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Description
The maritime city-state of Carthage was one of the largest and most prosperous trade empires in history. Dominating the shores of the Mediterranean for nearly half a millennium, Carthage is one of the few states which was be able to give the Romans a run for their money. But I'm getting ahead of myself, who were the Carthaginians and how did they achieve such prolonged success? If you asked them, they'd tell you that Carthage was founded in 814 BCE as a colony of the Canaanite city of Tyre. The Greek word for this region which we now call the Levant was "Phoinike", which in turn was borrowed into Latin as "Poeni", and it is here that we get our common modern English terms "Phoenician" and "Punic". These were not a united people, instead being a loose cluster of culturally-related city-states, many of which were powerful naval merchants in their own right. Tyre itself specialized in the trade of an extremely rare purple-red dye made from snail shells which appropriately has been dubbed "Tyrian Purple". Many empires from Egypt to Rome would seek this dye to use as a status symbol in the clothes of the wealthy, most famously in the robes of Roman senators.

Carthaginian legend tells us that it was a Tyrian princess, Dido, who first set out and settled the city on the African coast. She was the daughter of King Mattan, who before he died in 831 BCE declared that she would rule jointly with her brother Pygmalion. For unclear reasons, the people did not approve of this arrangement, and Dido was forced to cede her right to the throne. When her husband was murdered, supposedly for his wealth, she finally realized she might not be entirely welcome in Tyre, so she made preparations to get the hell out of dodge. Her colony ship landed in what is today Tunisia, near the territory of another Phoenician colony, Utica. The local Amazigh peoples reportedly welcomed the newcomers amicably, but were still understandably wary about this sudden influx of people looking to settle in their lands. One of their kings, Iarbas, permitted Dido to found a city only within the amount of space that could be covered by an ox hide. In what is… a strangely common trope of history, Dido had the ox hide cut into thin straps and laid them out end to end to mark out a giant swath of territory in which her new city would be founded. Literally. The city's name was "Qart-Hadasht", which translates to "New City", and I think you can connect the dots from there. Iarbas was, understandably, a bit miffed by this bullshit loophole, and demanded that Dido marry him lest he make war on the Carthaginians. Dido, still grieving the loss of her husband, decided to off herself on a funeral pyre rather than be unloyal. Damn, romance is metal. Of course, the Roman poet Virgil would later change the story so that he could ship Carthage's founder with Rome's legendary founder. No… the other one, Aeneas. Virgil's rewrites of history are a whole different story for another day, though, so I'll just let that lay where it is for now.

Over the next few centuries, Carthage would grow its power and influence, becoming masters of the sea and by extension a hub of cultural diversity. When its mother city Tyre collapsed under the weight of Babylonian invasion in 586 BCE, Carthage was at last able to shake off its old bonds and fill in the power vacuum left behind in the other extensions of the homeland. Taking control of colonies from the Levant to Italy to Spain, Carthage established themselves as the dominant power in the Mediterranean. The general Mago eventually established his family, the Magonid dynasty, as the city's royal house in the mid-6th century BCE. Under his management, Carthage secured control over Sardinia and Libya, while laying the groundwork for later generations to establish trade routes stretching all the way from the British Isles to the Congo. There was really only one thorn in Carthage's supremacy: Sicily. Inhabited by an assortment of indigenous peoples and Greek colonists, no one could keep this territory in their hands for very long. It's squabbling over this island which would eventually draw the attention of an up-and-coming Italic city-state called Rome in the 3rd century BCE. The Punic Wars were a cross-generational conflict full of incredible battles like the one at Cannae and personalities like Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, but sadly that's beyond the scope of this blurb. The long and short of it is that Rome eventually got the upper hand and completely ravaged the city of Carthage in 146 BCE, ending Carthage's reign once and for all, and paving the way for a new superpower to take over the Mediterranean…

Design notes, we don't seem to have a lot of contemporary art from the Carthaginians… probably because of Rome scorching it to the ground. Assholes. Most depictions of Carthaginian warriors tend to show them wearing the type of light armor that was common for Greek mercenaries. Which is fair, since a large chunk of Carthage's army was made up of mercenaries from foreign lands, especially North Africa. That's why I chose to depict the Agile as one of the feared Numidian Cavalry they often employed. Still, the Greek-style armor doesn't lend itself well to distinguishing these guys as specifically "Carthaginian". Obviously in real life, that wasn't exactly a concern. When you're expected to buy your own armor, your country's "brand" isn't really a priority. But dammit, I need D&D tokens, how dare these people not give consideration to some random nerds living on an unknown continent 2000 years after they died? So rude. Joking aside, I did my best to compile the little details that stood out from the reference images I sourced, and I'm actually quite pleased with how this turned out. The Heavy was kind of improvised, but not entirely made up whole cloth, and I think he looks gnarly. The Elite meanwhile has armor I based off of the Ksour Essef cuirass, which apparently is every reconstructionist's go-to when designing Carthaginian warriors based on how often this exact same breastplate showed up on different designs I found. To be fair, it is damn slick, I kinda want one-

Description
The maritime city-state of Carthage was one of the largest and most prosperous trade empires in history. Dominating the shores of the Mediterranean for nearly half a millennium, Carthage is one of the few states which was be able to give the Romans a run for their money. But I'm getting ahead of myself, who were the Carthaginians and how did they achieve such prolonged success? If you asked them, they'd tell you that Carthage was founded in 814 BCE as a colony of the Canaanite city of Tyre. The Greek word for this region which we now call the Levant was "Phoinike", which in turn was borrowed into Latin as "Poeni", and it is here that we get our common modern English terms "Phoenician" and "Punic". These were not a united people, instead being a loose cluster of culturally-related city-states, many of which were powerful naval merchants in their own right. Tyre itself specialized in the trade of an extremely rare purple-red dye made from snail shells which appropriately has been dubbed "Tyrian Purple". Many empires from Egypt to Rome would seek this dye to use as a status symbol in the clothes of the wealthy, most famously in the robes of Roman senators.

Carthaginian legend tells us that it was a Tyrian princess, Dido, who first set out and settled the city on the African coast. She was the daughter of King Mattan, who before he died in 831 BCE declared that she would rule jointly with her brother Pygmalion. For unclear reasons, the people did not approve of this arrangement, and Dido was forced to cede her right to the throne. When her husband was murdered, supposedly for his wealth, she finally realized she might not be entirely welcome in Tyre, so she made preparations to get the hell out of dodge. Her colony ship landed in what is today Tunisia, near the territory of another Phoenician colony, Utica. The local Amazigh peoples reportedly welcomed the newcomers amicably, but were still understandably wary about this sudden influx of people looking to settle in their lands. One of their kings, Iarbas, permitted Dido to found a city only within the amount of space that could be covered by an ox hide. In what is… a strangely common trope of history, Dido had the ox hide cut into thin straps and laid them out end to end to mark out a giant swath of territory in which her new city would be founded. Literally. The city's name was "Qart-Hadasht", which translates to "New City", and I think you can connect the dots from there. Iarbas was, understandably, a bit miffed by this bullshit loophole, and demanded that Dido marry him lest he make war on the Carthaginians. Dido, still grieving the loss of her husband, decided to off herself on a funeral pyre rather than be unloyal. Damn, romance is metal. Of course, the Roman poet Virgil would later change the story so that he could ship Carthage's founder with Rome's legendary founder. No… the other one, Aeneas. Virgil's rewrites of history are a whole different story for another day, though, so I'll just let that lay where it is for now.

Over the next few centuries, Carthage would grow its power and influence, becoming masters of the sea and by extension a hub of cultural diversity. When its mother city Tyre collapsed under the weight of Babylonian invasion in 586 BCE, Carthage was at last able to shake off its old bonds and fill in the power vacuum left behind in the other extensions of the homeland. Taking control of colonies from the Levant to Italy to Spain, Carthage established themselves as the dominant power in the Mediterranean. The general Mago eventually established his family, the Magonid dynasty, as the city's royal house in the mid-6th century BCE. Under his management, Carthage secured control over Sardinia and Libya, while laying the groundwork for later generations to establish trade routes stretching all the way from the British Isles to the Congo. There was really only one thorn in Carthage's supremacy: Sicily. Inhabited by an assortment of indigenous peoples and Greek colonists, no one could keep this territory in their hands for very long. It's squabbling over this island which would eventually draw the attention of an up-and-coming Italic city-state called Rome in the 3rd century BCE. The Punic Wars were a cross-generational conflict full of incredible battles like the one at Cannae and personalities like Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, but sadly that's beyond the scope of this blurb. The long and short of it is that Rome eventually got the upper hand and completely ravaged the city of Carthage in 146 BCE, ending Carthage's reign once and for all, and paving the way for a new superpower to take over the Mediterranean…

Design notes, we don't seem to have a lot of contemporary art from the Carthaginians… probably because of Rome scorching it to the ground. Assholes. Most depictions of Carthaginian warriors tend to show them wearing the type of light armor that was common for Greek mercenaries. Which is fair, since a large chunk of Carthage's army was made up of mercenaries from foreign lands, especially North Africa. That's why I chose to depict the Agile as one of the feared Numidian Cavalry they often employed. Still, the Greek-style armor doesn't lend itself well to distinguishing these guys as specifically "Carthaginian". Obviously in real life, that wasn't exactly a concern. When you're expected to buy your own armor, your country's "brand" isn't really a priority. But dammit, I need D&D tokens, how dare these people not give consideration to some random nerds living on an unknown continent 2000 years after they died? So rude. Joking aside, I did my best to compile the little details that stood out from the reference images I sourced, and I'm actually quite pleased with how this turned out. The Heavy was kind of improvised, but not entirely made up whole cloth, and I think he looks gnarly. The Elite meanwhile has armor I based off of the Ksour Essef cuirass, which apparently is every reconstructionist's go-to when designing Carthaginian warriors based on how often this exact same breastplate showed up on different designs I found. To be fair, it is damn slick, I kinda want one-