Welcome to my little place of... I don't know, contemplation? Confusion? Who cares. This is where I write the stories of what happen to me everynight. Below I have taken portions from the first few posts here which should tell you all you need to know about this place.
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[Taken from "Am I Awake?"]
Okay, you may have a hard time believing this, but 12 hours ago I was in 500 BC Greece. Either that or I still am, and am just dreaming.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, aren't I? Alright. When I remember back far enough, about 50 years for me, but probably yesterday for you, I was living a normal life. I did school, I hung out with friends, listened to music, all that good stuff. Unfortunately, I was a little to normal. A little smaller and weaker than the neighborhood bullies, a little dumber than the average kid my age, you know, all that stuff. But then I went to sleep last night:
It feels like it was so long ago. I remember waking up on the side of the road in nothing but a tunic. This wasn't a paved road in a city like what I was used to. This was a dirt road through a grass plain in site of the mountains. And I didn't just wake up on my own. I was picked up off the ground by this man yelling at me in some language I couldn't understand. He was really tall, muscular, and lean. He had three others following him, but these were smaller and weaker than him. I soon learned they were his slaves. And he was a Spartan Warrior...
Now I'm stuck wondering whether I'm dreaming or not as I type this. I lived a whole life in this other time, other world. I was an old man, now I'm a boy again. At a computer. This must be a dream. I hardly care about what I cared for yesterday. Can hardly remember any recent events. My mind is stuck in 500 BC. Is this just me getting over what's happened the last half century? I don't know. Am I awake even? Am I?
After I was rudely awaken, I was forced to live as a slave for several days. However, I guess that since I was so different (since before being woken up I was... awake here, in this world, or time, or whatever), they decided to see if I could make a warrior out of myself. I won't get into those details AT ALL! Yes, they were the most elite soldiers in history possibly, but if I told you what they did to get that tough no one would be allowed to read this blog. It's just that intense. And, as we see it now, inhumane. But it worked. And for the next decade, I was put through that. It was not fun.
Now to go contemplate what's real and what's not. I might do more tomorrow.
[Taken from "Not Again"]
Now to tell you a bit more about living in Greece. After being dragged back to Sparta as a slave, I was put to work as a farmer. The work that a "real" man couldn't do because he was in war. Anyway, a bit of history you might not know, but for a spartan youth to become a man he has to sneak out of the city one night and with his bare hands, kill a helot (a slave). Well, remember how I said I was a slave here? Yeah. Apparently one of the strongest youths came out one night, and picked me to try and slay. I was awaken in the night by someone picking up the rock I was using as a pillow (I was sleeping out on the ground, didn't have anywhere else). I looked up and he had it raised above his head, ready to slam it down on me. I launched my legs backwards up above and behind my head, nailing him in the gut. He went tumbling back, while dropping the rock on his foot. I got up, ran over there, and managed to choke him to death. Next morning, I thought the others were going to kill me. Instead, they rewarded me! By... taking me into the city and whipping me until I fainted.
. . .
Now back to my "reward". I ended up finding out later, that this stupid whipping ceremony was actually what they did to all their kids in training. They would take all the kids being trained for war periodically, whether they were good or bad, and have them stand in front of these posts and whip them. They would whip them to see how long the kids could take it without making a sound. Those who fainted (like um... me) were considered weak. At least I managed not to cry out, like many I saw. But even if I had, they would have whipped me until I stopped. That's how they got the kids to shutup. If he misbehaved, they would beat him. If he cried out or made a sound, they would keep beating him until he stopped. Even if he fainted or died.
That, and the actual training was intense. My first day they brought me for pankration (possibly the oldest martial arts, but it didn't seem like an art. There were no rules), I saw one 10 year old boy KILL an older boy while practicing. And guess what, he was REWARDED FOR IT! Not like I had been, but an actual reward! And the boy that died? When his friend shed A SINGLE TEAR, he was beat. That boy couldn't walk for a week. But he never shed another tear, ever.
[Taken from "NO!"]
Now, there came a point in my Spartan training where I needed to learn survival skills. So to teach me, I was sent off for a year on my own with nothing but a tunic. And a whole... included winter. It was horrible. The first initial months weren't to bad. It was summer, after all. A little warm, but I could steal lots of honey and other food from the helots. I got in... conflicts with a few though. At this point, it wasn't my first time killing. But when winter actually came, things got hard. I had already, acquired, some basic tools (including a knife). It didn't do me a lot of good though when I was bathing in the cold water and a starved wolf attacked me. I ended up wrestling that thing in the freezing cold mountain water during the winter. After that day, I never complained about wrestling again. Or even full blown pankration. You try wrestling a wolf in a freezing river during the winter, while wearing nothing.
[Taken from "Success!"]
So where was I? Oh yeah, that stupid wolf. That thing supplied me with food for a month and some clothes. After that fight, and the initial few days of trying to recover from the cold and exertion (I don't care if I spelled that wrong), that winter wasn't really so bad. I had a wolf skin cloak going, and I had plenty of good meat (meaning the organs as well). At one point there were even some young helots who wanted revenge or something; wanted to rebel. I was, um... scouting a nearby little village of their's and over heard them. I decided to intervene for the sake of Sparta. That wolf cloak was died red from that night onward. I was feeling the power of a warrior. I felt ready for anything.
[Taken from "Sleep..."]
This is actually another great place where my very long stay as a Spartan helped out. After I finished the year of survival training, I got to come back. I was rewarded, properly, for doing so well. My reward? I was considered a real man, warrior, and Spartan. A full fledged citizen. And as such it was my duty to make war. I continued training and become the leader of a "squad" like band of other young spartans. My squad, and others like them, would conduct training missions against each other (as usual, often resulting in deaths), and even skirmishes/small wars with the local helots. Here we learned to fight as a small, cohesive group. Almost like special forces. And in the ancient world, that's what we were. Every Spartan soldier was an elite warrior, just as a special forces soldier. Imagine a city state where every male citizen was an elite Navy Seal or something. These guys were tough.
[Taken from "A King is Chosen"]
Now, speaking of Spartans, and since I called this post "A King is Chosen", I should get to the rest of my first story now. I left off, I believe, where I became the leader of a "squad". As I said, we did training "games" with and against other squads. Also against the helots. As the years went by, I became parts of bigger groups. Became a better soldier. And fought in real battles. By the time I became a full fledged soldier (a few years after I turned 30), I was the main war leader in Sparta. Even the kings looked to me much of the time, and they were the traditional war leaders.
Since the Greek City States were almost always in a state of war, it gave us Spartans plenty of time to relax from training. One of the Kings decided to do so as well. He lead an attack on Athens, bringing me with him believing I would greatly increase their chances. Otherwise he might never had attacked Athens head on like this. And increase their chances I did... I just didn't increase the King's chances. He died in battle, on the front line, by my side. His name was Leonidas. Some of you may recongize this name.
With Athens under our control, we thought no one could beat us. However, we forgot the Persians. While we made war with our neighbors, they Persians had been making threats towards all of Greece. We overlooked and ignored them. And the last time they had attacked, at the battle of Marathon, the ATHENIANS had managed to drive them back. If the Athens could stop a Persian attack, why couldn't we Spartans? We sat back happily and conquerored city after city. Then word came of the Persians finally coming. And since we took Athens and the other King died, I was chosen to take his place. I had even killed the messenger from the Persians asking for our allegience.
We decided to hold them off at a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea; a place called Thermopylae. Yes, the same place Leonidas historically held of the Persians. But I had changed things here. There were not the estimated 200,000-800,000 Persians vs 7,000 Greeks, including Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. No. This time, There were 2,000,000 Persians. We heard of them gathering troops for years, but never cared. The more Sparta conquerored and the stronger we became, the bigger Persia made her armies. And the worst part, I had the same difficulty gathering troops that Leonidas historically had. The Persians came during the Olymic games, as well as the Spartan festival of Carneia. A war festival, pretty much. And each one of these events prevented any military action during their course. And two of them at the same time was even worse. When I said we should gather forces to stop the Persians, every Greek said it would bring upon us the curses of the gods.
I told them the gods will have no one to curse or bless if the Persians were allowed to invade. Who would offer them sacrifices if all of the the Greeks lay dead? I told them that if the gods did not want me to go with my armies, than they may stop me. I challenged the gods to stop me. And nothing happened.
I gathered over 100,000 soldiers. Including over 10,000 Spartans. The Persians stood no chance. After a week of fighting, they began to retreat. We chased them. We hunted them. We slaughtered them. It was whispered among the Persians that I was our Greek god of war, Ares. They thought the very gods of the Greeks were fighting against them. Persia was the first empire to fall to Sparta. And it was not the last.
[Taken from "Fire"]
Oh yes! I nearly forgot. Remember that story from Sparta awhile ago? Where I conquered the Persian Empire? Well, I took over all of Europe, most of northern Africa, and the entire western section of Asia (everything a few hundred miles west of China). I took over Great Britain, which was never Great Britain here because of me. Iceland, Greenland, most of Canada and and a large portion of where the United States is today. I was actually on campaign to Australia when I awoke. That had been my first journey. After almost literally having the whole world in your hands, suddenly waking up as a normal boy in some neighborhood is quite... strange. It was hard to recover, but I've learned since than.
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Well, that's the basic story of my first night. Read other posts to read about the others. I also have an official Facebook page for here, so please like it: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Dreamed-A-Reality
Follow this blog and it's page, I want to build a community here so I can talk with people about my journies. Right now I'm just talking to myself :(
