the tide pulls back and the Realm enters a new age, more of them awaken.
A legend follows only a lord whose renown is great enough. Renown is earned: win a battle, hold a city, sweep away a camp, lead your people into a new age, and your name is sung a little farther. The more famous the legend, the more renown they ask; and keeping a legend in your service costs good, solid gold.
The larger your town hall, the more legends it can host. They will lead your armies or hold your city — and when your paths part, you may send them on their way.
Legends already wandering the Realm when the tide first ebbed.
Roman general and statesman of the late Republic. He conquered Gaul in eight years and wrote his own account of the war, then crossed the Rubicon and won the civil war. "I came, I saw, I conquered."
Carthage's great general, who marched an army with war elephants over the Alps into Italy. At Cannae he surrounded and destroyed a much larger Roman army, a battle still studied in military schools.
A general of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms era, sworn brother of Liu Bei and Zhang Fei. Holding Jing Province, he drowned seven enemy armies in a flood and shook the whole land; later ages honored him as the Martial Saint.
A French peasant girl who said heavenly voices called her to war. At seventeen she put on armor, lifted the siege of Orléans and saw Charles VII crowned at Reims; captured, she was burned at the stake at nineteen and declared a saint nearly five centuries later.
King of Sparta. When the Persians invaded Greece in 480 BC, he held the pass of Thermopylae for three days with 300 Spartans and their allies. Told to hand over their weapons, he is said to have replied: "Come and take them."
One of Genghis Khan's "four hounds", the son of a blacksmith. His horsemen fought from northern China to the Volga and crushed the Hungarian king's army at Mohi; he almost never lost a battle.
Chancellor of Shu Han, styled Kongming. Liu Bei visited his thatched cottage three times to win him over; he devised the plan that split the realm in three, then governed Shu and led five northern campaigns, "giving his all until his last breath".
The first chancellor of the Han dynasty. When Liu Bang took the Qin capital, the other generals grabbed gold while he secured the laws, maps and census records. Through the long war with Chu he kept the front supplied with grain and men, and was ranked first among the founders.
Mathematician and inventor of Syracuse. He estimated pi and found the laws of buoyancy and the lever: "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth." His war machines held the Roman besiegers off for two years.
Chancellor and architect to the pharaoh Djoser, he built Egypt's first pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Remembered also as a healer, he was later worshipped by the Egyptians as a god of medicine and wisdom.
The last queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, a gifted linguist and the first of her dynasty to speak Egyptian. She allied with Caesar and then Mark Antony to keep Egypt free; defeated at Actium, she took her own life the next year and Egypt became a Roman province.
A scholar of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. His book on "al-jabr" gave algebra its name, his book on Indian numerals brought the decimal system to Europe, and the word "algorithm" comes from his own name.
On day 7 the world enters the Bronze Age, and these legends awaken.
Queen of the Shang king Wu Ding and the woman general most often named in the oracle bones. She led campaigns against the Tufang, Qiang and Ba, once at the head of 13,000 troops; her tomb, opened in 1976, held great bronze axes bearing her name.
Pharaoh at the height of Egypt's New Kingdom, who reigned for sixty-six years. At Kadesh he charged at the head of his chariots, and afterwards made one of the earliest known peace treaties with the Hittites. Builder of Abu Simbel, he is remembered as Ramesses the Great.
Legendary founder of the Xia. Where his father Gun had failed by damming the floods, Yu dug channels to lead the waters away; for thirteen years he toiled beside the people, three times passing his own door without going in, until the floods were tamed and the land divided into nine provinces.
King of Babylon who united Mesopotamia. He had his laws carved on a basalt stele over two metres tall and set up for all to see: the Code of Hammurabi, one of the most complete written law codes to survive from the ancient world.
On day 21 the world enters the Iron Age, and these legends awaken.
Qin's most feared general of the Warring States. He shattered the allied armies of Han and Wei at Yique and took the Chu capital Ying; at Changping he encircled Zhao's main army for forty-six days and broke Zhao for good. He took more than seventy cities and never lost a battle.
Founding general of the Han, later called the Immortal of War. Once forced to crawl between a bully's legs, he was chased down by moonlight by Xiao He and made commander-in-chief. He slipped through Chencang while feigning repairs to the plank road, beat Zhao with his back to a river and trapped Xiang Yu at Gaixia. Asked how many men he could lead, he said: "The more, the better."
General of the Swift Cavalry under Emperor Wu of Han. He went to war at eighteen, leading light horsemen on long raids deep into Xiongnu land, and drove north across the desert to Mount Langjuxu. Offered a mansion, he replied: "The Xiongnu are not yet destroyed. What need have I of a home?" He died at twenty-three.
King of Macedon at twenty, who in barely a dozen years conquered from Greece to the Indus without losing a major battle. He often led his Companion cavalry against the decisive point of the enemy line, founded many cities named Alexandria, and died in Babylon at thirty-two.
Chancellor of Qi in the Spring and Autumn period. Duke Huan forgave him for once shooting an arrow at him and made him chancellor; he reformed the state, put salt and iron under state monopoly and taught that "when the granaries are full, the people know propriety", making Qi the first hegemon of the age.
The reformer who remade Qin in the Warring States. To prove the new laws would be kept, he set a pole at the city gate and promised fifty gold to whoever carried it to the north gate, and paid the man who did. He swept away the old well-field system, opened new land and rewarded farming and soldiering; within twenty years Qin was the strongest state of all.
Master craftsman of Lu at the end of the Spring and Autumn period, revered as the patron of carpenters and masons. Legend says a saw-toothed blade of grass that cut his hand gave him the idea for the saw; the carpenter's square, the ink line and the siege ladder are all credited to him too.
Greek philosopher, student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great. At his Lyceum in Athens he studied everything from logic, physics and biology to politics and poetry, laying foundations that Western learning built on for two thousand years.
On day 42 the world enters the Medieval Age, and these legends awaken.
Southern Song general who fought the Jurchen Jin. Legend says his mother tattooed "serve the country with utmost loyalty" on his back. His army was famous for its discipline ("freezing, we tear down no houses; starving, we plunder no one") and broke the Jin heavy cavalry at Yancheng and Yingchang. He was put to death on trumped-up charges; his poem "The River Runs Red" is still recited.
Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, who united Egypt and Syria. In 1187 he destroyed the crusader army at Hattin and retook Jerusalem, then fought Richard the Lionheart for years, each respecting the other. East and West alike praised his mercy and good faith.
Samurai general of the late Heian period and younger brother of Minamoto no Yoritomo. At Ichi-no-Tani he led his horsemen down a sheer cliff into the Taira camp; victories at Yashima and Dan-no-ura followed, and the Taira fell. Hunted down by his own suspicious brother, he became Japan's best-loved tragic hero.
Northern Song chancellor and one of the Eight Great Prose Masters of Tang and Song. His Xining reforms lent farmers money between harvests and let households pay a fee instead of labour service, aiming to fill the treasury "without raising the people's taxes".
A Venetian merchant who travelled the Silk Road at seventeen with his father and uncle and served Kublai Khan for seventeen years. Back in Europe, the account he dictated in a Genoese prison showed Europeans the riches of the East for the first time.
Persian physician and philosopher, known in the West as Avicenna. He had mastered the medicine of his day by eighteen; his Canon of Medicine, which covered contagion, quarantine and the testing of drugs, was a standard textbook in European and Middle Eastern universities for some six hundred years.
On day 56 the world enters the Gunpowder Age, and these legends awaken.
Ming general who drove off the wokou pirates. He recruited farmers and miners in Zhejiang and drilled them into the disciplined Qi Family Army, fighting in "mandarin duck" formation with muskets and branched bamboo spears; in some eighty fights with the pirates he never lost. Later he held the northern frontier for sixteen years and built the hollow watchtowers of the Great Wall.
King of Sweden, the Lion of the North. He remade his army around rolling musket volleys and light regimental guns that kept pace with the infantry, and crushed the Imperial army at Breitenfeld in the Thirty Years' War. He fell at the Battle of Lützen in 1632.
Emperor of the French, who began as an artillery officer. In his twenties he swept through Italy; at Austerlitz he routed the Russians and Austrians and for a time dominated the continent, and the Napoleonic Code he oversaw still shapes the law of many countries. Defeated at Waterloo, he died on the Atlantic island of Saint Helena.
Ming admiral and navigator. Between 1405 and 1433 he led seven voyages of more than two hundred ships and twenty thousand men across the western seas, reaching as far as the coast of East Africa; his largest treasure ships are said to have dwarfed those Columbus sailed eighty years later.
Late Ming scholar who rose to Minister of Rites. With Matteo Ricci he translated Euclid's Elements, coining the Chinese word for geometry; he trialled sweet potatoes near Shanghai, compiled a great Complete Treatise on Agriculture and led the reform of the calendar.
Painter and engineer of the Renaissance, creator of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. His notebooks overflow with flying machines, armoured vehicles, canal locks and anatomy; many of his ideas could not be built until centuries later.
Upgrading your town hall opens more seats for legends. Hiring a legend costs gold, doubling with each one; after you beat a camp, an awakened legend sometimes offers to join you. A general's specialty counts only for the march they lead; an official's lasts as long as they serve you.
There is still plenty of open land in the Realm, waiting for your first city.
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