A Forgotten Realm: The Empire of Trebizond
September 08, 2017, 11:18:00 PM
A Forgotten Realm: The Empire of Trebizond
By Jubal
By Jubal
The Byzantine World by 1265: Trebizond can be seen on the east of the map
The Empire was founded by two grandsons of the deposed Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I, a mercurial character whose life mostly involved sleeping and fighting his way around and beyond the Byzantine world and whose usurpation of the throne in 1182 led to a brief, bloody three year reign that culminated in his being physically ripped apart by the Constantinopolitan mob. His two grandsons, David and Alexios, grew up in Georgia thanks to their relation to the Bagrationid royal family there, and in 1204, with the unstable reigns of the Angelos dynasty in collapse, they launched a campaign against the tottering Empire.
It's a point of debate what David and Alexios wanted to achieve in the Empire, with scholars split between those who think a breakaway principality was the goal versus those who suspect that they hoped to use of the political turmoil to seat Alexios on the Imperial throne. Turmoil it certainly was - they must have initially intended the campaign to be against the Angeloi rulers, but whilst their campaign was underway the Latin forces of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, creating an unstable Catholic principality around the city and an even more unstable power vacuum in which multiple claimants vied for the throne. Either way, David spearheaded a rapid campaign along the north Anatolian coast backed up by Georgian forces, which was eventually halted by a rival Imperial claimant, Theodore Laskaris, just a few days' march from Constantinople.
Many of these early gains, which alongside almost the entire south Black Sea shore included parts of the Crimean peninsula to the north, were lost over the next two decades. The Empire stabilised its borders in its eastern heartland (the area shown on the map above), shielded from other Anatolian rulers by the imposing Pontus Mountains and existing as a long, thin strip of land that was both trapped and protected between the mountains and the sea. This, for the next two centuries, was the Trapezuntine realm, a land where a patchwork of fishing, farming, and light industries like iron production were efficiently exploited to the benefit of the Emperors whose little string of ancient coastal towns formed the last testament to their family's once world-encompassing ambition. These towns, along with a wide array of smaller villages and monastic communities, probably mostly communicated by sea; the rugged shoreline terrain cut them off from one another by land.
The Citadel of Trebizond today (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Eugenios was, for inhabitants of the city, more than a distant figure of worship: the name was one of the most common to give babies born in the city, and numerous miracles attributed to the saint are recorded from during the period of the Empire. Alexios II, who ruled in the late 13th century, was later said (in a tale with echoes of Saint George) to have fought and slain a dragon with the saint's divine help, up in the rugged mountains of the Pontus – and perhaps, for the Trapezuntines who dwelt in their high shadow, that might have seemed half plausible.
Coin of Trebizond: St Eugenios (L), Emperor John I (R) (Image: Barber Institute of Fine Arts)
It was after the rise of the Ottoman sultans that the days of Trebizond's independence became truly numbered. In 1453, after the fall of Constantinople, Trebizond's position was more dependent than ever on a fragile network of alliances with the remaining independent rulers of northeastern Anatolia. In 1460 the Ottoman vassal-rulers of southern Greece, members of the Byzantine Palaiologan family, had their territories annexed; in the same year, John IV of Trebizond died, leaving his carefully constructed network of alliances between Turk, Greek, and Georgian alike to his younger brother David.
These alliances, however, proved no match for Sultan Mehmet II. In 1461 he revealed his goals by terrifying the Muslim ruler of Sinope, the best sheltered port on the southern Black Sea shore, into surrendering the city. Despite Sinope's powerful fortifications and large garrison, no ruler wanted to be besieged by a Sultan who just seven years earlier had breached Constantinople's famed triple wall for the first time in a thousand years. Mehmed then set his mind to the most dangerous of Trebizond's allies, Uzun Hassan, the husband of David's niece Theodora and ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu (sometimes known as the White Sheep Turks) who dominated much of what is now Iraq, Iran, and the southern Caucasus. Mehmed offered peace talks to the Aq Qoyunlu – but on the condition that Trebizond was excluded. Hoping this would be enough to isolate Trebizond, he headed for the city.
We will never know what would have happened if David had decided to fight (or if an assassination attempt on Mehmed, which may have been Uzun Hasan's doing, had succeeded) – hoping to save his family, he surrendered the city in August 1461 on the promise of a pension and estates in Thrace. Mehmed took 800 children to raise as new Ottoman janissaries, and relocated and split the population to prevent further rebellion. David had tragically miscalculated. As the heirs of Rome, his family were too strong a potential set of figureheads to be allowed to remain alive, and Mehmed searched for a pretext on which to have them executed. In 1463, in Constantinople - the city his ancestors had failed to capture a quarter of a millennium before - the last ruler of Trebizond was put to the sword alongside his sons.
Trebizond is little known and little-memorialised, beyond vague references in The Towers of Trebizond and in a few somewhat obscure historical novels. This may be because it's one of those places in history that almost nobody today feels a sense of ownership over, thanks to the 20th century removal of the Pontic Greeks, many of whom were forcibly resettled in northern Greece. Nonetheless, it's always fascinated me, and I wanted the chance to introduce you to it as well. It's a setting of contradictions: tiny and yet an Empire, exploiting the land and yet facing the sea, proudly Orthodox yet navigating a world of Turkish Muslim politics. Such a rich, unusual balance of place, power, and culture perhaps deserves rather more attention than it has done in the past, and to be drawn out of the dreams of century-old novelists and into the imaginations of today. So, next time you want some history to read, or some inspiration to write, remember the little Empire of Trebizond clinging to its rocky coast. Who knows - there might even be dragons in the mountains above.
Making Games: The First Steps
September 03, 2017, 06:28:15 PM
Making Games: The First Steps
By BeerDrinkingBurke
By BeerDrinkingBurke
Well, that's the idea. If you are interested in following the development process, pop on over to www.innkeepgame.com. There is a mailing list you can sign up for if you scroll down towards the bottom.
So, Jubal has asked me to write a short piece for you all on a topic of my choosing. I thought I would talk about taking that first step in making a game. As I haven't finished my game yet I can hardly talk about finishing one! I'll link to somebody else's post about that further below.
Maybe, like me, you've wanted to make games for a long time. You've played games for years, and have always toyed around with some ideas of your own. You write on game forums about ideas for cool games you wish existed. You might have tinkered around in simple programming languages in school, and tried out a few of those ideas in the past. (I am getting pretty old now, so for me I started with QBASIC, back in middle school, writing a big old text based detective noir game, set in a giant city you had to traverse with the help of wise-talking taxi drivers. Then I lost the floppy disk holding the data!) But maybe you don't feel too confident with learning a 'proper' programming language. Or maybe you think your art skills are too terrible. Or maybe you don't know where to begin. Or maybe you just generally lack confidence that you can actually make a game...
If this is you, then I have one initial piece of advice. Stop caring and just start playing around. Whatever you make will be pretty terrible. And that's OK.
Because...
- It's your work. That doesn't mean it's not terrible! But it's yours damnit. You did it. Whatever the level you are at, what you make is a little achievement. Nobody else has to think so. And unfortunately they might well not think very much of it! (I'm sure I had a few people even pity me a little when I first started). But that's OK too, because...
- You will get better! Something which helped me with the process of starting to make a game was prior experience learning a language. Not a programming language, but a regular language. And this was supposedly a 'difficult' one that takes people forever. Right from the very beginning, when I first took some introductory classes, I had a feeling that one day I would be good at this language. I was terrible, and my grades weren't very impressive, and year after year after year it felt like progress was very slow. And then, eventually, I got better. Then better still. Until I pretty much achieved all of my initial goals and expectations regarding competency in that language. But it did take seven years! Along the way I had to learn from my mistakes, and try new approaches. And this is common to getting good at anything I imagine. I'm not suggesting that you will need seven years to make your first game! But getting good at things takes time, and that's OK. It's important to learn to be patient with yourself, and be happy with where you are at, while at the same time looking for ways to improve.
Innkeep, as of early 2015:  Innkeep as of early 2016:  |
Innkeep as of present:  |
In the future I might write a few more posts about starting to work on a game, to the extent that I can considering that I am still not exactly a successful developer! I am considering writing a little on the process of thinking up an idea for your game, and how I made some gradual improvements to my terrible drawing skills. If you had some specific things you think I might be able to write about that you would like to see, let us know. Thanks everyone!
Some Helpful Resources:
Here is a very good post about starting and finishing a game, by Derek Yu, the creator of Spelunky.
GameMaker is the tool I am using for making Innkeep. It's quite approachable, and best of all there are a lot of great tutorials on YouTube to get you started.
Speaking of great GameMaker tutorials, Tom Francis, maker of Gunpoint, has this excellent series. This is what I started out with myself.
Want to start trying to draw your own art? I use GIMP. It has most of the functionality of Photoshop, and it is completely FREE.
Welcome to Exilian Articles!
September 02, 2017, 12:47:25 AM
Welcome to Exilian Articles!
In this area of Exilian, we'll be providing regular, eclectic, creative, geeky articles and other such content for your reading pleasure. On a weekly basis, more regularly if there's demand, we post a new article here by a member of the community for you all to read. We want to provide a mix of humour, intros or spins on interesting academic subjects, ideas for creativity and project design, showcases of tools and resources, and original creative work. Of course there'll still also be great content being made and written across the forum; Exilian Articles is generally for longer, article-type pieces, whereas game reviews and more high-detailed tutorials have places elsewhere.
If you want to write for us, just drop an email to megadux@exilian.co.uk and let us know! Unlike most areas of the forum we'll move or remove new topics posted directly without permission here: this is a "front-facing" area so articles should be cleared with a staff member before being posted. You are of course very welcome indeed to comment on the threads here, and we encourage you to do so: comments here as always fall under the Exilian Terms of Service.
Enjoy the articles, and let us know what you think.
Welcome to Exilian Articles!
In this area of Exilian, we'll be providing regular, eclectic, creative, geeky articles and other such content for your reading pleasure. We want to provide a mix of humour, intros or spins on interesting academic subjects, ideas for creativity and project design, showcases of tools and resources, and original creative work.
Of course there'll still also be great content being made and written across the forum; Exilian Articles is generally for longer, article-type pieces, whereas game reviews and more high-detailed tutorials have places elsewhere.
If you want to write for us, just drop an email to megadux@exilian.co.uk and let us know!
Enjoy the articles, and let us know what you think.