The two city-states as competing philosophies — the Athenian investment in democracy, philosophy, rhetoric, the life of the mind; the Spartan investment in discipline, sacrifice, the body as instrument of the polis. Kassandra was born into one and trained by it and then exiled from it and has spent the game building something neither city would recognize as legitimate. The mercenary's legend is not institutional. It belongs to her alone.

Built my own legend is the Eagle Bearer's essential statement about the Greek world and her place in it. Neither Athens nor Sparta has a category for her — too independent for the polis, too principled for pure mercenary work, too powerful for anyone to ignore. The legend she is building is the space she has carved out between the two systems that define the world she moves through.