The Eagles of the Steppe
Rome. The shadow of the corpse of Rome is that which blots out the sun and causes all those kingdoms of Europe to shiver in the cold beneath. The memory of Roman civilization hangs over Europe and fills the history books, it influences men and women in ways which nothing that is dead ever should. Therefore, it is a vile corruption upon the hearts of men, and I should know, for I have experienced the burden of its foulness upon mine heart and mind, and I have witnessed the extent of its corruption upon my kinsmen and seen its weight upon my ancestors through the history books.
We proud Rus’ were far from immune to this curse. We dreamed that dream which so many others have before us, the dream of a new Rome, a new empire to be hailed by historians and theologians centuries after our fall. We built what we could, destroyed what we could not, and dreamed of immortal life in the eyes of the scholarly and intellectual.
This is the curse. The curse of the memory of Rome.
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This is to be my second AAR, and hopefully the first that I will finish. While the last one, Knights of Saint John, was more of a holdover until Crusader Kings 2 was released, I’m hoping that this one will last longer. As long as Paradox doesn’t release a patch which breaks my save game, or as long as every save I make doesn’t get corrupted, my ambition should play out. Let’s all pray that there’s no bloated save game glitch as well
I’ll be playing as the Duke of Polotsk, Vseslav II Rurikovich, and I’ll be attempting to create the Kievan Rus’ and expand further from there. It’ll be written in a narrative and history book format, usually written in hindsight “after-the-fact”, though not too far ahead (I may play for 5 years or so at a time between updates, I like to keep everything fresh in my mind, though I may change this so I can impliment some overarching storylines).
I hope you, my readers, enjoy this. To anyone coming here from my Knights of Saint John AAR, I promise I will get back onto that at a later stage, but for now I’ll be focusing on this.