Peninsular lives

[Pelasgia]

Eudaemon, Tephanon
13/5/1957, 7:15 AM

Dhū Nuwās Ibn Jimrah, known to the Pelasgian authorities as “Dounaas Ivnitzimras” as was his legal name, found himself waking up sweaty and distraught once again; the weather was hot, nearing thirty degrees Celsius, and the atmosphere was humid and wet. Yet, the sky was not sunny but rather cloudy and greyish. Dhū Nuwās turned to his left, to find his wife still asleep. As quietly and tenderly as he could, he stood up, not wishing to wake the rest of the house: he had always had the rather peculiar habit of waking up early on weekends, fully rested and rather energetic too.

The fourty-year old Zataari man walked out of his bedroom and into the nearby bathroom. Standing before the mirror, he looked at his face: a dark black beard extended from his prominent cheeckbones to beyond his jawline, though he had somewhat trimmed it, as was the trend among the somewhat Pelasgised middle class of Eudaemon. His curly sidelocks (payots) extended up to about his shoulders, being of the same colour as his beard and hair, though all three had started turning grey.

After washing himself, the middle-aged man made his way to the small library that was hosted in his living room, sitting at one of the comfortable reading chairs at the centre of the room. He was surrounded by two walls covered in shelves, another wall hosting various portraits and icons, while the fourth wall, which completed the rectangular room’s structure was almost entirely made up of windows, the curtains that usually covered them being currently tied aside. The room, like the house itself, was a rather peculiar mixture of imported Imperial architecture and local traditional structures.

Dhū Nuwās lay in his chair, relaxing amidst the sound of the rain, which was occasionally interrupted by thunderous noise. He had recently applied for a position in the Department of Shipping, and to say that he had eagerly been awaiting a response would be quite an understatement. Indeed, he could not help but think of how much he disliked, nay despised his current job at the Port Authority. Between the pack of ill-mannered rustics that kept harassing him with repeated requests or attempted bribes to get their license restored after docking their fishing boat in the commercial ship section and the inept imbeciles that did not know how to properly fill out a form to request an updated list of goods on which the city had levied a special tax, Dhū Nuwās was not entirely sure of what he hated the most about that job.

Then again, if he had to guess, it would be his boss. The boss in question was a man about ten years his senior, who was clean shaven, perfumed and dressed like some bureaucrat from Propontis. Apparently, the man was a Pelasgian Jew from Therme who had moved to the Exarchate a few years ago, though if the “Dounaas” was to be asked, he was the most gentile-looking man he had seen in his entire life. Rumour had it that he had taken on a job in the Port Authority’s administration with increased pay, as the Empire sought to bring in loyal public servants and functionaries to supervise the local administration and increase its efficiency. In this way, it hoped to train a new class of loyal indigenous bureaucrats, though the only thing Mr. Levetzis seemed to be training Dhū Nuwās in was hating the Port Authority.

In any case, with any luck, he would be moving up the social ladder and out of that rabbit hole by the start of summer. While he had plenty of experience and met practically all of the qualifications necessary, he was still short of two things. The first was a letter of recommendation from Mr. Levetzis, to acquire which he had made sure to suck up to his boss as much as possible, even volunteering for the daunting task of double-checking the port registry for the first half of May. Gathering his courage to ask for the letter on Friday, after handing in the corrected port registry was all that was necessary in that field, at least as far as the middle-aged Zafaari was concerned. The second was a document people across the Empire had taken to referring as an “ideological certificate”. Officially titled “Proof of Loyalty and Trustworthiness”, the document was essentially meant to weed out Communists, hardcore Republicans, radical Socialists, minority separatists or activists and people tied to foreign ideologies, organisations, religions or countries from filling posts in the Empire’s administration and military that granted them access to sensitive information or put them in a position to cause any sort of trouble for the Imperial regime.

To many native Zafaaris, such as Dhū Nuwās, getting a paper of that sort was tantamount to selling one’s soul to the devil. Certainly, Dhū Nuwās could keep his current position, or even get another low-level administrative position on the merit of being somewhat amicable to the governing authorities, but to move up the ladder, his loyalty needed to be beyond question, even more so because he would be taking part in the management of crucial ports and trade routes far away from the Imperial heartland. But, then again, a position in the Department of Shipping would guarantee his family access to better housing, better security, better healthcare and better education. His children could truly make something of themselves; in that way he could at least be redeemed. They might even go on to form part of the leading class of a future independent Zafaar, making his sacrifice all the more noble. After all, he was certain that not all of the Zafaaris filling the Advisory Committee and other colonial institutions were exactly loyal to the foreign authorities.

Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the room’s wooden door opening; it was his wife, Shams. From the way she was looking at him, he could tell she could read his thoughts. As he stood up and followed her to the dining room, for breakfast, he remarked, as he had done many times before, how little he seemed to deserve that woman. Beyond mere physical attractiveness, he saw in her patience and care for him that he little found himself to be worthy of. Despite the grandstanding that defined his private conversations, he was, at his core, a quiet and somewhat cowardly man; he could even call himself a chameleon, but that would be a tad harsh, objectively speaking. Indeed, he could not see a single thing in himself for her to value so much as to be so dedicated. Perhaps it was merely a wife’s duty, but he knew all too well that in the “modern” urban bourgeoisies of Tephanon, tradition was not all that valuable. Besides, he could tell the difference between a duty fulfilled out of need and one fulfilled willingly.

As he sat across from her at the table, he wished her a good morrow, received a reply in kind. The reply was swiftly followed with a question: “So, how is that transfer you were talking about coming along, dear?”. Somewhat dumbfounded by how easy he had been to read, even after twenty years of marriage, he smiled a bit before retorting. “It is coming along, alright,” he said; “I just need to get that paper and a letter from Mr. Levetzis.”

In a way he could tell she was judging him; who wasn’t? But she understood why he needed to do what he was going to do. The position would be filled, regardless of whether it was taken up by some Kypht or Haydian from the other end of Himyar, or by him. Besides, it was not like him not getting an “ideological certificate” would topple the Exarchate, or like the reverse make it any better entrenched, for that matter. Alas, it was decided: he would go downtown, to the Government Palace, and apply for an “ideological certificate” on Wednesday, right after work. It’s just a scrap of paper, he thought to himself.

 

[Pelasgia]

Bay of Zarakas, Tephanon
25/5/1957, 3:55 PM

In the late years of the nineteen-fifties, a lone fishing boat dragged itself through the Bay of Tephanon, approaching the islet of Zarakas, off of the port of Eudaemon. The wooden craft had a reddish colour, like the lumber of cherry, on the entirety of its hull, though the tower-like structure protruding on the top half of the quarterdeck was white with azure details. The waters themselves shined like a silver mirror on a bright morrow as the sun drug an amount of light usually reserved for the middle of the day well into the afternoon, as the days grew larger and larger, owing to the approach of the summer.

Ebrahim Ibn Alssiad (officially Avraam Psaropoulos, his name having been Pelasgised in Imperial documents), stood on the deck of the ship, looking at the distant yet increasingly nearby port of Eudaemon, the clear blue sky of the summer being cut through by the dark fumes of the city’s all too recently constructed industrial district. With a deep sigh, he turned around and walked into the cabin of the boat, sitting down at a small table which was attached to the cabin’s left wall. Out of the small room in the back of the cabin, Butrus Bassily (officially Petros Vasileiou) emerged, standing half frozen with an inquisitive look in his eyes, like that of a child waiting for an answer to a question from an elder.

“I’ll try it,” Ebrahim remarked, bringing a smile to Butrus’s face as the latter sprung into the small room and back out again, this time holding a small bottle filled with a clear liquid and two glasses. Butrus sat across from Ebrahim and opened the bottle, using a little knife he had pulled out from his pocket. As the younger of the two fishers filled the two glasses, the elder, Ebrahim, remarked at the knife, which now laid on that table. Ornate patterns, shaped like a cross and reminiscent of Memphian art in blue, white and gold adorned its handle, while its short, sharp blade bore an inscription in a language that seemed similar to Pelasgian but not quite alike. Though the elderly fisherman knew the story behind that knife all too well, he could not help but admire it every time he saw it.

When Butrus had been but a young boy, barely old enough to stand on his own two feet, his family had migrated to Tephanon from the Theme of Mopsia, in the easternmost end of Pelasgia. Fleeing from debt collectors after the Bassily family patriarch’s furniture-making business had failed to compete with modern industrial competitors, the family of five had tried to seek a new life in the colony, encouraged by government-funded programmes to settle the area with Christians from the Imperial heartland. And yet, fortune had an entirely another thing in store for them, taking the lives of all family members except for Botrus by disease on the way to Eudaemon from Heracleopolis, their bodies being unceremoniously dumped overboard from the overcrowded passenger ship. The knife itself was the last memento Botrus had of his family when Ebrahim had found him and adopted him out of pity, replacing the son he had lost to an accident some years ago.

The strong, bitter and piercing smell of the mysterious transparent liquid took the old man out of his thoughts and back into the present. He looked at the excited face of Botrus and then down at the glass from which the smell was coming.

“What did you say they call this again?”

“Tsikoudia is what they call it, on Chandax anyway. Every place in the Long Sea seems to have its own name for the drink, but they all drink it, especially sailors and pirates.”

I’m neither a sailor, nor a pirate, and certainly not from the Long Sea, Ebrahim remarked silently. Finally, after a few more second, Ebrahim took the small glass into his fingers; just as he was about to down it, Butrus interrupted him.

“We have to toast to something first.”

“Toast?”

“Like, make a wish before drinking.”

“What for?”

“It’s just something that people who drink do. Mostly among friends and family, that is.”

“Can we toast to getting a good price for our catch?”

“Certainly! To a good price for today’s catch!”

The two glasses touched, making a slight ‘cluck’ sound, and both men drank the whole liquid straight down.

“Why do people drink this? It’s sinful and it tastes bitter.”

Butrus laughed.

“Wait a bit, old man. Once some time passes, you’ll start to feel relaxed and happy.”

“Only if we get a good price for our catch,” Ebrahim replied. Truth be told, he was not much of a religious man; he still kept the old traditions going, but it was mostly out of habit than out of faith. He did believe in God, but he felt that God was more of a distant being judging people’s character once they died, not an obsessive invisible dictator that micromanaged every single detail of people’s lives and judged them for it; that job belonged to his wife. He was not exactly thrilled to be breaking the ages-old taboo him and his fellow Muslims had around drinking, partly because the drink itself tasted so bad. Indeed, he could not understand how some people, mostly foreigners, got addicted to such a horrible substance. Then again, he thought to himself, one could say the same for our hookahs.

As the ship approached the harbour, Ebrahim stood up and went back outside, to the deck. The isle of Zarakas, a barren and empty rock back in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century, when he had still been a child, was now filled with large buildings of an entirely alien style, its docks housing the massive metal goliaths of the Imperial fleet’s garrison group in Tephanon. Alas, the elderly fisherman needed not look to those grey-coloured hulls to see the changing face of his country. To the left, right, front and back of his small, traditional fishing boat, tankers and other modern steamships roamed the seas, flying standards of realms and lands that were all foreign to him, leaving behind them a trail of dark smoke.

The small boat, named Nadia after Ebrahim’s favourite sister, with several car tires mounted around its hull to help it dock without smashing into the docks or other ships, docked next to a modern trawler, almost wholly metallic in its structure, with a hull painted red and the name «ΕΥΦΡΟΣΥΝΗ» (“EUPHROSYNE”) in white. Throwing a rope to the land, for a port worker to tie the boat to the docks, Ebrahim shouted to the worker.

“Friend, how are prices in the fish market?”

“If you’ve got any mackerel, you’re going to be a rich man; a ship carrying a large catch sunk of it and the price has skyrocketed.”

Ebrahim turned to Botrus, who had just stepped out of the cabin, and smiled- their catch was almost entirely made up of mackerel.

 

[Pelasgia]

Hagios Asterios, Tephanon
27/6/1957

Hajar Asfal (known to Pelasgian and foreigners as Hagios Asterios, as it was officially called) was a true gem of a city, possibly enough so to claim the title of Crown Jewel of Tephanon from Eudaemon. Though it was most certainly not the oldest city on the peninsula, that honour belonging to Marib, it has survived countless changes in rule, population and technology relatively unscathed. Indeed, just like almost any conqueror before them, the Pelasgians had found the local people surprisingly friendly to their new overlords; the upper classes were quick to adopt Pelasgian traditions, the city's streets quickly added buildings integrating Pelasgian features to the countless other elements they had adopted from other cultures and conquerors, and the life in general went on as if the Pelasgians had always been there. Nowhere else on Tephanon's pre-colonial cities could conquerors, settlers and people from all ethnic groups inhabiting the rather diverse peninsula walk around peacefully and without fear or reprisal from one another. The city seemed like a giant body, ready to take in whatever came to it and at to its collection of symbiotic creatures, so to speak.

From the city's older districts, which were lined with unique brick-made structures covered in white paint and decorated with dark blue, golden, crimson and other motifs in geometric shapes, to the areas encompassing the brown Zafaari-style buildings found in Eudaemon, the quarter lined with structures clearly resembling Urudoah and Islamic architecture of Eastern Himyar proper, especially Ayyubistan, and and the more recently constructed areas of the new port lined with Pelasgian-like or fully Pelasgian buildings in Neoclassical, Propontine Neo-Baroque, or Old Propontine-style architecture, one could get a lesson in the city's history by just walking through it. Synagogues, Mosques and Churches were to be found at various areas of the city, each in its own different style, while the markets, crossroads and squares were the city's various districts met were almost completely peaceful.

In Hagios Asterios, power, prestige, dominion, rivalry and struggle were not based one's race or religion; they were based on one class, or, more accurately, caste. The vast majority of the city's inhabitants consisted of the innumerable ranks of the eadim allawn, known to the Pelasgians as the Achromoi and to foreigners as the "Unmarked" or the "Colourless". These Colourless men and women did not belong to any of the city's great noble clans, and were thus not entitled to colour themselves, their clothes and their houses in the colours of said clans. The Colourless were internally divided into the khashab ("Wooden Ones", called "Xylinoi" in Pelasgian), the fida ("Silver Ones", "Asemenioi" in Pelasgian) and the dhahabi ("Golden Ones", "Chrysoi" in Pelasgian), based on the material from which their cultery was made, which in turn signified their income and welath level. Above this vast crowd were the mulawan ("Coloured Ones", known as "Chromatismenoi" in Pelasgian). Belonging to the noble clans which had formed the city's aristocracy for centuries, the Coloured Ones wore clothes dyed in the colours of their noble clan, lived in houses painted in the colours of their noble clan and even painted themselves in the colours of their noble clan.

Though each city in Tephanon -and in Europe, for that matter- had its own aristocracy, the innovation that had allowed the Coloured Ones to survive was that they, unlike other aristocracies, had learnt to place themselves below every new wave of conquerors, making themslelves indespensable in the administration of the city, while relinquishing the top of the social pyramid of the city to its new rulers. In a way, they were like the nobility of a realm which had gotten itself a new, foreign King on its throne, and had done so for quite a while. Upon closer inspection of this caste system, one would more clearly see that to discover the divisions within the city, on did not need to look to the areas between the city's ethnic or religious quarters, but to the borders of the areas where the various castes lived. Walled of since olden times and reinforced with guards, barricades and checkpoints, these lines cut through the city's fabric like a dagger through a tunic, splinting the city into a collection of smaller worlds, where each caste experienced a completely different reality from the rest.

It was in the industrial district of this rather expansive town of a couple hundred thousand people that the Internationalist Communist Party of Pelasgia (DKKP) had its best chance, at least in the opinion of Chairman Bogiatzis, of forming a Tephanon chapter, to spread its ideology in the furthest corner of the Empire, where Propontine Imperialism was felt the most. Navigating a rather diverse crowd of Wooden Ones, Saleh bin Daghr (officially Silas Tromaras), a man of barely twenty-one years, made his way to a crossroad between two important roads in the industrial district of the Hagios Asterios' new port. Though dedicated to the cause and a member of the DKKP for almost three years, Saleh was far from a skilled orator or statesman, and the DKKP had not exactly sent their best to Tephanon. Saleh himself had joined the DKKP while working on a ship which had sailed to Pelasgia proper regularly, before it was sold to a minor Ayyubistani shipping company after having aged significantly. Standing on a crate and flanked by two other DKKP members, of about the same age and posessing roughly the same oratorical skills -or lack thereof-, Saleh breathed in a decided to make his speech in Pelasgian, a tongue which, though foreign, had come to act as the mutual lingua franca for the countless groups that inhabited the peninsula.

"Workers of Hajar Asfal, the time of your liberation is nigh," he proclaimed loudly, getting himself the attention of a sizeable chunk of the crowd, including a rather strartled traffic policeman; "For far too long have you been oppressed! Oppressed by the boot of the foreign Pelasgian Crown! Oppressed by the 'Coloured Ones', who have sold you and cyour country out to the foreign capitalists, in exchange for the preservation of their undeserved wealth! Workers, brothers, fellow 'Uncoloured Ones'; for how long will you children continue to starve while those of the 'Coloured Ones', or even the 'Silver Ones' and the 'Golden Ones' waste enough food in a single day to feed your families for a week? For how long will you live in shacks while those who think themselves your betters continue to live in ivory towers and palaces, monuments to their own vanity and your oppression? For how long-"

Saleh had forgotten the rest of the speech; he was, after all, a poor orator, if one at all, and had memorised a speech written by the DKKP back in Pelasgia, without having thought up a word of it on his own. Anxious and already sweating more than before, he looked down at the other two DKKP members, as if they could give him a clue at what the words he was meant to say were. With the crowd on the brink of losing its interest, Saleh parrotted the end of the speech, a conclusion so full of Marxist-Leninovist jargon even he had trouble understanding it.

"The proletariat of Pelasgia proper is on the verge of seizing the means of production, as the reactionaries and the revisionists tear themselves apart. You too must do your part, to claim your right to live a socialist workers' laocracy. Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your, eh, chains!"

He looked on anxiously, as the confused crowd slowly lost interest, the traffic policeman whistling and motioning them to cross the street. The only man who approached Saleh was some half-crazed Christian preacher, belonging to some minor heretical splinter whose name completely escaped Saleh.

"It's alright my boy, I try to convert them to my own faith too, but they never listen. Would you like to hear about our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ?"

As if the words of preacher, which he would have thought to be a prime example of mockery were he not sure that the preacher was as oblivious to the meaning of the speech he had just delivered as he himself, were not enough, a few police officers appeared in front of Saleh, chasing him down accross the street and into a back alley. Saleh managed to barely escape by jumping into an open manhole, while the two men who were with him were taken in. Covered in feces and dirty water, Saleh realised that telling his superior to tell the DKKP proper to tell Ivar to send some help (as confusing as that series of messages sounded) was perhaps the only way for anything to be achieved.

 

[Kadikistani Union]

Hagios Asterios, Tephanon
27/6/1957

Bosko Brnabic hadn't had the time to recover from yet another night of drinking himself into a coma at the local bar, near the crummy apartment he had been squatting in for the past few weeks. To blend in the industrial neighbourhoods of Hagios Asterios he had chosen to dress as the lowest class of colourless, the khashab, did. He had no trouble fitting in with the lower class, himself not being a man of great culture and with a body odour that would awaken a pack of rabbits from miles away. But besides the smell, which came from nothing else than personal neglect, his face was confusable with the locals. Brnabic came from the Socialist Oblast of Kalavarskija, more specifically the industrialized fishing town of Irkavr in the southern-most island of Kadikistan, and was born with a brown skin-colour and pitch-black curly hair. The latter was also in some part related to his Turkic heritage on his great-grandmother's side who was forced to marry the Slavic conqueror back in the day. His family never reached importance on a political chain during the Clan-based system, one of Brnabic's great-uncle's at one point swore allegiance to the Burukova Clan and the rest of the family followed suit, but it didn't cost the family much grief when the National Committee for Justice and the Rejuvenation of Socialism took over and did away with nearly all of them. Brnabic was a loyal soldier and party-member, he simply followed the order coming from above and in turn he had been given great autonomy in his action. His superiors knew about his alcoholism and his most insincere devotion to prostitutes, but they let him be as long as he kept bringing in results and doing what he did. In fact Brnabic was very good at what he did, despite the fact that his sheer appearance would tell you otherwise as he looked like he just came back from a war that was fought in a dumpster full of dead animals.

Frequently paranoid, Brnabic had refused the safe-houses offered by the Kadikistani Directorate of Intelligence (KDI) and even the DKKP out of fear for being discovered by the very skilled Pelasgian intelligence agencies. Instead he chose to search for a safe heaven himself back when he got reassigned from Asbestopyrgos several weeks ago. He found such a place in a recently evicted apartment building in the centre of the industrial part of the colonial city. The apartment had stood there for a mere six years before it was evicted due to dangerous cracks in the outer walls, promised renovations were put on hold as the contractor that was hired to do the work declared bankruptcy days later. Thus Brnabic, along with several other locals, had began squatting the junk-filled building that had been ravaged by teen vandals for the past months. His most valuable possession in this rat infested building besides his personal KA-47 assault rifle, which he had purchased from local dealers rather than smuggling one in, was a bicycle that he had stolen during a drunken night in the whorehouse several blocks from his squat. While the still shiny bicycle contrasted heavily with his rag-tag ensemble, torn kaki pants, dirty wore-down, over-sized construction worker jacket and a scruffy turban wrapped over a miners helmet, it did help him move around the city better with less chance of being monitored or checked like on, for instance, the train.

From his bicycle Brnabic had seen the whole scene happen in front of him, Saleh's seemingly improvised speech and the subsequent cat-and-mouse game with the local authorities. "Amateurs", he thought to himself before releasing the nastiest fart he had mustered up in months, turning the heads of the innocent by-passers. As Saleh and his associates ran into the nearby alleys, the police seemingly focussed mainly on the speaker, Saleh. Brnabic had the same intention and decided to follow the inept orator, only he was better at tracking him than the local police was as the latter quickly lost track of their target in the maze of the city, with open doors, windows, hallways and low-hanging laundry everywhere. Not to mention the crowd, which made it particularly difficult for even a man as skilled as Brnabic to track him down to a local grocery shop where Saleh was getting some rest and recomposed himself. Saleh moved his fingers over some fruit as if he was looking to purchase, but his eyes were focussed on the window, nervously looking for the policemen chasing him. Suddenly he heard a low voice coming from behind him along with some heavy breathing, "That didn't go so well did it, tovarich?", Brnabic said in a mainland Pelasgian dialect, except for the last word which immediately identified him as a Kadikistani. Nevertheless Saleh jumped at the sound of Brnabic's voice, almost knocking over the rack of fruits in front of him. The commotion caught the attention of the shopkeeper, after which the Kadikistani agent was quick to anticipate. "Follow me outside in a few minutes and meet me at the old docks, peer 6, at 21h00. Purchase something and make sure you are not followed.", Brnabic said quietly before unnoticeably slipping some money in Saleh's pockets, making sure he could do the purchase and not raise further suspicion.

Later that night, at 21h00 to be more exact, Brnabic approached peer 7, carefully making sure he wasn't walking into an ambush. He didn't like to take such a risk, but the intelligence he received made him confident enough to take the chance. His assignment was clear, establish a foothold for the DKKP in the Pelasgian oversees territories, Tephanon. He hoped to find out what progress was made by the Marxist-Leninovists here, what their demographics were like and establish a network like the one in mainland Pelasgia.

 

[Pelasgia]

Hagios Asterios, Tephanon
27/6/1957

Saleh had approached peer 7 of the port of Hagios Asterios rather timidly, being somewhat irrationally afraid that the Police or the Exarchic Guard would still be on to him; in his mind, the fiasco at the industrial district this morning had been a failed revolutionary action, but a revolutionary action none the less. Accustomed to the realities of the mainland DKKP as he was, he was unable to perceive just how insignificant this incident would have seemed to both him and the Pelasgian authorities. Upon seeing Brnabic, Saleh rushed to his side, bringing with him the rather unimpressive overview of the DKKP's Tephanon "branch": 176 members in a colony whose population numbered in the millions and negligible to absolutely no influence in what few unions -if one could call the rudimentary workers' association of certain industries such- did exist in the Exarchate. Following this disappointing revelation, Saleh had another one: "We have no, um.... updated ideological manuals, Comrade Brnabic; we only have some old school Marxist-Leninovist literature, printed in Pelasgian alone. We aren't even sure what our doctrine is supposed to believe, since the latest Party Congress in Kadikistan."

 

[Pelasgia]

Eudaemon, Tephanon
10/9/1957

While a citizen of the core provinces of the Empire might only recently heard the term Politarcheia being used again, at least since the first such organisation died with the Pelasgian Republic in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century, to any man or woman living in the Exarchate of Tephanon, it was heard, read or pondered at on an almost daily basis. The Vasilikon Soma Politarcheias Taphanou (VSPT), loosely translated as Imperial Tephanon Constabulary Corps, was the sole police force in all of Tephanon, being under strict and direct control of the Exarch himself, so as to ensure that the next best thing to an army in the colony was under the orders of the central colonial government alone.

Organised in a paramilitary, if not outright military, fashion the Constabulary Corps was easily recogniseable due to its tan uniforms, which were not quite unlike those of the Imperial Land Army garrisons stationed at the colony every now and then, save for the shorts and rolled-up sleeves they sported, along with a distinctive pith helmet, which bore a golden-coloured Double Headed Eagle at the front. Its members, who were almost exclusively male, save for some serving indoors in administrative roles, always sported surplus military equipment, so that their materiel always gave a good idea of what the Imperial Armed Forces bore before their latest modernisation.

Though each city and town sported its own branch of the Constabulary, and each Prefecture had its own local Directorate, the highly centralised structure of the Corps was such that most important decisions were made at its heart: the General Directorate in Eudaemon's administrative quarter. Located but a few hundred meters away from the Exarchic Palace and the other important government buildings, the building which housed the General Directorate was a four-story edifice, built in the simplified neoclassical style which many of the colony's Pelasgian-built structures boasted. The principal entrance to the building consisted of a double door of green metal with large windows, which about two and a half meters tall, topped by another set of windows equal in height to about a quarter of the door itself. The windows were invariable covered with metal bars, while a second door, albeit shorter and less ornate, was to be found inside, above a short flight of stairs.

A grey stripe equal in height to this flight of stairs run around the external base of the building, being occasional interrupted by tiny, barred windows leading to the basement of the building, while the rest of the structure was painted in a light tan colour. This tan was only interrupted by the white marble which surrounded the entrance and the windows, which were themselves made of a green metal and glass, as well as white decorative motifs on the walls. At all four corners of the building, three of which which were visible from the street, a round tower-like structure stuck out, such as the one where the principal entrance was located, extending half a story above the rest of the building with an added layer of shorter windows, and being topped by a dome with a lightning rod on top. Each of the four walls connecting these towers sported a set of windows, in nine columns of four each, plus the three columns of windows on each tower, one of which had no first floor window due to the tall gate, and had an extra, short window on tower's top layer, under the dome.

The flags of the Exarchate of Tephanon and of the Imperial Tephanon Constabulary Corps (which consisted an ensign with the flag of Tephanon as the canton and a golden griffon on a red field) flew by the tower of the principal entrance, while the flag of the Pelasgian Empire flew from a pole under the third-floor window of the tower. Between the second floor window and the main gate of the principal tower at the corner of the former Leophoros Diadochou Isaakiou and Leophoros Megalon Komnenon (two principal avenues recently renamed to Leophoros Diadochou Eumenous and Leophoros Laskaridon, after the new heir-apparent and new dynasty, respectively) was a large plaque inscirbed «ΕΠΕΥΔΑΙΜΟÎΙ ΓΕÎΙΚΗ ΔΙΟΙΚΗΣΙΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΥ ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ Î*ΟΛΙΤΑΡΧΕΙΑΣ ΤΑΦΑÎΟΥ» ("General Diorectorate of the Imperial Tephanon Constabulary Corps in Eudaemon", still written in Katharevousa and not likely to be changed anytime soon).

One could always find two to four armoured cars a no less than two platoons of armed Constables on either side of the crossroad where the General Directorate was located, in addition to a squad on the building's roof, shielded from the sun by awnings. When traffic in the area was too significant and there were suspicions of any potential dangers, checkpoints were set up, though the submissive nature of the colonists made it so that in so many decades of Pelasgian domination, this measure had to be used only thrice. Indeed, this submissive nature was found in some due to a genuine belief that the Empire's technology and administration was making their lives progressively better, and in others due to a belief that, for all their dislike or even hatred of the Propontine Throne, they could not hope to defeat its armies, at least not without immense civilian losses. After all, Tephanon's native inhabitants had been under the domination of foreign Urudoah tribes for a long time, and to them foreign occupation was the only thing keeping the peace in Tephanon. In short, whilst the Pelasgian Exarchate was not loved by the locals, it was certainly seen as a tolerable, necessary and/or unavoidable evil.

Among the men meant to ensure that this necessary evil stayed in place was Enomotarches I (Sergeant First Class) Lykourgos Stavropoulos, a man who had migrated to Tephanon from Melingia about a decade ago. Like many in his native Melingia, Sergeant Stavropoulos was drawn to the security services, which were seen as a respected and necessary profession. Two of his brothers joined the Army, another joined the Military Aviation, and of his two sisters, one became a nurse in a military hospital and the other got herself a secretarial post at the Imperial Police.

Walking into the General Directorate Lykourgos climbed up the internal stairs and took off his pith helmet, past the reception desks and the waiting room, whose occupants he greeted, and into a corridor which led to the office of his commander, Anthypaspistes (Warrant Officer) Petros Apostolakis, a second generation settler from Chandax. The corridor itself was decorated in the fashion traditionally seen in Codris, and Lykourgos stopped before the wooden door of his commander, knocking on it.

"Come in," he heard the commander's voice say, and entered, standing in attention.

"Oh Sergeant, it is a pleasure to see you. At ease," the commander stated. The Warrant Officer's uniform was almost identical to that of the Sergeant, tan, with short pants, rolled up sleeves and a white pith helmet which was placed on his desk, save for the rank insignia: the Sergeant First Class bore four chevrons and a grenade on his sleeves, whilst the Warrant Officer bore a single, thin chevron connected to a horizontal line on his shoulders.

"The pleasure is all mine, sir. I was told to report to you for orders," the Sergeant replied; his face was reddenned by the sun, and his chestnut brown hair, which were the same colour as his eyes, were tightly cut, reflecting the tradition of the Pelasgian military for non-officer class troops. The Warrant Officer had somewhat longer hair, but lacked a moustache, the likes of which he would earn the privilege of growing were he ever promoted to Second Lieutenant, and his features were similar to those of the Sergeant, save for his dark green eyes.

"Indeed. First of all I would like to congratulate you on solving the case of Mrs. Eleutheriou's murder by that snake from the Far Orient."

"Thank you, Warrant Officer sir. I should note that the help of the young gentleman from Engellex and the doctor accompanying him was most crucial."

"You're welcome. You would be pleased to know that His Excellency, the Exarch congratulated them personally. I have also recommended your for a commendation for your own part. Now then, to your new orders."

As he uttered these last words the Warrant Officer set aside a document which he had been correcting up until that point, and looked up at the Sergeant.

"As you know, His Imperial Majesty's Government back in the Fatherland has grown rather weary of the illegal substances which are being smuggled into the Empire at an ever increasing rate. Last week, a freighter which had departed from our fair city was found to be bearing contraband narcotics. Since then, the State Secretariat for Public Order has decided to extend its crackdown on illegal narcotics to the Exarchate. Two days ago, a warehouse near the port possibly storing illegal substances was reported to us by a fisherman. Due to your recent success, Ypomoirarchos* Papakonstantinou asked for you to be put on this case personally. I do not hesitate to say that if you successfully get to the bottom of this, you might very well see yourself wearing the same shoulder insignia as me."
*Lieutenant

Sergeant Stavropoulos took a moment to think before replying. If he were successful he could finally make it to the threshold of the officer class. If not, he would be stuck at Sergeant First Class for life and would probably not even get the commendation the Warrant Officer mentioned.

"The Lieutenant's thinking so highly of me is humbling," he retorted; "I cannot help it but to accept the case, sir."

"Splendid. You shall find the details of the case in a file I have left for you with Ms. Kavarogiannou. I truly wish you the best of luck, Sergeant," said the Warrant Officer, as he stoof up to shake Lykourgos's hand. Following the handshake, Lykourgos saluted and exited the room. This would be the case that would make his career or break it.