Our Trojan War Advent Book – Embassy Outbound

The Trojan War Advent I: Embassy Outbound

Since its limited release as an author's prototype for literary agents and select trade publishers, the feedback has been strong and most praising of its editing, structural presentation of period and its stylization of a full immersion experience for readers. It has been severely criticized, however, for its extremely advanced material, perhaps too intensive for the first exposure of lay-person readers, given, that is, an obscure epoch within the prehistory of the Late Aegean Bronze Age. That is also to say, the book is too intensive on the facts and particulars of several confounding issues under comprehensive analysis, all at once progressing. As brought to this synthesis of the Trojan War Era, from scratch, the material is dense and hard pacing. It aims, we now admit, to a strictly  academic audience. We plan to produce a sequel in kind, and only later an abridgment, in order to ease a modern audience's accessibility.

The Embassy’s Story

Immersed far into the third anniversary of the Abduction of Helen, occurring 1265 BC, intensely underway are the varying convulsions of the earliest Greeks until the seminal date of 1262 BC. The Trojan War is now in advent and is proving pan-Hellenic over a truly grievous deed of imperial proportions. Recruitment toward a war of recapture of Helen has been primarily due to the impetuosity of Agamemnon and Palamedes, in order to take supreme position over the future hostilities.

Menelaos has taken the easiest way afforded to him as the foremost sovereign injured by the abduction. He leads his own major coalition, it being composed of a mighty generation that is ready to pledge him their fealty for peaceable démarches that shall ransom and return Helen. Many have already acceded as heirs presumptive, sons worthy to succeed their pre-eminent fathers. Its heroes already are avowed to Helen and himself since the trials for her bridal fully 6 years earlier. Then, in 1268 BC, men congregated to woo her through trials-at-bridal. They had consisted of ordeals of great physical and mental challenges to character – whereby they also have become pledged to the sustenance of the marriage ever afterward. Anticipated by Helen's fostering parents, Tyndareos and Leda have suffered gross interferences ever since, from third persons outside the men invited into an elite courtship once assembled at Lakonia.

From the first, deliberations of Menelaos' rallying force have opted for peacemaking, towards the continued prosperity enabled by his burgeoning maritime relations. The husband of Helen aims towards reconciliation of past hideous grievances through his generously ransomed restoration of his stolen wife. The reconciliation must become suitable through a single grand démarche as put forth by Nestor and Menelaos. They contrive an informal embassy to the Trojans, given the disturbing lack of any intelligence about where Helen is sequestered. At midway through the ongoing demarche of his diplomacy, Menelaos and Nestor of Messenia have become the only principals behind the embassy which shall be duly attendant upon the coming winter session of the High Court of Troias at Fortress Ilion. Until their peace offers receive approval from the High House of Laomedon, all efforts aim to restrict the impending warfare shall be wreaked upon the Trojans all alone. Their satellites shall be exempted from the hostilities should there ensue a failed embassy.

The two principals select Mentör of the Highlanders and Odysseus of Cephallenia to act as their principals' adjutants. They shall represent the embassy as sole proxies for Helen towards a ransomed restoration. They can enjoin an elite naval capacity that can regain her perforce. That they are not joined by her exalted brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, in comparable adjutant capacities to their own, is accounted by the book as a first calamity presented Menelaos’ coalition: Kastor's death by the regicide of his royal cousins, the High Princes Aphareid; and Polydeukes' banishment from the homeland of his adoption on account of his brutal revenge upon those murderers. After concerted deliberations to fill the brothers' deeply felt void, Odysseus and Mentör steer the embassy of 12 great galleys outbound to Rhodes and Cyprus. There they raise ransom and recruit strength from the farthest-flung suitors, Tlepolemos and Cinyras. The legs of itinerary lead onward to the forbidden shores of the Levant, where an enlightenment of the two young men over a maritime embargo of the Anatolians against all Westerners. The High Kingdoms of their west coast Anatolia are acting all for one, one for all, against the "Pelasgiotes." Although the embargo is variously premised, and under differing degrees of severe enforcement, the High Kingdoms under the interior Hatti Empire are unified in behalf of their Great King, Hattushilish III.

While restricted landfalls by itinerary of the Inward Passage of the west coastal Aegean make for perilous seas ahead, the embassy takes able enough escort from Tlepolemos into the Anatolian Corrridor, successfully recruiting force or gaining ransom pledges along the way. There's even a major diversion, for diplomacy with the Karians at Miletos. There Mentör successfully brings back in démarche a compact respectful of the Hatti's imperial neutrality, in return for naval support from "the Pelasgiotes" by way of annexing the neighboring High Kingdom of Maeonia to High Kingdom Millawanda of the Hatti Empire. Odysseus thereon runs a gamut of pirates supposed Maeonians, earliest precursors to the Lydians. By another naval force assisted most fortuitously, whereby a future enemy acts as friend in its behalf, the embassy is drawn into the Upper Aegean while two battle engagements at sea are fought to prevent its overtaking. Odysseus finally discovers for sure a subversive faction of Argives and Milesians, both intent upon the embassy's annihilation. Their faction stands fully for unlimited warfare for spoils that only a failed embassy at Troy can engender.