Profiles of Major Characters in the series

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Parmenio
Alternative Names
Parmenion, Arminius, Stewart Parmenio, Philip Stuyvesant, Phillip Stuyvesant, Paul Stuyvesant.

Early Life
Parmenio was born at Amphipopolis in 400BC, the son of a Northern Macedonian nobleman named Philotas. The initial stages of his career saw him serving under King Philip II (360-336) where his military talents saw him rise swiftly through the ranks to become one of Philip's leading generals. In 356, Parmenio defeated the Illyrians in a great battle (remembered because Philip received the news on the birthday of his first-born son, Alexander). Ten years later, Parmenio destroyed Halos, a strategic town in southern Thessaly. During this period, Parmenio visited the Oracle of Delphi for the first time, with Philip II. This is an interesting demonstration of trust Philip placed in Parmenio, the King is said to have remarked that during his reign, he had found only one trustworthy general, Parmenio. It is quietly acknowledged that Parmenio was the strategic brains behind Philip II rise to power in Greece.

In 336, Philip sent Parmenio and an army of 10,000 men to Asia, as the vanguard of a larger army that was to liberate the Greek towns on the western shore of what is now Turkey. This operation was useful to unite the Greek towns that Philip had subjugated in 338. The moment of the invasion was well-chosen: the news had arrived that the Persian king Artaxerxes IV Arses had been murdered by his courtier Bagoas and was succeeded by his relative Darius III Codomannus. At first, the expeditionary force did very well. The Greek towns in Asia revolted during the spring, but there was a major setback during the autumn. News arrived that Philip II had been murdered. The Macedonians were demoralized and suffered a humiliating defeat at Magnesia. The commander of the Persian Army, Menmon of Rhodes, was able to push back Parmenio and his demoralized troops. However, Parmenio managed to hold his army together and outmaneuver Menmon, allowing the Macedonian Army to remain in Asia.

Service with Alexander
Alexander was recognized as king in Macedonia in October 336, he was not the only candidate. One of his enemies was a man named Attalus, who was in the army of Parmenio. However, Parmenio put him to death. This was remarkable, because Parmenio was related to the victim. Over the next few years, we find many relatives of Parmenio in key positions in the Macedonian army. His youngest son Nicanor became commander of the infantry regiment that was known as the Shield bearers, his son-in-law Coenus commanded a phalanx battalion, and another Nicanor was admiral of the navy of the Greek allies. Parmenio's friend Amyntas and his brother Asander received other honorable positions. Parmenio himself became Alexander's second in command, retaining the position he already had under Philip. The most important appointment, however, was that of his oldest son Philotas: he was the commander of the Companion cavalry, a unit of eight squadrons (of 225 horsemen each) that was Macedonia's most effective weapon in any battle.

In May 334, Alexander joined Parmenion with reinforcements. The campaign against Persia, which had had a bad start, could now really begin. During three great battles, Parmenio commanded the left wing (12,000 heavily armed Macedonians, 7,000 allies, and 5,000 mercenaries), while Alexander himself commanded the right wing, where Philotas was his right-hand man. Meanwhile, the Persian satraps of Cilicia, Lydia, Hellespontine Phrygia and other territories had assembled at Zelea, near Dascylium. Alexander and Parmenio moved in their direction. In June, the two armies met near the river Granicus (the modern Biga Çay). The Persians had occupied strong defensive positions on one of the banks, which forced Alexander to attack from a difficult angle. Parmenio advised Alexander not to attack and but Alexander ignored the advice and attempted to attack at once. Parmenio had to move fast to rectify the situation and won the battle Alexander's impetuosity had nearly lost.

After the battle, Parmenio captured the Persian stronghold Dascylium, the capital of Hellespontine Phrygia after a hard fight. Later, he seized Magnesia and Tralleis. Asander, a brother of Parmenion, became satrap of Lydia. Meanwhile, Alexander conquered the Greek towns in Asia: Sardes, Ephesus, Miletus, Halicarnassus. During the winter, the king moved through Lycia. At the same time, Parmenion invaded Central Turkey from the west, drove out the remaining Persian troops and occupied the region. The two forces met each other in April 333 at Gordium, the capital of Phrygia, eighty kilometers west of modern Ankara.

After a short stay, the united army moved to the east, to Cilicia. While Alexander was in Cilicia, Parmenion and a small army were ordered to occupy the Assyrian gates. This was the pass between the coastal plain of Cilicia and the plain of the river Orontes in Syria; the main road from the Persian heartland to Cilicia went through this pass. He must have been puzzled by the fact that the enemy did not show up, but was not alarmed until he received word that Darius' huge army was at Sochi, only two days away. A courier was sent to Alexander's army, which covered 120 kilometers in forty-eight hours and joined the Parmenio's army near Myriandrus. The two commanders were planning to attack Darius in Sochi, when they discovered that the Persian army was no longer there and was, in fact, facing into their rear. With his enormous army, the Persian king had crossed the Amanus pass, had captured Issus, and cut off the only Macedonian line of supply. Darius had trapped Alexander. Not much later, battle was joined south of Issus. Although the Macedonians had been outmaneuvered by an army that was superior in numbers, they were victorious, primarily because Parmenio had been able to counter the Persian attack. This gave Alexander a chance to launch a counter-attack.

The most impressive action of Parmenio's career took place after the battle: he rushed to Damascus (350 kilometers through enemy territory) and seized Darius' treasure. The surprised Persian garrison gave him almost 55 ton gold, a great quantity of silver, 329 female musicians, 306 cooks, 13 pastry chefs, 70 wine waiters, 40 scent makers, and the women who had lived at Darius' court. Small surprise that Parmenio needed 7,000 pack animals to bring the booty to Alexander. During the next year, 332, the Macedonians pacified Syria and Palestine. Again, Parmenio had important commands, while his king went to the south to add Egypt to his empire. In the summer, the Macedonian army returned to Syria and invaded Mesopotamia and Assyria. On 1 October 331, the decisive battle took place at Gaugamela. Again, the Persians outnumbered the Macedonians. The commander of the Persian right wing, Mazaeus, attacked Parmenion and the Macedonian left. In fact, the cavalry on the Persian extreme right outflanked the Macedonians. However, Parmenio was able to keep the fighting spirit of his men high, so that they stood their ground. This enabled Alexander to lead the decisive charge.

After the battle of Gaugamela, Babylonia surrendered and Alexander moved to the east, to Susa and hence to Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid empire. The heartland of Darius' kingdom was surrounded by the Zagros Mountains, and Alexander and a small force captured a narrow pass, the Persian gate. Meanwhile, Parmenio was sent out with the main force, entering the plain of Persepolis from the south. The conquest of Ecbatana, another capital of the Achaemenid empire, was left to Parmenion. The veteran general, almost seventy years old, was also responsible for reinforcements and the pacification of the mountain country of the Cadusians. He was therefore, not with Alexander when Darius was hunted down and murdered, and he was not present during the advance to Aria and Drangiana. Consequently, he was unaware of the fact that his son Philotas had been accused of treason and was executed (December 330).

After Alexander had killed Philotas, his attempt to murder Parmenio was inevitable. In Ecbatana, he controlled the road from the Mediterranean to the East, possessed large sums of money and commanded many troops. An angry Parmenio was too powerful to remain alive. Therefore, Alexander accused him of treason and sent an express messenger to Ecbatana, whose duty it was to be there before the news of the death of Philotas reached his father. The courier gave letters to the commanders of the reinforcements to kill the old general, who supposedly would never know why. Two things conspired to foil the plan. One was that Parmenio was the finest strategist of that or probably any other age. He had known that, one day, Alexander would send assassins to kill him. He wasn't expecting this particular attack but he was expecting an attack and had his defenses in place. The other was that, while his official age was nearly 70, he had the physique and appearance of a man thirty years younger. When the assassins attacked, there was a wild brawl, they were killed and Parmenio was seriously wounded. Alexander's courier guessed that Parmenio had escaped but, fearing Alexander's anger, reported that the assassination attempt had been successful. In a way it had, Parmenio's powerbase in Ecbatana was no longer available to him.

The Babylon Era
Wounded and on the run, Parmenio had only one thought, surviving long enough to kill Alexander. However, he already knew that his life was unnaturally long and a man of his gifts must have suspected the ageing process had stopped. This put him in mind of his second visit to the Oracle of Delphi when Alexander The Great visited Delphi and behaved in a high-handed and abusive manner. He realized that the staff of the Oracle had been uncannily similar on both visits, simply changing roles, and that this fitted with his own experience. He therefore decided to head for the Oracle and link up with the occupants there. After a slightly fraught initial meeting, Naamah realized that Parmenio also had the gift of extended life shared by herself, Lillith and Apollo. It was a mutually useful engagement, Parmenio had somewhere to hide and a group he could rely on, for the women having another man, especially a mature adult, around would be a major increase in the safety of the group as a whole. Naamah and Lillith were no longer unattached and unprotected women but were part of a family group. Parmenio began to use his strategic talents to detaching the group from the Oracle and heading for Babylon. As he remarked to Naamah, he had business to settle there.

During this process, leadership of the small group began to slide away from Naamah towards Parmenio. After handing over the Oracle to a peasant woman who had been "chosen by the gods" the group set off for Babylon where Parmenio planned to assassinate Alexander. This was carried out with the team forming roles that they would carry on as standard for centuries. Naamah was the Court Princess, the face of the group in the corridors of power; Lillith the record keeper and administrator, Parmenio the guiding strategist and Apollo the general duties and other roles as needed.

The Assassination of Alexander
The problem was to gain access to Alexander and then to carry out the assassination while getting away. As an individual, Parmenio was prepared to go down as long as he had killed Alexander first but he could not adopt that approach now he was responsible for a group of people. So, a longer-term plan was needed and formulating this suited Parmenio's talents perfectly. The group initially presented themselves as wine merchants and established their presence in the city. Naamah used her skills as a herbalist to cure various sicknesses and injuries, soon becoming a respected member of the community. This was especially the case with Alexander's Army who suffered from the usual injuries from accidents and training plus the social diseases common to soldiers on garrison duty in a large city. Her cures were straightforward and practical, teas and poultices made from commonly-available herbs that her patients could gather for themselves rather than rare, exotic and unusual ingredients accompanied by mysterious prayers and incantations. She was particularly popular with the rank and file since her cures were cheap, effective and she didn't advise their officers of any illnesses or injuries that would get them in trouble. As Parmenio predicted, she was soon very well-regarded and, most importantly trusted, by the Macedonian garrison. So, when Alexander was stricken, she was the first physician called to his aid.

Having maneuvered Naamah into a position of trust, Patmenio sat back and let her do her part. After all, as Naamah had told him "nobody can stop a first-class poisoner". At that time, Alexander was suffering from serious stomach bleeding ulcers that defied easy cure. Using new recruits to the group (an innkeeper and former Queen of Assyria name Semiranic and a charioteer named Gusoyn)) both of whom shared the gift of extended life, Naamah was able to engineer the preparation of a particularly heavily-spiced dish at a banquet. The dish itself, prepared by Semiramis, was quite harmless, except to anybody with a bleeding ulcer. It was eaten by everybody at the banquet without ill-effects except for Alexander who collapsed in agony on the floor shortly afterwards, surrounded by his troops. Naamah was the first name that they thought of and she was brought, none too gently, to the palace. She quickly diagnosed a severe stomach colic and explained that Alexander had to be made to vomit up the contents of his stomach. First, she would have to calm the colic and would administer a potion made of medicine dissolved in wine. This raised immediate suspicion and she was invited to drink the wine - which she did with every sign of enjoyment. Naamah then explained it had been a long, hot day and she would enjoy another cup of wine. She made up another potion, drank half of it and gave the rest to Alexander. The dosed wine calmed him somewhat and when his spasms ceased, Naamah pushed a feather down his throat to make him vomit up the contents of his stomach. The carefully-prepared dose of poison was on that feather. Alexander seemed calmed by her treatment and she left the palace, accepting only a few coins to cover her costs. Early next morning, Alexander suffered a relapse and died a few hours later.

The Civil War
Following the assassination of Alexander, the empire was put under the authority of a regent in the person of Perdiccas in 323 BC, and the territories were divided between Alexander's generals, who thereby became satraps, at the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC. Alexander's generals (the Diadochi) jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire, and Ptolemy, one of his generals and satrap of Egypt, was the first to challenge the new rule, leading to the demise of Perdiccas. His revolt led to a new partition of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC. Seleucus, who had been "Commander-in-Chief of the camp" under Perdiccas since 323 BC but helped to assassinate the latter, received Babylonia, and from that point continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC, and Parmenio had allied with him. With Parmenio's strategic gifts driving his army, Seleucus quickly came to dominate a vast swath of the territory from Phrygia to the Indus.

The Seleucia Era
In fact, Parmenio realized that the Army was over-extended and engineered an agreement with Chandragupta Maurya, in which Seleucus exchanged his eastern territories for a considerable force of 500 war elephants. These proved decisive in consolidating Seleucus' power and stabilized the Seleucid Empire. For the next 250 years the group lived quietly in Seleucia, using their increased numbers to shift identities when age became too obviously anachronistic. They took the identity of a minor but influential family with Royal connections, the new identities being explained by one member "retiring to the country" while another was "a relative sent by his family to live in the city. Naamah and Semiramis alternated as the court face of the group, each introducing the other as a niece or more distant relative when the need arose. Their primary role was to keep an eye on the developing situation and act as an early warning system of any change in the military or political situation facing the Empire. In such cases, Parmenio would be insinuated into the council of state and act as the strategic direction to remedy the situation.

A good example of this was Parmenio's master-minding of Antiochus's campaign through the eastern parts of his empire restoring rebellious vassals like Parthia and Greco-Bactria to at least nominal obedience, and even emulating Alexander with an expedition into India where he met with king Sophagasenus. When he returned to the west in 205 BC, Antiochus and Philip V of Macedon then made a compact to divide the Ptolemaic possessions outside of Egypt, and in the Fifth Syrian War, the Seleucids ousted Ptolemy V from control of Coele-Syria. The Battle of Panium (198 BC) definitively transferred these holdings from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Antiochus appeared, at the least, to have restored the Seleucid Kingdom to glory although it was Naamah's political intrigue and Parmenio's strategic skills that had really won the day. In the event, the situation did not survive Parmenio's withdrawal from active participation and, despite his and Naamah's advice, Antiochus invaded Greece - only to go down in defeat. About the only lasting consequence of that adventure was that Parmenio met Hannibal and realized that he shared his heritage. Following a lost battle, a hapless peasant who looked a little like Hannibal was dressed in his armor and killed, thus engineering Hannibal's disappearance.

This lasted until the decay within the Seleucid Empire became too serious to be remedied. The Eastern areas remained nearly uncontrollable, as Parthians began to take over the Persian lands; and Antiochus' aggressive Hellenizing (or de-Judaizing) activities led to armed rebellion in Judaea — the Maccabee revolt. Efforts to deal with both the Parthians and the Jews proved fruitless, and Antiochus himself died during an expedition against the Parthians in 164 BC. Frequent civil wars made central authority tenuous at best. By 143 BC, the Jews in form of the Maccabees had fully established their independence. Parthian expansion continued as well. In 139 BC, Demetrius II was defeated in battle by the Parthians and was captured. By this time, the entire Iranian Plateau had been lost to Parthian control. Demetrius Nicator's brother, Antiochus VII, was ultimately able to restore a fleeting unity and vigor to the Seleucid domains, but he too proved unequal to the Parthian threat: he was killed in battle with the Parthians in 129 BC. The sudden strategic skill of the Parthians was no freak of fate, Parmenio, Naamah and her group had changed sides.

The Parthia Era
By 139 BC, Parmenio and his circle were established in the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and Parmenio had allied with the Parthian king Mithridates I. By 129 BC, the Parthians were in control of all the lands west of the Tigris, and established their winter encampment on its banks at Ctesiphon. Because of their need of the wealth and trade provided by Seleucia, the Parthian armies limited their incursions to harassment, allowing the city to preserve its independence. In the heat of the Mesopotamian summer, the Parthian army would withdraw to the ancient Persian capitals of Susa and Ecbatana. Aware of the problems that had faced the highly-centralized Seleucid Empire, the group used its influence with Mithridates to bring about a highly decentralized empire that accommodated several languages, many people, and a number of different economic systems. The loose ties between the separate parts of the empire were a key to its survival. In the 2nd century CE, the most important capital, Ctesiphon, was captured no less than three times by the Romans (in 116, 165 and 198), but, as Parmenio had envisaged, the empire survived because there were other centers of power.

Local potentates played important roles, and the king had to respect their privileges. Several noble families had votes in the Royal council; the House of Suren had the right to crown the Parthian king, and every aristocrat was allowed and expected to retain an army of his own. This system suited Parmenio down to the ground, it meant that he could maintain his army as a card that allowed him to enter the command structure directly when he thought it necessary. His policy was to remain out of the centers of power as long as things went well, only when things went badly would he get involved and rescue the situation. For example, in 53 BCE, the Roman general Crassus invaded Parthia, but was defeated decisively at the Battle of Carrhae by a Parthian commander who was called Surena in the Greek and Latin sources. That general was, in fact, Parmenio. The Parthian armies included two types of cavalry, heavily-armed and armored cataphracts and lightly armed but highly-mobile mounted archers. For the Romans, who relied on heavy infantry, the Parthians were difficult to defeat, as both types of cavalry were much faster and more mobile than foot soldiers. On the other hand, the Parthians found it difficult to occupy conquered areas as they were unskilled in siege warfare. Because of these weaknesses, neither the Romans nor the Parthians were able to completely defeat each other. Despite this continuous state of warfare, the loose, decentralized Parthian empire proved so amenable to Parmenio that he remained there for almost 400 years.

During this period, he pulled off two operations that proved highly significant. In 33BC, the Egyptian Pharaoh, Cleopatra appealed to Parthia for help against the oncoming Roman attack against her country. The Parthian royal family was minded to provide that assistance but Parmenio argued against it, pointing out that Mark Antony was a military imbecile and could be relied upon to lose the war. He could point to his own experience in that matter, Antony had invaded the Parthian Empire in 36 BC with the Legion VI Ferrata and other units. Despite having heavy cavalry in support, Antony failed to make much headway against Parmenio's much smaller force and had withdrawn with heavy losses. However, Parmenio pointed out, Cleopatra and her children could make a useful card in future negotiations with the Romans. Accordingly, he planned a rescue for her when the inevitable military catastrophe occurred. In 31 BC Antony's forces faced the Romans in a naval action off the coast of Actium. Cleopatra was present with a fleet of her own. Following the Battle of Actium, Octavian invaded Egypt. As he approached Alexandria, Antony's armies deserted to Octavian on August 12, 30 BC. Cleopatra was captured and imprisoned in a small building at the end of a quay in Alexandria harbor, a position so suited to a rescue it is hard to believe that everything had not been pre-arranged to relieve Octavian of a serious problem. Parmenio headed a cutting-out raid that rescued Cleopatra, planted evidence to suggest she had been killed and took her back to Ctesiphon. The three "children" of Cleopatra and Antony (in reality almost certainly adopted) were spared and taken back to Rome where they were taken care of by Antony's wife, Octavia Minor, who was also Octavian's sister - another sign that Parmenio and Octavian had pre-arranged the whole thing.

Parmenio had become instantly aware that Cleopatra was another person who was gifted with extended life. By now the group in Ctesiphon had grown to more than two dozen long-lived and was actively seeking out more of their kind - and in the process discovering how rare they were. Cleopatra was one, and that was a prize in itself. However, when the rescue party returned to Ctesiphon, Naamah took one look at Cleopatra and dropped to her knees, touching her head to the floor, an obeisance that Parmenio had never seen her perform before. It had been 1,200 since they'd last met, but Naamah had recognized Pharaoh Nefertiti instantly. This lead to another transfer of power within the group with Nefertiti becoming the nominal leader.

The second major incident took place in 9 AD following a threatening build-up on the Roman/Parthian border. Parmenio argued that rather than fight the Romans directly, it would be better if the Romans had their attention distracted elsewhere. The frontier with Germany seemed a good prospect in this respect so Parmenio set out with a group of six members of the group, leaving the rest in Ctesiphon with Nefertiti. He appears to have taken Phaeton Phoebus Apollo, Lillith, Naamah, Igrat and two others with him. He adopted the name of Arminius, posing as a son of a conveniently-dead Cheruscan war chief Segimerus who had been trained as a Roman military commander and attained Roman citizenship and the status of equestrian (petty noble) before returning to Germania to drive the Romans out. Parmenio manipulated a situation where a Roman incursion into Germania was subjected to concerted attack and, at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the three Legions involved were completely wiped out, one of the worst military catastrophes ever inflicted on the Roman Army. Parmenio regards the battle as one of his greatest masterpieces. In the aftermath, he was offered the pick of the captured Roman women and, recognizing one who had been gifted with extended life, picked her. This woman was Inanna who quickly became one of his "inner circle".

The Teutoburg Forest was a spectacularly successful strategic diversion that meant that Rome had to shift legions from the frontier with Parthia to the Rhine. It bought over a century of peace for Parthia. War broke out again in 114AD and this time Parthians were severely beaten. The Romans conquered Armenia, and in the following year, Trajan marched to the south, where the Parthians were forced to evacuate their strongholds. In 116, Trajan captured Ctesiphon, and established new provinces in Assyria and Babylonia. Later that year, he took the Parthian capital, Susa, deposed the Parthian King Osroes I and put Parthamaspates as a puppet ruler on the throne. Parmenio re-entered the battles, and pulled off a major strategic diversion, bringing about a Jewish revolt that forced Trajan to send an army to suppress them. Trajan overcame these troubles, but his successor Hadrian gave up the Parthian territories.

However, there was a serious problem emerging since Parthian weaknesses also contributed to the disaster. In the first century CE, the Parthian nobility had become more powerful due to concessions by the Parthian king granting them greater powers over the land and the peasantry. Their power now rivaled the king's, while at the same time internal divisions in the Arsacid family had rendered them vulnerable. Thinking through the inevitable consequences, Parmenio realized that Parthia's days were numbered. It was time to look for a new home.

The Sassanid Era
As Parmenio had foreseen, the Parthian kings were forced to concede ever greater powers to the nobility, and the vassal kings began to waver in their allegiance. Further military defeats hastened the decline of the Kingdom and this time Parmenio wasn't available to stem the rot. In 224, the Persian vassal king Ardašir revolted. In a remarkably well-organized and strategically astute campaign, he took Ctesiphon, and this time it meant the end of Parthia, replaced by a third Persian Empire, ruled by the Sassanid dynasty. Once again, Parmenio and his circle had found themselves in a comfortable and appealing environment that was to remain their homes for a further 400 years.

The long-term policy of the group was, by now, well-established. They became a minor aristocratic family that kept itself to itself and did not participate, much, in the affairs of the nation. Only when an apparent disaster threatened to affect their comfortable lifestyle would they get involved and then that involvement was limited to removing the threat to themselves. This might mean an obnoxious or threatening person might suddenly get sick and die or perhaps Parmenio would use his position to take over the strategic situation and achieve an improved balance in the Sassanid's favor but that was all. Outside that narrow band, the group 'went with the flow' and made themselves as inconspicuous as possible. Indeed the only major impact the group had was when one of the long-lived women who joined it, Scheherazade later became the heroine of Sir Richard Burton's famous book.

By 600AD, Parmenio was convinced that the Sassanid Empire was doomed. The problem that worried him was, where would the group move to? The nearest large empire, the Byzantine Empire, seemed to be in almost as much a terminal decline as the Sassanids and, at best, offered only a temporary solution. In the end, the problem was solved for him; the collapse of the Sassanid Empire at the hands of Islamic invaders was much faster than he had anticipated and a move to Byzantium was made inevitable by the course of events. They had barely completed the move when the Sassanid Empire collapsed.

The Byzantine Era
In 632, the group was established in Constantinople. Parmenio was ill-at-ease with this situation but the truth was, he saw no realistic alternatives at that time. He was beginning to feel that his group had run out of luck at last. This grim assessment lead him to believe that if no new home was immediately obvious, he would have to go out and find one. It is perhaps ironic that this pessimistic view of the viability of the Byzantine Empire as a home for the long-lived would end up with them staying there for the longest period to date. In retrospect, the move to Constaninople also changed the orientation of the group quite profoundly. Up to this point they had been representative of the Hellenic-Persian cultural tradition that ultimately traced its ancestry back to Alexander's Empire. With the shift to Constantinople, that tradition was left behind and the group became more closely associated with the western, Roman-derived tradition of Europe and that would affect both their beliefs and their actions.

What had changed the situation was a period of radical transformation in the Byzantine Empire. The empire which had once stretched from Spain to Jerusalem was now reduced to Anatolia, Chersonesos, and some fragments of Italy and the Balkans. The territorial losses were accompanied by a cultural shift; urban civilization was massively disrupted, classical literary genres were abandoned in favor of theological treatises, and a new "radically abstract" style emerged in the visual arts. That the empire survived this period at all is somewhat surprising, especially given the total collapse of the Sassanid Empire in the face of the Arab expansion, but a remarkably coherent military reorganization helped to withstand the exterior pressures and laid the groundwork for the gains of the following dynasty.

It is no coincidence that the period that followed is known as the "Macedonian Renaissance" to historians. Parmenio masterminded the defeat of the Islamic armies in 718, and achieved a major victory at the expense of the Arabs in 740. He also addressed himself to the task of reorganizing and consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. Finally, on behalf of Emperor Constantine V, Parmenio won a series of noteworthy victories in northern Syria, and thoroughly undermined Bulgar strength. Militarily, the Empire was stabilized, the population rose, and production increased, stimulating new demand while also helping to encourage trade. Culturally, there was considerable growth in education and learning. Ancient texts were preserved and patiently re-copied. Byzantine art flourished, and brilliant mosaics graced the interiors of the many new churches. Though the empire was significantly smaller than during the reign of Justinian, it was also stronger, as the remaining territories were less geographically dispersed and more politically and culturally integrated. This is all the more impressive when it is considered that Parmenio's sole aim in masterminding this process was not to save an empire but simply to provide a safe refuge for the people he considered his family while he found somewhere more agreeable to live.

By 862AD Parmenio was ready to move and his departure was hastened by a major row within the group, set off by a massive dispute between Lillith and Apollo. Lillith went into what Naamah calls "vengeful harpy" mode and the family split up according to who's side they took in that dispute. Nefertiti and Parmenio managed to smooth things down but the dispute appears to have frustrated Parmenio to the point where he simply wanted out. Accordingly, he left for the Far East, accompanied only by two members of the group, an ex-Gladiator named Achillea and his adopted daughter Igrat. He would not return for almost 300 years.

The Far Eastern Interlude
It is hard to trace Parmenio's route after leaving Constantinople. It is most unlikely that he headed south through Moslem lands, a calculated guess would be that he and Achillea moved along the southern coast of the Black Sea, then down to the Indus where they crossed into India. It would then appear that they moved across northern India, into what is now Burma before heading North into southern China. At that point they made contact with the Nanchao, some 15 years after they had left Constantinople.

Nanchao was a kingdom that existed on the borders of China and was home to a wide range of different Thai peoples. The state was remarkable for being both matriarchal and had a very liberal approach to sexual relations, which perplexed the very straight-laced Han Chinese majority. Nanchao was a very militaristic society. This was partly a result of bordering the enormous Chinese empire and the fear of invasion, as well as being bordered to the west by the Tibetans who, at that time, had a powerful expansionist state of their own. The Nanchao Army was based on formidable armored cavalry and was supplemented by a militia that demanded all men, and any women, who wished would provide military service as capable archers, horsemen and soldiers. To support the military effort, comparatively high levels of technology were achieved and a stable economy was created with a basis of agriculture in the plains areas and trade with a variety of neighbors, much of which was in the horses that flourished around the capital of Dali. Horses were always of considerable importance to China who needed them to counter the threats of mounted nomads who bordered the empire all around the western and northern edges and who were able to raid Chinese lands at will if not met by cavalry.

The official religion was a form of Buddhism but, given the syncretic nature of Buddhism (which permits the worship of various other gods and spirits) and the wide variety of peoples of Nanchao, many of whom continue to this day with animistic beliefs (that is, worshipping the spirits of nature), many forms of religious belief were pursued. As a tolerant, advanced and militarily powerful state, Nanchao appeared to be exactly what Parmenio was looking for. However, from the tenth century, a series of defeats by Chinese armies persuaded successive Nanchao rulers to adopt a much more peaceful stance and retained its existing borders. As a result, Nanchao expansion north, west and east was blocked. The only option was to expand south and this Nanchao did throughout the 10th and 11th centuries. Nanchao expanded into the Chaophyra Delta forming a series of kingdoms that were satellites of the main Nanchao group further north. The most important of these southern groups was Sukothai.

Parmenio appears to have arrived in Nanchao in around 880, just as this push south was starting. How he managed to work his way into the confidence of the Nanchao kings is unclear but the tolerance and military efficiency that distinguished Nanchao would have provided a good environment for the recognition of his talents. He appears to have partnered with a series of Nanchao generals, masterminding the push south. One of these Prince-Generals had a young daughter who Parmenio realized also had the gift of extended life. Her name was Princess Suriyothai. She became Parmenio's protege and most avid student, soaking up Parmenio's expertise as a general and a strategist. In time, she was to become almost his equal, the key difference being that her extreme patriotism and devotion to her people contrasted sharply with the cold, mercenary Parmenio.

The Kingdom of Nanchao lasted until the advent of the Mongols who, in a series of powerful campaigns, conquered the whole of China, then destroyed the Nanchao Kingdom, burning the cities, killing the rulers and replacing them with foreigners and causing mass migrations of people southwards. Those people fled into the southern subsidiary kingdoms from around 1220 onwards. By this time, Parmenio had already returned to Constantinople.

The motives for Parmenio's long stay in the Far East have been much discussed. After all, Nanchao in the 9th Century appeared to be just what he was looking for so why did he not bring the rest of the group out to join him. Asked on this issue he simply replied "time flies when we're having fun." However, this question masks a more important one, why did he decide to return when he did? There must be a suspicion that when he left Constantinople in 862, he never intended to return. In is probable that he was bored with the machinations of politics in the area and the frustrations resulting from the internal strife within the extended-life community had soured him more deeply than he had let on. It is possible that he had been following the situation in the Middle East and realized that the Byzantine Empire was doomed. In that case, Constantinople would fall and all within it stood a very good possibility of being killed. Possibly, also, he realized that as a European in an Asian community, he would always stand out and his long-term stay there was impossible. For whatever reason, he decided to return to Constantinople. The Mongol Empire made travel much faster and safer than it had been three hundred years earlier and, by 1200, he had rejoined the group in Constantinople.

The Florentine Era
The Florentine Republic had been governed from 1115 by an autonomous commune. During the period when Parmenio was planning the move to Florence, the city was plunged into internal strife by a struggle between the Ghibellines, supporters of the German emperor, and the pro-Papal Guelphs, who after their victory split in turn into feuding "White" and "Black" factions led respectively by Vieri de' Cerchi and Corso Donati. These struggles eventually led to the exile of the White Guelphs, one of whom was Dante Alighieri. This political conflict did not, however, prevent the city's rise to become one of the most powerful and prosperous in Europe, assisted by her own strong gold currency, the florin introduced in 1252, was the first European gold coin struck in sufficient quantities to play a significant commercial role since the seventh century. As many Florentine banks were international operations with branches across Europe, the florin quickly became the dominant trade coin of Western Europe for large scale transactions, replacing silver bars in multiples of the mark), the eclipse of her formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406). Power was largely exercised by the guilds and the mercantile elite. It goes without saying that one of these mercantile families was the group of extended lifers (now numbering several dozen) lead by Nefertiti. The group formed an early alliance with the powerful Medici family and it was Parmenio's strategic gifts that resulted in the rise and extended power of that group. Parmenio kept the alliance largely secret and was able to orchestrate a series of rescue missions when Medici power was threatened.

In 1377, An English Mercenary Captain, Sir John Hawkwood was hired by the anti-papal league and married Donnina Visconti, the illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti, the Duke of Milan. This alliance was soon ended by a quarrel with Bernardo and Hawkwood was up for hire. Parmenio decided to meet and hire him for Florence, more to prevent him working for anybody else than for operational reasons. However, he soon realized that Sir John also shared the extended life gift and the two established a tenuous relationship. Somewhat to Parmenio's surprise, Hawkwood showed little interest in joining the established group instead electing to go his own way. Hawkwood instead signed an agreement with Florence that committed him to the city's defense. In the 1390s Hawkwood became a commander-in-chief of the army of Florence in the war against the expansion of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan. With the strategic moves planned by Parmenio, Hawkwood's army invaded Lombardy and was within ten miles of Milan before he had to retreat over Adige river. Later in the year, forces under his command defended Florence and later defeated the Milanese force of Jacopo dal Verme. Eventually Visconti sued for peace. Contemporary opinion in Florence regarded Hawkwood as a savior of Florence's independence against Milanese expansion although those in the corridors of power were well aware it was Parmenio's strategic gifts that had brought about Visconti's defeat.

By the start of the 1600s, Parmenio began to sense that Florence's star was waning. The Medici family had become Grand Dukes of Tuscany (and would remain so until the 1750s when the line became extinct. By that time, Parmenio and the rest of the extended life group had moved to Avebury in England.

The Avebury Era
Parmenio arrived in England late in 1666. The first act of the group was to purchase the title to the Manor of Avebury, a semi-derelict manor that had fallen into decay during the Cromwellian era. That made Parmenio Lord of the Manor of Avebury, positioning the group on the bottom rung of the aristocratic system (it should be noted that a 'Lord of the Manor' is not a lord or indeed any form of ennoblement). The group spent freely restoring the Manor House to its former glory and reviving the local farming and other activities. This put a severe dent in their financial reserves which was only slowly being replenished by the group's trade interests. For Parmenio, the stay in Avebury was something of a holiday, he had very little to do other than his, far-from onerous duties as Lord of the Manor and spent his time being waited on by everybody else. By this time, he and Lillith were partners. Lillith fitted easily into her role as the Lady of the Manor and the group seemed set for a long, quiet and comfortable stay.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. In 1710, Parmenio had arranged with Sir John Hawkwood for the transport of a large proportion of the group's financial assets (gold coin and other tangible valuables) by sea. The ship was wrecked off Ushant and the cargo was lost, apparently permanently. The disaster was a severe blow to the group's liquidity and, for the first time in centuries, the extended-life community was short of money. It takes but a modicum of cunning to realize that people wildly throwing their money away are easy targets and Lillith had far more than a modicum of cunning. She bought a major stockholding in the South Seas Trading Company and started to spread word of the company's glowing prospects. The directors of the Company insisted profits were just around the corner, and even outbid the Bank of England for an additional £31,000,000 of government debt in 1719. At that point, Lillith and Parmenio sold out all their interests and essentially cashed out of the market. The result of their selling their South Sea Trading Company stock was delayed but when it hit it hit hard. In September 1720, the bottom fell out of the market, nobody wanted to buy stocks. With no buyers, those who still held stock they had bought for thousands of pounds could only unload it for a fraction of the price they had paid. Of course, those who had anticipated this made out like bandits. The group's financial reserves were adequately replenished (though not to the point of opulence the group had enjoyed in Florence). It should be noted that the whole pump-and-dump scheme was, at the time it was committed, perfectly legal. In Parliament, Lord Molesworth decided that while no law existed to punish this company, they ought to make one in a hurry. A few directors and Parliament members were subjects of fairly uneventful inquiries, save for Earl Stanhope. He managed to whip himself into a frenzy after blunting some accusations, and passed out in the House of Commons. He "let blood the on the following morning, but with slight relief." It was eighteenth-century England, and everyone knew that a good healthy bleeding was a sovereign cure for many ailments. However, the fatal result was not anticipated except by his physician. Knowing too much can be a fatal affliction when Naamah is around.

Having been the first out of the scheme, the group down at Avebury were well clear of all the tumult and watched the proceedings in London with a certain degree of amusement. By 1730 the memory of the "South Sea Bubble" was fading and it appeared to be a thing of the past, a highly successful looting operation which, Parmenio said, put him in mind of the good old days when a soldier could make his fortune from looting a captured city. However, by the mid-1740s, people were beginning to look at the South Sea Bubble with cooler heads and analyze what had happened in greater detail. Within a few years, the parts played by previously-unknown parties were becoming more obvious. Parmenio decided that it was time to leave before the emerging trail lead the investigators back to Avebury. After a careful analysis of destinations, Parmenio picked the colonies in North America and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This lead to an amicable split in the group. It had turned out that the period 1500 - 1750 had produced an unusually large number (in relative terms) of people in England who had the gift of extended life. Some of these, most notably Nell Gwynne and William Shakespeare decided to remain with the main group and make the transition to the new properties and life in Jamestown, Virginia. Many of the rest, though, decided that they wished to stay in the U.K., trusting to their political power and position to protect them from the South Sea Bubble fall-out. In time, this splinter group became the Piccadilly Circus. By 1755, the main group had left, leaving Avebury in the hands of the stay-behind faction.

The Jamestown Era
By 1765, Parmenio and the group had moved to Jamestown, Virginia where they bought a large estate (which still remains in the hands of the group as communal property). Individual members of the group purchased houses in and around Jamestown. The group set themselves up as traders and shipping owners, making substantial sums out of the import of goods that were in short supply. Shortly after they arrived, the agitation that was to end in the American Revolution started. Parmenio thought about the situation in depth and came to the conclusion that the British were going to lose. Accordingly, when the revolution actually started, he sided with the colonial against the British - although he took great case not to let his group (now numbering more than a hundred) get too deeply involved. Mostly, they supported the revolution by importing much-needed supplies and selling them at a large profit. Parmenio did, however, give some tactical and strategic advice to the Colonial army and rendered other aid as necessary. As a result, he and his "family" were in good repute when the war ended. Parmenio was also very careful not to get involved in the war of 1812.

Essentially, Parmenio lived quietly as a prosperous and successful trader until 1860. By then it had become apparent that a civil war was brewing between the slaveholding South and the Free North. Parmenio thought about this impending war in great detail and came to the conclusion that the North both should win and would win. Parmenio had no objections to slavery per se, given his background that is hardly surprising, but saw that the sort of society desired by the Confederacy could not survive in the modern world. The North had to win, or America would not survive.

When war broke out, Parmenio raised a regiment and took it out west where he was attached to the command of General Ulysses S Grant. He and Grant quickly became firm friends and the alliance of a cold-blooded, ruthless strategist and equally ruthless fighting general proved deadly to the Confederate forces along the Mississippi. At some point in the campaign, Grant discovered the secret of Parmenio's extended life, how is not known. With the Western forces of the Confederacy destroyed, Grant and Parmenio were moved east where they repeated the process on the Army of Northern Virginia. It was Parmenio's insistence that priority be given to destroying the Confederate Armies rather than simply seizing territory that ensured the Civil War ended in 1865 with a clean break. Had those armies not been destroyed, guerilla fighting might have gone on for decades.

With the coming of peace, Parmenio returned to his role as a trader and industrialist. He was, however, a profoundly worried man. His experiences in the Civil War had convinced him that technology was advancing too fast to be properly controlled by humans. After all, the technology with which he had fought his first battles was not really very different from that with which he had fought 1,500 years later. The difference between the technology of 1815 and 1860 had been profound and the rate of change was accelerating. His fears were confirmed by the First World War and he could see how things were going to go. A personal tragedy may have confirmed his opinions on this point. In the 1919 Great Influenza, he and many of the extended-lifers contracted the illness. Most recovered but Semiramis and Scheherazade both died of the disease.

In 1921, there was a great meeting of as many of the extended life community as could gather. By now the total community amounted to several thousand and was growing quickly as prosperity increased both population and life expectancy. There were three main proposals for the future. Suriyothai was in favor of a very activist policy, helping the short-lifers to rule. In support of that, she pointed to her own experience in having created a niche where she could steer national policy. Loki was in favor of the traditional hands-off non-intervention policy. Parmenio favored a third way, a discrete involvement in government that would not direct or control but simply limit the adverse effects of any bad decisions. No decision on this was reached and each of the three major groups continued to pursue their own agendas. Parmenio started the process of involving himself in government. He had purchased a shipyard, the Herreshof Yard as an investment and used his position as a shipbuilder to become one of the advisors on the American team negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty. With his involvement, the center of the group's activity moved from Jamestown to Washington, bringing the group into the modern era.

The Modern Era
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Parmenio used his position as an industrialist and investor to manoeuver his way into Government service by participating on advisory boards and liaison committees. At the same time other members of the group started to get jobs in government departments, using their long experience to establish themselves in influential positions. In 1941 Parmenio was appointed to the Air Warfare Department with responsibility for analyzing German industrial structures and planning the bombing attacks on same. With the outbreak of World War Two, this section became the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Committee and was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Commission. Parmenio rapidly moved to become the chairman of that commission and, when he was read into the Manhattan District Engineering Project, he became chairman of the Dropshot Committee planning the nuclear assault on Germany. He staffed the EIWC, USSBC and Dropshot with extended-lifers, partly as a result of his long-term plans but also because their incredibly long experience made them best suited for the job.

Post-war, the EIWC/USSSBC/Dropshot became the core of the National Security Council with Parmenio holding the position of National Security Advisor. The NSC was a hybrid operation, a government department that was run under contract by private companies. The company responsible for the NSC (The Hudson River Institute) was paid an annual fee for running the NSC and HRI paid all the costs of operating the NSC. The contract was for ten years, renewable at the end of that period and not cancellable in between. The intention was to provide the US Government with strategic advice, intelligence and analysis. It was the perfect job for Parmenio which is fortunate; he would hold it for 600 years.

The system by which government departments were run in this way proved highly efficient and successful. More and more Departments and agencies adopted the principle until by the late 1980s, all US Government departments and agencies were operated by private companies under contract to the U.S. Government. The way it worked was that the departments etc. were headed, and their policy formulated, by elected officials but their routine administration was the responsibility of the companies contracted to run them. Those companies recruited and trained staff and made sure that the department in question ran smoothly. Of course, if anybody ever managed to track their way through the maze of Lillith's book-keeping, they would have found all those companies were owned by members of Parmenio's group. The elected officials running those departments quickly learned that the effects of their mistakes was usually mitigated and rarely seemed to have serious consequences while their correct decisions turned out to be spectacularly and publicly successful. It was Parmenio's abiding rule; the extended lifers were not there to rule, direct or even influence, just to make sure that the damage caused by mistakes was limited to a minimum while the benefits conferred by successes were exploited to the full.

Under this system, the U.S. Government operated more smoothly and productively and with relatively fewer employees than at any time in its history.

[Calder]

Naamah
Alternative Names
Naomi Samson, Lady Naamah Samuel, Aphra Behn, Naamah Sammale

Early Life
Naamah is believed to have been born around 1250 BC as a member of the royal family of one of the Canaanite tribes that lived in the Fertile Crescent (present day Palestine Satrapy). The exact tribal group she belonged to is uncertain although some evidence (especially her red hair) points to one of the Midianite tribes. Little is known of her life in this era although some of her comments make it clear that her parents had severe difficulties in finding her a husband. The stumbling block appears to have been her eyes. Then, as now, Naamah’s eyes are a muddy slime-green, almost completely lifeless and so frightening as to be repulsive. This unfortunate characteristic appears to have scared off potential suitors who regarded her as being possessed. Also, during this period, she became a very skilled and capable herbalist. This knowledge was to become extremely important in her later life.

Around 1226 BC, Naamah’s parents finally found her a husband, Sammael of Shyt’tin.

The Shyt’tin Era
Had records survived, it is quite probable that the relationship between Sammael and Naamah would be one of the great recorded romances of history, It appears that the two were truly devoted to each other and related on a variety of personal and professional levels. As Sammael’s Queen, Naamah was much more of an equal partner to her King than was accepted in those days. Part of this comes from Sammael’s character. Naamah was his second wife, his first having died in childbirth. That tragedy appears to have affected Sammael deeply and he appears to have held himself responsible for her death. That responsibility seems to have manifested itself as a particular care for the welfare of women in his Kingdom; in fact Sammael was probably the first recorded feminist.

A description of Naamah can be found in the Zohar Sitrei Torah. Although this was written long after her early life, it is apparently based on oral history from the Shyt’tin era: “her hair all arranged, red as a rose, her face white and red, six trinkets dangling from her ears, her bed covered with fabric from Egypt, on her neck all the jewels of the East, her mouth poised, a delicate opening, what lovely trappings! The tongue pointed like a sword, her words smooth like oil, her lips beautiful, red as a rose, sweet with all the sweetness of the world. She is dressed in purple, adorned with forty adornments minus one.” This last comment is usually interpreted to be a very veiled reference to Naamah's eyes (the adornment minus one).
The key art of this description is “tongue pointed like a sword” for part of Naamah’s duties as Sammael’s Queen were to investigate crimes then find and punish the perpetrators. Some details of cases she handled were found in 2005 as part of the Potiphar Scrolls and it is apparent that she relied heavily on her incisive grasp of human nature and her ability to trip up suspects during questioning. Naamah also served as the high priestess of the Cult of Astarte during this period, Sammael is believed to have died in 1180BC and was succeeded by his grandchildren. At that point, Naamah and her close friend Lillith biti-Anat suddenly left Shyt’tin in a manner that suggests they were running for their lives. Naamah’s explanation for this is that her grandchildren resented the fact that she looked younger than they did (an early reference to Naamah’s extended life) and that they were planning some singularly unpleasant deaths for her. However, there are some suggestions that she and Lillith tried a power grab to usurp authority from the grandchildren and that failed, forcing them to run. Whatever the truth of the matter, without the strong guiding hand and wisdom of Sammael and Naamah, the Kingdom of Shyt’tin collapsed, probably during the Sea People’s invasions between 1180 and 1150BC.

The Phoenician Era
Lillith and Naamah appear to have settled in Ras Shamra after their departure from Shyt’tin and remained there for a number of decades. It is believed that Naamah continued her career as a court princess, presumably identifying herself with a far-off part of the growing Phoenician trade empire. It is also likely, given their duration of stay in Ras Shamra, that she changed identities several times. Given the chronology, it is probable that it was during her stay at Ras Shamra that Namah perfected the art of disappearing and re-emerging under a new identity that was to become a staple of her existence. There was only a limited number of times this could be done in the closed environment of Ras Shamra and by about 1000 BC, the game was up.

It appears that the "demonization" of the couple took place during this time with the Habiru (also known as Apiru or Hebrew) taking oral histories of the two women and distorting them to suit their political aims. For example, the "demonized" Naamah is referred to as having the eyes "that could stare into somebody's heart", a clear reference to her unusual eyes and to her role as a judge and inquisitor in Sammael's Kingdom. This demonized image of Lillith and Naamah eventually brought about the end of their stay in Ras Shamra; they were identified as the two women mentioned in the legends and were the target of a riot, allegedly started by Habiru residents of Ras Shamra. Once again, Lillith and Naamah had to leave, probably in something of a hurry with an angry mob at their heels.

The Delphi Era
Ras Shamra was probably the pivotal lesson of her existence. It was now painfully apparent that any admission of an extended lifespan was extremely dangerous and that a lynch mob would gather quickly if hints of their secret got out. Also, one person could not change identity convincingly enough to keep a deception going through a period of decades. Another solution was needed. The couple wandered for a while before hitting on a solution. They came across the Oracle of Delphi and this offered them a refuge.

The Oracle was run by a priestess, the Pythia. The priestess sat down for a cup of tea with her visitors, developed a sickness and died, a victim of Naamah’s herbalist skills. Lillith and Naamah took over the role of Pythia, alternating it between them in order to shake off suspicion. They became a famous institution and settled in the location for almost six hundred years. During this period, they adopted a young man, Phaeton Phoebus Apollo who had been badly burned in a forest fire. It turned out that this young man shared their extended life and he became a part of the “Oracle Act” writing mysterious word-puzzles that both amused and instructed the patrons. The Delphi Oracle was a wealth-making proposition, especially since it was "known" to be protected by the Gods, and was a secure haven for two unattached women who would otherwise have been very vulnerable to abuse.

The Delphi era lasted until 330 BC when everything changed.

The Babylon Era
The immunity offered by the Delphi Oracle was declining by the time the Third Century BC arrived. The Oracle’s treasures had been stolen by the Phokaeans and recovered by Phillip’s armies. King Phillip II visited the Oracle personally and was received by Naamah in her persona as the Pythia. At that time, Naamah met one of Phillip's most competent and capable generals, General Parmenio was already famous for his great victory over the Illyrians and was widely (if quietly) regarded as the real brains behind Phillip IIs military achievements. This was the first known meeting between the two. A few years later Alexander The Great visited Delphi - by that time the role of Pythia had been taken over by Lillith - and behaved in a high-handed and abusive manner. This convinced Naamah that the immunity offered by the Oracle was running out and it was time to move on.

This impression was confirmed when she and Parmenio met for the third time. After the conquest of Drangiana, Alexander was informed that Philotas, son of Parmenio, was involved in a conspiracy against his life. Philotas was condemned by the army and put to death. Alexander, thinking it dangerous to allow the father to live, sent orders to Media for the assassination of Parmenio. There was no proof that Parmenio was in any way implicated in the conspiracy, but he was not even afforded the opportunity of defending himself. However, Alexander forgot that Parmenio was a master strategist who was almost always two if not three jumps ahead of the game. He had anticipated that an assassination attempt would come from Alexander eventually and prepared his defenses. He escaped, although severely wounded, and was on the run. By this time Parmenio was seventy years old but looked (and had the health of) a man in his early forties. He remembered the Oracle, its occupants and headed there.

After a slightly fraught initial meeting, Naamah realized that Parmenio also had the gift of extended life shared by herself, Lillith and Apollo. From her point of view, having another man, especially a mature adult, around would be a major increase in the safety of the group as a whole. She and Lillith were no longer unattached and unprotected women but were part of a family group. Parmenio began to use his strategic talents to detaching the group from the Oracle and heading for Babylon. As he remarked to Naamah, he had business to settle there.

During this process, leadership of the small group began to slide away from Naamah towards Parmenio. This was largely inevitable of course, the standards of the day would hardly allow anything else. However, Naamah established a close relationship with Parmenio that substituted for her long-lost love Sammael. After handing over the Oracle to a peasant woman who had been "chosen by the gods" the group set off for Babylon where Parmenio planned to assassinate Alexander.

This was carried out with the team forming roles that they would carry on as standard for centuries. Naamah was the Court Princess, the face of the group in the corridors of power; Lillith the record keeper and administrator, Parmenio the strategist and Apollo the general duties and other roles as needed.

The Assassination of Alexander
The group initially presented themselves as wine merchants and established their presence in the city. Naamah used her skills as a herbalist to cure various sicknesses and injuries, soon becoming a respected member of the community. This was especially the case with Alexander’s Army who suffered from the usual injuries from accidents and training plus the social diseases common to soldiers on garrison duty in a large city. Her cures were straightforward and practical, teas and poultices made from herbs rather than rate, exotic and unusual ingredients accompanied by prayers and incantations. She was particularly popular with the rank and file since her cures were cheap, effective and she didn't advise their officers of their illnesses. So, when Alexander was stricken, she was the first physician called to his aid.

At that time, Alexander was suffering from serious stomach bleeding ulcers that defied easy cure. Using new recruits to the group (a petty thief and part-time prostitute named Igrat and a charioteer named Gusoyn) both of whom shared the gift of extended life, Naamah was able to engineer the preparation of a particularly heavily-spiced dish at a banquet. The dish itself, prepared by a third recruit to the group, Semiramis, once Queen of Assyria, was quite harmless, except to anybody with a bleeding ulcer, and was eaten by everybody at the banquet without ill-effects. Except for Alexander who collapsed in agony on the floor shortly afterwards. Surrounded by his troops, Naamah was the first name that they thought of and she was brought, none too gently, to the palace. She quickly diagnosed a severe stomach colic and explained that Alexander had to be made to vomit up the contents of his stomach. First, she would have to calm the colic and would administer a potion made of medicine dissolved in wine. This raised immediate suspicion and she was invited to drink the wine - which she did with every sign of enjoyment. Naamah then explained it had been a long, hot day and she would enjoy another cup of wine. She made up another potion, drank half of it and gave the rest to Alexander. The dosed wine calmed him somewhat and when his spasms ceased, Naamah pushed a feather down his throat to make him vomit up the contents of his stomach. The carefully-prepared dose of poison was on that feather. Alexander seemed calmed by her treatment and she left the palace, accepting only a few coins to cover her costs. Early next morning, Alexander suffered a relapse and died a few hours later.

The Civil War
Following the assassination of Alexander, the empire was put under the authority of a regent in the person of Perdiccas in 323 BC, and the territories were divided between Alexander's generals, who thereby became satraps, at the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC. Alexander's generals (the Diadochi) jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire, and Ptolemy, one of his generals and satrap of Egypt, was the first to challenge the new rule, leading to the demise of Perdiccas. His revolt led to a new partition of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC. Seleucus, who had been "Commander-in-Chief of the camp" under Perdiccas since 323 BC but helped to assassinate the latter, received Babylonia, and from that point continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC, used as the foundation date of the Seleucid Empire. By this time, Naamah (having quietly dropped her pretext as a wine-merchant's wife and vanished to remerge as an Afghan Princess) was an accepted part of court life and Parmenio had allied with Seleucus. With Parmenio's strategic gifts driving his army, Seleucus quickly came to dominate a vast swath of the territory from Phrygia to the Indus.

The Seleucia Era
By 300BC, Naamah and her group (now numbering seven) were firmly established in Seleucia. In fact, Parmenio realized that the Army was over-extended and engineered an agreement with Chandragupta Maurya, in which Seleucus exchanged his eastern territories for a considerable force of 500 war elephants. These proved decisive in consolidating Seleucus' power and stabilized the Seleucid Empire.

From that point, Naamah and her group dropped out of active participation in state affairs. For the next 250 years the group lived quietly in Seleucia, using their increased numbers to shift identities when age became too obviously anachronistic. They took the identity of a minor but influential family with Royal connections, the new identities being explained by one member "retiring to the country" while another was "a relative sent by his family to live in the city. Naamah and Semiramis alternated as the court face of the group, each introducing the other as a niece or more distant relative when the need arose. Their primary role was to keep an eye on the developing situation and act as an early warning system of any change in the military or political situation facing the Empire. In such cases, Parmenio would be insinuated into the council of state and act as the strategic direction to remedy the situation.

A good example of this was Parmenio's master-minding of Antiochus's campaign through the eastern parts of his empire restoring rebellious vassals like Parthia and Greco-Bactria to at least nominal obedience, and even emulating Alexander with an expedition into India where he met with king Sophagasenus. When he returned to the west in 205 BC, Antiochus and Philip V of Macedon then made a compact to divide the Ptolemaic possessions outside of Egypt, and in the Fifth Syrian War, the Seleucids ousted Ptolemy V from control of Coele-Syria. The Battle of Panium (198 BC) definitively transferred these holdings from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Antiochus appeared, at the least, to have restored the Seleucid Kingdom to glory although it was Naamah's political intrigue and Parmenio's strategic skills that had really won the day. In the event, the situation did not survive Parmenio's withdrawal from active participation and, despite his and Naamah's advice, Antiochus invaded Greece - only to go down in defeat. About the only lasting consequence of that adventure was that Naamah met Hannibal, realized that he shared her heritage and managed to engineer his disappearance.

This lasted until the decay within the Seleucid Empire became too serious to be remedied. The Eastern areas remained nearly uncontrollable, as Parthians began to take over the Persian lands; and Antiochus' aggressive Hellenizing (or de-Judaizing) activities led to armed rebellion in Judaea — the Maccabee revolt. Efforts to deal with both the Parthians and the Jews proved fruitless, and Antiochus himself died during an expedition against the Parthians in 164 BC. Frequent civil wars made central authority tenuous at best. By 143 BC, the Jews in form of the Maccabees had fully established their independence. Parthian expansion continued as well. In 139 BC, Demetrius II was defeated in battle by the Parthians and was captured. By this time, the entire Iranian Plateau had been lost to Parthian control. Demetrius Nicator's brother, Antiochus VII, was ultimately able to restore a fleeting unity and vigor to the Seleucid domains, but he too proved unequal to the Parthian threat: he was killed in battle with the Parthians in 129 BC. The sudden strategic skill of the Parthians was no freak of fate, Parmenio, Naamah and her group had changed sides.

The Parthia Era
By 139 BC, Naamah had established her group in the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and Parmenio had allied with the Parthian king Mithridates I. By 129 BC, the Parthians were in control of all the lands right to the Tigris, and established their winter encampment on its banks at Ctesiphon. Ctesiphon was then a small suburb directly across the river from Seleucia on the Tigris, the most Hellenistic city of western Asia. Because of their need of the wealth and trade provided by Seleucia, the Parthian armies limited their incursions to harassment, allowing the city to preserve its independence. In the heat of the Mesopotamian summer, the Parthian army would withdraw to the ancient Persian capitals of Susa and Ecbatana. Aware of the problems that had faced the highly-centralized Seleucid Empire, the group used its influence with Mithridates to bring about a highly decentralized empire that accommodated several languages, many people, and a number of different economic systems. The loose ties between the separate parts of the empire were a key to its survival. In the 2nd century CE, the most important capital, Ctesiphon, was captured no less than three times by the Romans (in 116, 165 and 198), but, as Parmenio had envisaged, the empire survived because there were other centers of power.
Local potentates played important roles, and the king had to respect their privileges. Several noble families had votes in the Royal council; the House of Suren had the right to crown the Parthian king, and every aristocrat was allowed and expected to retain an army of his own. This system suited Naamah down to the ground, effectively it returned her to her preferred role as a semi-queen with virtual independence. In fact, the loose, decentralized Parthian empire was so amenable to Naamah and her group of long-lived that they remained there for almost 400 years.

The Sassanid Era
As Parmenio had foreseen, the Parthian kings were forced to concede ever greater powers to the nobility, and the vassal kings began to waver in their allegiance. Further military defeats hastened the decline of the Kingdom and this time Parmenio wasn't available to stem the rot. In 224, the Persian vassal king Ardašir revolted. In a remarkably well-organized and strategically astute campaign, he took Ctesiphon, and this time it meant the end of Parthia, replaced by a third Persian Empire, ruled by the Sassanid dynasty. Once again, Lillith found herself the manager of a comfortable and appealing environment that was to remain their homes for a further 400 years. The long-term policy of the group was, by now, well-established. They became a minor aristocratic family that kept itself to itself and did not participate, much, in the affairs of the nation. Only when an apparent disaster threatened to affect their comfortable lifestyle would they get involved and then that involvement was limited to removing the threat to themselves. Once again, Naamah became the public face of the group, acting as a court princess although she rotated the role with Semiranis. By 600AD, Parmenio was convinced that the Sassanid Empire was doomed. The problem that worried him was, where would the group move to? The nearest large empire, the Byzantine Empire, seemed to be in almost as much a terminal decline as the Sassanids and, at best, offered only a temporary solution. In the end, the problem was solved for him; the collapse of the Sassanid Empire at the hands of Islamic invaders was much faster than he had anticipated and a move to Byzantium was made inevitable by the course of events. They had barely completed the move when the Sassanid Empire collapsed.

The Byzantine Era
In 632, the group was established in Constantinople. Parmenio was ill-at-ease with this situation but the truth was, he saw no realistic alternatives at that time. He was beginning to feel that his group had run out of luck at last. This grim assessment lead him to believe that if no new home was immediately obvious, he would have to go out and find one. It is perhaps ironic that this pessimistic view of the viability of the Byzantine Empire as a home for the long-lived would end up with them staying there for the longest period to date. In retrospect, the move to Constaninople also changed the orientation of the group quite profoundly. Up to this point they had been representative of the Hellenic-Persian cultural tradition that ultimately traced its ancestry back to Alexander's Empire. With the shift to Constantinople, that tradition was left behind and the group became more closely associated with the western, Roman-derived tradition of Europe and that woudl affect both their beliefs and their actions.

In 862AD a massive dispute between Lillith and Apollo caused a major row within the group. Apollo, ever fascinated with puzzles and cryptic statements, became involved in the developing mystical Christian revelations. Lillith tried to persuade him to find something else to study, Apollo refused and left to follow his own path. Lillith was deeply insulted and felt betrayed that her advice had been ignored. The truth was she still saw Apollo as being a little boy, a replacement for her lost children. When Apollo left, Lillith flipped into what Naamah calls her "vengeful harpy" mode and started a major inter-family feud. Disgusted by the events, Parmenio left, taking Igrat and Achillea with him while the rest of the family split up according to who's side they took in that dispute. Naamah was disgusted by Lillith's behavior and made her disagreement with her old friend very plain. For the first time since they met, there was a notable coldness between the two women with Naamah barely acknowledging Lillith's existence. The truth was that Naamah found the intrigues and plotting of the Byzantine court entirely to her taste and her activities as a court princess there took up most of her attention. However, that focus stood to the group's benefit because Naamah was well aware of the slow decline of the Empire. Nefertiti had also become aware that the Byzantine Empire was falling and was trying to do something about it but lacked Parmenio's planning ability. When Parmenio reappeared, his first priority (after trying to heal the rifts that still existed in the group) was to find a new home. Parmenio eventually settled on Florence in Italy.

The Florentine Era
The Florentine Republic had been governed from 1115 by an autonomous commune. During the period when Parmenio was planning the move to Florence, the city was plunged into internal strife by a struggle between the Ghibellines, supporters of the German emperor, and the pro-Papal Guelphs, who after their victory split in turn into feuding "White" and "Black" factions led respectively by Vieri de' Cerchi and Corso Donati. These struggles eventually led to the exile of the White Guelphs, one of whom was Dante Alighieri. This political conflict did not, however, prevent the city's rise to become one of the most powerful and prosperous in Europe, assisted by her own strong gold currency, the florin introduced in 1252, was the first European gold coin struck in sufficient quantities to play a significant commercial role since the seventh century. As many Florentine banks were international operations with branches across Europe, the florin quickly became the dominant trade coin of Western Europe for large scale transactions, replacing silver bars in multiples of the mark), the eclipse of her formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406). Power was largely exercised by the guilds and the mercantile elite. In this environment, Naamah found a new application for her time-honored role as Court Princess. Now, she was the representative of a major commercial group and this required her to work closely with Lillith. Of necessity, this brought about a final reconciliation between the two women. Between the two of them, they created a situation where their group's position in Florence quickly became one of great relative wealth. Never the less, by the start of the 1600s, Parmenio began to sense that Florence's star was waning. The Medici family had become Grand Dukes of Tuscany (and would remain so until the 1750s when the line became extinct). By that time, Parmenio and the rest of the extended life group had moved to Avebury in England.

The Avebury Era
Parmenio arrived in England late in 1666. The first act of the group was to purchase the title to the Manor of Avebury, a semi-derelict manor that had fallen into decay during the Cromwellian era. That made Parmenio Lord of the Manor of Avebury, positioning the group on the bottom rung of the aristocratic system (it should be noted that a 'Lord of the Manor' is not a lord or indeed any form of ennoblement). The group spent freely restoring the Manor House to its former glory and reviving the local farming and other activities. This put a severe dent in their financial reserves which was only slowly being replenished by the group's trade interests.

Once again, Naamah took on the role of Court Princess but this time in a different guise. She invented the identity of Aphra Behn, Shortly after she arrived in England in 1664, Naamah married Johan Behn, who was a merchant of German or Dutch extraction. Johan Behn died shortly afterwards of a somewhat mysterious disease. It is likely that Naamah made the marriage simply to gain the status of a widow, which was more beneficial for what she was trying to achieve. By 1666, Naamah had become attached to the Court, and possibly was recruited as a political spy to Antwerp by Charles II. The Second Anglo-Dutch War had broken out between England and the Netherlands in 1665. She became the lover to a prominent and powerful royal, and from him she obtained political secrets to be used to the English advantage. The lover, as one might expect, died of a mysterious illness after his usefulness was over. Naamah's exploits were not profitable, however, as Charles was slow in paying (if he paid at all) for either her services or her expenses whilst abroad. Unable to contact Parmenio who was in process of moving from Florence to Avebury, she had to borrow money to return to London, where a year's petitioning of Charles for payment went unheard, and she ended up in a debtor's prison. As soon as Parmenio heard of her plight, he paid her debts, and she was released from prison, starting from this point to become one of the first professional women writers. She cultivated the friendship of various playwrights, and starting in 1670 she produced many plays and novels, as well as poems and pamphlets.
Throughout this period, Naamah was living a double life, as Aphra Behn in the London Court and as Naamah Samuel (wife of an absent naval officer) in Avebury. On the one occasion this was detected, she explained her Avebury identity as a cover for her spying activities in Antwerp. Also, while at Court she detected another person with the extended life gift, the actress and courtesan Nell Gwynne. The two became fast friends, Naamah having blighted the hopes of one of Nell's rivals, Moll Davies, by feeding the unfortunate Moll a large dose of laxatives and diuretics just before her tryst with King Charles II. Later, after the death of Charles II, Naamah engineered the "death" of Nell Gwynne and her absorption into the group living at Avebury.

Naamah's early money troubles in England proved to be prophetic. In 1710, Parmenio had arranged with Sir John Hawkwood for the transport of a large proportion of the group's financial assets (gold coin and other tangible valuables) by sea. The ship was wrecked off Ushant and the cargo was lost, apparently permanently. The disaster was a severe blow to the group's liquidity and, for the first time in centuries, the extended-life community was short of money. The loss could have been accommodated had it not been for the expenditure at Avebury and vice versa but the two together created a crisis. To remedy the situation, Lillith came up with a classic pump-and-dump stock fraud, carried out centuries before the term became commonplace. It takes but a modicum of cunning to realize that people wildly throwing their money away are easy targets and Lillith had far more than a modicum of cunning. The group bought a major interest in a number of stock-financed ventures, pumped up the value by judicious release of bogus information then sold out all their interests and essentially cashed out of the market. As a result, the bottom fell out of the market, nobody wanted to buy stocks. With no buyers, those who still held stock they had bought for thousands of pounds could only unload it for a fraction of the price they had paid. Of course, those who had anticipated this made out like bandits. The group's financial reserves were adequately replenished (though not to the point of opulence the group had enjoyed in Florence).

It should be noted that the whole pump-and-dump scheme was, at the time it was committed, perfectly legal. In Parliament, Lord Molesworth decided that while no law existed to punish this company, they ought to make one in a hurry. A few directors and Parliament members were subjects of fairly uneventful inquiries, save for Earl Stanhope. He managed to whip himself into a frenzy after brunting some accusations, and passed out in the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards, he hinted that he knew who was responsible for his plight and gave every indication he would implicate the group at Avebury. In order to cure his illness, his physician recommended that he be bled, at that time a sovereign cure for all ailments. However, the fatal result of this treatment was not anticipated except by his physician, Naamah, thus proving that knowing too much can be a fatal affliction when she is around.

Having been the first out of the scheme, the group down at Avebury were well clear of all the tumult and watched the proceedings in London with a certain degree of amusement. By 1730 the memory of the "South Sea Bubble" was fading and it appeared to be a thing of the past, a highly successful looting operation which, Parmenio said, put him in mind of the good old days when a soldier could make his fortune from looting a captured city. However, by the mid-1740s, people were beginning to look at the South Sea Bubble with cooler heads and analyze what had happened in greater detail. Within a few years, the parts played by previously-unknown parties were becoming more obvious. Naamah, still safely situated in court, warned Parmenio that it was time to leave before the emerging trail lead the investigators back to Avebury. After a careful analysis of destinations, Parmenio picked the colonies in North America and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Jamestown Era
By 1765, Parmenio and the group had moved to Jamestown, Virginia where they bought a large estate (which still remains in the hands of the group as communal property). Individual members of the group purchased houses in and around Jamestown. The group set themselves up as traders and shipping owners, making substantial sums out of the import of goods that were in short supply. Shortly after they arrived, the agitation that was to end in the American Revolution started. Parmenio thought about the situation in depth and came to the conclusion that the British were going to lose. Accordingly, when the revolution actually started, he sided with the colonial against the British - although he took great case not to let his group (now numbering more than a hundred) get too deeply involved. Mostly, they supported the revolution by importing much-needed supplies and selling them at a large profit. Naamah's efforts in this area are unclear but it is reputed that several outbreaks of debilitating sickness amongst key British officers had Naamah's hand behind them. As a result, he and his "family" were in good repute when the war ended. Parmenio was also very careful not to get involved in the war of 1812.

Essentially, Naamah lived quietly as part of a prosperous and successful trader until 1860. By then it had become apparent that a civil war was brewing between the slaveholding South and the Free North. Parmenio thought about this impending war in great detail and came to the conclusion that the North both should win and would win. Parmenio had no objections to slavery per se, given his background that is hardly surprising, but saw that the sort of society desired by the Confederacy could not survive in the modern world. The North had to win, or America would not survive.
When war broke out, Parmenio raised a regiment and took it out west where he was attached to the command of General Ulysses S Grant. Naamah went with him, accompanied by Igrat and Achillea. Naamah's major claim to fame was the assassination of the Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston in April 1862. As the Confederate forces overran the Union camps, Johnston seemed to be everywhere, personally leading and rallying troops up and down the line. At about 2:30 p.m., while leading one of those charges, he was wounded, taking a bullet behind his right knee. Within a few minutes Johnston was observed by his staff to be nearly fainting off of his horse, and asked him if he was wounded, to which he replied "Yes, and I fear seriously." He was taken to a forward aid station where Naamah was working (actually to gain tactical information, a repeat of her work for Charles II). She recognized Johnston and realized the importance of him not recovering from the wound he had suffered. She bandaged the wound but coated the bandage with a salve that prevented coagulation. As a result, Johnston continued to bleed out. Although he went back to the front, his boot was filling up with blood and shortly afterwards, he collapsed. Johnston was taken to a small ravine, where he bled to death in minutes.

With the coming of peace, Naamah returned to her role as part of a trading and industrial family. Her traditional role as Court Princess was obviously no longer appropriate but she transformed it into that of society hostess. In 1919, she suffered a personal tragedy when, in the Great Influenza, she contracted the illness, recovering only after a serious illness. Her close friends, Semiramis and Scheherazade both died of the disease.
In 1921, there was a great meeting of as many of the extended life community as could gather. By now the total community amounted to several thousand and was growing quickly as prosperity increased both population and life expectancy. There were three main proposals for the future. Suriyothai was in favor of a very activist policy, helping the short-lifers to rule. In support of that, she pointed to her own experience in having created a niche where she could steer national policy. Loki was in favor of the traditional hands-off non-intervention policy. Parmenio favored a third way, a discrete involvement in government that would not direct or control but simply limit the adverse effects of any bad decisions. No decision on this was reached and each of the three major groups continued to pursue their own agendas. Parmenio started the process of involving himself in government. He had purchased a shipyard, the Herreshof Yard as an investment and used his position as a shipbuilder to become one of the advisors on the American team negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty. With his involvement, the center of the group's activity moved from Jamestown to Washington, bringing the group into the modern era.

The Modern Era
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Parmenio used his position as an industrialist and investor to manoeuver his way into Government service by participating on advisory boards and liaison committees. Naamah continued her role as a society hostess, acting as the group's "ears" on the movements and opinions in society circles. In 1941 Parmenio was appointed to the Air Warfare Department with responsibility for analysing German industrial structures and planning the bombing attacks on same. With the outbreak of World War Two, this section became the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Committee and was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Commission. Parmenio rapidly moved to become the chairman of that commission and, when he was read into the Manhattan District Engineering Project, he became chairman of the Dropshot Committee planning the nuclear assault on Germany. He staffed the EIWC, USSBC and Dropshot with extended-lifers, partly as a result of his long-term plans but also because their incredibly long experience made them best suited for the job. Naamah was technically one of the secretaries in the group but also acted as the group's source of information on social and society opinions in Washington. Naamah's role as society hostess became significant when the groups headed by Parmenio quickly became notorious in Washington for the large number of women employed at their senior management levels. This originally was the cause of adverse comment and a whispering campaign started in Washington's notoriously Machiavellian circles. The campaign faded away, partly because of the demonstrated efficiency of those groups and partly because some of the leading critics suddenly developed chronic illnesses that caused them to retire from Washington social circles.

Post-war, the EIWC/USSSBC/Dropshot became the core of the National Security Council with Parmenio holding the position of National Security Advisor. The NSC was a hybrid operation, a government department that was run under contract by private companies. The company responsible for the NSC (The Hudson River Institute) was paid an annual fee for running the NSC and HRI paid all the costs of operating the NSC. The contract was for ten years, renewable at the end of that period and not cancellable in between. The intention was to provide the US Government with strategic advice, intelligence and analysis. Initially at least, Naamah was not involved in running the NSC, her society hostess role being considered too important.

The system by which government departments were run in this way proved highly efficient and successful. More and more Departments and agencies adopted the principle until by the late 1980s, all US Government departments and agencies were operated by private companies under contract to the U.S. Government. The key appointment in all departments run in this fashion was that of "Executive Assistant". This post was effectively the liaison between the elected officials who set policy and made the major decisions and the private contractors who executed that policy and carried out the decisions made. The Executive Assistants provided by the Contractors quickly gained a reputation for smooth administrative efficiency with their "principles" (the elected official for whom they worked) learning to expect what seemed to be minor miracles in terms of scheduling problems and business arrangements working smoothly. The secret was, of course, that the Executive Assistants could draw upon the range of talents and experience possessed by the group; in effect they were the public face of an organization with more than 6,000 members, all of whom simply had far more experience in making things happen than the average. Naamah was one of the earlier Executive Assistants, initially being appointed as the Executive Assistant to the Attorney General Ramsey Clark. That appointment did not last too long; her principal proved to be a disaster in office and eventually suffered a terrible fate at Naamah's hands. This event was unique, driven by a critical mix of events, and represents the only occasion when an elected official was actually removed by the staff appointed by the contractors to serve him.

[Calder]

Lillith
Alternative Names
Lillith, Lilith, Lillith biti-Anat, Lady Lillith Parmenio, Lillith Beatty

Early Life
Lillith biti-Anat was born around 1250BC in Ugarit, a member of the royal family in that city. She is a distant cousin of Naamah. Lillith was apparently well-educated and was able to read and write in both Canaanite and Egyptian. She also appears to have been spoken multi-lingual at an early age. When about 18 years old, she was married to a Hebrew, King Adam of Edom by whom she had three children. While the marriage appears to have been happy at first, it deteriorated when Adam took on a second wife, Eve, and at her instigation became addicted to what are delicately known as unnatural sexual practices. Lillith was repulsed by his demands, took her children and escaped to the neighboring kingdom of Shyt'tin. Adam demanded she return and, when she refused, he sent three of his lieutenants, Senoy, Sansenoy and Smengalof, to force her. They failed and, in revenge, brutally tortured Lillith and killed her children.

The Shyt'tin Era
Lillith was found, near death, by some of King Sammael's guards who brought her to the Temple of Astarte in the hope that Naamah could save her life. Naamah recognized her cousin and, despite the severity of her injuries (including severely burned feet and internal injuries from sexual abuse) managed to save her life. This was a remarkable achievement since (although details are obviously sparse) the probable extent of Lillith's injuries would have challenged the skills of a modern trauma ward. Even so, it was almost a year before Lillith could walk again and the injuries to her feet continue to trouble her even to this day.

When recovered enough, Lillith told King Sammael of what had become and caused him to have one of his rare but terrifying outbursts of sheer fury. He declared war on Adam and Edom, ostensibly because of the insult to his honor resulting from the attack on a person who had sought refuge in his city and was thus under his protection. It might also be suspected that his protective attitude to women was a major factor in his decision. Naamah had already arranged the assassination of Senoy, Sansenoy and Smengalof and their families. It was apparently Lillith who demanded that their children should be killed in retaliation for the death of her own. Sammael's army quickly dispersed that of Adam and took his city of Edom. Adam and Eve were cast out of the city as exiles and apparently starved to death in the barren hills surrounding the area (some theologians now believe that this incident is the root of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis). Edom was incorporated into Sammael's Kingdom and prospered as a result.

For a period of time, certainly months and probably years, after this incident, Lillith appears to have been largely revenge-driven and, in modern terms, was urgently in need of psychiatric help. Clinically, she was probably suffering from deep depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. This period ended when she was fully included within Sammael's household, technically as one of his wives although the nature of the relationship was probably platonic. She held the position of "Keeper of Records" and put the record-keeping of the city on a sound and reliable basis. Remarkably, some of these records were discovered as the "Potiphar Scrolls", a selection of ancient records discovered in The Caliphate and saved by the Methaq El Wardeh (Pact of the Rose). Being part of an affectionate and benign family plus having a role that exploited her talents appears to have snapped her out of her psychological state. By the time she and Naamah had to escape from Shyt'tin after Sammael's death, she had recovered, mentally at least, from her ordeal.

The Phoenician Era
Lillith and Naamah appear to have settled in Ras Shamra (Ugarit), a major Phoenician trading center. The city was sited on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia. Ugarit sent tribute to Egypt and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus (called Alashiya). It is likely that Lillith's fluency in both the Ugaritic languages and Egyptian allowed her to become a person of significant importance in the local economic and political structures. The date of her arrival in Ras Shamra is uncertain but she and Naamah much have arrived well after 1190BC when Ugarit was overrun and sacked. By the time the couple arrived, the city had been rebuilt and was being ruled by the "Sea Peoples".

Lillith and Naamah had apparently removed a significant percentage of the Shyt'tin treasury when they escaped from the city and this acted as seed money for their new life in Ras Shamra. Naamah used her political connections as a Court Princess to negotiate with the rulers of the country while Lillith started a commercial trading operation which replenished their financial reserves. While they were involved in establishing themselves, the Sea Peoples' onslaught in the eastern Mediterranean continued with the destruction of the states of Hatti, Ashkelon and Hazor. Scholars now believe that Shyt'tin fell to the Sea People some time during this period; however it was not important enough to warrant independent mention. It should be stressed that the invasions were not merely military operations, but involved the movements of large populations, by land and sea, seeking new lands to settle. The warriors who fought in the land battles were accompanied by women and children loaded in ox-carts. Whether Lillith and Naamah were involved in the decision to attack Shyt'tin is unknown; it appears unlikely that Naamah would have conspired to destroy the Kingdom that was her beloved husband's work, but the attack would fit into Lillith's pattern of almost obsessive vengefulness.

Lillith remained in Ras Shamra for several generations, during which time she and Naamah perfected the art of changing identities to conceal their extended age. It appears that the "demonization" of the couple took place during this time with the Habiru (also known as Apiru or Hebrew) taking oral histories of the two women and distorting them to suit their political aims. For example, the "demonized" Lillith is referred to as having the lower half of her body "made of fire", a clear reference to her burned feet. This demonized image of Lillith and Naamah eventually brought about the end of their stay in Ras Shamra; they were identified as the two women mentioned in the legends and were the target of a riot, allegedly started by Habiru residents of Ras Shamra. Once again, the two women had to flee for their lives.

The Delphi Era
Ras Shamra was probably the pivotal lesson of Lillith's existence. It was now painfully apparent that any admission of an extended lifespan was extremely dangerous and that a lynch mob would gather quickly if hints of her secret got out. Also, one person could not change identity convincingly enough to keep a deception going through a period of decades. Another solution was needed. The couple wandered for a while before hitting on a solution. They came across the Oracle of Delphi and this offered them a refuge.

The Oracle was run by a priestess, the Pythia. The priestess sat down for a cup of tea with her visitors, developed a sickness and died, a victim of Naamah’s herbalist skills. Lillith and Naamah took over the role of Pythia, alternating it between them in order to shake off suspicion. They became a famous institution and settled in the location for almost six hundred years. During this period, they adopted a young man, Phaeton Phoebus Apollo who had been badly burned in a forest fire. Lillith effectively adopted the young man finding in him a partial substitute for her lost children. It turned out that this young man shared their extended life and he became a part of the “Oracle Act” writing mysterious word-puzzles that both amused and instructed the patrons. The Delphi Oracle was a wealth-making proposition, especially since it was "known" to be protected by the Gods, and was a secure haven for two unattached women who would otherwise have been very vulnerable to abuse.

The Delphi era lasted until 330 BC when everything changed.

The Babylon Era
The immunity offered by the Delphi Oracle was declining by the time the Third Century BC arrived. The Oracle’s treasures had been stolen by the Phokaeans and recovered by Phillip’s armies. King Phillip II visited the Oracle personally and was received by Naamah in her persona as the Pythia. In Phillip's party was one of his most competent and capable generals, General Parmenio was already famous for his great victory over the Illyrians and was widely (if quietly) regarded as the real brains behind Phillip IIs military achievements. This was the first known meeting between the two. A few years later Alexander the Great visited Delphi - by that time the role of Pythia had been taken over by Lillith - and behaved in a high-handed and abusive manner. This convinced them both that the immunity offered by the Oracle was running out and it was time to move on.

This impression was confirmed when she and Parmenio met for the third time. After the conquest of Drangiana, Alexander was informed that Philotas, son of Parmenio, was involved in a conspiracy against his life. Philotas was condemned by the army and put to death. Alexander, thinking it dangerous to allow the father to live, sent orders to Media for the assassination of Parmenio. There was no proof that Parmenio was in any way implicated in the conspiracy, but he was not even afforded the opportunity of defending himself. However, Alexander forgot that Parmenio was a master strategist who was almost always two if not three jumps ahead of the game. He had anticipated that an assassination attempt would come from Alexander eventually and prepared his defenses. He escaped, although severely wounded, and was on the run. By this time Parmenio was seventy years old but looked (and had the health of) a man in his early forties. He remembered the Oracle, its occupants and headed there.
After a slightly fraught initial meeting, Lillith realized that Parmenio also had the gift of extended life shared by herself, Naamah and Apollo. By implication this meant that there were likely to be others of their kind. From another point of view, having another man, especially a mature adult, around would be a major increase in the safety of the group as a whole. She and Naamah were no longer unattached and unprotected women but were part of a family group. Parmenio began to use his strategic talents to detach the group from the Oracle and heading for Babylon. As he remarked to Naamah, he had business to settle there. After handing over the Oracle to a peasant woman who had been "chosen by the gods" the group set off for Babylon where Parmenio planned to assassinate Alexander.

This was carried out with the team forming roles that they would carry on as standard for centuries. Naamah was the Court Princess, the face of the group in the corridors of power; Lillith the record keeper and administrator, Parmenio the strategist and Apollo the general duties and other roles as needed.

The Seleucia Era
Following the assassination of Alexander, the empire was put under the authority of a regent in the person of Perdiccas in 323 BC, and the territories were divided between Alexander's generals, who thereby became satraps, at the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC. Alexander's generals (the Diadochi) jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire, and Ptolemy, one of his generals and satrap of Egypt, was the first to challenge the new rule, leading to the demise of Perdiccas. His revolt led to a new partition of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC. Seleucus, who had been "Commander-in-Chief of the camp" under Perdiccas since 323 BC but helped to assassinate the latter, received Babylonia, and from that point continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC, used as the foundation date of the Seleucid Empire. With Parmenio's strategic gifts driving his army, Seleucus quickly came to dominate a vast swath of the territory from Phrygia to the Indus. In fact, Parmenio realized that the Army was over-extended and engineered an agreement with Chandragupta Maurya, in which Seleucus exchanged his eastern territories for a considerable force of 500 war elephants.

The Parthia Era
By 139 BC, Parmenio and his circle were established in the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and Parmenio had allied with the Parthian king Mithridates I. Aware of the problems that had faced the highly-centralized Seleucid Empire, the group used its influence with Mithridates to bring about a highly decentralized empire that accommodated several languages, many people, and a number of different economic systems. Once again Lillith took on the role of the group's record keeper and financial manager, ensuring that there was adequate income to support the slowly-increasing number of people in what was now effectively an extended family. As a result of her trading and other economic activities, the group was becoming steadily wealthier and Lillith was the primary center that ensured that everybody lived comfortably while the group had adequate reserves of easily-transportable money to meet with any emergencies.

In 30BC, Lillith and Naamah met an old acquaintance when Parmenio brought back Cleopatra after removing her from under Octavian's nose. Cleopatra was another person who was gifted with extended life something that became obvious when Naamah took one look at her and dropped to her knees, touching her head to the floor, an obeisance that Lillith had last seen her perform in Shyt'tin some 900 years earlier. It had been 1,200 since they'd last met, but Naamah had recognized Pharaoh Nefertiti instantly. This lead to another transfer of power within the group with Nefertiti becoming the nominal leader.

The increased financial solidity of the group due to Lillith's careful management and the presence of Nefertiti as a manager allowed Lillith to join Parmenio, Naamah, Igrat and Apollo on a diversionary operation that caused the German tribes to rise up against the Romans. Parmenio manipulated a situation where a Roman incursion into Germania was subjected to concerted attack and, at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the three Legions involved were completely wiped out, one of the worst military catastrophes ever inflicted on the Roman Army. Parmenio regards the battle as one of his greatest masterpieces. In the aftermath, he was offered the pick of the captured Roman women and, recognizing one who had been gifted with extended life, picked her. This woman was Inanna who quickly became one of his "inner circle". Lillith took the young woman under her wing, helping her to adjust to the implications of her inheritance. The rising wealth of the group was symptomatic of a greater problem that saw the Parthian nobility become more powerful due to concessions by the Parthian king granting them greater powers over the land and the peasantry. Their power now rivaled the king's, while at the same time internal divisions in the Arsacid family had rendered them vulnerable. Thinking through the inevitable consequences, Parmenio realized that Parthia's days were numbered. It was time to look for a new home.

The Sassanid Era
As Parmenio had foreseen, the Parthian kings were forced to concede ever greater powers to the nobility, and the vassal kings began to waver in their allegiance. Further military defeats hastened the decline of the Kingdom and this time Parmenio wasn't available to stem the rot. In 224, the Persian vassal king Ardašir revolted. In a remarkably well-organized and strategically astute campaign, he took Ctesiphon, and this time it meant the end of Parthia, replaced by a third Persian Empire, ruled by the Sassanid dynasty. Once again, Lillith found herself the manager of a comfortable and appealing environment that was to remain their homes for a further 400 years. The long-term policy of the group was, by now, well-established.

They became a minor aristocratic family that kept itself to itself and did not participate, much, in the affairs of the nation. Only when an apparent disaster threatened to affect their comfortable lifestyle would they get involved and then that involvement was limited to removing the threat to themselves. Lillith remained in the background, keeping records, managing the groups assets and generally making sure everything went as smoothly as possible. By 600AD, Parmenio was convinced that the Sassanid Empire was doomed. The problem that worried him was, where would the group move to? The nearest large empire, the Byzantine Empire, seemed to be in almost as much a terminal decline as the Sassanids and, at best, offered only a temporary solution. In the end, the problem was solved for him; the collapse of the Sassanid Empire at the hands of Islamic invaders was much faster than he had anticipated and a move to Byzantium was made inevitable by the course of events. They had barely completed the move when the Sassanid Empire collapsed.

The Byzantine Era
In 632, the group was established in Constantinople. Parmenio was ill-at-ease with this situation but the truth was, he saw no realistic alternatives at that time. He was beginning to feel that his group had run out of luck at last. This grim assessment lead him to believe that if no new home was immediately obvious, he would have to go out and find one. It is perhaps ironic that this pessimistic view of the viability of the Byzantine Empire as a home for the long-lived would end up with them staying there for the longest period to date. In retrospect, the move to Constantinople also changed the orientation of the group quite profoundly. Up to this point they had been representative of the Hellenic-Persian cultural tradition that ultimately traced its ancestry back to Alexander's Empire. With the shift to Constantinople, that tradition was left behind and the group became more closely associated with the western, Roman-derived tradition of Europe and that woudl affect both their beliefs and their actions.

In 862AD a massive dispute between Lillith and Apollo caused a major row within the group. Apollo, ever fascinated with puzzles and cryptic statements became involved in the developing mystical Christian revelations. Lillith tried to persuade him to find something else to study, Apollo refused and left to follow his own path. Lillith was deeply insulted and felt betrayed that her advice had been ignored. The truth was she still saw Apollo as being a little boy, a replacement for her lost children. When Apollo left, Lillith flipped into what Naamah calls her "vengeful harpy" mode and the family split up according to who's side they took in that dispute. Nefertiti and Parmenio managed to smooth things down but the dispute appears to have frustrated Parmenio to the point where he simply wanted out. Accordingly, he left for the Far East, accompanied only by two members of the group, his adopted daughter Igrat and an ex-Gladiator named Achillea. He would not return for almost 300 years.

When she came to her senses, Lillith was horrified by what she had done. Apollo and Parmenio had both walked out and disappeared and her own standing in the group had been severely harmed by her behavior. Even her old friend Naamah was angered at her and for the first time since they met, there was a notable coldness between the two women. To make matters worse, without Parmenio's guiding strategic hand, the group was drifting without an overall aim or purpose. It took many years for the homogeneity of the group to recover from the explosion and even when it did, things were never quite the same. Lillith swore never again to behave in the manner that had brought about the disaster. She made it a strict rule to walk away from conflict rather than get involved in the rows.

It took the return of Parmenio in 1195 to finally heal the rifts caused by the explosion. Nefertiti had become aware that the Byzantine Empire was falling and was trying to do something about it but lacked Parmenio's planning ability. Worse, the loss of respect for Lillith had made her financial and managerial work for the group much less effective and their resources were beginning to run down. Parmenio's decision to move to Florence was, therefore, timely.

The Florentine Era
The Florentine Republic had been governed from 1115 by an autonomous commune. During the period when Parmenio was planning the move to Florence, the city was plunged into internal strife by a struggle between the Ghibellines, supporters of the German emperor, and the pro-Papal Guelphs, who after their victory split in turn into feuding "White" and "Black" factions led respectively by Vieri de' Cerchi and Corso Donati. These struggles eventually led to the exile of the White Guelphs, one of whom was Dante Alighieri. This political conflict did not, however, prevent the city's rise to become one of the most powerful and prosperous in Europe, assisted by her own strong gold currency, the florin introduced in 1252, was the first European gold coin struck in sufficient quantities to play a significant commercial role since the seventh century. As many Florentine banks were international operations with branches across Europe, the florin quickly became the dominant trade coin of Western Europe for large scale transactions, replacing silver bars in multiples of the mark), the eclipse of her formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406). Power was largely exercised by the guilds and the mercantile elite. It goes without saying that one of these mercantile families was the group of extended lifers (now numbering several dozen) lead by Nefertiti. In this environment, Lillith found a new vocation and became one of the leading traders in the city. Parmenio found that his strategic gifts could be applied to the business environment (something he had always regarded as below him) as well. He and Lillith worked closely together, rebuilding the group's reserves and then raising them to new heights of affluence. The group's position in Florence quickly became one of great relative wealth. Never the less, by the start of the 1600s, Parmenio began to sense that Florence's star was waning. The Medici family had become Grand Dukes of Tuscany (and would remain so until the 1750s when the line became extinct). By that time, Parmenio and the rest of the extended life group had moved to Avebury in England.

The Avebury Era
Parmenio arrived in England late in 1666. The first act of the group was to purchase the title to the Manor of Avebury, a semi-derelict manor that had fallen into decay during the Cromwellian era. That made Parmenio Lord of the Manor of Avebury, positioning the group on the bottom rung of the aristocratic system (it should be noted that a 'Lord of the Manor' is not a lord or indeed any form of ennoblement). The group spent freely restoring the Manor House to its former glory and reviving the local farming and other activities. This put a severe dent in their financial reserves which was only slowly being replenished by the group's trade interests. Lillith fitted easily into her role as the Lady of the Manor and the group seemed set for a long, quiet and comfortable stay.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. In 1710, Parmenio had arranged with Sir John Hawkwood for the transport of a large proportion of the group's financial assets (gold coin and other tangible valuables) by sea. The ship was wrecked off Ushant and the cargo was lost, apparently permanently. The disaster was a severe blow to the group's liquidity and, for the first time in centuries, the extended-life community was short of money. The loss could have been accommodated had it not been for the expenditure at Avebury and vice versa but the two together created a crisis. Lillith came up with a scheme to raise the necessary revenue to replenish the reserves.

In 1711, the British government had spent itself into debt totaling over ten million pounds. A large group of merchants joined together as the South Sea Trading Company and bought some £9,000,000 of the debt, assured by the government of a six percent interest rate giving the group a guaranteed annual income of £540,000 income. The company started to promote its shares heavily on the stock market, causing the shares to from £100 to £1000, with no end in sight. Driving the speculation was news that the British government had recently given them exclusive trading rights to four ports Spain was allegedly willing to open up in Chile and Peru. Those investing in the South-Sea Company imagined piles of gold in South America, and between these trading rights and the incoming interest from the government, they saw the economic opportunity of a lifetime. The news that was not heeded was, in hindsight, somewhat crucial: King Philip V of Spain let everybody involved know that he was only willing to let one ship squeak in a year. Somehow, that information never became public.

It was a classic pump-and-dump stock fraud, carried out centuries before the term became commonplace. As with other promises of instant wealth, folks went nutty with investing. The South-Sea Company made millions overnight, and in no time there were plenty of other trading companies popping up to take advantage of the speculative frenzy. Not a few set up and vanished in a week or two, skipping off gaily with investors' money, ostensibly to the New World to return their investment but really just down the street to the local bar or bordello. It takes but a modicum of cunning to realize that people wildly throwing their money away are easy targets and Lillith had far more than a modicum of cunning. The directors of the Company insisted profits were just around the corner, and even outbid the Bank of England for an additional £31,000,000 of government debt in 1719. At that point, Lillith and Parmenio sold out all their interests and essentially cashed out of the market. The result of their selling their South Sea Trading Company stock was delayed but when it hit it hit hard. In September 1720, the bottom fell out of the market, nobody wanted to buy stocks. With no buyers, those who still held stock they had bought for thousands of pounds could only unload it for a fraction of the price they had paid. Of course, those who had anticipated this made out like bandits. the group's financial reserves were adequately replenished (though not to the point of opulence the group had enjoyed in Florence).

The directors of the South-Sea Company, the suddenly-wealthy authors of this bubble, got together with disgruntled investors and told them what great deeds the Company had done for England. They claimed, "none had ever performed such wonderful things in so short a time as the South-Sea Company… moneyed men had vastly increased their fortunes; country gentlemen had seen the value of their lands doubled …in short, [they] had enriched the whole nation." And then they ran, much to the consternation of everybody else who had suddenly found themselves in the poorhouse. They had to run, the pull-out orchestrated by Lillith a year earlier had left them holding the bag.

It should be noted that the whole pump-and-dump scheme was, at the time it was committed, perfectly legal. In Parliament, Lord Molesworth decided that while no law existed to punish this company, they ought to make one in a hurry. A few directors and Parliament members were subjects of fairly uneventful inquiries, save for Earl Stanhope. He managed to whip himself into a frenzy after blunting some accusations, and passed out in the House of Commons. He "let blood the on the following morning, but with slight relief." It was eighteenth-century England, and everyone knew that a good healthy bleeding was a sovereign cure for many ailments. However, the fatal result was not anticipated except by his physician. Knowing too much can be a fatal affliction when Naamah is around. Public complaints, exhortation of lamentations and looting were rampant. The press and spent their time lauding politicians who claimed that the entire populace of England was unwittingly duped by these evil merchants. These politicians efficiently directed public attention away from themselves to these elderly rich gentlemen, who either had the good sense to flee the country or stuck around and got prosecuted on some trumped-up charges. As for the poor, neglected peoples who had run helter-skelter and had thrown their money about, their luck and dreams of riches had departed.

Having been the first out of the scheme, the group down at Avebury were well clear of all the tumult and watched the proceedings in London with a certain degree of amusement. By 1730 the memory of the "South Sea Bubble" was fading and it appeared to be a thing of the past, a highly successful looting operation which, Parmenio said, put him in mind of the good old days when a soldier could make his fortune from looting a captured city. However, by the mid-1740s, people were beginning to look at the South Sea Bubble with cooler heads and analyze what had happened in greater detail. Within a few years, the parts played by previously-unknown parties were becoming more obvious. Parmenio decided that it was time to leave before the emerging trail lead the investigators back to Avebury. After a careful analysis of destinations, Parmenio picked the colonies in North America and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Jamestown Era
By 1765, Parmenio and the group had moved to Jamestown, Virginia where they bought a large estate (which still remains in the hands of the group as communal property). Individual members of the group purchased houses in and around Jamestown. The group set themselves up as traders and shipping owners, making substantial sums out of the import of goods that were in short supply. Shortly after they arrived, the agitation that was to end in the American Revolution started. Parmenio thought about the situation in depth and came to the conclusion that the British were going to lose. Accordingly, when the revolution actually started, he sided with the colonial against the British - although he took great case not to let his group (now numbering more than a hundred) get too deeply involved. Mostly, they supported the revolution by importing much-needed supplies and selling them at a large profit. Lillith was now primarily a book-keeper and the group's banker and restricted her activities to loaning money to revolutionary commanders. As a result, she and her "family" were in good repute when the war ended. Lillith also aided Parmenio in his efforts not to get involved in the war of 1812.

Essentially, Lillith lived quietly as part of a prosperous and successful trading family until 1860. By then it had become apparent that a civil war was brewing between the slaveholding South and the Free North. Parmenio thought about this impending war in great detail and came to the conclusion that the North both should win and would win. Parmenio had no objections to slavery per se, given his background that is hardly surprising, but saw that the sort of society desired by the Confederacy could not survive in the modern world. The North had to win, or America would not survive.
When war broke out, Parmenio raised a regiment and took it out west where he was attached to the command of General Ulysses S Grant. Lillith remained back east, essentially running the group's industrial facilities and ensuring that they received an adequate number of lucrative government contracts. The industries she was overseeing did well during the War, further building up the group's financial reserves. Her role as the group's banker and financial manager continued postwar. During World War One, she again repeated her financial management efforts to secure some of the very large government contracts floating around, at Parmenio's instigation she started to invest in aircraft and other advanced industries. A personal tragedy hit her during the 1919 Great Influenza, she and many of the extended-lifers contracted the illness. Lillith was seriously ill but Semiranis and Scheherazade both died of the disease.

In 1921, there was a great meeting of as many of the extended life community as could gather. By now the total community amounted to several thousand and was growing quickly as prosperity increased both population and life expectancy. There were three main proposals for the future. Suriyothai was in favor of a very activist policy, helping the short-lifers to rule. In support of that, she pointed to her own experience in having created a niche where she could steer national policy. Loki was in favor of the traditional hands-off non-intervention policy. Parmenio favored a third way, a discrete involvement in government that would not direct or control but simply limit the adverse effects of any bad decisions. No decision on this was reached and each of the three major groups continued to pursue their own agendas. Parmenio started the process of involving himself in government and, as a result, the center of the group's activity moved from Jamestown to Washington, bringing the group into the modern era.

The Modern Era
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Parmenio used his position as an industrialist and investor to manoeuver his way into Government service by participating on advisory boards and liaison committees. Lillith became Parmenio's preferred assistant in the increasingly-important government positions that he held. In 1941 Parmenio was appointed to the Air Warfare Department with responsibility for analyzing German industrial structures and planning the bombing attacks on same. With the outbreak of World War Two, this section became the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Committee and was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Commission. Parmenio rapidly moved to become the chairman of that commission and, when he was read into the Manhattan District Engineering Project, he became chairman of the Dropshot Committee planning the nuclear assault on Germany. He staffed the EIWC, USSBC and Dropshot with extended-lifers, partly as a result of his long-term plans but also because their incredibly long experience made them best suited for the job. Lillith was effectively his deputy in all of these positions. The groups headed by Parmenio quickly became notorious in Washington for the large number of women employed at their senior management levels. This originally was the cause of adverse comment and a whispering campaign started in Washington's notoriously Machiavellian circles. The efficiency with which these organizations were run though quickly silenced those critics.

Post-war, the EIWC/USSSBC/Dropshot became the core of the National Security Council with Parmenio holding the position of National Security Advisor. The NSC was a hybrid operation, a government department that was run under contract by private companies. The company responsible for the NSC (The Hudson River Institute) was paid an annual fee for running the NSC and HRI paid all the costs of operating the NSC. The contract was for ten years, renewable at the end of that period and not cancellable in between. The intention was to provide the US Government with strategic advice, intelligence and analysis. Lillith became his "executive assistant", a job title that was invented to give her position as Parmenio's right hand some official standing.

The system by which government departments were run in this way proved highly efficient and successful. More and more Departments and agencies adopted the principle until by the late 1980s, all US Government departments and agencies were operated by private companies under contract to the U.S. Government. The key appointment in all departments run in this fashion was that of "Executive Assistant". This post was effectively the liaison between the elected officials who set policy and made the major decisions and the private contractors who executed that policy and carried out the decisions made. The Executive Assistants provided by the Contractors quickly gained a reputation for smooth administrative efficiency with their "principles" (the elected official for whom they worked) learning to expect what seemed to be minor miracles in terms of scheduling problems and business arrangements working smoothly. The secret was, of course, that the Executive Assistants could draw upon the range of talents and experience possessed by the group; in effect they were the public face of an organization with more than 6,000 members, all of whom simply had far more experience in making things happen than the average.

Under this system, the U.S. Government operated more smoothly and productively and with relatively fewer employees than at any time in its history.

[Calder]

LeMay, Curtis Emerson

Early life and career
Curtis Emerson LeMay was born on November 15th 1906 in Columbus, Ohio to Erving LeMay, an unskilled laborer and Arizona Carpenter. His early life was complicated by the family’s frequent moves as his father sought work in a wide variety of industries. The family was continuously short of money and the young Curtis had to start working at a very early age. As is typical of American youngsters at that time, he started as a newspaper boy but his managerial ability quickly became apparent; he became the distribution manager for a number of local newspapers while still in his early teens.

Curtis LeMay studied civil engineering at Ohio State University. He was commissioned as an officer in the ROTC then transferred to the Army Reserves in order to join the Air Corps in 1928 where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1930. His early career was in fighters, flying the [[[P-12 |Boeing P-12] at a number of bases including Ohio, the Canal Zone and Hawaii. During this period, he started to take an intense interest in the problems of aircraft navigation.

As a result of his activity in the areas of long-range navigation and night flying, he transferred to bomber aircraft in 1937 and soon demonstrated his abilities. He was assigned to the 2nd Bomb Group, initially flying Douglas B-18 Bolos but quickly moving to the Boeing Y1B-17 Flying Fortress. LeMay was chief navigator for a number of B-17 flights to South American countries on goodwill missions and, in 1938, was the primary navigator for the famous interception of the Italian liner Rex in the Atlantic.

World War II
At the entry of the U.S. to World War II, LeMay was a lieutenant colonel and commander of the newly-formed 305th Bomb Group. He took the 305th to Russia in December 1942 as the first part of the U.S. commitment to the Russian Front and led it in combat until May 1943, notably helping to develop the combat box formation. In April 1943, the 305th was joined by the 19th and 306th Bomb Groups to form the American Air Expeditionary Force. This became the 3rd Bomb Division in September, 1943. When his crews were not flying missions they were being subjected to his relentless training as he believed that training was the key to saving their lives. The men called him "Iron Ass" because he demanded so much but he was immensely respected. More importantly, his managerial capabilities came to the fore and he was responsible for a major change in maintenance and flying procedures that greatly increased the capability of his small force of B-17Es.

SAC Commander
It was this managerial ability that attracted the attention of the Chiefs of Staff who were looking for a commander to take charge of the new Strategic Air Force being built in the United States. Although part of the USAF, Strategic Air Command would report directly to the Chiefs of Staff, an unprecedented arrangement. In August 1944, LeMay returned to the Zone of the Interior and took command of Strategic Air Command and its growing fleet of B-36 bombers. In this capacity LeMay was in charge of all strategic air operations against Germany.

As part of the formation of Strategic Air Command, LeMay was read into the secret of the Atomic Bomb that was approaching operational status. He immediately saw the implications of the development of this weapon and was quite aware of the cataclysmic nature of a bombing campaign based around that weapon. However, he argued that it was his duty to carry out the attacks in order to end the war as quickly as possible, sparing further loss of life. At this time, LeMay began a close association with the senior members of The Targeteers that was to last until his death. It is rumored that LeMay was privy to the secret of the extended life of those leaders although this has never been confirmed.

Presidents Roosevelt and Dewey justified the concept of the nuclear attack on Germany by reference to the one million American troops that had already been killed on the Russian front and the probability that twice that many would die if Germany and Western Europe had to be invaded. Between 1944 and 1945 there was a long debate over the rival concepts of The Big One, a single massive blow that would destroy German war making potential and render the country incapable of continuing the war and The Little One, a sustained nuclear bombing campaign that would use nuclear devices in small numbers as they became available. LeMay was strongly in favor of the former and master-minded its acceptance by the Government.

When LeMay took over SAC, it consisted of little more than a few understaffed B-36 groups. Less than half of the available aircraft were operational, and the crews were undertrained. When he ordered a mock bombing exercise on Dayton, Ohio most bombers missed their targets by one mile or more. LeMay was instrumental in the U.S. Air Force's acquisition of a large fleet of new strategic bombers, establishment of a vast aerial refueling system, the formation of many new units and bases, and the establishment of a strict command and control system with an unprecedented readiness capability. He insisted on rigorous training and very high standards of performance for his aircrews, supposedly saying, "I have neither the time nor the inclination to differentiate between the incompetent and the merely unfortunate."

While SAC was being formed, LeMay was aware that delaying The Big One until June 1947 while the necessary inventory of nuclear devices was being built up was a calculated gamble. Germany was believed to also be developing nuclear devices and the chance that they would use one or more was always on the cards. LeMay therefore insisted that SAC would always have to be ready to go to war at a few hours notice, using whatever assets it had available. In the event, Germany had abandoned nuclear development in 1943 but the principle of instant readiness laid down by LeMay in 1945 was to remain SAC policy right up to the present day.

Although LeMay has been characterized as a war-monger and mass-murderer by his critics, the truth is that he abhorred war and regarded it as an obscenity. However, he held that opinion modified by the belief that the only thing worse than going to war was to lose a war. Therefore, his policy laid down for SAC (and later in his Presidency) was that the U.S. should only fight when its vital interests were involved but when it did fight, it should do so with the maximum violence needed to end the war as quickly and decisively as possible.

Air Force Chief of Staff
LeMay was appointed Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force in July 1951, serving until 1954 when he was made the third Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. During this period, the U.S. under Presidents Dewey and Patton reorganized its armed forces around the doctrine of massive retaliation. This saw the dramatic reduction of U.S. tactical forces and the adoption of the philosophy that “the U.S. does not make war on its enemies, it destroys them.” Le May’s belief in the efficacy of strategic air campaigns over tactical strikes and ground support operations became Air Force policy and has remained so ever since.

President
In December 1955, President Patton suffered a severe stroke (from which he would die almost a year later). The Republican Party approached General LeMay to become its candidate for the 1956 election in place of Patton. Initially at least, LeMay declined but was eventually persuaded to stand. He resigned from the Air Force in January 1956 and was elected in November by a massive majority in both the popular vote and Electoral College.

LeMay's two terms of office are now regarded as something of a golden age of international politics. Although much was made of a number of small issues at the time, it is now apparent that these were of little significance overall. The only obvious use of American power was the 1959/60 involvement in a Triple Alliance/Chipanese dispute that terminated in the Siege of Myitkyina and was ended by Operation Jungle Hammer. For the rest of those years, the term Pax Americana was exact and accurate. President LeMay's term saw SAC develop into its final form as the ultimate expression of power. A brief flirtation with intercontinental missiles in 1957-58 was quickly abandoned (virtually all US strategic missile programs were cancelled in the infamous 1957 "Missile Massacre") and the bomber remained the centerpiece of American strategic power. LeMay was challenged for his second term by John F Kennedy and the election looked extremely finely balanced but JFKs death in 1960 put the election in LeMay's lap. President LeMay was in increasing bad health for most of his second term. This lead, in part, to an acceleration of the process by which various departments of the US Government were run under contract by firms of specialized outside contractors, descendants of The Targeteers who had planned The Big One. As a direct result, the size of the US Government (measured in terms of numbers of employees) fell steadily throughout the eight years of his Presidency.

Retirement
Following the end of his presidency in 1964, Curtis LeMay entered a quiet retirement, being careful not to criticize or undermine any of his successors. He died on October 1, 1990, and is buried in the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
He married Helen E. Maitland (died 1994) on the 9th of June 1934 with whom he had one child—Patricia Jane LeMay Lodge.