Difference between revisions of "Who Killed Alexander?"

Revision as of 17:18, 10 December 2008

I'm guessing Drelzna, disguised as Olcias, with Styx water hidden in a false foot of some sort.

From the Diadocomachia:

   Menander, who was the father of the notorious page Charicles, had just arrived in Babylon the 
   day before the fatal dinner party, bearing with him the prisoner Diodorus the Ephesian, 
   assassin of Hegesias. Others say another assassin, arrived in his company, but she in disguise.

   In disguise, some say, she attended Medius the Sycophant’s dinner party. 

From Eumenes' List of Suspects:

   Olcias: A friend of Medius', presumably? (Although frankly too old for the role.) Too much a 
   nobody to pose any threat to Alexander. Walked with a limp going out that he had lacked going 
   in, if I recall; but then, he drank immoderately. 

And:

   Who was not at the party? Laomedon? Hercules? Harpalus had disappeared, I wish I knew where to. 
   The women, of course, the wives, Roxanne and Strateira; some say Menander had arrived with the
   fat one-eyed bastard's wife in tow, but if so I never saw her. In any case, no woman was in the
   room, this much is certain, just as it is certain that no one was carrying an ass's hoof. The 
   protections on Alexander counted for something. 

From Fragments in Cassandreia:

   lcias had come from Nonacres, which lies near Ph

Now we must ask, why? Who was the intended target? Ptolmey?

Noah: I agree that Olcias is the most likely suspect, though I am not prepared to implicate Drelzna yet (although the thought did occur to me b/c of the above excerpt from Eumenes' list). I think more likely she was aware of the plot and trying to prevent it somewhere from the shadows, and failed. Besides, what possible motive could Drelzna have to kill her brother? If she had done it, would it really remain a mystery to Ikulu for that long? We now know (or we now think we know) the fratricides that would haunt Ikulu until the end of her days: Aramin by Kukuth (Drelzna's daughter), and then Kukuth by Drelzna. If there was even the slightest whiff that Drelzna was to blame, it would have come out long before now.

Further, I highly doubt Ptolemy was the target. The forces of darkness knew he had the periapt (at least in the Diodocomachia it is strongly hinted that they set him up) -- if he was to be killed, why try with Styx water against which he would be resistant? Alexander was the one who is impossibly difficult to kill -- Ptolemy might be challenging, but why go at him when Alexander & friends were in the room?

You do raise two points that I hadn't thought of, I don't think. First, I'm not sure I made the connection between that fragment and Olcias (though maybe I did and I forgot). I don't know where Nonacres is, though, and there are a lot of 'Ph' place names in the Greek lands (Phalerum, Phanagoria, Pharae, Pharnacia, Phaselis, not to mention Phoenicia, etc.). Perhaps a bard could help.

Second, the Styx water would have had to be borne in the hoof of an ass the whole time and smuggled into the party either ahead of time (seems unlikely) or with the assassin (unless it was somehow pulled from another dimension when needed). This would be not so easy to do, and dangerous.

My thought, though largely unfounded, was that Olcias was really the ghost dwarf Antanolia in disguise. Ikulu certainly takes violent enough revenge on she and Harpalus (although the Diadocomachia has it that Harpalus and Antanolia had already caused Ikulu and Alexander ample headaches to warrant her anger). The unknown author of the Diadocomachia certainly had someone in mind when he wrote that there was a female assassin in disguise at the party.

Then again, he only suggests that there was a female assassin in disguise present... not that she was necessarily the one who pulled the trigger... Drelzna may well have been there, disguised as someone else. Taking away the gender element... Olcias could be anyone who had natural shapeshifting abilities or magical ones. He could have been one of the sons of Proteus. He could have been Harpalus himself. At that time, however, Alexander possessed the fingernail of Vala, and one would think it could have been employed to make certain there were no party crashers.

Maybe Olcias really was some guy named Olcias who had been somehow retained to do the deed. Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree.

Kerry: Evidence for Drelzne is in Rumors and Leads, where it says rather straightforwardly that she killed Alexander. I had totally forgotten this.

Kerry: In the Commentary on the Three Charms of Ikkulu there is some confusing talk about who killed who and what was fratricide and what not. I've got some new stuff over there that adds to this. Essentially I think Drelzne made a mistake, and thinking that Alexander killed Aramin she killed him. See also Ikkulu's Lament:

   "And then something went wrong, so many miles away, and the boy died, just as the girl died,
    and there was no point even continuing. The dream died with him, and all my dreams died with
    her."

Noah: I would buy that as a possibility. It is certainly tragic enough. Without knowing the new stuff, I can't comment on it (apparently your druid walks through trees now, so she should feel free to visit the oak in Oeonoe's vineyard some time and drop off some texts), but if you go to the original textual fragment from the monastery where the rumor you mentioned originates, it is not so clear:

  ...favor left Philip, and he was murdered, and in turn her favor left Alexander, once he had completed her . . . and he was
  murdered in turn, perhaps by Drelzna.

So the author of the text does not express straightforward certainty. Even so, we can say that much of the rest of the text is untrue and, well, slanderous:

  In Iggulu her horn she lives aging not, like the Jew, and scheming ever, in the lands of the East of the devilish Finns, 
  between the great lakes, called Psoicanthe in their barbaric tongue.  If she has written of octopodes reclaiming the land 
  she writes lies, and her works are to be consigned to the flames on earth, as her soul will be hereafter.  For things of 
  the water there remain, as things of the land there remain, assigned...

So, yes, it does have the (roughly) correct location and name of Psoicanthe, but the rest is not particularly credible. Indeed, you could even say it has a definite anti-Ikulu bias. I wouldn't put much stock in it.

Kerry: Upon further thought, I would bet that Harpalus and his dwarf set this up. He must have had it in for Alexander for a long time, since it seems he had the Styx water all along. From the Fragments in Cassandreia:

   Harpalus, who wasn't lame after all, and his

I'm betting he incited Drelzna to kill Alexander by convincing her that Alexander killed Aramin. He then booked out fo town. Remember that Harpalus is the smartest guy around, smarter than Eumenes. He also has something against Igwilf, and this would seem a mighty clever plan to hurt and thwart her. He runs off before the deed is done, which seems like the act of a guilty man. Finally, Igwilf (who was the answer to the Riddle of Harpalus) shows up and wreaks her vengence. She probably figured it all out, but too late. We would do well to find out more about Harpalus and Antanolia. Maybe they were working for the other team.

Noah: I think it's almost absolutely certain they were working for the other team. You guys are the ones who have been to Crete - where else can we find Harpalus info? Not sure how the above fragment indicates he had the Styx water the whole time, or why Ikulu is the answer to Harpalus' riddle -- But what became of the flower of the Bat-Eared Fox? -- the question is what happened to Ayesha, isn't it? And why she bailed?

Kerry: Nope. Bat-eared fox == artic fox == Finland. Other clues abound. Ayesha is very pissed off that she wasn't offered power by the Burkurae. Igwilf was offered and bailed, and Kundria/Despuare got the Sky Beauty deal instead. She was tricking the beauties, however, with a lie about her origins(ie, not really Germany). We need to solve a riddle to see where she really came from. As for Harpalus, he seemed lamed because he had an ass foot attached to his own foot the whole time. Olcias/Drelzna seemed lame after she took it off.