Theodoros is an Orthodox principality which occupies a relatively small and uneventful tract of land at the southern end of Crimea; she is stable, backwater, and particularly isolated. Her only neighbors are the catholic Genoese Kerch to the west and the moslem Golden Horde to the north.
But a short time ago, it was not really an unreasonbly bad time to be an Orthodox state. Between increasingly predatory Italians and the the rising star-and-crescent in Turkey, the future of Theodoros is certain, and unpleasant.
That was in 1418. In 1419, the Principality of Theodoros would change forever.
There are four great eminences in Theodoros, each of them attracted from different corners of Christendom by Alexis, the current prince. Alexis is incompetent and flighty -- precisely the sort of monarch who, upon seeing a nation as basically bereft of potential as Theodoros, would set upon the idea of spending much of its hard-earned money on various advisors.
Late in 1418, one of the Prince's underlings called all of the advisors in something of a panic: he had found something 'most fantastic'; how to deal with it was far beyond him, and he sought out the help of any wise men he could find.
Karol was already beginning to regret accepting the money that Prince Alexis offered him to come to Theodoros. He took the job under the mistaken assumption that it was a Genoese principality and working there would allow him freer access to the great center of trade to the west. Now he was rushing as quickly as possible to see one of Alexis's dimwitted attendants' moronic spectacles. He had bet himself that a she-goat had delivered triplets and the Greek swooned from the shock.
When he entered the audience chamber, he immediately realized that he owed himself a dollar.
There it was, sitting on the table: a vibrantly-colored box, three cubits on its longest side, half a cubit on its shortest, and a cubit on the other. It seemed to be made of glass, and a quick look confirmed that the other side of it was glowing. Some kind of obscenely fancy lamp, Karol thought. Alexis probably bought a gross of them from a German huckster...
When he saw the other side of the vibrantly colored box, that train of thought was immediately derailed. What in God's name is this thing? Karol was literate enough in Greek to read the glowing white letters, slowly and deliberately. He turned to the attendant slowly; the nameless courtier nodded at him.
Finally, Karol managed to ask, "Did you find this strange thing with what it asks for?"
The courtier, still in stunned silence, produced two more arcane artifacts: a box about a cubit long, a generous span wide, and an inch thick, covered with what looked like thousands of tiny buttons, and something which looked like nothing so much as a polished stone, both of which hung from a long rubber cord and were made of the same material -- something utterly alien to Karol.
"Obviously not. We shall have to improvise."
"Improvise, Karol m'lord?"
"Improvise. Fetch me a ratkeep, a carpenter, and a locksmith."
...
After some days of tinkering, Karol finally got the box to work. A Small-gentle Glass Onescore, it called itself. An absurd name for something whose only immediate use seemed to be computing in Arabic numbers, he thought, but he put up with it.
More tinkering would reveal various images on the machine. Soon he learned that the icons -- that is what they called themselves, which seemed blasphemous, but it wasn't as if Karol was too religious anyway -- which seeemed to represent warped parchment were 'folders', which contained similar items. The one entitled 'art' contained images ranging from virtual pieces which brought him to the verge of tears to bizzare people with words floating above their heads which looked as if they were drawn as a blind ox would see humanity, and... multicolored boxes? Misfoldered, Karol decided.
He would study the Small-gentle Glass Onescore for a long time. He became so engrossed in studying it, in fact, that when Wladimir -- who had apparently been similarly occupied with drilling Theodoros's troops and could not arrive at the desperate summons for weeks -- entered the meeting chamber, he was transfixed by a single flowchart and the Russian would need to make a concerted effort to get the Croat's attention.
"Eh? What do you want, your marshallship? Can't you see I'm perfectly busy?"
Wladimir stared at him wetly. "Is this what important military business has been interrupted for?" He circled the odd box and stared self-importantly at the screen.
The flowchart was gone. Karol was momentarily worried until he realized he could summon it up again at the flick of the rat -- for some reason the small-gentle did that when he did not mess with the rat for a while. He prepared to do so when Wladimir scoffed dismissively. "Hah! Apparently they don't have lamps in Crimea. Remind me to kill the worm that sent this summons, Karol; I bid you good day."
The Russian stormed out of the room. The merchant moved the rat and the little pointer -- it looked like a stylized rat's nose, so he supposed he could see the reference -- moved and the dancing flames disappeared, replaced by the flowchart. And he studied on.
Prince Alexis had not seen Karol in weeks when he summoned the merchant again in November 1418. "Your Principal Majesty, I apologize for the delay in my presence; I can only say that I have been touched by the merciful hand of God."
Prince Alexis was gullible to a fault. Even he had a bit of trouble believing the weedy merchant was a vessel of God, though. "Chancellor Karol, we should hope for your sake you have a better excuse than that."
Karol handed him a sheet of notes. Alexis read them with a growing sense of awe.
"You... you really think this will work, Chancellor Karol?"
Karol nodded.
"All of it? To the degree you specify? How? I... we... I mean -- we mean -- Karol, I have decided to place you in the position of proconsul of Theodoros."
"Your principal Majesty, I am relatively certain no such position exists."
"It does now." Alexis smiled. "We have been praying for some miracle to restore our realm to its previous state -- a bastion of Byzantion power. You are that miracle, by all we can see. Go forth and show the heathens of what the divine industry is capable!"
Karol smiled a little and retreated. He was no inventor, and he was hardly the hand of God. One thing he was, however, was damned good at taking notes.
To the small-gentle he would return and read of marginal utility and state-government superstructures and stormproof ships and the steam engine and...
...
...
Throughout 1419, little news came out of Theodoros -- all too little, in fact. The Genoese, whose merchants had once moved freely through the principality, now found themselves unwelcome. Had the sudden change come from someone else -- say, a German state, or Britain -- it would be seen as peculiar. But it was only Theodoros -- 6000 souls ruled by a doddering Greek with no consistent ambitions. What threat could they pose, after all?
Karol's reforms would remove layer after layer of mercantilist doggerel from Theodoric legal code, turn Kaffa into a model, sanitary town, and expand the trade of Theodoros into whichever market was least crowded.
He was working on sealane reform, as seemed to be his wont, when Wladimir stormed into his chambers in a fury. "You seek to make Theodoros a laughingstock? This is an absurd contraption you have ordered me to build; by all proper physics it oughtn't float, and wind tests show that if it does manage to float, regular sailing will capsize the damned thing. Besides which, the parts you have ordered for it lead me to believe you made these plans while drunk! You may not appreicate the position you have been handsomely overpaid for, but by God, I intend to earn every ducat of my pay, and if that means spitting you I have no qualms about doing so!"
Karol pulled a black cube which would accomodate an object not too much larger than a man's head out of a sack. "The cube can form the artifacts thus required."
Wladimir gave Karol his customary boggy look, and wiped a trickle of sweat off one cheek. August in Crimea didn't agree with the Russian at all. "How?"
Karol smiled. "Magic. What do you need?"
Wladimir contemplated for a moment, then smiled devilishly. "A functional scale model of a catapult." He rubbed his hands together, and then let one drop to his side. Karol saw the scabbard on the same and at once understood the gesture. Gulping, he threw a coin into the box.
"What the hell does it need money for?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." Karol pressed a few buttons and closed the box's top. It hummed for a few seconds; the humming stopped. When they opened the box, a wave of steam escaped, revealing a little catapult about six inches tall at its highest point.
Wladimir tested the little device. It worked more than satisfactorily; grumbling, he wrote down a long list of requisitioned parts and handed it to the Proconsul.
The Edesse would be unveiled in April of the following year. It would take months to get the sixty cannons the design demanded in working order, and a tour of Europe to find enough crewmen to man it -- men who were willing to leave their homes, possibly never to return -- and once it was all ready, Karol ordered it out to map the winding coastline of northern Africa...
But a short time ago, it was not really an unreasonbly bad time to be an Orthodox state. Between increasingly predatory Italians and the the rising star-and-crescent in Turkey, the future of Theodoros is certain, and unpleasant.
That was in 1418. In 1419, the Principality of Theodoros would change forever.
There are four great eminences in Theodoros, each of them attracted from different corners of Christendom by Alexis, the current prince. Alexis is incompetent and flighty -- precisely the sort of monarch who, upon seeing a nation as basically bereft of potential as Theodoros, would set upon the idea of spending much of its hard-earned money on various advisors.
Late in 1418, one of the Prince's underlings called all of the advisors in something of a panic: he had found something 'most fantastic'; how to deal with it was far beyond him, and he sought out the help of any wise men he could find.
Karol was already beginning to regret accepting the money that Prince Alexis offered him to come to Theodoros. He took the job under the mistaken assumption that it was a Genoese principality and working there would allow him freer access to the great center of trade to the west. Now he was rushing as quickly as possible to see one of Alexis's dimwitted attendants' moronic spectacles. He had bet himself that a she-goat had delivered triplets and the Greek swooned from the shock.
When he entered the audience chamber, he immediately realized that he owed himself a dollar.
There it was, sitting on the table: a vibrantly-colored box, three cubits on its longest side, half a cubit on its shortest, and a cubit on the other. It seemed to be made of glass, and a quick look confirmed that the other side of it was glowing. Some kind of obscenely fancy lamp, Karol thought. Alexis probably bought a gross of them from a German huckster...
When he saw the other side of the vibrantly colored box, that train of thought was immediately derailed. What in God's name is this thing? Karol was literate enough in Greek to read the glowing white letters, slowly and deliberately. He turned to the attendant slowly; the nameless courtier nodded at him.
Finally, Karol managed to ask, "Did you find this strange thing with what it asks for?"
The courtier, still in stunned silence, produced two more arcane artifacts: a box about a cubit long, a generous span wide, and an inch thick, covered with what looked like thousands of tiny buttons, and something which looked like nothing so much as a polished stone, both of which hung from a long rubber cord and were made of the same material -- something utterly alien to Karol.
"Obviously not. We shall have to improvise."
"Improvise, Karol m'lord?"
"Improvise. Fetch me a ratkeep, a carpenter, and a locksmith."
...
After some days of tinkering, Karol finally got the box to work. A Small-gentle Glass Onescore, it called itself. An absurd name for something whose only immediate use seemed to be computing in Arabic numbers, he thought, but he put up with it.
More tinkering would reveal various images on the machine. Soon he learned that the icons -- that is what they called themselves, which seemed blasphemous, but it wasn't as if Karol was too religious anyway -- which seeemed to represent warped parchment were 'folders', which contained similar items. The one entitled 'art' contained images ranging from virtual pieces which brought him to the verge of tears to bizzare people with words floating above their heads which looked as if they were drawn as a blind ox would see humanity, and... multicolored boxes? Misfoldered, Karol decided.
He would study the Small-gentle Glass Onescore for a long time. He became so engrossed in studying it, in fact, that when Wladimir -- who had apparently been similarly occupied with drilling Theodoros's troops and could not arrive at the desperate summons for weeks -- entered the meeting chamber, he was transfixed by a single flowchart and the Russian would need to make a concerted effort to get the Croat's attention.
"Eh? What do you want, your marshallship? Can't you see I'm perfectly busy?"
Wladimir stared at him wetly. "Is this what important military business has been interrupted for?" He circled the odd box and stared self-importantly at the screen.
The flowchart was gone. Karol was momentarily worried until he realized he could summon it up again at the flick of the rat -- for some reason the small-gentle did that when he did not mess with the rat for a while. He prepared to do so when Wladimir scoffed dismissively. "Hah! Apparently they don't have lamps in Crimea. Remind me to kill the worm that sent this summons, Karol; I bid you good day."
The Russian stormed out of the room. The merchant moved the rat and the little pointer -- it looked like a stylized rat's nose, so he supposed he could see the reference -- moved and the dancing flames disappeared, replaced by the flowchart. And he studied on.
Prince Alexis had not seen Karol in weeks when he summoned the merchant again in November 1418. "Your Principal Majesty, I apologize for the delay in my presence; I can only say that I have been touched by the merciful hand of God."
Prince Alexis was gullible to a fault. Even he had a bit of trouble believing the weedy merchant was a vessel of God, though. "Chancellor Karol, we should hope for your sake you have a better excuse than that."
Karol handed him a sheet of notes. Alexis read them with a growing sense of awe.
"You... you really think this will work, Chancellor Karol?"
Karol nodded.
"All of it? To the degree you specify? How? I... we... I mean -- we mean -- Karol, I have decided to place you in the position of proconsul of Theodoros."
"Your principal Majesty, I am relatively certain no such position exists."
"It does now." Alexis smiled. "We have been praying for some miracle to restore our realm to its previous state -- a bastion of Byzantion power. You are that miracle, by all we can see. Go forth and show the heathens of what the divine industry is capable!"
Karol smiled a little and retreated. He was no inventor, and he was hardly the hand of God. One thing he was, however, was damned good at taking notes.
To the small-gentle he would return and read of marginal utility and state-government superstructures and stormproof ships and the steam engine and...
...
...
Throughout 1419, little news came out of Theodoros -- all too little, in fact. The Genoese, whose merchants had once moved freely through the principality, now found themselves unwelcome. Had the sudden change come from someone else -- say, a German state, or Britain -- it would be seen as peculiar. But it was only Theodoros -- 6000 souls ruled by a doddering Greek with no consistent ambitions. What threat could they pose, after all?
Karol's reforms would remove layer after layer of mercantilist doggerel from Theodoric legal code, turn Kaffa into a model, sanitary town, and expand the trade of Theodoros into whichever market was least crowded.
He was working on sealane reform, as seemed to be his wont, when Wladimir stormed into his chambers in a fury. "You seek to make Theodoros a laughingstock? This is an absurd contraption you have ordered me to build; by all proper physics it oughtn't float, and wind tests show that if it does manage to float, regular sailing will capsize the damned thing. Besides which, the parts you have ordered for it lead me to believe you made these plans while drunk! You may not appreicate the position you have been handsomely overpaid for, but by God, I intend to earn every ducat of my pay, and if that means spitting you I have no qualms about doing so!"
Karol pulled a black cube which would accomodate an object not too much larger than a man's head out of a sack. "The cube can form the artifacts thus required."
Wladimir gave Karol his customary boggy look, and wiped a trickle of sweat off one cheek. August in Crimea didn't agree with the Russian at all. "How?"
Karol smiled. "Magic. What do you need?"
Wladimir contemplated for a moment, then smiled devilishly. "A functional scale model of a catapult." He rubbed his hands together, and then let one drop to his side. Karol saw the scabbard on the same and at once understood the gesture. Gulping, he threw a coin into the box.
"What the hell does it need money for?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." Karol pressed a few buttons and closed the box's top. It hummed for a few seconds; the humming stopped. When they opened the box, a wave of steam escaped, revealing a little catapult about six inches tall at its highest point.
Wladimir tested the little device. It worked more than satisfactorily; grumbling, he wrote down a long list of requisitioned parts and handed it to the Proconsul.
The Edesse would be unveiled in April of the following year. It would take months to get the sixty cannons the design demanded in working order, and a tour of Europe to find enough crewmen to man it -- men who were willing to leave their homes, possibly never to return -- and once it was all ready, Karol ordered it out to map the winding coastline of northern Africa...
