Formed by fictional leakage from the various accounts and legends of the life of Alexander the Great of Macedon, Alexandria is a mature Recursion locked in the late Iron Age time that inspired it. On our Earth, Alexander conquered the largest empire the world had yet seen over a span of 15 years, only to die young at the age of 33. During his life, he lost no battles and was worshiped as a god, and it was said of him that when his empire reached its full extent, he wept that there were no more worlds to conquer. On Alexandria, Alexander is a god, immortal and invincible, and his army has been on the march now for 300 years. Alexandria is unique in that it does not have a fixed geography; instead, it consists only of the 100 miles or so surrounding the Macedonian army. As the army conquers, it moves on and the conquered regions cease to exist, replaced by new foes for Alexander to subdue; truly, there are now infinite worlds for him to conquer.
The peoples of Alexandria are thus divided into two categories: the Macedonian army and their unconquered foes. The Macedonian army is led by Alexander the God and a dozen subordinate leaders who are also immortal demigods. The junior officers, common soldiers, and camp followers are all normal mortal humans, comprising around 20% of Alexandria’s population at any time; around 25% of these people have the Spark. Soldiers who are too wounded or too old to continue on campaign are settled in new cities, which are almost invariably named “Alexandria.” These new cities will then fade away as the army marches on, but the people within these cities, along with those soldiers killed in battle, seem to be re-incarnated into new bodies who arrive as part of “reinforcement columns.” Thus, even the common soldiers have a sort of immortality in Alexandria. The remaining 80% of the population is made up of the so-called “opposition forces.” These peoples are and have been a mixture of cultures and nations that populated the Earth of 323 BCE, along with several random anachronisms; for instance, 80 years ago the Macedonian army fought (and, of course, defeated) Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion. Only 5% or so of these people will have the Spark, and those who do are disproportionately likely to be absorbed into the Macedonian army upon their inevitable defeat. As a result, the Macedonian army has over time become something of a cultural melting , with ethnic Macedonians and Greeks mixing with Persians, Egyptians, Indians, Scythians, Gauls, Romans, and Chinese, among others.
Alexandria is a war without end. The Macedonian soldiers march from victory to victory, amassing a truly staggering amount of loot, but their existence is one of constant toil and bloodshed. The soldier looks ever forward to the day when he might retire and enjoy the fruits of victory, but should that day ever come, they will soon fade from existence, only to begin again as a fresh young recruit. For the remainder of the population, their existence is usually nasty, brutish, and short; they come into existence only to fight and die (if warriors) or to watch helplessly as their city/village/tribe falls to the invincible army, to be disposed of at the whim of the God Alexander and his demigods. There are signs of change in the Recursion, though. The percentage of the population with the Spark has been rising, and more of these gifted individuals are beginning to imagine that there might be more to life than warfare. More ominously, Alexander himself has begun to question this existence. The battles are beginning to repeat themselves, and he is becoming bored. Alexander supports a corps of philosophers to study the new lands he discovers, as a tribute to his long-dead teacher Aristotle, and some of these philosophers have posited the existence of infinite worlds outside of this one. Captivated by this idea, Alexander has set his philosopher corps to the task of discovering a way to enter these other worlds. It is perhaps well that Alexandria seems to be limited in technology to the late Iron Age – otherwise, we might soon see a gunpowder-armed elite army led by an immortal military genius bent on conquering every world in existence.