Archon

Archon (Greek ἄρχων arkhon; pl. ἄρχοντες) is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord," frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule," derived from the same root as monarch.

Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece the chief magistrate in various Greek city states was called Archon. The term was also used throughout Greek history in a more general sense, ranging from "club leader" to "master of the tables" at syssitia.

In Athens a republican system of nine concurrent Archons evolved, led by three respective remits over the civic, military, and religious affairs of the state: the three office holders being known as the Eponymos archon (Ἐπώνυμος ἄρχων; the "name" ruler, who gave his name to the year in which he held office), the Polemarch ("war ruler"), and the Archon Basileus ("king ruler"). The six others were the Thesmothétai, Judicial Officers. Originally these offices were filled from the wealthier classes by elections every ten years. During this period the eponymous Archon was the chief magistrate, the Polemarch was the head of the armed forces, and the Archon Basileus was responsible for some civic religious arrangements, and for the supervision of some major trials in the law courts. After 683 BC the offices were held for only a single year, and the year was named after the Archōn Epōnymos. (Many ancient calendar systems did not number their years consecutively.)

Archon (software)

Archon was an open source platform created by the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign which is designed to allow archival repositories to more easily create and publish finding aids to their collections. It was created in response to a lack of easy methods for archivists to publish finding aids online. While the archival community had previously created content and data structures, such as Encoded Archival Description, implementation of these standards was difficult for many in the profession.

Beginning in 2009, Archon and Archivists' Toolkit (a similar tool) began the process of merging the two platforms. This new software, ArchivesSpace, was developed in 2012-2013 and had a 1.0 release in September 2013. As of January 2014, Archon has become unsupported software and the project has been merged with ArchivesSpace.

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Races of StarCraft

Blizzard Entertainment's bestselling real-time strategy game series StarCraft revolves around interstellar affairs in a distant sector of the galaxy, with three species and multiple factions all vying for supremacy in the sector. The playable species of StarCraft include the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth who excel at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoids obsessed with assimilating other races in pursuit of genetic perfection; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. Each of these races has a single campaign in each StarCraft real-time strategy game. In addition to these three, various non-playable races have also been part of the lore of the StarCraft series; the most notable of these is the Xel'Naga, a race which features prominently in the fictional histories of the Protoss and Zerg races.

The original game has sold over 10 million copies internationally, and remains one of the most popular games in the world. One of the main factors responsible for StarCraft's positive reception is the attention paid to the three unique playable races, for each of which Blizzard developed completely different characteristics, graphics, backstories and styles of gameplay, while keeping them balanced in performance against each other. Previous to this, most real-time strategy games consisted of factions and races with the same basic play styles and units with only superficial differences. The use of unique sides in StarCraft has been credited with popularizing the concept within the real-time strategy genre. Contemporary reviews of the game have mostly praised the attention to the gameplay balance between the species, as well as the fictional stories built up around them.