Rome AARisen - a Byzantine AAR

Hello eeryone!

I'm just starting work on the next update after an absolutely wonderful weekend in Chicago. Boyfriend and I stayed at an almost hotel with hip and almost "psychadelic" decor (Aloft! Hotel at O'Hare for those that are curious), and we went to see the Distant Worlds concert series yet again on their swing back into the United States. Saw quite a few world premiere conversions, got to shake Noboe Uematsu's hand and had an amazing time.

(Distant Worlds is s concert series where the music of the Final Fantasy video games is played by symphonic orchestra. If you want a taste of the kind of thing they do, the concert series is all over Youtube. They tour the entire world, I know there's at least one concert in Stockholm in the spring...)

Anyways, now that my geek-out has wound to its end, back to the story!

armoristan - That is coming. Maybe not in the exact way people think, however...

Issac Wolfe - In-game, the division was me getting bored of world conquest and playing around with making buffer states (a.k.a. I want to see what the shield of Persia is, etc. etc.). In-story, Albrecht in particular is concerned about imperial overreach--can Konstantinopolis simultaneously watch the Western Empire, the Germans and French, the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate, and the Arabian tribes? If an Emperor is campaigning in Persia, it could be the entire campaign season before he knows of a western incursion, and even more time to move the relevant armies if you want the resistance to be directed from the center. As we've seen, allowing resistance to be directed by the Komnenoi dynatoi just gives the other branches of the family the power and prestige to pull a Bardas...

Siind - "Precision timing" and "secrecy" are also relative. What we'd call precision timing is definitely not what Albrecht would call such... precision also could simply mean being focused on one goal or objective needing to be overcome. That could definitely take place in the Middle Ages.

Yay semantics!:rofl:

Qorten - Something so cunning it was developed by a Professor of Cunning at Oxford who later went on to serve on the International Board of Cunning at the U.N.

asd21593 - You'll shortly find that Albrecht's scheming has its own twist compared to Mehtar's. Maybe it's more like Sophie's...

dublish - True, though Lainez went into forced exile for over almost a decade, that has a tendency to make people focus, especially when the reason for their insanity is gone. As for Albrecht, all I'll say is that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here, and that things aren't necessarily as they seem...

Hannibal X - What Albrecht's proposing isn't a collapse, more along the lines of client kingdoms. You've got some parts of the idea right, others though, aren't close. Frederica will be an empress, if Gabriel holds to his part of the deal, and both she and Thomas survive...

Kirsch27 - Thanks for catching that. I must've misread it when I did my quick proofread! Aha... someone's wondering where Albrecht's going with all this? Is Albrecht doing this for personal power, or something else...

Hawkeye1489 - Constantinople would still indeed lord over the new "Kingdom" of Mesopotamia. Baghdad is not isolated from the Empire, and it'd be relatively easy for a sufficiently irate Emperor to send an army down the Tigris and Euphrates Valley to "fetch" any King that proved troublesome.

Nikolai - Which gets back ot the big question--is he loyal to himself, or something bigger? So far we've seen plenty of evidence to the former, but we also haven't seen the fullness of what he's planning, and why it's preferable that Gabriel should remain alive.

TC Pilot - That could be the end goal as well--Thomas safely on the throne, Gabriel is suddenly expendable...

RGB - the Von Frankens never seem to be especially successful in my CK games...

Servius Magnus - He is, technically, the heir to the defunct von Franken imperial line in the West. Now, if he managed to grab the diadem himself, it'd technically be a union of the Eastern Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. If the Western Empire was removed, then suddenly you've go back to the days of Constantine - One Empire, One God, One Emperor...

Vesimir - Problem with that--you'd have a power vacuum that would need filling, just like there was when Thomas II ravaged the dynatoi after Andreas' coup. Someone would have to step in the gap, and fewer dynatoi means the remainder have a bigger chunk of lands to their individual names.... Manuel started a ball rolling that likely can't be efficiently stopped...

Avarri - Desert Demon wasn't taken from Dune actually... it just sounded right in my head. That said, the comparison fits aptly. Gabriel is kind of like Paul Atreides, minus the Kwitsach Haderach feature, though.

FlyingDutchie - Helene is still around. She's in Constantinople, actually...

October 31st, 1238


Frederica von Hohenstaufen raised an eyebrow as yet another cart full of grain trundled by their small caravan. Her five guards on their chargers and the officious Eleutherios fellow paid the cart little attention, but she leaned out the carriage window and watched it go past. It was highly unusual to see this many carts filled with grain this late in the year. Like all the others, it was overflowing with sacks of grain stamped with the imperial double eagle—and like all the others, it was headed east.

“Why is grain being shipped east?” Frederica’s bodyservant Siddiqa muttered under her breath for the fifth time that day alone. Frederica was long past wondering—she’d accepted the occurrence as something that was normal. Once she was married to that unreadable Thomas, then she’d ask someone why foodstuffs were flowing away from the lands where the war would undoubtedly be fought. Who needed grain in Persia? All the Muslims were fleeing west! Antemios was in the West!


Frederica shook her head, then yawned. The carriage ride from Baghdad had been absolutely boring—the imperial road had been resurfaced at the orders of some enterprising strategos intent on keeping his soldiers occupied. As a result, the carriage had a tendency to rock lightly, almost like a cradle…

She sighed. No, she wouldn’t sleep, not yet. She;d done far too much of that—all the way from Baghdad to Nisbis, if Siddiqa was to be believed. No, Frederica needed to think! She was to be married in Antioch—and married to the new co-Emperor of the most powerful realm in Christendom, no less! She needed to know what Prince Thomas was truly like. Surely he wasn’t as daft and incapable as the night she’d met him! She was used to men being tongue-tied and speechless in her presence, but him…

…she shook her head free of thoughts. No, she needed to decipher, here and now, how she could wrap such a powerful man around her finger. Father had asked her to do something like that she thought—it’d been four years, she wasn’t quire sure what her father had wanted anymore—but she was more interested in the jewels, cloaks, and most importantly, prestige that being the wife of an Emperor would give her. If she could seduce her husband and make him bend to her every whim... She scarcely could imagine what a i[]Roman Emperor’s[i/] wealth could buy her! Maybe a zoo, a pet menagerie complete with elephants and giraffes, maybe her own silk farm made to manufacture silk just for her cloaks!

Yet Thomas, it seemed, was the strangest man she’d ever met. Most of die rittern were easy to lure—she merely needed to bend over to grab their attention. But this Thomas—he seemed interested in buildings, and little else. Added to that, he had the awkwardness of a fish flopping on the shore when it came to women! Even after that awkward first meeting, whenever she’d tried approaching him during his stay in Baghdad, he’d shied away as a deer would flee a hunter.

“Why are all those carts headed east?” Siddiqa leaned out the opposite side of the carriage and called to a rather well built man with short curly hair that rode directly next to them.

“I’m not a drover, I have no bloody idea,” Eleutherios Skleros muttered darkly. Frederica snorted. For an ‘ambassador’ from the illustrious Albrecht von Franken, he was clad rather plainly for her tastes—fine linens, but no silk. If he hadn’t been so insistent that they leave Baghdad forthwith, she would’ve made him buy silks to wear on the journey to Antioch. She was from a high ranking family, she deserved escorts clad in silks, not…

…she heard the voice of the guards yelling something outside, and heard Skleros’ horse cantering ahead of the carriage. Siddiqa was already craning to look out the window, but Frederica refused to lower herself to acting like a gawking peasant.

“Probably one of those carts has blocked the road. Don’t look,” Frederica growled at her maidservant, “it’s unseemly and unladylike.” Frederica started twiddling her thumbs, yet again—it seemed the only thing to do inside the stuffy carriage. “We’ll be on our way in…”

Now there were shouts from outside. Then a scream—not the scream of an angry person, or a frightened person, but a warbling, gurgling scream, as if someone had just had their gut slit open. Siddiqa, ignoring her princess’ orders, had just enough time to lean out and screech “Oh my God!” before a strange man was next to Frederica’s window. His breath smelled horrible, his teeth were misplaced, and most glaring of all, he had a sword out, its tip pointed through straight at the still confused princess’ neck.

Frederica blinked, unsure of what to do. No one had ever told her what she could do if she was robbed. No one had dared to even think that she could be robbed! Yet here, in the forests of northern Lebanon, she was being robbed!

“Lower your weapons, or I run her through!” the man barked. Frederica swallowed hard. Were they bandits? Robbers? She started cataloguing what she could give the man to get him to leave them—her father’s ruby ring, gold coin...

…his eyes flashed towards her, and he gave a crooked smile.

“Out of the carriage, Highness!” he nodded his head in mock deference.

Others might have taken the time to notice that, despite never seeing her before, the man had used the correct title of deference. Or that despite his foul look, his held his sword with the air of a competent professional, not a wandering marauder. Yet Frederica noticed none of these things—all she noticed was that her assailant had not bowed as he should when addressing a princess. Whereas others might have been fearful at having a burly man with a blade staring at them, Frederica grew angry… angry that this man dared rob her, angry that he didn’t show her proper respect…


Slowly, her eyes glaring at him the whole time, she clambered out of the carriage. Unlike the countless courtiers she was used to, the man didn’t offer her a hand as she climbed out, and didn’t throw anything down to keep her feet from touching the dusty earth underfoot. Frederica’s anger grew… hotter and hotter, as she looked around her. Two of her guards were on the ground, arrows sticking from their bodies. The three others stood, swords lowered, horror on their faces. Five men, all roughly clad, were clustered between them and her—and all of their eyes looked at her with a gaze that bordered on feral.

Frederica had seen that look before… the look in the eyes of a Ritter before he grabs a milkmaid and satisfies himself with her, the look Frederica gave before she grabbed a ritter and satisfied herself with him. For these… feral… ingrates to look at her like she was a piece of meat simply there for their pleasure…

“Who are you?” Frederica demanded, her voice imperious, her nostrils flaring in rage.

“Huh?” the big man squinted, confusion plain across his face.

“Are you deaf?” Frederica snapped, “Did I stutter. Who are you?” she repeated slowly, annunciating every word as if she were speaking to a slow, dumb child.

“That’s of no consequence,” the man muttered darkly, the point of his sword rising level with Frederica’s neck. He shoved it forward slightly, and for the first time, she felt cold steel kissing her flesh. “We’re here to kill you.”

“Here to kill me?” Frederica smiled dimly. Was this man daft? “Really?” She looked back at the dead guards behind the carriage, the other three looking on helplessly at their lady with a blade pointed at her throat. “I didn’t imagine.” She looked back at the leader—he was beefy, with a stomach that bulged over his belt. Part of her wondered what he’d be like, before deciding that like the other rittern she’d taken to bed, he’d be more trouble and more of a bore than fun. “I can think of plenty of more fun swords to play with than that one,” she smirked. “A man with a blade as large as yours,” she slid a hand to her hip, grinning, “is clearly compensating for a smaller sword in more important places.”

The man’s jaw dropped—he clearly didn’t expect his target to speak to him like that, let alone a princess to use such base thoughts in a sentence. The momentary pause was all that Frederica needed, and her hand flicked just under her cloak…

While she’d been in Germany, she’d watched die rittern closely. While they’d shown off with their swords and maces, she’d watched, and silently noted. She was by no means an expert, but she knew when to pounce, and her stunned captors had no idea she kept an iron mace on her, just in case something did happen to her bodyguards. It was a simple weapon really—swing and smash, not requiring the skill of a sword or the quickness of a dagger. In a split second it was in her hand, moments later it cracked into the brute’s jaw, breaking bone.

For a split second the man’s gurgled yell was the only noise hanging in the air, as all eyes looked on in stunned confusion. A moment later, one of those eyes bulged suddenly, as the noise of steel ripping flesh and scraping bone echoed through the forest. Eleutherios ripped his own sword from another would-be assassin’s body, before turning to the remaining three, twirling his blade slowly. Their eyes darted between the body of their leader, and the smiling Skleros.

Eleutherios’ thin smile became a grin, and he started to whistle.

At the shrill noise, the other assassins quickly turned and ran into the forest. Immediately the three remaining guards were in pursuit, till Eleutherios’ sharp voice called them back.

“Nice mace-work,” Eleutherios smiled slightly, eyes looking about for any more danger, before he pulled out a kerchief and started cleaning his sword. “Never thought a princess would know anything…”

“Swing it hard and hit them in the jaw,” Frederica shrugged as she summed up everything she knew about “mace-work”, cutting Skleros off. The man she hit still lay groaning on the ground. She walked over, pulling back her cloak with her off-hand, then leaning forward awkwardly. Blood took forever to clean out of fine silk. After over a minute of positioning, shifting, and leaning to try to keep her fine cloak away from his blood covered body, she was finally satisfied it wouldn't get dirty, and smacked the man twice across the face with the heavy iron head of the weapon. He stopped moving.

“I think I killed him?” the Hohenstaufen princess looked down at the bloody mess that used to be the leader of their assailants. Her eyes drifted from the body to the cloak she’d so desperately tried to keep away from the mess. “Eh! It’s soiled now! Siddiqa!” Royal hands deftly unclasped the thing, and quickly it was held out at arms length. “I need a new one. And this needs washing!”

Eleutherios was already busily examining the hand of the man he’d run through. “He’s quite dead,” Skleros said absently.

“What are you looking for?” Frederica heard Siddiqa’s voice ask, still shaky. The princess turned to see her maidservant slowly climbing out from underneath the carriage—her clothes were a sea of mud. Frederica scowled—that certainly wouldn’t do!

“Emperor’s Hand,” was all that Skleros said quietly, tossing the dead man’s hand aside.

“Emperor’s what?” Frederica muttered, sighing at the disarray of her clothing.

“Personal assassins of the Emperor,” Skleros growled, annoyance plain in his voice. He looked over his shoulder at Frederica, but the Hohenstaufen was busily clucking at how slowly Siddiqa was moving the offending body off the royal clothing trunk. “Bardas, probably means to stop the German alliance…”


“Bardas?” Frederica sighed, clambering back into the carriage as Siddiqa took the bloodied cloak from her mistress with a sigh. “Why would he want me hurt?” Frederica asked, slamming the door behind her.

“I said he…” Eleutherios started to reply, before she heard him give that annoyed huff he tended to do when he was annoyed. Frederica huffed right back—she was a princess, by God, and no linen-clad man was going to huff at her!

“Highness, we had best move on, as quickly as we can,” Skleros muttered with a mix of grimness and grouchiness as he clambered back onto his horse.

“What about them?” Siddiqa nodded to the dead guardsmen and assassins as she climbed into the carriage from her side. Frederica sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. Siddiqa smelled of mud and worse.

“Leave them,” Skleros grumbled. “We need to move, now, before the remainder get their nerve back and try again. We were lucky this time, Highness!”



November 10th, 1238

Subotai son of Jelme, Noyan of the Mongol Empire and perhaps the most feared warrior alive, slowly settled into the extra-large campstool set out for him. Long gone was the thin, wiry man of his youth—years of food and drink, lavished on him for his victories in the field, had turned him into a rotund little man. None said anything about the Noyan’s enlarged status—corpulent or not, Subotai son of Jelme was perhaps the most feared Mongol tactician alive—the chief reason he was here, thousands of miles from the Mongol capital of Karakoum.

Outside the ornately decorated tent, filled with sumptuous furs and silk, lay the noise and bustle of an army at siege—30,000 Mongols, Koreans and Chinese busily laying siegeworks around the most formidable fortress on the Indian subcontinent—the city of Delhi, last stronghold of the Ghurid Sultans. Should it fall to the armies of the Wolf the Mongols, lords of the steppe, would be able to count the Indus and Ganges Valleys amongst their litany of conquests.


As Subotai reached for a cup of goatsmilk, the future Khan of the Indian conquests, by decree straight from Karakorum, plopped into the stool opposite from the aged, bulky Noyan. Hulagu, son of Genghis Khan, was also a middle-aged man, the wrinkles of experience and sun etched deep into his face. Yet today, his face seemed to be beaming.

“You approve of my plan for taking the city towers?” Subotai murmured, sipping the milk.

“Yes, but that is not why I am smiling, son of Jelme,” the Khan grinned.

“It certainly isn’t because of my comely looks,” Subotai shot back with a smirk. “What? Did you find a better way to take the city?”

“No!” Hulagu’s grin grew larger, before the Khan slapped his hands on his knees in apparent glee. “I found out the Romans will soon be at war with one another!”

“The Romans war against one another?” Subotai raised an eyebrow. No wonder Hulagu looked so pleased…

“Yes!” Hulagu said, almost gleefully. Subotai watched the Khan’s hands slide closer, as if he was going to rub them together in eagerness. “Their Prince, the one the Arabs call Ja’breel, marches against their Imperial City against his own brother.”

“Who told you these things?” Subotai asked darkly, the walls of Delhi long since forgotten.

“The Muslim named Yassir and Guyuk,” Hulagu shot back. “Think on it, Subotai! If the Romans…”

“Guyuk sometimes inflates the enemy’s numbers to make your victories seem more impressive,” Subotai said dryly.

“I know. I sent Ariq Boke and Ong to verify,” Hulagu waved off Subotai’s concerns. “They should be returning in three months after checking with their contacts in Persia. All the other evidence I’ve gathered personally,” the Khan grinned, almost like a child with a new toy, “taken from grain merchants to travelers, indicates that civil war is likely! If…”

“Head west now, father!”

Subotai raised a bushy eyebrow and craned his bulk around to catch a small, petite silhouette blocking the light at the entrance to Hulagu’s tent. The old general gave a toothless smile at his god-daughter, Hulagu’s own daughter Altani. She walked forward, with the speed and grace of a panther, dressed in her usual attire—the silks of a Mongol princess, but her chest covered with the metallic gray scales of scale armor.

Amongst the Mongols, or any other peoples, that alone was unusual. Then again, Subotai thought, Altani herself was the very definition of unusual.

She was short, even for a Mongol, and her skin was much fairer than that of her siblings. Despite the fact she rode in the saddle like her brothers, her skin was devoid of the marks and blemishes left by the kiss of long days in the sun. Imperious brown eyes flashed between Subotai and her father. Subotai had seen brown eyes that fierce long ago—in the eyes of Genghis himself.


Even her presence here was unusual. At first, the men made a stink whenever she came with the army—many muttered at first that it was a bad omen, to have a women who put on armor as the men with the tumen. Yet while Hulagu had not let her fight, the army had marched from victory to victory across the Indus, crushing petty kingdoms and the great Sultan himself with impunity. Over the last year, the view of the army had slowly changed—Altani was now the good luck charm, the living embodiment of how the blue banners of the Mongols would march across the subcontinent in a blaze of glory.

Almost immediately, she was by her father’s side.

“Ah, it’s the lioness,” Subotai smiled.

“Altani, why…” Hulagu started.

“Head west now!” Altani repeated herself, crossing her arms in much the same way her mother did when she was scolding her husband. “If you don’t, the Romans will sort out their civil war and resist you in full strength! You saw what happened to grandfather when the Romans…”

“Altani!” Hulagu snapped, as he often did. Instead of surrendering, his daughter merely gave a ‘hmph,’ and Subotai smiled. Hulagu most often snapped right before he gave in—and like all those times the Noyan had seen before, the great conqueror closed his eyes and sighed. “Say your greetings to your godfather, before you lunge into business.”

“Hello, godfather,” Altani curtly nodded her head, before her eyes flashed back to her father. Subotai openly laughed—great rolling peals of laughter that shook all the flab around his body.

“She has more of you in her than Bortei!” the Noyan chortled.

“We still have Delhi to our front, Altani…” Hulagu ignored the Noyan’s humor and focused squarely on his own daughter.

“They’re broken! A siege and the city is ours, and with it, the Sultanate!” Altani roared onwards, uncaring at her father’s paling face. It was Hulagu’s turn to cross his arms, and the two stared off at each other momentarily before finally Altani snapped. “Father, then give me a tumen, and let me ride West!” Altai snapped. “I’ll deliver you Persia and the lands of the Two Rivers by the new year!”

Subotai exploded into laughter again. Altani did have more of her headstrong father than her mother running through her veins. She had the fire and fury of all her brothers put together—and considering the records of Ariq Boke, Mongke, and Guyuk, that said a great deal….

“Your uncle would have me strangled!” Hulagu openly gawked. “And the men tolerate you, they wouldn’t follow you! No matter how good your bowshot is!”

At his daughter’s almost explosive look, Hulagu Khan, the most powerful Mongol lord outside of Ogedei himself, plaintively looked towards the aged, bulbous form of Subotai for assistance.

“My Lord,” Subotai said, adopting a most deferential tone that did not match the appreciative smile on his face, “your present enemies are unbroken, and lay before you,” the ancient Noyan gestured at the tent flap, and towards the still unyielding towers of Delhi. “I think your brother would wish you to break them, before you go and march against the Roman.”

“After we’ve taken the Ganges Plain, then the Romans,” Subotai simplified his counsel down to the simplest terms possible.

“After the Ganges Plain,” Hulagu echoed, looking out of the tent towards the distant towers and minarets of Delhi, then towards his own daughter. “Do you hear that, Altani? After the Ganges Plain!”

“When you move west, I am following,” Altani announced, the statement her only acknowledgement of surrender on the point of moving West immediately.

“Well,” Hulagu muttered, relief apparent in his voice, “if these rumors are true, as I was saying,” he glared momentarily at Altani, who smiled sweetly and innocently at her father, “we’re going to move prepared this time. I’m not going to lunge in expecting victory, not like last time.”

Subotai nodded—unlike some of the other relatives of the Mongol imperial family, Hulagu learned from his mistakes. The Roman Prince Gabriel had thrashed them at Rayy. By the Khan’s eyes, it was apparent he would not allow any such thrashing to happen again.


“Subotai, I want you to ride to Karakorum, and present this information to my brother in person. Ogedei will listen to you—you were always father’s favorite warhorse,” the Khan grinned slightly. “Tell him if he grants me five tumen and sufficient auxiliaries once they arr available, I can deliver Persia to him within a year of our march.”

“Sufficient auxiliaries?” Subotai raised an eyebrow. IF he was running the operation, he’d need perhaps 20,000, maybe less. Hulagu was a terrifying battlefield tactician—enemies from the Oxus to the Indus had discovered that to their peril—but when it came to taking cities, the man opted for stubborn frontal attacks, even over the objections of the Chinese and Korean generals at his side.

“Hundred thousand,” Hulagu said quietly, reading the look on the Noyan’s face. “I don’t want to just raid Persia, I want to conquer it, raze its cities, and garrison places as far as the Land of the Two Rivers. And I want enough men that if the Romans have a few surprises, I can be ready to meet them.”

“No toying this time, eh?” Subotai said quietly, his mind still wrapping around the numbers. “That many men will take a year, perhaps two to gather and ready for march. By that point the Romans are liable to have sorted out their matters.”

“They might,” Altani piped up, her eyes daring either man to interrupt her. “But even if they have, they will be far weaker for their effort. Now is the time to strike.”

Subotai nodded. The Romans had survived a blow from Genghis himself. They would not survive the blow of Hulagu.



So Frederica has a little more mettle than it first seems, and a Mongol princess (oh, and her father, Hulagu) loom on the horizon. Why is grain being sent east? Will the Mongol blow be as devastating as Hulagu hopes? More to come, when Rome AARisen continues!

*Credit for Altani's Theme should go to AlexanderPrimus, not myself. He made up the piece long ago.