It's a blackhole of talent. Who knows, maybe one day it will spew forth its collected sacrificial pool of talent and drown the world in Sennarian greatness?
In the Shadow of Certain, Painful Doom: Abyssinia
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It's a blackhole of talent. Who knows, maybe one day it will spew forth its collected sacrificial pool of talent and drown the world in Sennarian greatness?
Will Dionysia be the shining light in the future of the Zagwe dynasty?? Will the Sennar curse be broken?? (personally, I find it hard to believe...)
A forest is one of the least probable places to get murdered in Sennar - even though getting murdered as a part of Sennarian court is not improbable at all.
1) If there even was such a lordly estate as hunting forest in Sennar, the goatherders would immediately burn it down and turn it into pasture for goats.
2) In the unlikely case the forest would remain intact as a recreation and entertainment resort, Sennarian goatherders would definitely not allow some measly Caesar to stroll through THEIR FOREST. Lock him up in Tej Mahal where the remaining losers reside.
3) Most likely though, the Gelada baboons would claim the forest as their own, choose a monkey king from their ranks and start reclaiming Abyssinia under his iron rule. It couldn't get any slower than under Zagwes after all.
1) If there even was such a lordly estate as hunting forest in Sennar, the goatherders would immediately burn it down and turn it into pasture for goats.
2) In the unlikely case the forest would remain intact as a recreation and entertainment resort, Sennarian goatherders would definitely not allow some measly Caesar to stroll through THEIR FOREST. Lock him up in Tej Mahal where the remaining losers reside.
3) Most likely though, the Gelada baboons would claim the forest as their own, choose a monkey king from their ranks and start reclaiming Abyssinia under his iron rule. It couldn't get any slower than under Zagwes after all.
Isn't Monkey King one of the Tituler Title held by whoever 'rules' in Sennar? And by rule I do of course mean permitted to live by the baboons.
Technically yes but it's even more of a token title than Caesar. Laurentios and everyone's mom can never keep a straight face while adressing Tesfaye by any of his titles anyway though.
The genuine monkey king is going to be a truly unstoppable force. I, for one, welcome our new baboon overlords.
The genuine monkey king is going to be a truly unstoppable force. I, for one, welcome our new baboon overlords.
I meant to offer this idea earlier, but considering converting the Zagwe's to Hinduism? Specifically, Hanuman worship?
Think about it, a whole ARMY of Sennarian Geleda Baboons. A WHOLE ARMY!
You won't need a knucklebone when you got these brosefs with you. And hop them up on tej for better effect!
Really now? Its Sennar. That should answer that question :ninja:
Think about it, a whole ARMY of Sennarian Geleda Baboons. A WHOLE ARMY!
You won't need a knucklebone when you got these brosefs with you. And hop them up on tej for better effect!
Really now? Its Sennar. That should answer that question :ninja:
You've saved your descendants! A proud day, to be celebrated by shivering under a blanket and looking out for your wife.
Wow, it actually looks like things are looking up. You are sooo doomed.
Have you considered that it might be very beneficial to the dynasty if new Tesfaye died right now?
Have you considered that it might be very beneficial to the dynasty if new Tesfaye died right now?
That same bored look she gets when… when…
It is fortunate that I have appointed a capable spymaster recently, for I receive some horrifying news. My new spymaster discovers a plot by my wife to murder me. My wife hates me with every fiber of her being for several reasons, but the latest and largest reason is that my change in the succession laws has completely cut her children out from inheriting the rule of Sennar. I can understand her being angry that her children will not rule, but she also lives here. How could she want our children to be exiled here?
Oh don't worry, that's just the teh playing with her mind. Opening up her skull should clear up the delusions nicely. You just need to find a nice sharp axe for that...
Think of the symbiotic relationship... The Greek-Zagwe relationship is the opposite of that.
Yes, it's only a matter of time before this happens... or the entire county is just overrun by baboons and is lost for the rest of the Medieval Age.
She does have a lot going for her. But I think your skepticism is well placed. There is just too much cosmic baggage with these Zagwes.
It would indeed be a good think if the Gelada Baboons started reclaiming Abyssinia. As you note, they could not be slower in doing so than the Zagwes.
Yes. In fact it is.
Good, you at least may be spared by the baboon overlords. We need a few who can properly convey the terms of unconditional surrender to the rest of the human governments.
It would be nice if PI tweaked Abyssinia in a DLC so the region was more likely to survive the Muslims.
Exactly. That's exactly what I'm on about. It would be a new plague. The baboon plague. The Mongols would arrive in 1200-whatever and find desolate rubble and return home. That's how bad it would be.
Thank you, but remember--the One-Natured God watches and waits. Is the One-Natured God wishing well for the Zagwe Dynasty? Or simply trying to lower their defenses for the final kill?
Yes, you are right. It would be very beneficial for the Zagwe Dynasty if Tesfaye died of natural causes right now. Or if someone murdered him. Or if he is killed in combat... If only there were a big, red self-destruct button!
Problem is, if you attack her with an axe, you are giving her an axe. She is one scary woman. That not-so-intelligent bored look is what scares me the most, given her history.
Chapter 67
I instruct my spymaster to talk with my wife and dissuade her from her plot to murder me. It would probably be more productive if I confronted her myself, but my nerve has failed me.
Nothing personal, but I can't help realizing that recognition of you was the straw that pushed my wife over the edge.
Konstantinos Zagwe—the elder product of my adulterous romance with my mistress—is at the age where I must find a tutor for him. Unfortunately, little Konstantinos must take from his mother’s side more than his father’s. He is… well, he is not the sharpest dagger in the armory. I will have his mother tutor her son. She will have the most patience of anyone.
My daughter Duchess Dionysia has taken a husband. Since I’d not been consulted on this match, I was anxious about who she had married. By the God! She has given away our dynasty’s rights to land to some oaf from a smaller duchy. How could see do this? None of her children can inherit her duchy or counties in this marriage. The first thing I think of, of course, is murdering the husband.
I instruct Spymaster Artemios to organize a plot amongst the elements in my daughter’s court that are amenable to murdering my daughter’s husband, whatever his name is. It turns out that nobody is willing to help. Nobody really likes him much, but nobody really dislikes him either. My daughter comes to closest to being willing—she is obviously not head over heels for her new spouse. I am beginning to suspect that this was Regent Bagrat’s doing while she was still a child.
After I think about the plot on my daughter’s husband, it occurs to me how futile it is. It took years for my plot against Georgia to come to fruition. My daughter and her husband are 16 and 18. Within a couple of years the damage will already have been done and my daughter will have had several children. And in any case, my daughter can replace him in less than a month with someone else willing to give her a child and take my dynasty’s land. Assassinating the spouse is risky and will not work. I must find another way.
Brilliant but cold. Very cold.
I visit the genius Spymaster Artemios. He is exceptionally talented in so many ways—it puzzles me that he would want to waste that talent in Sennar. But it is my gain, for whatever his reasons. I explain my problem to him. He doesn’t even think about it. His immediate response is to betroth my younger daughter that is in line for the Armenian duchy for a matrimonial marriage, and then murder my older daughter, the duchess, before she gives birth. If she manages to have a child, kill that first. My younger daughter will inherit the duchy and when she comes of age will marry the safe choice I’ve picked. I am speechless with horror at his cold and relentless logic. Artemios mistakes my speechless gaping as interest. He mentions that he has thought about this problem already and has three different ways he could assassinate my daughter—would I care to go through them with him now? I coldly inform him that he must never speak of this again to me, and he should forget all his plans to murder my eldest daughter immediately.
I go next to speak with Chancellor Demetrios. He is a Monophysite, but he is known for being kind and honest, so I can hope that he will be open to solutions apart from murdering my daughter. Sure enough, he has some sage and non-murderous advice: convince my daughter to change her succession laws to Elective, just as we in Sennar have done, and then she can elect someone from the Zagwe dynasty. On her death, her children with the oaf will inherit nothing from Dionysia’s lands, while they will still be eligible for inheriting on their father’s side. Wonderful! I thank Demetrios profusely and leave. On my way out, I notice strange instruments, similar to the ones that I had seen depicted in my Great-Aunt Ganet’s journal. I think nothing further of it and leave.
I try to plan ahead for contingencies by arranging for my daughter who is next in line for Armenia. At least this part of Artemios’ plan was sensible. If my older daughter dies unexpectedly, at least then my next daughter will have an appropriate matrimonial marriage already set up. I am looking for someone of similar age or older, as I do not want to waste precious years of potential childbirth waiting for some boy to reach 16. An alliance with a Byzantine duchy would be a plus. With that in mind I have Demetrios send me some potential husbands. He first reports back with David, a courtier in Cephalonia. David is the son of the current Duchess of Calabria, and so would bring an alliance with that duchy. Unfortunately, as a father I cast a disapproving eye on some of his other traits for my daughter: underhanded rogue, wroth, arbitrary, slothful. He is also fairly much an idiot in diplomacy, administration, intrigue, and book learning. While he looks like someone I would not be surprised to find leading one of my army’s columns, he is not suitable material to marry any daughter of mine. I pass on him.
Later Demetrios reports on Georgios Doukas in Thracesia, son of imprisoned Duke Athanasios of Thraceia. While deceitful and arbitrary, Georgias is also humble, charitable, and temperate. But here is where things become interesting. Georgios father is imprisoned by my liege, Empress Ioanna the Great—he must have been one of the many Doux who rebelled against Ioanna since she assumed power. That is not necessarily a sign of insane ambition. Ioanna the Great has a tendency to revoke her subjects’ duchies, which they often refuse, triggering a rebellion. Fortunately Sennar is nothing anyone would bother about. Georgios’ eldest living brother, Anastasios, is regent for his father while he is in prison. Anastasios is also heir to the Duchy of Tracesia. As Primogeniture is the succession model that this duchy follows, neither Georgios or the two middle brothers stand to inherit anything. But if all three of his older brothers met with an unforeseen accident, presumably Georgios would stand to inherit… and pass on to his own heirs. I also note that the brother right before Georgios, the 16-year old Alexandros, is the new husband-Emperor Consort to the 40-year old Empress Ioanna. This is a family with connections. I instruct Demetrios to reach out to this family and request a betrothal between my second eldest daughter and Georgios.
Doux Anthanasios sends his approval from prison. Or perhaps he is too busy being tortured by my enlightened liege—daughter of the Impaler, after all—and the Doux has to let Regent Anastasios give the approval on his behalf. Regardless, Caesar’s dynasty is becoming further embedded in most powerful families of the Byzantine Empire. Things are starting to look up.
That night I receive a surprise and shock. A sudden acrid smell wakes me from my sleep and I gasp awake. I find in my bedchamber five hooded, red-robed individuals standing in front of my bed. One of them is backing away from my side, replacing a tube into his robes, apparently the container that held the acrid smell. My mistress Konstantine is lying next to me. I am not sure she is breathing. “Don’t worry,” says the hooded figure in the middle. “She is perfectly fine. She, as well as your guards, will wake shortly with no harm done.” His voice is very rough. I nod, aware that they could easily have murdered me while I slept if that had been their design. “Why are you here?” “We are here to warn you that your life is in danger.” Being woken like this is causing me fear—that new sensation aroused by my wife’s wrath that I had not felt since a boy—but their response causes the serious fear to again form like ice in my belly. “My wife?” I ask. The hooded figures look at each other and pause. “You are in danger from your wife as well?” This is not going well.
The central hooded figure explains that no, they were unaware that my wife wants to kill me. They are bringing me a warning that my court has become host to a cabal of Orthodox religious zealots that is hostile to my dynasty. They are known as the Brotherhood of True Romans. All of the new Greeks, led by now-Spymaster Artemios, are True Romans and are here for three things: to find a Monophysite relic—some sort of saint’s knuckle bone, to find Ganet’s journal, and to murder me. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I say, “Why would they want to murder me?” The hooded figure says that the Brotherhood regards my dynasty as inseparably intertwined with the Monophysite religion. “Their core belief is that blood, religion, and kingdom are all part of the same thing. With your roots in the Monophysite Kingdom of Abyssinia, you are in their eyes once and forever a Monophysite heretic, despite what you happen to believe now.”
It turns out that the group before me is not so different in opinion if not in specific outlook. They are the Order of the Coptic Goat Herders, and they are committed to protecting the Monophysite religious tradition and relics. They view me as a vital part of that tradition, despite my abhorrent current views. They have worked tirelessly to protect me and previous Zegwe rulers, even when the actions of some previous rulers… made protecting those individuals more difficult than others. The man tells me that they have been able to convert one of the Greeks, and so they have advanced warning that the Greeks will soon be planning against my life. The man urges me to throw the Greeks out of Sennar immediately for the safety of myself and my dynasty. Whatever I decide, they will do their best to protect me and my family, but if the Greeks are allowed to remain, they cannot be confident that I can be protected. Their warning given, they solemnly begin to withdraw out of the room.
Before they leave, however, the leader of the group turns back and asks, “Do you wish to see it? That which we preserve? Its fortunes are closely tied to that of your dynasty’s. It would require a few hours of your nighttime sleep if you are interested.” I am curious, so I agree. They sneak me out of the castle, past drugged guards sleeping fitfully, through a secret tunnel shockingly close to my bedchamber. I am put on a horse and blindfolded, and they lead me in a circuitous path evidently designed to mislead me as to which direction we are taking. Eventually we stop and I am helped off my horse and over a short wall into some sort of rope contrivance. Once secured in this, I am lowered down into a cool hole about twenty feet down. While dangling there I can feel that an opening is available, and it is through this that I am drawn and taken out of the ropes. I am led down a narrow passageway, which eventually opens up. I hear a door close, torches lit, and then my blindfold is removed. And then I behold the secret of Sennar.
I instruct my spymaster to talk with my wife and dissuade her from her plot to murder me. It would probably be more productive if I confronted her myself, but my nerve has failed me.
Nothing personal, but I can't help realizing that recognition of you was the straw that pushed my wife over the edge.
Konstantinos Zagwe—the elder product of my adulterous romance with my mistress—is at the age where I must find a tutor for him. Unfortunately, little Konstantinos must take from his mother’s side more than his father’s. He is… well, he is not the sharpest dagger in the armory. I will have his mother tutor her son. She will have the most patience of anyone.
My daughter Duchess Dionysia has taken a husband. Since I’d not been consulted on this match, I was anxious about who she had married. By the God! She has given away our dynasty’s rights to land to some oaf from a smaller duchy. How could see do this? None of her children can inherit her duchy or counties in this marriage. The first thing I think of, of course, is murdering the husband.
I instruct Spymaster Artemios to organize a plot amongst the elements in my daughter’s court that are amenable to murdering my daughter’s husband, whatever his name is. It turns out that nobody is willing to help. Nobody really likes him much, but nobody really dislikes him either. My daughter comes to closest to being willing—she is obviously not head over heels for her new spouse. I am beginning to suspect that this was Regent Bagrat’s doing while she was still a child.
After I think about the plot on my daughter’s husband, it occurs to me how futile it is. It took years for my plot against Georgia to come to fruition. My daughter and her husband are 16 and 18. Within a couple of years the damage will already have been done and my daughter will have had several children. And in any case, my daughter can replace him in less than a month with someone else willing to give her a child and take my dynasty’s land. Assassinating the spouse is risky and will not work. I must find another way.
Brilliant but cold. Very cold.
I visit the genius Spymaster Artemios. He is exceptionally talented in so many ways—it puzzles me that he would want to waste that talent in Sennar. But it is my gain, for whatever his reasons. I explain my problem to him. He doesn’t even think about it. His immediate response is to betroth my younger daughter that is in line for the Armenian duchy for a matrimonial marriage, and then murder my older daughter, the duchess, before she gives birth. If she manages to have a child, kill that first. My younger daughter will inherit the duchy and when she comes of age will marry the safe choice I’ve picked. I am speechless with horror at his cold and relentless logic. Artemios mistakes my speechless gaping as interest. He mentions that he has thought about this problem already and has three different ways he could assassinate my daughter—would I care to go through them with him now? I coldly inform him that he must never speak of this again to me, and he should forget all his plans to murder my eldest daughter immediately.
I go next to speak with Chancellor Demetrios. He is a Monophysite, but he is known for being kind and honest, so I can hope that he will be open to solutions apart from murdering my daughter. Sure enough, he has some sage and non-murderous advice: convince my daughter to change her succession laws to Elective, just as we in Sennar have done, and then she can elect someone from the Zagwe dynasty. On her death, her children with the oaf will inherit nothing from Dionysia’s lands, while they will still be eligible for inheriting on their father’s side. Wonderful! I thank Demetrios profusely and leave. On my way out, I notice strange instruments, similar to the ones that I had seen depicted in my Great-Aunt Ganet’s journal. I think nothing further of it and leave.
I try to plan ahead for contingencies by arranging for my daughter who is next in line for Armenia. At least this part of Artemios’ plan was sensible. If my older daughter dies unexpectedly, at least then my next daughter will have an appropriate matrimonial marriage already set up. I am looking for someone of similar age or older, as I do not want to waste precious years of potential childbirth waiting for some boy to reach 16. An alliance with a Byzantine duchy would be a plus. With that in mind I have Demetrios send me some potential husbands. He first reports back with David, a courtier in Cephalonia. David is the son of the current Duchess of Calabria, and so would bring an alliance with that duchy. Unfortunately, as a father I cast a disapproving eye on some of his other traits for my daughter: underhanded rogue, wroth, arbitrary, slothful. He is also fairly much an idiot in diplomacy, administration, intrigue, and book learning. While he looks like someone I would not be surprised to find leading one of my army’s columns, he is not suitable material to marry any daughter of mine. I pass on him.
Later Demetrios reports on Georgios Doukas in Thracesia, son of imprisoned Duke Athanasios of Thraceia. While deceitful and arbitrary, Georgias is also humble, charitable, and temperate. But here is where things become interesting. Georgios father is imprisoned by my liege, Empress Ioanna the Great—he must have been one of the many Doux who rebelled against Ioanna since she assumed power. That is not necessarily a sign of insane ambition. Ioanna the Great has a tendency to revoke her subjects’ duchies, which they often refuse, triggering a rebellion. Fortunately Sennar is nothing anyone would bother about. Georgios’ eldest living brother, Anastasios, is regent for his father while he is in prison. Anastasios is also heir to the Duchy of Tracesia. As Primogeniture is the succession model that this duchy follows, neither Georgios or the two middle brothers stand to inherit anything. But if all three of his older brothers met with an unforeseen accident, presumably Georgios would stand to inherit… and pass on to his own heirs. I also note that the brother right before Georgios, the 16-year old Alexandros, is the new husband-Emperor Consort to the 40-year old Empress Ioanna. This is a family with connections. I instruct Demetrios to reach out to this family and request a betrothal between my second eldest daughter and Georgios.
Doux Anthanasios sends his approval from prison. Or perhaps he is too busy being tortured by my enlightened liege—daughter of the Impaler, after all—and the Doux has to let Regent Anastasios give the approval on his behalf. Regardless, Caesar’s dynasty is becoming further embedded in most powerful families of the Byzantine Empire. Things are starting to look up.
That night I receive a surprise and shock. A sudden acrid smell wakes me from my sleep and I gasp awake. I find in my bedchamber five hooded, red-robed individuals standing in front of my bed. One of them is backing away from my side, replacing a tube into his robes, apparently the container that held the acrid smell. My mistress Konstantine is lying next to me. I am not sure she is breathing. “Don’t worry,” says the hooded figure in the middle. “She is perfectly fine. She, as well as your guards, will wake shortly with no harm done.” His voice is very rough. I nod, aware that they could easily have murdered me while I slept if that had been their design. “Why are you here?” “We are here to warn you that your life is in danger.” Being woken like this is causing me fear—that new sensation aroused by my wife’s wrath that I had not felt since a boy—but their response causes the serious fear to again form like ice in my belly. “My wife?” I ask. The hooded figures look at each other and pause. “You are in danger from your wife as well?” This is not going well.
The central hooded figure explains that no, they were unaware that my wife wants to kill me. They are bringing me a warning that my court has become host to a cabal of Orthodox religious zealots that is hostile to my dynasty. They are known as the Brotherhood of True Romans. All of the new Greeks, led by now-Spymaster Artemios, are True Romans and are here for three things: to find a Monophysite relic—some sort of saint’s knuckle bone, to find Ganet’s journal, and to murder me. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I say, “Why would they want to murder me?” The hooded figure says that the Brotherhood regards my dynasty as inseparably intertwined with the Monophysite religion. “Their core belief is that blood, religion, and kingdom are all part of the same thing. With your roots in the Monophysite Kingdom of Abyssinia, you are in their eyes once and forever a Monophysite heretic, despite what you happen to believe now.”
It turns out that the group before me is not so different in opinion if not in specific outlook. They are the Order of the Coptic Goat Herders, and they are committed to protecting the Monophysite religious tradition and relics. They view me as a vital part of that tradition, despite my abhorrent current views. They have worked tirelessly to protect me and previous Zegwe rulers, even when the actions of some previous rulers… made protecting those individuals more difficult than others. The man tells me that they have been able to convert one of the Greeks, and so they have advanced warning that the Greeks will soon be planning against my life. The man urges me to throw the Greeks out of Sennar immediately for the safety of myself and my dynasty. Whatever I decide, they will do their best to protect me and my family, but if the Greeks are allowed to remain, they cannot be confident that I can be protected. Their warning given, they solemnly begin to withdraw out of the room.
Before they leave, however, the leader of the group turns back and asks, “Do you wish to see it? That which we preserve? Its fortunes are closely tied to that of your dynasty’s. It would require a few hours of your nighttime sleep if you are interested.” I am curious, so I agree. They sneak me out of the castle, past drugged guards sleeping fitfully, through a secret tunnel shockingly close to my bedchamber. I am put on a horse and blindfolded, and they lead me in a circuitous path evidently designed to mislead me as to which direction we are taking. Eventually we stop and I am helped off my horse and over a short wall into some sort of rope contrivance. Once secured in this, I am lowered down into a cool hole about twenty feet down. While dangling there I can feel that an opening is available, and it is through this that I am drawn and taken out of the ropes. I am led down a narrow passageway, which eventually opens up. I hear a door close, torches lit, and then my blindfold is removed. And then I behold the secret of Sennar.
Ahh ,
the Mighty Order of Confusius and the Holy Chickens Bone,....or was it the other one ?
:ninja:
Ganets' journal, oh my a twist which i can't comprehend. Curious.
the Mighty Order of Confusius and the Holy Chickens Bone,....or was it the other one ?
:ninja:
Ganets' journal, oh my a twist which i can't comprehend. Curious.
Does this mean they converted him? Oh how I hope he is a convert again to the One Natured God in all his knuckle bone based glory! Of course that means he's gonna die in like a week, like his father before him.
It has come to my attention that rumors are spreading that the Geleda Baboon's may be gaining power somewhere in the north... Seneca needs a update on the status of the rest of the world!
Spoken like a true Byzantine
!Again, some things never change
You're not rolling like a true Zagwe until you have boatloads of people trying to murder you!
Tell me, did one of these Brotherhood men happen to have a scorpion tattoo, or look something like this?:
If so, I got bad news for you...
I would take a read of Ganet's journal if I were you, and SOON...she knew something.
Of course, knowing Zangwe's, he will not think to read the diary until its gone and someone is dead!
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The One-Natured God seems to enjoy messing with you. After so much effort, your daughter decides she wants you and the rest of the Zagwes locked in Sennar. Time to find yourself another Duchess I suppose.
And pay no attention to this infidel! The Messiah speaks only the truth!
Tell me, did one of these Brotherhood men happen to have a scorpion tattoo, or look something like this?:
If so, I got bad news for you...
And pay no attention to this infidel! The Messiah speaks only the truth!
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