The Knautschlings - part 2
King of Denmark
This chapter begins with a plan of Harald.
This plan will turn out to fail so spectacularly that Harald will try to erase all memories of it´s execution from history.
He will prevail in denying you from seeing more than one picture of his embarrassing failings,
but he will not prevail in denying me from telling this chapter of the Knautschling history.
So this is the story of Harald´s darkest hours:
After defeating the King of Scandinavia in a war Harald wants to further expand his influence.
The demesne of the pagan count Krutoj of Mecklemburg is what he is gazing at.
Krutoj himself has little armies to command but is vassal to the Prince of the Pruthenians
whose armies outnumber Harald´s by a fair margin.
Harald plans to rush Krutojs land before his liege can effectively intervene.
His plans do not take later retaliation measures of the Pruthenians into account,
but this is not how his plan will fail.
Horribly.
In fact a later retaliation of the Pruthenians could not be called a failing of Harald´s plan at all,
since his plan ends before that.
So Harald orders his Marshall Olaf to get Slesvigs armies into attack position.
Of this a picture will later be salvaged:
Olaf does not command a regiment as you can see.
He only is responsible for the grand-scale tactics of this assault.
Some might sense disaster at this point already, knowing the level of Olaf´s tactical expertise.
But he is not entirely to blame.
From your perspective at least.
In Harald´s eyes Olaf is responsible for everything.
That is because Harald does not know what we do.
He does not know that he and Olaf are both just videogame-characters who are controlled by me.
When Olaf´s armies of over 9000 men get their ass whipped by Krutojs 240 men Rostock regiment several times
he does not know that this is because I raised this armies at the end of last session and they got their morale
set to zero due to a bug.
(And obviously I did not know that at that point as well)
Harald believes that Olaf is responsible, and thus he will sack him after the war and appoint a new Marshal: Pimen of Ragusa.
But let us keep the chronological order and talk about what happens after the failed first assault on Krutoj.
Olaf´s armies get routed several times. In fact they get routed so long until the Prince of the Pruthenians arrives with the bulk of his army.
When the Prince of the Pruthenians arrives Olaf´s armies get no longer routed. Now they get destroyed completely.
At this point Harald begins to panic.
He issues a grand mobilization and throws everything he has left at the Pruthenian Hordes and in fact finally manages
to achieve a humiliating white peace with the Pruthenians.
But not before most of Slesvig´s soldiers are dead.
For the next four years Harald does pretty much nothing noteworthy except cowardly abandoning his vassal
the Count of Halland when he gets attacked by the King of Scandinavia.
After four years Harald finally has enough.
The humiliation he had to endure from the Pruthenians he can no longer endure, Krutoj of Mecklemburg has to fall.
He orders Marshal Pimen to dig out Olaf´s plans from four years ago and execute them again.
What a little genius our Harald is.
This time the assault on Krutojs land is successful.
Krutoj abdicates in favour of Harald before any Pruthenians arrive.
However later Pruthenians arrive in Mecklemburg and Pimen can not resist them.
The Pruthenians advance all the way to Slesvig before Haralds vassal the count of Jylland drives them out of there
and chases them through Holstein
and Lübeck
back to Mecklemburg.
At the same time Marshal Pimen devastates the Pruthenian homelands with a regiment from the island of Gotland,
thus forcing the Pruthenians to yield.
After winning this war Harald completely succumbs to delusions of grandeur.
He issues harsh extra taxes on all his lands to be able to afford a ceremony where he proclaims himself
King of Denmark.
And only one month later he invites all his neighbors again to an expensive feast.
This time the reason is not hos crowning but a great hunt.
The pagans of Mecklemburg do not like Haralds extra taxes and his ridiculing of their religion.
What exactly drives them to their revolt is unclear, but it is very clear that Marshal Pimen puts them in their place again.
In August 1093 Harald decides it is now time to regain Halland from the King of Scandinavia and
positions his armies for an assault.
Harald is of course not aware that this is the end of the session in the videogame he is a character in.
He is also not aware that the same bug that thwarted his plans in 1086 will now cause similar problems.
But now
I am.