Rome AARisen - a Byzantine AAR

Servius Magnus - Thank you for all the kind praise! I actually didn't start playing CK myself until I read some of the AARs in this forum - the Byzantine Letters and the Paleologi specifically, so I understand where you're coming from. Half the fun for me is expanding the game beyond its original "intent" through the story - having plots and counterplots to explain game events, etc. etc.



Update is about 60-70% done. Right now I've got a little writing and a lot of graphics to make. So, to hold everyone over, I have a little graphic of what I've been doing in In Nomine while I was procrastinating...


At this point in game its 1580... my Byzantine Empire Westernized in 1562, and has been decisively beating Muslim countries since. I hold Funj, Adal and a small African country in present day Nigeria (forget its name) as vassals from conquest, and have Moldavia, Montenegro and Armenia as diplomatic vassals for future diploannex. Byzantium fields the largest standing army in the world, 120,000 strong, though we're a little technololgically behind (thanks to Westernization, not by far though). Byzantium also has the largest navy - 18 heavy warships, 15 light warships, 50 galleys and 20 transports. My current mission is to take southern Italy, but the alliance climate isn't in favor of such a move, so I think instead I might take on Fez, who owns almost all of north Africa outside of me - they look large and menacing, but in fact, they muster far too few troops.

Of very interesting note is the fate of Poland, who had a royal marriage union with Lithuania and instantly became the most powerful country in the world for some 80 years, before exploding into civil war (which has last twenty years... Poland's monarchy holds no territory of its own, its all occupied). Silesia, Polotsk, Ukraine, and Lithuania all declared independence and are still squabbling over the spoils.

Eams - Yes, that's from a completely different thing. Part of me, after I get further in this AAR, wants to start an IN Byzantine AAR... but considering my last efforts to run two AARs at once, I'm leery of doing so...


And yay! An actual update!




Basil tarried only a short while in Konstantinopolis, before returning to the field in April of 1173. The next phase of the planned wars in Spain was about to unfold, and Basil wanted, once again, to lead the Romanoi in person.

To the north, the various Christian armies had finally broken out of northern Spain and were marching south. Richard struck south and west, to take the northern parts of Castile and Galicia, while the King of France and the Emperor of the West marched south towards Toledo itself. Their advance was lightning fast, and on June 5th, 1173, Toledo fell to the armies of Emperor Heinrich. Yet Basil himself had a far different goal. While the Germans and French made hard for Toledo itself, namesake and titular capital of the Sultanate, Basil lunged from Almeria for a much older prize.

Cordoba.


The city was one home to the great Ummayad Caliphs, and at its height had been more populous and prosperous than even Konstantinopolis. Even at this late a date, it was still one of the largest, wealthiest cities in the Known World – a suitable jewel for the crown of Spanish territories Basil was about to claim.

The plan called for Kosmas to take some 6,000 troops northward into southern Valencia, while Basil led some 12,000 in two columns towards Cordoba and Seville. A third column of 7,000 under Romanos Demertzis would follow the coast west towards Cadiz.

Basil’s planned attack meant dividing his 25,000 troops into multiple columns. As the Sultan was far to the north with the bulk of the Toledan forces, splitting his troops would allow Basil the opportunity to take as much territory in as little time as possible, capitalizing his gains while the Toledans were away. Hopefully this would grant him leverage at any negotiating table he should have to approach, whether it be amongst the Christians themselves or with the Moors.


At Granada, first blood was drawn. Some 4,500 Toledan soldiers drew themselves up against Basil’s personal column of 6,500 on the 18th of June, 1173. They were not only outnumbered, but the Romanoi had a superiority in cavalry – some 1,700 horse versus barely 250 under the banner of the sheikh. Sheikh Al-Mansur deployed his troops on a hill, dominating the roadway below - a decision that maximized what little advantage he had. The Grenadine troops had some 2,500 heavy infantry – mostly the spear militia trained and raised by the city of Granada itself. These men were clad in good chainmail armor, had heavy shields, stout spears and good swords, the equal of any Roman skoutatos. Behind this heavy line Al-Mansur deployed his thousand lighter troops, mostly levies armed with short spears and light shields drawn from the countryside.

Basil knew his superiority in cavalry would be sorely pressed by Al Mansur’s deployment on the hillside, and while Basil had 1,500 heavy menalavoi and swordsmen, the majority of his infantry line were light troops from the Sicilies… some 2,500. Hybrid descendants of the Saracens and Romans who had lived their before Romanion reasserted control, Basil saw an opportunity - on the craggy heights on the Moorish right, they could easily function far better than Al Mansur’s heavy infantry.

So at noon the Roman lines went forward, the heavy infantry in the center, light troops to the left, and a thousand of the cavalry to the right. Al Mansur was forced to intercept the Romanoi horse with his own, while he desperately redeployed his own light troops to counter the threat of the Romanoi on the heights. The end result was a gap, where the flank of his heavy infantry line was left open.

Into this gap charged the Emperor and 700 Roman heavy horse, smashing the Moorish flank. Al Mansur ordered a retreat, which rapidly slipped into the a rout. The sheikh himself was captured, along with 1,800 of his troops, while another 600 lay dead on the field. The remainder scattered to the winds.

At a stroke, Granada was laid open, and the Emperor quickly occupied the city less than a week after the battle. Afterwards, Basil’s columns continued their varied, lightning strikes – the Emperor himself force marched his men to Cordoba, seizing the city by surprise storm. Another column under Romanos Demertzis marched to the west of the Imperial lines, towards Aracena, while Kosmas’ column followed the sea towards Cadiz.

All seemed to be going according to plan, and within the year, it looked as if all of southern Spain would fall to the Romanoi. Yet events elsewhere were conspiring against the Emperor, even before he could maximize on the situation. Unknownst to Basil, the French had concluded a treaty of peace with the Sultan, and withdrawn their troops. On the 13th of July, 1173, Drogo declared war on Heinrich, and 45,000 prepositioned French troops stormed into the Holy Roman Empire. As planned, the Duke of Lower Lorraine, as well as the Dukes of Franconia and Saxony, declared themselves free of Imperial control, with Duke Leopold of Franconia declaring himself King of Germany.

In a flash, Heinrich was struck in a horrific predicament. He was cut off from home, unable to get to Germany except through a hostile France. Desperately the German Emperor had appealed to Rome for help – only to hear no reply. Rather than lose everything because of a seemingly uncaring Papacy, Heinrich negotiated his way back through France, surrendering ancient claims to Provence and Flanders, as well as handing the French King a healthy sum. All the while, Emperor Heinrich never realized the French fleet had intercepted his messages off Toulon, and Pope Boniface had heard little, to nothing of Drogo’s moves…

So the French King’s designs flew open – the Western Emperor was embarrassed and once again preoccupied with his own nobility, while the King of England was left alone in the north of Spain. Drogo’s agents in England itself quickly went to work, and on July 25th Richard’s brother Hugh, as well as his wife Amelie and their twin sons, perished in a mysterious fire at Hereford Castle. At a stroke, Drogo had not only dangerously isolated the impetuous English king, but had aligned his own son to be next in line to the English throne.

As Richard was operating separately from the other monarchs, the news of Heinrich’s withdraw did not reach the English King until the 18th of August, by which point the Sultan had brought over the forces he’d planned on using against Heinrich and Drogo to focus on Richard. At Vieja, the English King fought a desperate battle to escape the Sultan’s trap. Over 28,000 Toledan troops swept north on Richard’s 15,000, attempting to encircle and cut off the King. Through a series of desperate and devastating cavalry charges, Richard, leading in person as normal, broke through the Sultan’s lines and led his barely 10,000 survivors northwards to Bilbao. Desperate riders were sent to where the French and German armies were expected to be, only to come back reporting nothing. Fearing complete disaster, with the Sultan’s hordes fast approaching, Richard took to ship for England, quitting the Crusade. It wasn’t until he was back in England that word reached him that Drogo had betrayed Heinrich – and that his brother, as well as his twin two year old nephews, were dead.


Immediately, England began preparing for war.

All of this together meant that the Sultan of Toledo, once pressed and hemmed in from all sides, now found himself free to concentrate his entire power against the one opponent still in the field – Emperor Basil. Sultan Rukhaddin immediately led his northern force southward, linking up with the remnants of his sheikhs and emirs forces, launching a broad, devastating counteroffensive across the board. Emir Muqtada Taifan led 14,000 towards the east, with the intent of attacking the army of Megas Doux Kosmas Komnenos, pushing northward into Valencia. The Sultan himself, with 29,000 troops, set off towards southern Castile, with the intention of trapping and destroying Basil’s disparate columns.

The Emperor’s first inclination something was wrong came from worried scouts on the Elbro, reporting that large numbers of Toledans were marching north rapidly – then even more were seen marching southwards. Basil slowed his lightning northward advance, calling for the columns of Clemente Kosaca and Romanos Demertzis to draw closer to him. On October 18th, 1173, an advance guard of the Moorish army, 8,000 strong, appeared only mere miles from Basil’s position. The Emperor launched a surprise assault near Madrid, decimating the force, inflicting some 4500 casualties for 1000 of his own. Sensing the Sultan’s pressure, however, Basil used the breather granted by this sharp victory to pull southward, closer to his other, rapidly approaching columns. A few days later, a tarried rider, sent by Richard as he boarded the last of his ships and Bilbao, confirmed what Basil already knew – the Moors were moving south, in force.

However, all would not go so well elsewhere. At Aracena on November 1st, Demertzis’ column of 5,500, hurriedly marching to the east to make contact with the Emperor, was caught by surprise in a pass by the Sultan himself, and well over 8,000 of his men. To Demertzis’ credit, the strategos fought his way out, losing two thousand men for an equal number of the Sultan’s. Yet when the beaten column ran into Basil’s main force outside of Niebla, Demertzis was in a state of panic. Moors had been sighted near Toledo, at Cadiz, on the Elbro and in Valencia. Scouts had reported Moorish forces from all of Spain were gathering – a seeming storm of steel was descending south, directly towards the Emperor and his dangerously isolated columns


Basil immediately sent riders flying to the four winds, with orders for Kosaca, Kosmas, and all other columns to immediately march with all haste on Niebla. Kosaca arrived at Niebla on the 18th of November, with 4000 men, giving Basil a force of close to 8000 men. The Sultan was fast on his heels, arriving on the hills outside of the town on the 20th of November. A series of sharp, pitched skirmishes resulted over the next week, where Basil used his light cavalry to harass, raid, and reconnoiter his opponent, steadily trying to back away as he did so.

However, on the night of the 28th of November, Sultan Rukhaddin pulled perhaps the most daring tactical move of his reign, marching his entire force by night around the Roman position. On the morning of November 29th, Basil found the whole of the Sultan’s wing of the army drawn up, blocking his path of retreat to Cordoba. With no word from Kosmas, Basil found himself facing the might of Toledo with only half of his men…


November 11th, 1173

Leo Komnenos, called Eklytos (“the Lecher”) closed his eyes and smiled. There certainly were privileges to being the brother of a reigning Emperor, and even more when one counted that Leo was a Prince in his own right. As southern Italy was far too important a group of themes to be left to any possibly errant noble, Basil had entrusted them to his younger brother, now a “vigorous” young man, with stewardship of Apulia, Calabria and Salerno.

One of the best was having several attractive women arranged around his throne, armed with elaborate ostrich fans to fight away any absurd heat that should seek to annoy his person. The constant cool breeze was enough to make any man smile, especially with all others present in the room nearly sweating from the unseasonably aggressive temperatures. Even if his personal garden of nightshade was withering in the heat, at least Leo himself would be the shade.


Yet it was the young woman kneeling before Leo’s throne that made him smile the most this day. She was thin, pale, and blonde – exactly how the Prince preferred his women, with downcast blue eyes and a form fitting dress that left little to the imagination. Clearly in Leo’s mind, someone with a sense of taste and refinement had selected her. Such tastes were unfortunately expensive in Konstantinopolis, yet the woman kneeling at his feet was to be his servant – whore in all but name – for free.

“What is your name?” Leo leaned back, drumming his fingers on the sides of his throne. Possibilities were alight in his mind – all of which were far more interesting than the standard drudgery of holding court and listening to petitions.

“Nimue, my lord,” she said, in surprisingly good Greek. She still carried a soft Latin accent, something that pleased Leo’s ears as much as her bosom pleased his eyes. A French name – that probably meant she had more skills than any prim and proper Roman woman. That thought alone made his smile even broader.

“Who sends this gift?” he asked. Someone clearly of high station. He knew a small list of who wouldn’t have sent such a gift – his brother Basil at the top of the list. Last Christmas, Basil’s idea of the perfect gift for the worldly Leo had been a gold bound, illuminated copy of the Bible, complete with gemstones implanted in the leatherbound front and back of the volume. Leo had the gemstones taken out and pawned, and used the money to throw a party for his best friend, Nikolaios Laskaris.

His chamberlain, the same Nikolaios Laskaris, looked at the parchment and read. His face bunched up quizzically in the same way it always did when he came across a word or name he didn’t know well. Finally, he spoke.

“Hmm… she is a gift from the French Ambassador to Konstantinopolis,” Laskaris said after a moment, avoiding the man’s Latin name. “It is a token to your greatness, my lord. He says she has served well as a house servant, and he feels that her looks, and her skills, will please Your Highness most excellently.” A grin came to his chamberlain’s face, and Leo could tell Nikolaios was thinking the same thoughts he was. Great minds thought alike, always.

“Indeed.” Leo’s smile changed from one of lasciviousness to something else. So the French ambassador was sending tributes to Leo’s greatness? It was about time someone did! Was not Leo an member of the Komnenoi, just like his brother Basil? Hadn’t Leo taken up the sword and saw service in the Nubian campaign? Yet Leo didn’t get the plaudits and praise, that mechanical bull Clemente Kosaca did. Even now, the Prince fumed, Kosaca was likely earning more plaudits for his efforts in Spain!

And why was Basil, Emperor of the Romans, running about in Spain with only a few men – there was an Empire to govern! Why had Basil taken the disgraced Kosmas, and that little dog Kosaca, and not his own brother? War meant glory, and glory meant prestige, power, wealth, and women! Calabria was wealth enough, but being a rich governor was nothing when all the glory and honor, let alone less illustrious things, seemed to go the way of the generals!

Patriarch Ignatios had grown increasingly ill of late, and often the Metropolitan of Thessalonike, Herakles Koustramis, had taken his place in the pulpit, delivering damning sermons against the Latin idea of ‘War in the Name of God.’ Wasn’t Koustramis right – that the Emperor was, in tantamount, fighting a Crusade on the behalf of the Latin Kings of the West? His place was not in Moorish Spain – it was in Konstantinopolis. If anything, Leo thought, he should be in Spain, winning glory, fighting battles…

These thoughts rattled through Leo’s mind, before he came upon an idea.

“Nikolaios, take a letter,” he began. “To my lord and friend Amalric, Ambassador to Konstantinopolis, Leo, Prince of Calabria et cetera sends his greetings and warmest thank you for the fine gift you have bestowed upon me. I have heard that Konstantinopolis’ winds off the sea sometimes bother your wife. I invite you to come to Calabria for a month, and stay as my guest…”


“So this is it?”

The messenger nodded, standing proud and tall before Basil in his flowing robes and turban. Basil would give the herald from the Sultan of Toledo one thing – he certainly was a brave man, to walk into the Romanoi camp, proud to hand to the Emperor of the Romans his master’s message proclaiming that the infidel shall be driven from Spain’s shores.

Basil’s eyes flecked back down to the parchment. The Arabic calligraphy was harsh, hurried. An angry man wrote this, a man bent on vengeance and anger. Basil carefully filed that piece of information away as he looked up at the messenger.

“You know we cannot let you leave camp?” the Emperor said quietly. “Wouldn’t want you giving away out position.”

The man nodded, and Basil noticed a momentary widening in his eyes. Clearly, he’d expected to be butchered for his master’s harsh words.

Slowly the Emperor walked out of his Spartan tent, only the Imperial banner fluttering above it signifying it was anything greater than the tent of an ordinary kentarchos. Outside, he found the grim faces of three of his personal Four Horses – Demertzis, Clemente Kosaca, and Ioannis Dragases.

Demertzis and Dragases were competent men, excellent subordinates, but as Basil had deduced now from almost a year in the field with them, poor independent commanders. Subordinate command required someone that took orders with a minimum of fuss, and attended to detail exquisitely, traits that both men held in spades. Yet neither man was inclined to move quickly on their own – Demertzis tended to become overwhelmed by the myriad of options open to an independent commander, and Dragases tended to be too bullheaded, and would continue lumbering in a given direction. He was perfect for holding a position – don’t ask him to launch an offensive, however. If they survived this day, likely both would find themselves attached permanently to the Emperor’s command, or that of Kosaca.

Clemente Kosaca, former bodyguard of Emperors, and now Prince of Kairouan and strategos, was an altogether different sort of beast. Basil liked to describe Clemente Kosaca as grain mill. He was dull, but at what he did – running an army, he was almost without peer. . Basil imagined fighting against Kosaca must be like trying to stop a slow, sluggish river – it appears to have no flashes of rapid water, or angry movement, but slowly, indomitably shoves you and your pitiful efforts aside. Kosaca tended to have plans within plans on the battlefield, and never took the field without at least six contingency plans. Methodical, ruthless, the former Imperial bodyguard took little joy in even a crushing victory, simply setting the next parameters for maximizing his gain afterwards. After he utterly decimated a Toledan column outside of Seville, the strategos’ response had been to order their flags collected to be sent to the Emperor, and told his men, within hours of the battle’s conclusion, to continue their march – no victory drinks, no celebration, just simple, methodical progress.


Basil looked around him, and finally, off in the distance, caught sight of the Moorish battle line, drawing up from camp, blocking his path back to his base at Cordoba. So things would have to be decided here, and now. No more marching.

“How many do they muster?” Basil squinted, trying to gain something from the fuzzy gray line in the distance. All he could see was movement, the fluttering of banners, his mind decided.

“I’ve counted enough banners to muster 19,000, if we go by the standard Toledan decimetric unit system,” Kosaca said in his dry, almost mechanical voice. “That’s also assuming they’ve lost some 15% from their forced marches from the northern front,” he added sourly. The strategos was never one for flamboyance, and hated operating at odds.

Basil chewed on his lower lip. Part of him remembered a time before when Alexandros would have chided him for doing so, but his friend’s voice was long gone. The Emperor continued, mulling his options. His combined columns here mustered only around 8,000 total. True, the Megas Doux was supposed to arrive, bringing his own column of 8,000, but as Basil thought, and marching numbers went through his head, he came to the glum, mathematical certainty that Kosmas would not make it until late afternoon at the earliest – the Toledan hordes would have some five hours to pound Basil’s lines as they saw fit.

The Romanoi army was a fine machine of war, but every machine had its limits. Basil was not foolhardy enough to assume his skoutatoi could just hold the line and all would be well – Menorca had taught him that even the lightest infantry could spring a devastating trap. Something would have to be done… some stratagem, some plan…

The ground around him, it spoke to his eyes. Even without being able to see the whole battlefield clearly, there was much Basil could tell from the ground right beneath his feet. Small rocks, stones – slick with dampness from the morning rain. A years worth of campaigning added its voice to his thoughts. The Toledans tended to keep their bows strung at all times – which meant on short notice they could pull a nasty ambush.

But after a night long, drenching rain…

More words. The woods to the left. Thick, heavy, even in Basil’s blurred eyes. To the right, a shallow upward approach, with a sharp cliff face on one front. Sentences, paragraphs of instruction came to the Emperor’s mind.

He looked up. The skies to the east were dark, to the west the rising sun shone brilliantly, its heat already coming down on him. More instructions, things for Basil’s mind to synthesize. Finally, he snapped around, his eyes alighting on his commanders.

“Clemente, Dragases, Demertzis,” Basil called the strategoi over. His lip hurt. Basil didn’t realize it, but his lower lip was bleeding. Fortunately, it was hidden by the mail covering the lower part of his face.

“Clemente, I want you to form the skoutatoi in the center, in a semi-circle arcing away from the enemy. Archers will be posted on the flanks – post one group in the woods to the left, the other on the open field to the right. Make sure they pile up caltrops, sticks, whatever in front of them as they deploy.”

“Yes, sire,” the grim Italian nodded. Basil watched the general’s eyes, and saw his mind working. He was already trying to figure out what the Emperor’s overall plans were.

“Dragases, you’ll take your menalovoi and post them on the left, Demertzis, I want you and your spathiaroi on the right. I’ll keep the horse to the rear, exploit any breakthroughs,” Basil said quietly. Yes – that would be the plan. If the Sultan fought as the reports from up north, and from Demertzis himself said, he would fall exactly into the trap.

“What?” Dragases asked, giving the half-laugh that dead men chuckled as they met their maker. “No, cunning plans? No brilliant stratagem? We simply form up in a semi-circle and wait?”

Basil looked at the strategos. The man was right – Basil’s plan looked deceptively simple. Ridiculously simple even. Sit and take it – that’s the plan the formation would scream to the Sultan and his followers. It would be too obvious – Basil would seemingly be blatantly showing his hand, that he hoped they would lumber into a classic trap set by Hannibal a millenia before. It would invite them to try to envelop the Romanoi, to try all sorts of trickery to turn the Roman lines.


Which is exactly what Basil was counting on. An opponent trying to be clever was often more foolish than a simple thinking man. The Sultan would waste valuable time developing a stratagem, and commit wholly to it – sending a huge force to the right or left, maybe even the right and left, but not simultaneously towards Basil’s center.

“Yes,” Basil said simply. The Emperor looked over at Kosaca, the man who’d been the sharpest weapon in the Imperial arsenal for the past year. The strategos was looking off distantly towards the Moorish line, then suddenly, his eyes went back to his Emperor. Wide eyes, concerned eyes.

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous, sire?” the Italian quietly offered. The other commanders looked at him blankly, and to the methodical man’s chagrin, Basil actually laughed.

The Sultan also was a rather cautious man – never rashly committed himself to the front. Richard had written letters on this after Vieja, and Demertzis had said he hadn’t sent the Sultan anywhere near the field till the end of the battle. Yet his armies always did well… so either Rukhaddin, or a capable subordinate who ran things in his name, always had a central position to supervise the army. If the Moors went for Basil’s flanks, they’d leave their center weakened…

“War is dangerous, Clemente! Battle is dangerous! Would you have us sit at home, sip spiced wine, and lay with the finest harlots in Christendom all day?” Basil watched as a grin spread over Kosaca’s lips, even as the other strategoi started to laugh as well. “My, what a boring life, Clemente!”

“Utterly boring, Majesty,” Kosaca beamed, “I’m sure we’d all die of boredom within the week!”

“Ha!” Basil laughed harshly. The Emperor’s smile faded, and he sighed. Leading the Roman cavalry in a headlong charge directly at the center of the Sultan’s army was extremely dangerous, Basil knew, but considering his outnumbered state, and the likely tardiness of reinforcements, the Emperor didn’t see any other way to force the issue today. He turned to his commanders, eyeing them carefully. “It is the only way I can see out of this. I am open to other suggestions – that goes for any of you.”

The other commanders looked around them, desperately trying to see what their Emperor saw. Alas, the terrain did not speak to them – Basil could see it in the blank looks in their eyes.

“Very well then,” he said, reflexively checking his sword to see if it’d come out of his scabbard. “Off to your posts then, and hold your positions at all costs, no matter what. You cannot give this day, not an inch.”

“I understand, Majesty,” Kosaca said quietly. Gone was the mechanical tone in his voice, replaced by a slight, upturned amount of awe. “We’ll hold the line for you, sire.” The other strategoi echoed the sentiment.

“Excellent,” the Emperor smiled. Romans had faced these odds before. Romans would face them again. Basil mounted his charger, and trotted to the front line, eyeing the ground around him through blurry eyes. It all spoke to him, echoing his decision.

“The men will need a speech of some kind, Majesty,” Clemente called. “Something better than the one Leo tried to give outside of Dongola.”

Basil nodded at the reference to his martially incompetent brother. Words came to mind – loud, bombastic words, the kinds of words he was sure the Megos might have uttered before Nineveh or Arbela. Basil dismissed them – they weren’t appropriate. He wasn’t the Megos, and he now knew that. Leo would have charismatically shouted such words – and knowing that made Basil doubt placing his brother in charge of southern Italy, let alone the next place he would set him…

“Shall I remind them of their duty to God, Romanion, and me?” Basil muttered to no one in particular. “Be honest, tell them if they don’t do their duty, we shall all die or worse?”

“I’m sure you’ll say something appropriate, Majesty,” Kosaca said, making Basil jump. The Emperor hadn’t realized Kosaca had strayed behind the others.

“Your vote of confidence is encouraging,” Basil said wryly.

“Perhaps that little comment you said to me just now?” Kosaca offered. “The ‘Would you have us’ bit? You could deliver the speech with some irony.”

Basil looked down at Clemente, thinking for a second, before the right words came to his head. The Emperor shook his head no. “No, I won’t give that speech to them. Some of them likely want to spend the end of their days bored and in a whorehouse. I have something though.”

“I’m sure it will be a sight to see, as always, Majesty.”