Bronze Age Collapse

[Michael]

I'd guess it'd be safe to pin some blame on the Silver Ladder as well for the collapse?

As of 2e they didn't exist yet.

What makes you say that anyway?

[Flyboy254]

Ancient Egypt, the Assyrians, the Hittites, all of them seem like candidates for the Ladder to go, "Hellooooooooo, heir to Atlantis!"

[wyrdhamster]

Well Silver Ladder was not there yet ( and for next 800 years), but Omphalos cults of Hierarchy of Being ( from which Silver Ladder Order comes from) are more than wide spread - and any of those 4 Empires of Bronze Age would have their own Omphalos mage-priests. There canon pointings to trys to creation of what later was described as Atlantis - see Minoan and Hyperborean 'Atlantis' event of 1500 and 800 BCE in History of Awakened topic.

[Live Bait]

I too watch Extra History and was thinking the collapse would be a be a great time for the Strix to clear out the old kindred to make way for the clans we know of but it might be a little too far back, also it could be the point where we became aware of the God Machine and it was responsible for the collapse or the world faced some sort of meme entity (both explain the loss of writing, the GM would seek to remove our knowledge of it and destroying our recalled keeping ability would weaken a meme entity).

[Michael]

The Second Sothic Turn from Sothis Ascends is 910 BC. It's a quarter of a millenium out, but it's clearly written in the shadow of the Collapse.

Interestingly, it effectively states that the biblical narrative of the Exodus and after is basically correct (there are even judges wandering around), which alters history a fair bit, especially since I've seen it suggested that the Exodus is based on the memories of the withdrawl of Egyptian domination following the Collapse.

[malonkey1]

I'd guess it'd be safe to pin some blame on the Silver Ladder as well for the collapse?

At first, I thought you were referring to the Celestial Ladder. In which case, one could say that every societal collapse is the result of it, in a sense. It's the Tower of Babel, basically, and the abstractness of the Celestial Ladder being all societal collapses simultaneously fits right in with all the weird symbolic-but-literal stuff going on in Mage's abstract pre-Fall "never-history."

[wyrdhamster]

There come out second part of video in series. This time it says about society elements that lead to collapse of those empires. One of them are Chariots – I wonder how to run them mechanically in CoD rules engine. Like a vehicle, like cars in our modern era?

Second element is literacy – as highly specialized skill that only small part of society learned. I resolved this by making it simply Literacy (*) Merit for pre-mass education era ( circa half of XIX century C.E. on West ).

What are your thought on those subjects? What do you think about video topics? In my POV, if not Mage Orders come circa 200 BC, I would proposed that Seers of Throne would come from those Byzantine-like Social Hierarchy that come from those times. Now, I would simply say that Omphalos Darshanas cults were very prominent in those times, running society in hierarchies.

[wyrdhamster]

Third part in the series. Does at the root of the Collapse are some mysterious Sea People? If Atlantis was real-real, I would say they were exiles from Wonder Island. But we know it’s not true – or do we?

[nofather]

In Chronicles that's been linked to Afzu’Umm’Ia, an idigam.

[Leliel]

Third part in the series. Does at the root of the Collapse are some mysterious Sea People? If Atlantis was real-real, I would say they were exiles from Wonder Island. But we know it’s not true – or do we?

Actually, there's a group of hobgoblins called the Border Reavers; the descendants of "beautiful invaders" who got overconfident conquering the world and assaulted the True Fae themselves, being cursed with mutation for their troubles.

Perhaps once, their thorny ships came from great portals across the sea. Perhaps they were human, then.

[Flyboy254]

And here's the final video. So, overall, what do we all think?

[wyrdhamster]

Last video do not adds more to previous ideas – just showing possible scenario for Bronze Age and that those things repeatedly in history. I think that assuming presented speculation, Western tribes can be hit by drought from some supernatural event – like Exarchs meddling or some uber Mummy shenanigans. But it’s nothing more concrete than ‘this came from West’.

[Michael]

I tend to agree with Wyrdhamster. What makes the Collapse interesting from a CoD perspective is that the evidence reads on the face of it like a horror story. The actual explanation is more prosaic and therefore less useful.

That said... How about the change being caused by proto-Diamond magi? There's a tendency to valorise the Bronze Age empires (Roman Empire too), but it's worth remembering that they're still authoritarian heirarchies. I'm not saying that monumental architecture isn't cool, but when it's being built on the backs of the population it begins to look more like the work of the Exarchs.

In light of that, I could see a group of Awakened creating the collapse to push back against the Exarchs.

[FallenEco]

We might get more insight in the DE2 Chapter "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" (Changeling, Promethean).

[Michael]

We might get more insight in the DE2 Chapter "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" (Changeling, Promethean).

What makes you think so?