Hi guys, I have contacted a tax advisory in my country regarding crypto taxation laws in order to confirm certain things, however, I left there with more questions than answers, it seems crypto is highly green area in Malta and I am getting confused daily. I have a substantial amount of crypto invested and I also participated in some day trading in the past year and I am confused, the advisory stated that, a. Crypto to crypto transactions do NOT create a taxable event. b. Only when cashing out to FIAT will you have to pay taxes on the profit. c. Also taxation is based on income tax. Now my confusion is that none of what the advisory said was written on paper, so he could have just been throwing me off or maybe he wasn't even sure what he was talking about, so I'm still somewhat paranoid on this tax thing. Based on the below article on Malta taxation laws can you confirm that what the advisory said is inline? I have pasted the source of the article as well on the bottom of the post for your perusal. Please note: that I have been a resident in Malta for all my life, if that makes any difference, which I assume it does. Thanks a lot in advance.
How and when are coins and tokens taxed in Malta?
Coins The tax treatment of transactions involving coins would be identical to the tax treatment of transactions involving fiat or conventional currency. As such, coins fall outside the scope of income tax and duty, and gains on isolated transfers will not be taxed in Malta. Conversely, where the Coins are transferred as part of a coin exchange business or trade, profits realised from such business would be taxed at the standard Maltese corporate income tax rate of 35%. By the application of structuring options which are available under the Maltese full imputation system, the effective tax rate on such trading income could be reduced to between 5% and nil. The exchange of coins for other cryptocurrencies or for fiat money where such exchange constitutes a supply of services for consideration will not be liable to VAT. Mining would also fall outside of scope of VAT, unless it is carried out against payment of transaction fees. Financial Tokens A return on financial tokens such as payments equivalent to dividends, interest, premiums is treated as income and taxed in the hands of the holder at the applicable rates (progressive capped at 35% where the holder is an individual and standard 35% where the holder is a company) subject to available exemptions. Where the financial token meets the definition of security, essentially, having profit-participating rights, gains derived upon a transfer of such tokens fall within taxable capital gains, to which a number of exemptions apply. Where gains are derived in the nature of trade, such as where the transfer is part of a profit-making undertaking or scheme, they will be treated as trading income and subject to tax at 35% which may be mitigated as aforementioned when dividends are distributed through the application of the Maltese full imputation system. The transfer of a financial token will generally be liable to stamp duty only where it meets the definition of a security at law, and then also subject to available exemptions. The VAT treatment of transactions in financial tokens depends on the return to which they are entitled. If they qualify as securities, relevant exemptions apply. Utility tokens While non-business transfers will not be subject to income tax or duty, profits arising from a trade or business in utility tokens will be treated as trading income and subject to tax at 35%, with the possibility of benefitting from the full imputation system as indicated above. Furthermore, transfers of convertible utility tokens not being financial tokens at the time of issue will be treated as non-taxable until such time as they are converted into financial tokens.From a VAT perspective, transactions in utility tokens would be treated as transactions in vouchers and the issuer will be required to account for VAT on the utility tokens based on its context. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) or Token Generation Events The issue or generation of financial tokens will not attract tax and VAT implications in Malta. However, payment for the issue of utility tokens is likely to constitute income derived by the issuer, which ought to be taxed when realised. Generally where the good or service for which the utility token is issued and the corresponding price cannot be clearly identified, no VAT implications arise. Exchanges Income derived by crypto exchanges is considered to be trading income and treated as such. Where the provision of exchange facilities is against a fee, the supply would be VATable unless the DLT asset traded is classified as a currency or security under VAT law. Source: https://home.kpmg/mt/en/home/insights/2019/01/blockchain-tax-guidelines-in-malta.html#:~:text=As%20such%2C%20coins%20fall%20outside,income%20tax%20rate%20of%2035%25.
I was wondering what the tax is like on relatively low-income trades from stocks and CFDs in Malta. Do they count as foreign-sourced income thus exempt or do they count with the capital gains? The trading is being done on an online platform (Trading212) which is not based in Malta, however the bank is Maltese. Thanks.
The History of the Arretian Merchant Republic [from foundation to modern day] - warning 5,000 words
Feathers over Arretia is an indie RPG dealing with the most serious criminal elements threatening society: smol birbs. The game takes place in the fictional city of Arretia, a modern setting with some minor fantasy elements. HISTORY PART I THE FOUNDING MYTHS All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic. Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection 334BC Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia. In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground. His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land. Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it. So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel. In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.” Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity. Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location. But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day. Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander 323 BC Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling. Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed. Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir. However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day. Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war. Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today. Myth 3 – The First Flight 440 BC In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it. On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot. Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C. The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman. One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans. Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.” Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea. Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process. PART II ANCIENT HISTORY The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes. Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil. Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean. PART III PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.” All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith. Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money. In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King. The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more. PART IV ROMAN INVOLVEMENT The Vote By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite. All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote. The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter. The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire. Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy. The Landing Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people." The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic The Byzantine Period While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily. So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time. Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall. The Plague The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium. The Arretians tell a different story. In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation: The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us]. Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts. The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs. In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation. The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life. On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible. An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species. On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim. Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter. Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted. By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea. PART V – THE OTTOMANS Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:
The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant
The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory
The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides. Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan. A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies. Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment. The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums. Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing. PART VI – MODERN HISTORY The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support. Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years. In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!” The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy. Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning. It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before. In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished. Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection. Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly. Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.
Valentine's Day Update Special AKA 20,000 Subs Speical AKA Dev Diary 3: The History of the Arretian Merchant Republic [from foundation to modern day] - warning 5,000 words
FEATHERS OVER ARRETIA WORLD BUILDING Feathers over Arretia is an indie RPG dealing with the most serious criminal elements threatening society: smol birbs. The game takes place in the fictional city of Arretia, a modern setting with some minor fantasy elements. To read the pitch see: https://www.reddit.com/illegallysmolbirbs/comments/k0p19n/thanksgiving_announcement_the_illegallysmolbirbs/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=illegallysmolbirbs&utm_content=t3_kexuy4 To read the first dev diary where I go into the characters you can play as see: https://reddit.com/illegallysmolbirbs/comments/kexuy4/christmas_announcement_dev_diary_1_the_dream_team/ HISTORY PART I THE FOUNDING MYTHS All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic. Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection 334BC Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia. In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground. His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land. Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it. So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel. In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.” Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity. Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location. But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day. Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander 323 BC Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling. Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed. Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir. However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day. Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war. Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today. Myth 3 – The First Flight 440 BC In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it. On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot. Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C. The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman. One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans. Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.” Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea. Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process. PART II ANCIENT HISTORY The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes. Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil. Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean. PART III PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.” All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith. Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money. In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King. The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more. PART IV ROMAN INVOLVEMENT The Vote By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite. All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote. The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter. The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire. Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy. The Landing Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people." The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic The Byzantine Period While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily. So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time. Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall. The Plague The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium. The Arretians tell a different story. In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation:
The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us].
Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts. The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs. In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation. The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life. On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible. An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species. On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim. Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter. Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted. By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea. PART V – THE OTTOMANS Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:
1. The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant 2. The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory
The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides. Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan. A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies. Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment. The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums. Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing. PART VI – MODERN HISTORY The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support. Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years. In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!” The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy. Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning. It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before. In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished. Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection. Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly. Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.
The History of the Arretian Merchant Republic [from foundation to modern day] - warning 5,000 words
HISTORY PART I THE FOUNDING MYTHS All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic. Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection 334BC Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia. In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground. His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land. Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it. So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel. In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.” Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity. Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location. But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day. Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander 323 BC Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling. Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed. Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir. However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day. Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war. Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today. Myth 3 – The First Flight 440 BC In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it. On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot. Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C. The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman. One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans. Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.” Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea. Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process. PART II ANCIENT HISTORY The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes. Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil. Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean. PART III PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.” All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith. Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money. In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King. The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more. PART IV ROMAN INVOLVEMENT The Vote By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite. All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote. The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter. The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire. Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy. The Landing Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people." The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic The Byzantine Period While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily. So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time. Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall. The Plague The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium. The Arretians tell a different story. In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation:
The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us].
Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts. The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs. In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation. The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life. On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible. An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species. On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim. Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter. Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted. By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea. PART V – THE OTTOMANS Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:
1. The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant 2. The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory
The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides. Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan. A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies. Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment. The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums. Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing. PART VI – MODERN HISTORY The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support. Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years. In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!” The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy. Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning. It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before. In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished. Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection. Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly. Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.
The History of the Arretian Merchant Republic [from foundation to modern day] - warning 5,000 words
Feathers over Arretia is an indie RPG dealing with the most serious criminal elements threatening society: smol birbs. The game takes place in the fictional city of Arretia, a modern setting with some minor fantasy elements. HISTORY PART I THE FOUNDING MYTHS All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic. Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection 334BC Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia. In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground. His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land. Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it. So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel. In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.” Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity. Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location. But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day. Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander 323 BC Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling. Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed. Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir. However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day. Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war. Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today. Myth 3 – The First Flight 440 BC In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it. On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot. Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C. The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman. One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans. Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.” Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea. Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process. PART II ANCIENT HISTORY The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes. Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil. Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean. PART III PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.” All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith. Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money. In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King. The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more. PART IV ROMAN INVOLVEMENT The Vote By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite. All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote. The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter. The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire. Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy. The Landing Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people." The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic The Byzantine Period While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily. So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time. Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall. The Plague The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium. The Arretians tell a different story. In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation: The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us]. Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts. The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs. In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation. The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life. On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible. An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species. On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim. Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter. Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted. By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea. PART V – THE OTTOMANS Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:
The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant
The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory
The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides. Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan. A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies. Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment. The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums. Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing. PART VI – MODERN HISTORY The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support. Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years. In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!” The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy. Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning. It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before. In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished. Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection. Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly. Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.
The History of the Arretian Merchant Republic [from foundation to modern day] - warning 5,000 words
HISTORY PART I THE FOUNDING MYTHS All great cities of the Ancient World have foundation myths, Arretia is no different. There are competing stories that claim legitimacy as the “true” foundation myth of the city. Both have considerable academic merit and the debate has continued for centuries as to which is the “true” myth. However recent excavations on the Mount of Cages, which contains some of the most ancient remains of the old part of the city, have revealed a third story in recent years that is as popular as it is fantastic. Myth 1 – The Aristotelian Connection 334BC Crowned King of Macedon at age 20 with the death of his father Phillip II, Alexander consolidated power on the Greek countryside, taking on Illyria, Thebes and Athens before continuing his father’s life’s work: the invasion of Persia. In 334 BC Alexander set foot upon the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellespont and claimed the entirety of it’s continent with the ceremonial thrust of a spear into the ground. His tutor and advisor Aristotle, perhaps the smartest man alive at the time, prudently informed the young conqueror with a whisper that this moment should be commemorated for posterity as generations would want to know where it was the gods themselves acquiesced to his demands for land. Alexander’s exact response isn’t known but he broadly let Aristotle know that if it was so important, he could do it. So a small shrine was erected at the spot where the spear lay, consecrated by a priestess of Delphi retained with the party for such events and a plaque was written in Greek and Persian telling all who could read of its history. Aristotle himself dictated the passage and etched his own mark into the bottom with hammer and chisel. In May 334 BC, when Alexander defeated Memnon of Rhodes in The Battle of the Granicus River, the first blow against the might of Persia, Aristotle recommended a similar monument be made. Alexander was impudent and demanded the tutor just make a sign pointing to the last shrine to save time. A slip of the lip caused that sign to read “Με αυτόν τον τρόπο στην πλάκα του Αριστοτέλη” or “This way to Aristotle’s plaque.” Some say that this mistake made its way back to the young King who decided to make sure such a mistake could never again occur, founding innumerable cities in his own name from that day forward. Ironically, playing right into Aristotle’s original ploy to get Alexander serious about building a legacy and not just pursuing glory in vanity. Over decades, the spear was eventually stolen and the shrine looted but the plaque remained stalwart and vivid as the day it was carved, as did the signs directing people to its location. But “Aristotle’s plaque” became shortened to “Aristotle’s [land]” and eventually was misread as Arretia in a Roman census which stuck around to the present day. Myth 2 – The Disgraced Commander 323 BC Even before Alexander’s retreat from India in the final year of his life, the empire he had spent years building was already in danger of crumbling. Disloyal generals, governors and bureaucrats of the West who once groveled at his feet were no longer cowed upon his departure to lands further and further East. Threats of rebellion simmered and the empire was already being carved up by conspirators in back rooms long before Alexander ever lay upon his deathbed. Before the Wars of the Diadochi tore this empire asunder a dozen times, one of Alexander’s most loyal allies Antigonus I who had followed him all the way from Greece having served his father Philip II had his son Antigonus II sent in secret back to his holdings in Macedon with a fortune in gold to build support for his claim to the empire once Alexander finally died without an heir. However his return was slow and exorbitant as the young noble caroused at every city and village on the long journey from Persia and by the time he had finally reached The Hellespont, not only was much of his fortune squandered but his own party betrayed him, throwing him off of the gangway at the last second before boarding ship which sailed towards Crete. Either bad fortune or the very wrath of the gods saw it cast to the bottom of the Aegean where the gold remains undiscovered to this day. Learning of his son’s incompetent failure, Antigonus I had his name stricken from history and rewrote his family lineage so that Demetrius I was his issue, not Antigonus II. Historians debate how much gold was lost in this event but many agree that had the trip been successful, Antigonus I might have bought-off Ptolemy long enough to keep the empire from falling to civil war. Yet locals still recall in vivid detail the folly of Antigonus II and took to calling the area where he was betrayed as ανόητος ηλίθιος στη νερό (silly idiot in the water) which was shortened over time to ατοςιος σερό and eventually αρτηρία or Arretia today. Myth 3 – The First Flight 440 BC In 1989, a small excavation at the Mount of Cages began as a joint effort by the Committee of Arretian Historical Preservation (CAHP) and the Fine Arts College of Arretia (FACA) to find relics of the city’s past succeeded and may have changed history with its discovery of a plaque far more ancient than any others before it. On this plaque in worn Copper and Jade was the following: 𒀀𒆷𒀸𒊭𒄠𒈪𒅖𒉺𒋫𒀀𒀸𒉿𒈾𒀜𒋾𒅖 (Wanattis patas Alasammis) along the faint impression of a human foot. Tests determined the plaque to be authentic, tracing back to the middle of the 5th Century B.C. The human foot was determined to be that of a young woman. One enterprising youth working on a PHD in Comparative Linguistic Studies suggested that the engraving might be Luwian Swadesh, a form of ancient Cuneiform thought to be used by the Trojans. Translated the plaque reads: “[where from] the sea [a] woman’s foot.” Although the subject on intense debate between Arretian, Turkish and Greek scholars, it is believed by some that this spot was where Helen of Troy first stepped on land after being abducted by Prince Paris in the time immediately before the Trojan War. This theory is buoyed due to Arretia’s proximity to the ruins of Troy and soil erosion patterns suggest that the Mount of Cages was at one time a natural jetty sticking out into the sea. Now a Professor Emeritus of the Linguistics Department of the FACA, Dr. Merlin Bruce Codlack’s book “Beneath the Mount” maintains that the old form of Trojan gave rise to the common use of the name Arretia for the area over centuries as the spoken language was invaded by Greek cognates which turned “Alsammis” and “patas” to “Arretpatas” by the time of Alexander who adopted the name simplifying it to Arretia in the process. PART II ANCIENT HISTORY The meteoric ascendancy of Greece during the time of Alexander brought prosperity to Asia Minor along with immigration at rates unheard of. Due to its strategic position in a natural harbor, a small trading community sprang up in the region which grew at an accelerated pace due the influx of trade between itself, Byzantium and Rhodes. Ancient merchants who spoke of the glory of the Colossus as it was being built in the 3rd Century BC made mention of the cheap provisions that could be had a few days sail further along the coast at Arretia which now boasted a considerable farming community lured to the area by cheap land and fertile soil. Migrating herds of black cattle moving along transits laid by the Hittites 1,000s of years earlier became an increasingly common site in the town. Before long, the citizens had erected crude palisades and a considerable watchtower upon what would later be known as the Mount of Cages where a band of far-sighted archer mercenaries from across the Greek world stood ever vigilant, paid in turn with generous land grants and even more gracious payment than could be found anywhere else in the Mediterranean. PART III PRE-ROMAN OCCUPATION Centuries of good fortune, prosperity and mild weather turned the small town into a bustling city by the time of Rome. Generations of increasingly confident watchmen and prudent city defense planning had turned the once wooden tower into a stone monolith which through the clever use of mirrors and a coal fire was able to light the sea for miles around at night while lenses developed by Archimedes himself at Syracuse were re-engineered to make Arretian scouts unrivaled marksmen capable of sighting fleets days before they would normally be spotted – in no small part egged on by a merchant class of considerable power which gambled heavily and recklessly with commodity speculation. A common phrase at the time was “no grain ship can leave Alexandria for Rome without some Arretian knowing about it, selling and trading its cargo before the sails are even unfurled.” All of these marvels paled in comparison to Rhodes to the South and Arretians prided themselves on being the underdog rival, resulting in a hundred fortunes lost beneath the soaring arm of the Colossus won back under Arretia’s stone monolith. Despite most mapmakers placing Arretia firmly within the bounds of the territories of the Seleucid Empire, the only tax ever paid to that crumbling backwater was a single pure silver slug approximately 10 grams in weight paid annually by one of the many merchant families via courier addressed directly to the King of the Seleucids. When this tradition first started with the founding of the city during the days of Alexander, such a payment was a king’s ransom but over time became so much of a pittance that the families boasted decades of “taxes” were pre-paid in their basement next to the cheap wine and how droll it all seemed that some distant king truly needed the money. In 217 BC, the Selucid King Antiochus III the Great in an attempt to revive the dying empire made war on Egypt and lost at the Battle of Raphia. Though bloodied, the king engaged in a restructuring of his lands which was mostly focused on quelling rebellions and consolidating power in the East while giving up on retaking Syria for the time being. In service to these efforts, he raised taxes and Arretia found itself the subject of an event that has been colloquially known as The Shaming of The King. The story goes that the Seleucid King’s tax collector arrived in Arretia to find its walls (once wooden now solid stone) manned with troops in full battle regalia and the gate locked. However the side gate (known as the Eye of the Sling) was opened just enough that he might crawl through it and a small banner made of finest silk confirmed that was expected of him saying “για τους φτωχούς (for the poor)” with an arrow pointing down at it. The tax collector humbly crawled down into the gate finding it covered in animal muck and mud along the bottom. When he crossed the threshold the patriarchs of the merchant families stood proud and tall alongside strongboxes arrayed before him. When the tax collector stood up, covered in filth, the men tipped the boxes over, showering his feet in silver coins a hundred deep which sank quickly into the mud before walking silently back to their estates without a word. Tradition states that the tax collector spent days sifting through the muck as it hardened, collecting a small fortune before realizing he had no possible way to carry it back to his King in the East. Legend states that he stole a muck-rakers cart and escaped through the gate which had been left open in the meantime with a pile of silver and dung half a man high. He was eventually able to find passage back in less humiliating fashion but the message was clear: Arretia thought King Antiochus III to be a common beggar, no more. PART IV ROMAN INVOLVEMENT The Vote By the 1st Century BC Rome’s ascendancy was all but assured. While Carthage remained a valuable trade partner, its destruction in the Third Punic War half a century earlier made even the richest houses of Arretia quake with fear. In 145 BC, exactly one year after her strongest ally was burnt to the ground and her fields salted the great houses organized a plebiscite. All adult male citizens and freemen or women who owned property were allowed to vote. Voting occurred over a three week period allowing even the most disparate of farmers or merchants out at sea an opportunity to vote. The vote was simple: shall Arretia resist Rome, yay or nay? Nay votes were symbolized by a feather from a rooster, chosen at random in the market stalls from vendors as part of a lot system while the yay votes came from hens along similar lines. Over three weeks it is said there was not a single unplucked chicken in Anatolia. On the final day it was found that the ‘nays’ had won by a landslide and the great houses debated how best to interpret this matter. The three richest houses proclaimed they would sign a treaty of friendship with Rome, offering them a similar deal to that offered to the now defunct Seleucid Empire. Over the Winter a grand ceremony was planned and preparations made for the envoy. The Landing Two great ships were built, The Romulus of Apollo and The Remus of Februus, adorned in gold and silver respectively. Carried by sails of silk, rowed by the tallest slaves of Parthia, full of exotic spices from the Far East, captained by men who claimed to have reached the Southern-most Tip of Africa and full of a ransom fit for any three emperors combined, along with a single daughter of each great home trained in Latin, the fleet anchored off Rome’s Portus artificial harbor off the north bank of the Tiber on April 5th, 144 BC on the dawn of the Festival of Fortuna Publica, or the "luck of the people." The young women approached the senate and handed forth reams of purple vellum explaining the offer of Arretia to the upstart hegemon. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Counsul a the time and elected during the Fortuna Publica festival in 154 BC coincidentally, accepted the terms: Arretia would provide logistical support, technical expertise and ships to the Roman Navy 10 talents of silver annually paid to the Roman Senate Build a new Pantheon in Arretia for the Roman Gods Rome would exempt her citizens of any taxes or drafts Rome would become her protectorate should any enemies declare war on the merchant republic The Byzantine Period While Rome seemed unstoppable, Arretia was a haven of intellectual involvement and oligarchy as the richest men and women of the known world demanded citizenship, if only to avoid the harsh taxation of Rome at home. Soon there was a row of homes, all empty, where dozens of Arretian “citizens” “lived” but even the most fastidious bureaucrat in Italy was hopelessly lost in the ocean of paperwork Arretian civil servants produced daily. So it was that when Constantine the Great decreed that Constantinople would be the new Capitol of the Roman Empire, the whole of Arretia held its breath. Along with his tax reform and re-issuance of the currency (debasing it with cheaper metals and forcing all Roman citizens to pay in coin for government fees and taxes), Constantine demanded Arretia triple their existing tribute until Constantinople was finished with construction of the Hagia Sophia (Megale Ekklesia or Big Church) Arretian merchants, craftsmen, builders, surveyors and brick layers descended upon the new city like a flock seagulls upon an uncovered market stall, determined to have it finished in record time. Legend has it that for every brick laid in Constantinople, another was laid in Arretia. The old Pantheon was retrofitted behind closed gates and under grand tents. On February 15th, 360 AD during the reign of the emperor Constantius II when The Hagia Sophia was concentrated and opened to the public. While The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had more artifacts on display, The Hagia Sophia held the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch and The Pantheon still had the largest dome in the world, The Ecclesiae Baptismate (Church of the Baptism) contained by some estimates nearly 40% of all pieces of the True Cross to exist in the world at the time, ironically making the Cross replica itself nearly 74 feet tall. The Plague The Plague of Justinian 541 AD killed untold millions throughout the world, originating in either Asia or Africa, the first documented reports of its involvement according to Byzantine source Procopius was in Egypt’s port of Pelusium. The Arretians tell a different story. In 540 AD a sailor from the Far East was found floating in the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the coast of Axum by an unknown Arretian vessel. Its captain recorded in stone tablet (as all wood and papers had dissolved in the salt water) this message. He then scuttled the vessel to the bottom of the sea to protect the world as best he could and forestall the inevitable coming devastation:
The [man] is turning black before our eyes as though some fire burns from within his groin and [armpits]. The spits the most vile [substances] and convulses in the night. I notice [on myself] the same growing painful lumps and it is my duty to stop this [plague] before my crew are infected. May God have mercy on [us].
Spies and merchants (if there ever was truly a distinction to the Arretians) reported on rumors in Pelusium of a sickness that spread like locusts. The 15 Great Houses of Arretia held an emergency meeting that very night, un-customarially sharing all possible information on the sickness and concluded in a matter of hours that the city must survive, no matter the costs. In the most Arretian way possible a 2 day state of emergency was declared. Any and all food stores were seized, any and all ship traffic in the harbor was seized, the bowels of all ships emptied while furious captains were silenced with bags of silver too large to carry by any one pack animal, and sent back to their port of call without explanation. The countryside was picked clean and all foreign citizens warned to not return to the city upon pain of death. The walls were redoubled with temporary wooden facades, the gates sealed shut with leaded locks for which no key was made. From the highest aviaries to the lowest jetties, not an inch of the city went upturned. Every fishing boat was impressed and triple staffed for back-to-back shifts until the sea around Arretia was scraped clean of all marine life. On the last night, all boats were returned to the harbor where they were dismantled, along with the harbor itself while the stone edifices of the great houses and mansions of the typically unoccupied but ostentatious ‘Roman Quarter’ were thrown into the harbor creating a temporary breakwater which was reinforced with pitch and tar until water sealed and a great fire set ablaze on the shore. Boiling water in so great a quantity bathed the city in salt, collected from windows, walls and the ground itself to preserve every scrap of meat and fish possible. An especially hardy species of mushroom from far off Gaul of the Grooty Strain (brought over by some trader years earlier) was discovered growing underneath a porch and at once a massive team of laborers set to work retrofitting every basement, vault and catacomb into nurseries for the tiny gray intrusive species. On the dawn of the third day Arretia had gone from a glittering example of the height of civility into a militarized, insular micro-nation where the rich and poor alike bore the filth of manual labor and the treasures of a dozen generations lay in the hands of foreign nations that had no idea why they had reversed centuries of trade policy on a whim. Only Justinian’s spies had even a clue and they warned him that the Empire of Rome itself might do the same, a premise shouted down in the Senate a handful of times until bodies started piling up in the street, far too late to matter. Accurate records are not possible but it is said Arretia lost a tenth of her population to starvation, rioting and disease. But not one single death from plague was ever noted. By the time the Black Plague entered the world, Arretia had learned from the mistakes of the past and had years worth of imperishable stocked away in hidden caves with secondary and even third basements covered in edible plants that thrived in the dank, lightless environment supplying a grateful populous who still shared stories of the darkest time in her history. The Venetians claim to have invented the Quarantine but in fact, Arretia had perfected the practice while Venice was still flotsam floating in the Adriatic Sea. PART V – THE OTTOMANS Almost 500 years of constant war, against the Huns, Cumans, Samaritans, Sassanids, Seljuks and others on just her Eastern borders, the Byzantine Empire strained at the edges and much of Asia Minor was lost to the Turks. In 1071AD a number of very forward-thinking members of the Great Houses of Arretia sent spies along with the Roman Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in his campaign to once again bring all of Anatolia under Roman rule. At the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071AD two very important events took place:
1. The Emperor himself was captured and would be paraded throughout the Seljuk Empire in chains before ransomed at a price even the Arretians found exorbitant 2. The Arretians returned upon the fastest horses money could buy from dubious mercenary Pechenegs in the middle of the night still drunk on the glory of victory
The Great Houses were divided on whether or not to prop up an Empire that seemed on the brink of collapse who they had sunk mountains of gold and silver into in the hope that they could once again establish themselves in the hinterlands, whether they should take advantage of the weakness of Rome to declare independence and even take Constantinople while it remained unguarded by her legions or bend knee to the Turks. The matter was put to vote, however in order to maintain perfect secrecy only members of the ruling families were able to participate, those that were in the city at the time that is. By a margin of exactly 1 vote which came from what would later be described as “the desiccated corpse of a Pater familias dug up from a catacomb, adorned in sweet perfumes and operated by a series of pulleys and bellows,” Arretia switched sides. Some say The Cross in The Ecclesiae Baptismate which had towered over pilgrims for hundreds of years was torn down that morning while other historians maintain it was buried under a nearby hill until such time as the city could be returned to its old faith safely. Whatever the case, the building was converted to a Grand Mosque and a procession left a few days later to pay homage to their new suzerain in Isfahan. A cohort of 400 of the strongest boys Arretia had to offer arrived at the head of the caravan, to comprise the a contingent of troops that over time would come to be the Elite Janissary of the Ottoman Empire. With them came oxen laden with ten years worth of tribute in gold, and the plans for a massive highway to be built along the route to facilitate trade between the new allies. Sultan Alp Arslan’s Grand Viser accepted the terms as dictated by the Arretians after hardly a glance at the treaty, so great was his desire to impress such a fabulously wealthy nation that came crawling on its knees without the rattle of a saber, they were essentially the same as offered the Romans before him and the Ottoman Fleet quadrupled in size with the flourish of a quill upon purple parchment. The Arrentians, with the exception of those cohorts they sent every year and what few sailors they could not procure from elsewhere, remained circumspect of their new Ottoman masters and it is often said that even the Imam in the Grand Mosque still wore a cross under his robes. Though coffeehouses, hookah dens and other Near Eastern proprietors were already common in the city, a new flood of Turkish shops came and went as they realized that the Arretians were terribly nepotistic in their shopping patterns and the Great Houses were willing to sell storefronts with one hand while making sure no suppliers or contracts would ever make it through customs with the other. While the flag above the city changed shape and color, its people still walked through Roman style bathhouses and drank wine freely in the plazas and museums. Over the centuries during the Siege of Malta in 1429 AD, Siege of Rhodes 1522 AD, the Second Siege of Malta in 1565 AD, and Constantinople itself in 1203 AD, 1204 AD, 1235 AD, 1236 AD, 1376 AD , 1391AD, 1394-1402AD, 1411AD, 1422 AD and finally 1453 AD, it is said the families of Arretia wept as openly as their once-bretherin Romans. There stands a plaque in the central plaza listing the name of every Arretian who died in those sieges, to the puzzlement of modern historians it seems that either those commissioning the plaque were unconcerned with accuracy or almost 10% of those three cities were comprised of Arretians. DNA testing of survivors is inconclusive but ongoing. PART VI – MODERN HISTORY The Ottoman Empire waned with time, eventually becoming the “Sick Man of Europe” and the West conspired for decades over who would get Arretia for their own like squabbling children looking at the will of a man on life support. Following the conclusion of WW1 and the imposition of the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10th, 1920 Arretia was nominally under Italian rule for the first time in 100s of years. In a drunken, semi-coherent speech in April 1923, ‘Il Duce’ Benito Mussolini (having recently succeeded in a coup the year previous and setting about dissolving any political opposition) proclaimed to an audience of fellow blackshirts that “Direct rule from Rome would begin again in Arretia by morning!” The following morning Moussolini awoke with a hangover and a single feather on his pillow beside him. Thinking nothing of it, as he was used to errant feathers poking out of his pillow from time to time, he simply re-fluffed his own pillow to find it strangely heavy and lumpy. Opening the case, he found it stuffed full of Italian Lire, exactly ₤ 2,250. The same amount he had mailed to his Mistress for rent that month. In a rush he grabbed a phone and had the operator connect him with her, who answered very surprised as she pointed out he himself had paid her rent via check and spent the night with her before leaving in the very early morning. It took hours for his bank to confirm the check was genuine and his signature authentic. Moussolini called for Achille Starace, the Press Secretary of the Office of the Presidency of the Council and his brother Arnaldo Mussolini, the editor of the state-occupied Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, to shred any and all documentation of his speech the night before. In a single night, Italian dreams of returning Arretia to its dominion vanished. Rumor has it that Carmine Coppola heard the story from a relative who was there that night for the speech and told an impressionable Francis Ford Coppola about it in his childhood, sparking the famous horse’s head scene in 1972’s The Godfather. The Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the connection. Arretian pseudo-independence was celebrated by thousands of sailors between 1940 and 1943 who’s lives were protected by their ‘Eagle-eyed guides’ spotting submarines at the last second, steering unarmed convoys away from sea mines or even bad weather long range radar couldn’t pick up. During the Battle of Britain, those same guides filled in gaps left by long-range spotter balloons and rode along RAF Spitfires and P-51s when their own spotters, gunners and even pilots were too tired, wounded or shaken to keep the skies friendly. Though not formally invited to the Yalta Conference in February, 1945, Arretian diplomats helped steer Marshall Plan funding for years, were instrumental in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, were the first non-continental member of the EU in 1973, wrote almost half of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, kept the Common Currency negotiations from falling apart in 1999, bought half of all Greek Debt during the European Financial Crisis of 2008 and ironically now own half of all proven European Oil Reserves due to meddling in Brexit Negotiations just two years ago, buying North Sea drilling rights for pence on the Euro. While the EU is ruled from Brussels, most politicians would concede that most legislation is written in Arretia using Arretian ink by Arretian claws and hands alike.
In Malta the taxation of an individual's income is progressive; i.e. the higher an individual's income, the higher the tax paid. Payment of personal tax is mainly effected either through the Provisional Tax system, the FSS (Final Settlement System) or by means of the Self-Assessment. The Global Residence Programme is aimed at attracting more third country national individuals in taking up residence in Malta without taking up employment in Malta, with foreign-source income remitted to Malta by the beneficiary or its dependants being taxed at a flat rate of 15%, subject to a minimum tax of EUR 15,000 per annum. Taxation in Malta . Malta is far from a Tax Heaven, it is a very well know reputable EU jurisdiction that enjoys fully EU Approved laws and regulations. We will guide you on the benefits that International Investors in Malta can utilise. Taxation choose your function. Customs and Excise. Online Payments. Tax events Visit Malta. The Official Tourism Site for Malta, Gozo and Comino ... Toggle navigation Taxation Online Developed by Toggle navigation Taxation Online Developed by ... Under Malta’s taxation system, there is no tax on inheritance, wealth or gifts. But, note that the usual 5% stamp duty still applies to immovable property transferred as part of an estate. A surviving spouse only pays the duty on half the value of their marital home when their partner dies. Additional tools ; VIES VAT number validation. Important Disclaimer: As of 01/01/2021, the VoW service to validate UK (GB) VAT numbers ceased to exist while a new service to validate VAT numbers of businesses operating under the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland appeared. Welcome to the Income Tax Services on-Line. The Commissioner for Revenue is seeking to improve service levels to taxpayer by encouraging you to access your Tax Statement online either by using the e-ID or the CORP (for government officials only) credentials. Since its establishment in 1995, the MIT has strived to establish itself as a professional body for advisers, practitioners and academics operating in the field of taxation in Malta, promoting the highest standards in the tax profession, through the creation of learning opportunities and ongoing professional education, and contributing toward the development of local tax policy, legislation ... This article gives an insight into the Malta Taxation system for Resident non-Doms, focusing on entities. Subject to corporate tax in Malta on remittance basis are entities incorporated outside of Malta, with a place of effective management and control in Malta.
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