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@Rabid: Okay, fine, I do that during this episode. It's been on my mind as well.
I was going to make some witty remark about the plight of the Ottomans, probably referencing the similarity of their downfall to that of Byzantium itself, but I actually ended up performing the necessary conquest before you asked. More on that later.
Episode 13: The Planet Shrinks
Alexander Phokas was having a rough day. First, a shipment of coffee beans intended for Dolarasteron was stolen, so he was unable to serve customers. Second, he found Robert and Matthew Basileous fighting in an alleyway behind the palace.
"Alright, what is it this time?" he shouted, trying to pry them apart. It took but a moment; neither brother had reached the height of their physical strength.
"The Ukraine is being occupied by the Sultanate of Kazan!" said Robert, who was still breathing heavily after his recent exertion. "We have to help them!"
"We have a truce with them due to their intervention in the Crimean war. If we were to attack, it would break international agreements," Alexander retorted.
They didn't bother to call for Byzantine help! This actually happened at the end of the last episode, but my attention was elsewhere.
Matthew took the opportunity to slap his brother in the face. The angry red marks it left on Robert's face would remain for a few hours.
Alexander's interest in attending court meetings was waning. With Eligos and Aedryn available to provide important information, he found simply asking them what happened to be less annoying, more straightforwards, sometimes more informative.
"Announcement: Byzantium has decided to invade the Mamluk sultanate yet again," Eligos said to him in July, 1531.
"Makes sense," responded Phokas. "What's their goal?"
"Hypothesis: Asserting further hegemony over the Red Sea. They had not decided once they sent the ambassador with the declaration."
Obviously, if you were a Greek, you didn't need a reason to oppress Mamluks.
War was declared in January, because the Mamluks had managed to draw the ire of Morocco. It seemed like an ordinary war - the casual web of alliances and guarantees extended some distance, but suddenly, an unfamiliar design of ships in the Mediterranean...
Apparently, Mali had gained the ability to project force in the area. Not enough, of course, but it was worth noting. A broad look at the theater suggested that if Byzantium's enemies in the area had been better coordinated, it would not bode well for the Empire, but as usual, coordination was poor.
The conquest of the area was going nicely...
It might not look it, but these zoomed out screenshots sacrifice the depth of Mamluk casualties for a better picture of the armies.
...when suddenly, Ruma asked for help in yet another defensive war. However, the only nation of the many Ruma claimed were about to attack it was Granada... at first.
Luckily, the areas Byzantium wanted for itself quickly succumbed, and a suitable peace treaty was negotiated fairly quickly with the Mamluks.
Meanwhile, Granada's main problem was that it was unable to protect its capital in an intelligent manner, so after a brief siege they agreed to stop attacking Ruma, at least for a brief moment. In that respect, they were like the Mamluks. Lessons from the latest cycle of wars lead the Byzantine army to readjust its musketeers' tactics to rely more on offensive techniques.
In other words, the guns of the Greeks were beginning to emerge from behind a curtain of pikes and lances.
In December 1535, Fabricus de Villaret died. Had he not converted to Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism might have become more prevalent. It did spur a few sympathy conversions from the dwindling minority of persecuted Muslims, though. Thomas IV forced his cabinet to attend de Villaret's funeral, which was far more lavish than the poor schismatic would've desired. Alexander considered himself lucky - it apparently went on for hours and unending hours of droning about infinitesimally small theological issues. More importantly, the food was bad.
"Fact: Greeks do not understand Catalan cuisine," Eligos had complained. A moment later, he'd begun dashing frantically for some sort of outhouse. Being part of the shadowy cabal controlling the government of Byzantium was not without its flaws.
Byzantium did not war aggressively for quite some time, although it did take a few moments out of its busy schedule to assist Scotland against a renewed bout of Djatou aggression. This war ended the same way as all the others - attempted Djatou pillaging of the lowlands dissuaded by the disruption of shipping.
Meanwhile, the forcible resettlement of Bolu that had started 50 years ago drew to its conclusion. A local noble made a huge fuss about how his (still clearly Turkish) subjects now were model Greeks, and the people under him started eating slightly more Greek food to maintain the illusion.
As I said when I enacted the settlement policy, there isn't much point beyond getting the province renaming events when Turkish is an accepted culture, and you can rename provinces manually. But that didn't stop me.
Ethiopia called for help against its neighbor, Adal. Unfortunately, Byzantium had no idea how to get to said country, so only nominal assistance was provided. At least Adal didn't appear large enough to present a threat to its nominally Christian neighbor ('Oriental Orthodoxy' was usually in question, but better that than being Catholic).
If Adal weren't landlocked, I wouldn't need a conquistador (or some lucky map spread) to find a path to them. Remember, you specifically need the 'Colonial Plans' modifier to get "Quest for the New World". There was some discussion in WAMMO's thread about making that plan easier to make in Dark Continent, but it was only tentative. I think the end result was that Europe's relevant naval technology requirements were reduced - in the case of the "Northern Exploration Ports" (Iceland, the British Isles, northern coast of France and a bit of Spain, and the Netherlands), it went down from 24 to 20.
In the meantime, Thomas IV decided the country should remove the last of the Turkish beys from the peninsula, and declared war on the Ottomans. This was yet another quick operation, but this left several North African nations (and Al-Alemand) craving blood. The irony of the Islamic world coming to their defense (at least compared to what real life Constantinople got in 1453) was not lost upon Phokas. While Byzantium's soldiers were getting more proficient at operating in the eastern Sahara, the less developed, more desolate western areas, such as the Byzantine "colony" of Tripoli still presented difficulties, and the occasional horror story from the area came up. Maghreb soldiers were ferocious, to say the least.
Later viewers will probably want to know why I left the Ottomans as an OPM for so long. It's very simple - the Mamluks guarantee-locked them for decades. While I never lost the core due to their occasional participation in crusades, directly attacking them would've disrupted my truce timing with the Mamluks and otherwise made it quite difficult to keep up a nice rhythm of conquest. It wouldn't matter that much, but for the fact WAMMO is as stingy with Casus Bellis as it is harsh with its infamy numbers. The way I saw it, it was either keep guessing as to when the guarantees would expire, take a massive 20 infamy hit for annexing their final province when they weren't a war target (not an option when your ruler is a diplo-muppet and generally not an option anyways), or waiting until I'd gotten the important Mamluk conquests out of the way.
Robert and Matthew were seen reconciling their differences soon after the annihilation of the Ottomans began. It seemed sincere, but Alexander had reason to doubt that.
"Constantine Palaiologos is dead!" was about the best explanation he'd receive at the time. Constantine was a general in the Byzantine army until a stray Tunisian arrow, fresh from the latest crusades, had ended his life. This happened because, to put it bluntly, Greeks had not yet optimized their armor to handle projectiles. Heavy breastplates deflected bullets and arrows effectively, but they also roasted their users alive in the Sahara. With leather or cloth 'armor', the best strategy was to avoid getting shot in the first place. The main problem was that Byzantine troops did not emphasize mobility, while those of Tunisia for instance did. Either way, Constantine was a major rival of the latest generation of Basileous brothers, and despite hating each others' guts, they both realized that they had to work together in order to consolidate their influence. On the other hand, it was increasingly difficult for a mundane noble or state official to gain favor compared to someone flamboyant, like the time travelers. While Robert and Matthew remained on good terms with Alexander Phokas (who had participated significantly in their childhood), Aedryn and Eligos weren't so lucky.
It had not escaped anyone's notice that Byzantium was reaching striking distance of Mecca and Medina, but fear of an unending crusade had, for a brief period, kept the country from attacking the tribes of the Hedjaz. Those fears were beginning to dissipate.
This time, it was the unified call of the Basileous brothers that lead Byzantium to declare war in March 1541, leading to what was most likely a repeat of the last war (except with the weakened if still powerful Magyars instead of Al-Alemand representing Islamic Europe). Once again, the fleets of the Maghreb bloc were destroyed, although at expense to Byzantine sanity in North Africa.
Scotland had become the go-to place for Orthodox Christians to escape from the insanity of the Mediterranean after Thomas II had managed to force Djata Kurafa to acknowledge its existence at the expense of Faransa. In this, it compared favorably to Tunisian Denmark. Naturally, when people found out how cold and damp it was compared to Constantinople, they wanted to stay. As a result of Byzantium's campaigns in the Sahara and other mind-melting deserts, people were overcompensating for the heat in record numbers. This did not escape the government's notice, and the subject came up in a meeting.
"How can we keep our soldiers from deserting the army-" Thomas IV began, before realizing he had broken a piece of etiquette that the time travelers held very dear.
"Sorry! How can we keep our soldiers from leaving for Scotland?" said the metropolitan after it became obvious that nobody really cared if he used the word 'deserting'.
"Well, the simplest solution is to destroy Scotland. We can do that if you wish," Aedryn suggested. Thomas rolled his eyes at this.
"I don't think casually murdering our brothers and sisters in the faith and salting their lands is going to solve this problem."
"The solution is wine," interjected Robert Stuart Basileous. "Phokas told me that the spirits in the wine, while they cause a person to feel warm, actually make them cool down. All we need to do is get people to drink more wine and liquor, and they'll cope with the heat more effectively."
Getting people drunk wasn't much better, but it was more likely to work.
"Well, the Muslims wouldn't drink wine, but they aren't the ones leaving. I suppose you should get on that," Thomas IV said.
The Hedjaz was annexed in time for Christmas, and Magyaristan was forced to grant autonomy to the people living on the island of Osel for what were seen as arbitrary reasons. When freed of nominal Magyar sovereignty, they immediately reverted to pagan practices - naturally, Thomas IV drew a lot of flak for supporting anything even slightly non-Christian, and would probably present a feeble excuse for not defending the people of Ösel when the inevitable reconquest occurred.
The conquest of Islam's holy cities was, however, considered the best Christmas present ever. Meanwhile, conversion efforts were reaching down into the Levant (although it would be some time before the 'deepest' Arabs would be receptive to conversion).
Even the mostly Christianized Turks were forging closer ties to Greece; some of them were real.
As further evidence of Byzantium's "Anything goes if you're Christian" policies, Thomas IV decreed the creation of an artist's guild, designed primarily to furnish the churches and cathedrals of the realm.
When a surge of abstract geometric art began appearing throughout the Empire, it caused some of the more conservative nobles concern, but the metropolitan dismissed it.
"What are a bunch of colored lines going to do to harm us? The Muslims will convert faster if they are allowed to keep their indigenous art."
Dangerous sentiments for what really weren't particularly dangerous times. I mean, look at the size of Byzantium... it's getting pretty big.
I was going to make some witty remark about the plight of the Ottomans, probably referencing the similarity of their downfall to that of Byzantium itself, but I actually ended up performing the necessary conquest before you asked. More on that later.
Episode 13: The Planet Shrinks
Alexander Phokas was having a rough day. First, a shipment of coffee beans intended for Dolarasteron was stolen, so he was unable to serve customers. Second, he found Robert and Matthew Basileous fighting in an alleyway behind the palace.
"Alright, what is it this time?" he shouted, trying to pry them apart. It took but a moment; neither brother had reached the height of their physical strength.
"The Ukraine is being occupied by the Sultanate of Kazan!" said Robert, who was still breathing heavily after his recent exertion. "We have to help them!"
"We have a truce with them due to their intervention in the Crimean war. If we were to attack, it would break international agreements," Alexander retorted.
They didn't bother to call for Byzantine help! This actually happened at the end of the last episode, but my attention was elsewhere.
Matthew took the opportunity to slap his brother in the face. The angry red marks it left on Robert's face would remain for a few hours.
Alexander's interest in attending court meetings was waning. With Eligos and Aedryn available to provide important information, he found simply asking them what happened to be less annoying, more straightforwards, sometimes more informative.
"Announcement: Byzantium has decided to invade the Mamluk sultanate yet again," Eligos said to him in July, 1531.
"Makes sense," responded Phokas. "What's their goal?"
"Hypothesis: Asserting further hegemony over the Red Sea. They had not decided once they sent the ambassador with the declaration."
Obviously, if you were a Greek, you didn't need a reason to oppress Mamluks.
War was declared in January, because the Mamluks had managed to draw the ire of Morocco. It seemed like an ordinary war - the casual web of alliances and guarantees extended some distance, but suddenly, an unfamiliar design of ships in the Mediterranean...
Apparently, Mali had gained the ability to project force in the area. Not enough, of course, but it was worth noting. A broad look at the theater suggested that if Byzantium's enemies in the area had been better coordinated, it would not bode well for the Empire, but as usual, coordination was poor.
The conquest of the area was going nicely...
It might not look it, but these zoomed out screenshots sacrifice the depth of Mamluk casualties for a better picture of the armies.
...when suddenly, Ruma asked for help in yet another defensive war. However, the only nation of the many Ruma claimed were about to attack it was Granada... at first.
Luckily, the areas Byzantium wanted for itself quickly succumbed, and a suitable peace treaty was negotiated fairly quickly with the Mamluks.
Meanwhile, Granada's main problem was that it was unable to protect its capital in an intelligent manner, so after a brief siege they agreed to stop attacking Ruma, at least for a brief moment. In that respect, they were like the Mamluks. Lessons from the latest cycle of wars lead the Byzantine army to readjust its musketeers' tactics to rely more on offensive techniques.
In other words, the guns of the Greeks were beginning to emerge from behind a curtain of pikes and lances.
In December 1535, Fabricus de Villaret died. Had he not converted to Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism might have become more prevalent. It did spur a few sympathy conversions from the dwindling minority of persecuted Muslims, though. Thomas IV forced his cabinet to attend de Villaret's funeral, which was far more lavish than the poor schismatic would've desired. Alexander considered himself lucky - it apparently went on for hours and unending hours of droning about infinitesimally small theological issues. More importantly, the food was bad.
"Fact: Greeks do not understand Catalan cuisine," Eligos had complained. A moment later, he'd begun dashing frantically for some sort of outhouse. Being part of the shadowy cabal controlling the government of Byzantium was not without its flaws.
Byzantium did not war aggressively for quite some time, although it did take a few moments out of its busy schedule to assist Scotland against a renewed bout of Djatou aggression. This war ended the same way as all the others - attempted Djatou pillaging of the lowlands dissuaded by the disruption of shipping.
Meanwhile, the forcible resettlement of Bolu that had started 50 years ago drew to its conclusion. A local noble made a huge fuss about how his (still clearly Turkish) subjects now were model Greeks, and the people under him started eating slightly more Greek food to maintain the illusion.
As I said when I enacted the settlement policy, there isn't much point beyond getting the province renaming events when Turkish is an accepted culture, and you can rename provinces manually. But that didn't stop me.
Ethiopia called for help against its neighbor, Adal. Unfortunately, Byzantium had no idea how to get to said country, so only nominal assistance was provided. At least Adal didn't appear large enough to present a threat to its nominally Christian neighbor ('Oriental Orthodoxy' was usually in question, but better that than being Catholic).
If Adal weren't landlocked, I wouldn't need a conquistador (or some lucky map spread) to find a path to them. Remember, you specifically need the 'Colonial Plans' modifier to get "Quest for the New World". There was some discussion in WAMMO's thread about making that plan easier to make in Dark Continent, but it was only tentative. I think the end result was that Europe's relevant naval technology requirements were reduced - in the case of the "Northern Exploration Ports" (Iceland, the British Isles, northern coast of France and a bit of Spain, and the Netherlands), it went down from 24 to 20.
In the meantime, Thomas IV decided the country should remove the last of the Turkish beys from the peninsula, and declared war on the Ottomans. This was yet another quick operation, but this left several North African nations (and Al-Alemand) craving blood. The irony of the Islamic world coming to their defense (at least compared to what real life Constantinople got in 1453) was not lost upon Phokas. While Byzantium's soldiers were getting more proficient at operating in the eastern Sahara, the less developed, more desolate western areas, such as the Byzantine "colony" of Tripoli still presented difficulties, and the occasional horror story from the area came up. Maghreb soldiers were ferocious, to say the least.
Later viewers will probably want to know why I left the Ottomans as an OPM for so long. It's very simple - the Mamluks guarantee-locked them for decades. While I never lost the core due to their occasional participation in crusades, directly attacking them would've disrupted my truce timing with the Mamluks and otherwise made it quite difficult to keep up a nice rhythm of conquest. It wouldn't matter that much, but for the fact WAMMO is as stingy with Casus Bellis as it is harsh with its infamy numbers. The way I saw it, it was either keep guessing as to when the guarantees would expire, take a massive 20 infamy hit for annexing their final province when they weren't a war target (not an option when your ruler is a diplo-muppet and generally not an option anyways), or waiting until I'd gotten the important Mamluk conquests out of the way.
Robert and Matthew were seen reconciling their differences soon after the annihilation of the Ottomans began. It seemed sincere, but Alexander had reason to doubt that.
"Constantine Palaiologos is dead!" was about the best explanation he'd receive at the time. Constantine was a general in the Byzantine army until a stray Tunisian arrow, fresh from the latest crusades, had ended his life. This happened because, to put it bluntly, Greeks had not yet optimized their armor to handle projectiles. Heavy breastplates deflected bullets and arrows effectively, but they also roasted their users alive in the Sahara. With leather or cloth 'armor', the best strategy was to avoid getting shot in the first place. The main problem was that Byzantine troops did not emphasize mobility, while those of Tunisia for instance did. Either way, Constantine was a major rival of the latest generation of Basileous brothers, and despite hating each others' guts, they both realized that they had to work together in order to consolidate their influence. On the other hand, it was increasingly difficult for a mundane noble or state official to gain favor compared to someone flamboyant, like the time travelers. While Robert and Matthew remained on good terms with Alexander Phokas (who had participated significantly in their childhood), Aedryn and Eligos weren't so lucky.
It had not escaped anyone's notice that Byzantium was reaching striking distance of Mecca and Medina, but fear of an unending crusade had, for a brief period, kept the country from attacking the tribes of the Hedjaz. Those fears were beginning to dissipate.
This time, it was the unified call of the Basileous brothers that lead Byzantium to declare war in March 1541, leading to what was most likely a repeat of the last war (except with the weakened if still powerful Magyars instead of Al-Alemand representing Islamic Europe). Once again, the fleets of the Maghreb bloc were destroyed, although at expense to Byzantine sanity in North Africa.
Scotland had become the go-to place for Orthodox Christians to escape from the insanity of the Mediterranean after Thomas II had managed to force Djata Kurafa to acknowledge its existence at the expense of Faransa. In this, it compared favorably to Tunisian Denmark. Naturally, when people found out how cold and damp it was compared to Constantinople, they wanted to stay. As a result of Byzantium's campaigns in the Sahara and other mind-melting deserts, people were overcompensating for the heat in record numbers. This did not escape the government's notice, and the subject came up in a meeting.
"How can we keep our soldiers from deserting the army-" Thomas IV began, before realizing he had broken a piece of etiquette that the time travelers held very dear.
"Sorry! How can we keep our soldiers from leaving for Scotland?" said the metropolitan after it became obvious that nobody really cared if he used the word 'deserting'.
"Well, the simplest solution is to destroy Scotland. We can do that if you wish," Aedryn suggested. Thomas rolled his eyes at this.
"I don't think casually murdering our brothers and sisters in the faith and salting their lands is going to solve this problem."
"The solution is wine," interjected Robert Stuart Basileous. "Phokas told me that the spirits in the wine, while they cause a person to feel warm, actually make them cool down. All we need to do is get people to drink more wine and liquor, and they'll cope with the heat more effectively."
Getting people drunk wasn't much better, but it was more likely to work.
"Well, the Muslims wouldn't drink wine, but they aren't the ones leaving. I suppose you should get on that," Thomas IV said.
The Hedjaz was annexed in time for Christmas, and Magyaristan was forced to grant autonomy to the people living on the island of Osel for what were seen as arbitrary reasons. When freed of nominal Magyar sovereignty, they immediately reverted to pagan practices - naturally, Thomas IV drew a lot of flak for supporting anything even slightly non-Christian, and would probably present a feeble excuse for not defending the people of Ösel when the inevitable reconquest occurred.
The conquest of Islam's holy cities was, however, considered the best Christmas present ever. Meanwhile, conversion efforts were reaching down into the Levant (although it would be some time before the 'deepest' Arabs would be receptive to conversion).
Even the mostly Christianized Turks were forging closer ties to Greece; some of them were real.
As further evidence of Byzantium's "Anything goes if you're Christian" policies, Thomas IV decreed the creation of an artist's guild, designed primarily to furnish the churches and cathedrals of the realm.
When a surge of abstract geometric art began appearing throughout the Empire, it caused some of the more conservative nobles concern, but the metropolitan dismissed it.
"What are a bunch of colored lines going to do to harm us? The Muslims will convert faster if they are allowed to keep their indigenous art."
Dangerous sentiments for what really weren't particularly dangerous times. I mean, look at the size of Byzantium... it's getting pretty big.
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Not much to say, except that we are drawing close to age of colonization. Also, I actually managed to procure a copy of "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's turning out to be a good read.
Episode 14: Byzantium's Annoying Neighbors
Time passed rather quickly. Robert and Matthew Basileous were drawing close to middle age. It wasn't working out very well for them; they had yet to marry or sire children, being too busy hating each other to do much else.
In 1548, a maid had entered the apartment they (somehow) shared, with intent to clean. Luckily, she'd been paid for her duties, otherwise she would've died a slow and horrible death when they got back. The Basileous residence promised to be easy money - for all their problems the brothers were at least capable of keeping an orderly house. She was in the process of dusting some drawers when a slip of paper caught her eye.
It was a map of Byzantium. That was comprehensible. It appeared to be fairly up to date, as well; even the recent conquest of Mecca was accounted for. In fact, were it not for one ugly, awkward line scrawled down the middle of the Black Sea, the maid might have just replaced the map and continued her duties.
She stared at it a moment, and saw what appeared to be names. As an illiterate, she lacked the training to properly decipher them, but she noted that there was one on each side of the dividing line. On the European side something dominated by straight lines, on the Asian, something given to curvature. It almost seemed as if... no, that couldn't be right. But the maid had intuited enough from the map to figure something horrific would happen if it remained in the Basileous residence.
The loss of the map wouldn't necessarily mean anything, but this maid had access to the ears of powerful people. What can I say? She kept their houses orderly. The aristocracy and clergy of Constantinople valued the cleanliness of their households, and would have placed even more emphasis on it had someone, perhaps Alexander Phokas, told them a story about little invisible creatures that lived everywhere and could spread disease.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," said the maid's next client. Phillip Argyros was an arms manufacturer who had become one of Byzantium's many generals once the government had started buying his guns in particularly large numbers. He was nearing 50 years of age, had a son in the clergy, and was (by 16th century standards) unusually training a daughter to take over the family factory in Athens. Argyros was a perfect example of the 'new' nobility; rich enough to pursue his own interests and have ancestry forged. His personal fortune was estimated to be several times that of the Basileous and Palaiologos families. Peasants loved him because his last name was easier to spell than that of the other two major families. Other nobles loved his guns and cannons while secretly conspiring to take over his assets.
"It appears that the Basileous brothers want to sunder the empire at its moment of greatest glory. Why would they want to do that?" Phillip continued in the presence of his maid. He hadn't told her about the origins of the map, leaving her confused and simply doing her job to compensate.
A few weeks later, Robert and Matthew stopped attending the Metropolitan's meetings. This was the first thing Alexander Phokas noticed when Aedryn and Eligos convinced him to start attending again.
"So where are they?" he asked. Conveniently, Thomas IV had something to say on the subject.
"Hanging by their feet from ropes. They're beginning to smell quite bad." Not the sort of speech Alexander associated with the man who was supposed to be both the temporal and spiritual leader of Byzantium (supposed to being the key term). Thomas IV then went on a long tirade about loyalty to one's country, the conversion of heathens in order to save their souls, the weakness of divided empires. Phokas' attention wavered.
"Do you know what happened when Theodisus split Rome? The western half withered and died. Our half was stronger, yet it nearly collapsed under centuries upon centuries of assault at the hands of the Saracens! In a way, the plague was a blessing," ranted Thomas.
"I should know. I've been here since 1399," Alexander said, countering the metropolitan's half-crazed agitprop by droning about the growth of Byzantium.
"You know, for a person who's seen our empire go from its darkest hour to heights not seen since Justinian, you really don't seem to care that much," responded Thomas when Alexander seemed to be running out of steam.
"It's pretty absurd, am I right? You could've been an emperor, but for the fashion taste of your predecessor."
"Hypothesis: The Metropolitan has enough power to declare himself Emperor, and crush all opposition," Eligos suddenly interjected, restoring a semblance of normality to the proceedings.
"Why would I do that? A lot of effort for no real gain, don't you think?"
For his crucial role in informing on the Basileous, Phillip Argyros was inducted into the Metropolitan's inner circle. As for the maid? I think she got a pay raise or something.
Thomas IV's latest claim was that Byzantium should work on improving its internal trade. This occurred for some time.
Then the Scottish Metropolitan (James VI) managed to enrage the entirety of the steppe hordes and called for Byzantium to assist them. Apparently, Scotland had pledged to defend the small Christian principality of Yaroslavl. Considering that Yaroslavl was small, landlocked, poor, and surrounded on all sides by enemies, this may not have been their best idea. On the other hand, none of Scotland's new enemies had figured out the fine art of naval supremacy.
More bad ideas made themselves apparent when Swahili decided that this would be the best time to attack Byzantium and attempt to reclaim the holy city of Mecca for themselves. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to actually launch their attack. Since Byzantium wasn't interested in the southern half of Africa, this meant that the supposed jihad was ignored by all and quickly forgotten.
The Golden Horde soon asked for peace after a few border skirmishes. This meant, of course, that none of the other nations could project force into Byzantium, since they had never thought to sign open borders agreements with their neighbors. After that, the war fizzled out, and the Qasim Khanate demanded a few shiny pennies from Yaroslavl.
What is it about these countries not reconquering their cores? Also, I looked at my save in the EU3 Save Suite, and it appears that Swahili fought absolutely no battles in the war they declared, not even with Ethiopia.
Thomas IV ordered the construction of a new seminary in Constantinople, road networks were expanded. Again, it seemed like Byzantium would be at peace for a long time. Byzantium learned of many new lands during this latest bout of peace; amongst other things they discovered overland routes to China, India, and other markets to the east. They were literally crawling with infidels.
"Things are getting awfully boring around here," Aedryn complained some time in 1551.
They wouldn't stay that way for long - Tunisia, tiring of Rumi efforts to beat on the Knights of Malta, decided to intervene in the latest Rumi punitive campaign, while Scotland came under attack by the Djatans yet again. They also managed to convince the Mamluks to bear the weight of Byzantium, so it looked like the country was going to be occupied on most of its important fronts.
In the midst of this new outbreak of fighting, interesting news came from Djata Kurafa. Alexander Phokas noted with some consternation that it had apparently taken them a very long time to figure out the existence of the Americas, and half-entertained the notion of giving Byzantium some detailed maps of the planet.
Then, in 1552, Ethiopia decided to expand into the Arabic peninsula by attacking Yemen. That was too much. Luckily, Ruma was doing much better against the Tunisians than it had the last time...
...so Byzantium was able to demand some small concessions from its enemies before exiting the war.
Djata Kurafa continued its voyages of discovery. In August 1552, they learned of the Amazon rainforest. The name of Ammar Traore was now known even in Byzantium. Such focus on the exploits of other nations was a natural result of the halt in Greek expansion as of late. Thomas IV continued to recommend the nation lay low and focus on self-strengthening, but increasingly it was suggested that entirely new lands could enrich the the country even further.
As it was, Thomas IV had the dubious honor of being the first Metropolitan not to be assassinated. Instead, he simply had a stroke. This left him paralyzed on his right side for a few days. Byzantine medicine, while increasingly advanced from Arabic, Indian, and Chinese influences, was very bad at treating cerebral hemorrhages, so they couldn't do anything about the second stroke that finished him off.
"Warning: I have taken the liberty of choosing the successor to Thomas," Eligos informed Alexander and Aedryn in private.
"Sure, whatever. Knock yourself out. Just don't kill him too quickly." They didn't seem to care.
Andreas Argyros, son of Phillip, soon had the honor of adding two Is to his name. He wasn't a bad choice, since he was in fact quite skilled at the domestic duties his predecessor had encouraged in his final years.
Oddly, he doesn't appear to have any of WAMMO's added attributes for rulers. Is that a bug? Also, I would've liked a better diplomacy score, but at least his other attributes are higher than those of Thomas IV.
Outside the time travelers, only Andreas knew that his purpose was to do Eligos' bidding.
"What we need to do is create a forwards naval base to imitate, and eventually surpass the exploration efforts of Djata Kurafa," the new metropolitan said at his first meeting. It was not without controversy.
"How will we do this? We would have to attack either Granada or Morocco to gain a port on the Atlantic," asked another new voice. Kastor Mikrulakes was a friend of Andreas' father; he had become a general through his own merits, but Phillip had to guilt Andreas into including him on the council. Needless to say, Andreas did not share his father's camaraderie with the fellow.
"Then we shall attack Morocco. Their allies are weaker."
"..."
"You vastly underestimate our power."
Andreas managed to pull off one diplomatic trick by convincing the emir of Algiers to let him station troops in his country. He and the sultan of Morocco had some bad blood that they had yet to work out. Naturally, Kastor was sent to lead troops personally on this campaign.
"I absolutely loathe the Sahara!" he shouted to his underlings from the safety of his personal barque.
Overwhelming force was the order of the day. On July 4th, 1555, war was declared. A few weeks later, it became apparent that something was very wrong with Morrocan diplomacy.
"Their allies aren't going to help them?" sneered Aedryn. "What, did their Sultan take a dump in the others' vineyards?" Nobody had rushed to help the Moroccans. Because of this, Morocco began to collapse in a nasty fashion.
The fighting devolved into a series of hot weather sieges.
On February 3rd, 1557, Kastor died of some unknown desert disease. Andreas II didn't really care what it was; he was merely glad to be rid of him.
"Opinion: Your actions were very effective in strengthening your power," Eligos told Andreas in private once he'd heard the news. Andreas didn't get it. He really wasn't a people person.
"Hypothesis: By ridding yourself of your father's puppet, you have secured greater autonomy," continued Eligos.
"Uh, right." Andreas didn't sound very confident about this.
"Corollary: You must at least feign grief over Kastor's death, otherwise people will become suspicious of you." Eligos really didn't like having to tell Andreas such basic things, but he didn't want to openly take power, no matter how much people enjoyed cosplaying as him (luckily, that trend was on the decline, as the average Byzantine nobleman had went back to wearing proper clothing). Regardless, it was a small price to pay for decades of entertainment.
Morocco was forced to cede its moderately prosperous holdings near the strait of Gibraltar. It looked to be a difficult area to subdue, but now Byzantium could more easily bully the people in the region and protect Rumi interests. It'd be a long time before this power could be extended much beyond the African coast, though.
Other sweeping changes in the world were likely to happen in the meantime. Skandistan, for instance, was dealing with a massive insurrection of Norwegians. While they had converted to Islam several generations ago, they had never really forgiven their Skandistani overlords for taking over their ancestral homeland.
Whether they would succeed or not was up for debate. Meanwhile, the Jochids continued to suffer at the hands of their neighbors - the Ukraine, for instance, launched another successful crusade at their expense. Faransa was reclaiming its southern holdings. Malacca was trying to increase its influence in Southeast Asia. Needless to say, with its increasing access to the world's oceans, Byzantium was ready to take an ever more active role in planetary affairs.
The obligatory map of the world follows.
Yes, that is Arawak in New Hampshire, and Carib in South America. I'm not sure, maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a little weird, but what are you going to do? The Asians aren't doing very well at colonizing despite what I said about how Dark Continent is supposed to force them to try. I guess it's just a fluke, and hopefully the Amerindians will pick up the slack.
Episode 14: Byzantium's Annoying Neighbors
Time passed rather quickly. Robert and Matthew Basileous were drawing close to middle age. It wasn't working out very well for them; they had yet to marry or sire children, being too busy hating each other to do much else.
In 1548, a maid had entered the apartment they (somehow) shared, with intent to clean. Luckily, she'd been paid for her duties, otherwise she would've died a slow and horrible death when they got back. The Basileous residence promised to be easy money - for all their problems the brothers were at least capable of keeping an orderly house. She was in the process of dusting some drawers when a slip of paper caught her eye.
It was a map of Byzantium. That was comprehensible. It appeared to be fairly up to date, as well; even the recent conquest of Mecca was accounted for. In fact, were it not for one ugly, awkward line scrawled down the middle of the Black Sea, the maid might have just replaced the map and continued her duties.
She stared at it a moment, and saw what appeared to be names. As an illiterate, she lacked the training to properly decipher them, but she noted that there was one on each side of the dividing line. On the European side something dominated by straight lines, on the Asian, something given to curvature. It almost seemed as if... no, that couldn't be right. But the maid had intuited enough from the map to figure something horrific would happen if it remained in the Basileous residence.
The loss of the map wouldn't necessarily mean anything, but this maid had access to the ears of powerful people. What can I say? She kept their houses orderly. The aristocracy and clergy of Constantinople valued the cleanliness of their households, and would have placed even more emphasis on it had someone, perhaps Alexander Phokas, told them a story about little invisible creatures that lived everywhere and could spread disease.
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," said the maid's next client. Phillip Argyros was an arms manufacturer who had become one of Byzantium's many generals once the government had started buying his guns in particularly large numbers. He was nearing 50 years of age, had a son in the clergy, and was (by 16th century standards) unusually training a daughter to take over the family factory in Athens. Argyros was a perfect example of the 'new' nobility; rich enough to pursue his own interests and have ancestry forged. His personal fortune was estimated to be several times that of the Basileous and Palaiologos families. Peasants loved him because his last name was easier to spell than that of the other two major families. Other nobles loved his guns and cannons while secretly conspiring to take over his assets.
"It appears that the Basileous brothers want to sunder the empire at its moment of greatest glory. Why would they want to do that?" Phillip continued in the presence of his maid. He hadn't told her about the origins of the map, leaving her confused and simply doing her job to compensate.
A few weeks later, Robert and Matthew stopped attending the Metropolitan's meetings. This was the first thing Alexander Phokas noticed when Aedryn and Eligos convinced him to start attending again.
"So where are they?" he asked. Conveniently, Thomas IV had something to say on the subject.
"Hanging by their feet from ropes. They're beginning to smell quite bad." Not the sort of speech Alexander associated with the man who was supposed to be both the temporal and spiritual leader of Byzantium (supposed to being the key term). Thomas IV then went on a long tirade about loyalty to one's country, the conversion of heathens in order to save their souls, the weakness of divided empires. Phokas' attention wavered.
"Do you know what happened when Theodisus split Rome? The western half withered and died. Our half was stronger, yet it nearly collapsed under centuries upon centuries of assault at the hands of the Saracens! In a way, the plague was a blessing," ranted Thomas.
"I should know. I've been here since 1399," Alexander said, countering the metropolitan's half-crazed agitprop by droning about the growth of Byzantium.
"You know, for a person who's seen our empire go from its darkest hour to heights not seen since Justinian, you really don't seem to care that much," responded Thomas when Alexander seemed to be running out of steam.
"It's pretty absurd, am I right? You could've been an emperor, but for the fashion taste of your predecessor."
"Hypothesis: The Metropolitan has enough power to declare himself Emperor, and crush all opposition," Eligos suddenly interjected, restoring a semblance of normality to the proceedings.
"Why would I do that? A lot of effort for no real gain, don't you think?"
For his crucial role in informing on the Basileous, Phillip Argyros was inducted into the Metropolitan's inner circle. As for the maid? I think she got a pay raise or something.
Thomas IV's latest claim was that Byzantium should work on improving its internal trade. This occurred for some time.
Then the Scottish Metropolitan (James VI) managed to enrage the entirety of the steppe hordes and called for Byzantium to assist them. Apparently, Scotland had pledged to defend the small Christian principality of Yaroslavl. Considering that Yaroslavl was small, landlocked, poor, and surrounded on all sides by enemies, this may not have been their best idea. On the other hand, none of Scotland's new enemies had figured out the fine art of naval supremacy.
More bad ideas made themselves apparent when Swahili decided that this would be the best time to attack Byzantium and attempt to reclaim the holy city of Mecca for themselves. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to actually launch their attack. Since Byzantium wasn't interested in the southern half of Africa, this meant that the supposed jihad was ignored by all and quickly forgotten.
The Golden Horde soon asked for peace after a few border skirmishes. This meant, of course, that none of the other nations could project force into Byzantium, since they had never thought to sign open borders agreements with their neighbors. After that, the war fizzled out, and the Qasim Khanate demanded a few shiny pennies from Yaroslavl.
What is it about these countries not reconquering their cores? Also, I looked at my save in the EU3 Save Suite, and it appears that Swahili fought absolutely no battles in the war they declared, not even with Ethiopia.
Thomas IV ordered the construction of a new seminary in Constantinople, road networks were expanded. Again, it seemed like Byzantium would be at peace for a long time. Byzantium learned of many new lands during this latest bout of peace; amongst other things they discovered overland routes to China, India, and other markets to the east. They were literally crawling with infidels.
"Things are getting awfully boring around here," Aedryn complained some time in 1551.
They wouldn't stay that way for long - Tunisia, tiring of Rumi efforts to beat on the Knights of Malta, decided to intervene in the latest Rumi punitive campaign, while Scotland came under attack by the Djatans yet again. They also managed to convince the Mamluks to bear the weight of Byzantium, so it looked like the country was going to be occupied on most of its important fronts.
In the midst of this new outbreak of fighting, interesting news came from Djata Kurafa. Alexander Phokas noted with some consternation that it had apparently taken them a very long time to figure out the existence of the Americas, and half-entertained the notion of giving Byzantium some detailed maps of the planet.
Then, in 1552, Ethiopia decided to expand into the Arabic peninsula by attacking Yemen. That was too much. Luckily, Ruma was doing much better against the Tunisians than it had the last time...
...so Byzantium was able to demand some small concessions from its enemies before exiting the war.
Djata Kurafa continued its voyages of discovery. In August 1552, they learned of the Amazon rainforest. The name of Ammar Traore was now known even in Byzantium. Such focus on the exploits of other nations was a natural result of the halt in Greek expansion as of late. Thomas IV continued to recommend the nation lay low and focus on self-strengthening, but increasingly it was suggested that entirely new lands could enrich the the country even further.
As it was, Thomas IV had the dubious honor of being the first Metropolitan not to be assassinated. Instead, he simply had a stroke. This left him paralyzed on his right side for a few days. Byzantine medicine, while increasingly advanced from Arabic, Indian, and Chinese influences, was very bad at treating cerebral hemorrhages, so they couldn't do anything about the second stroke that finished him off.
"Warning: I have taken the liberty of choosing the successor to Thomas," Eligos informed Alexander and Aedryn in private.
"Sure, whatever. Knock yourself out. Just don't kill him too quickly." They didn't seem to care.
Andreas Argyros, son of Phillip, soon had the honor of adding two Is to his name. He wasn't a bad choice, since he was in fact quite skilled at the domestic duties his predecessor had encouraged in his final years.
Oddly, he doesn't appear to have any of WAMMO's added attributes for rulers. Is that a bug? Also, I would've liked a better diplomacy score, but at least his other attributes are higher than those of Thomas IV.
Outside the time travelers, only Andreas knew that his purpose was to do Eligos' bidding.
"What we need to do is create a forwards naval base to imitate, and eventually surpass the exploration efforts of Djata Kurafa," the new metropolitan said at his first meeting. It was not without controversy.
"How will we do this? We would have to attack either Granada or Morocco to gain a port on the Atlantic," asked another new voice. Kastor Mikrulakes was a friend of Andreas' father; he had become a general through his own merits, but Phillip had to guilt Andreas into including him on the council. Needless to say, Andreas did not share his father's camaraderie with the fellow.
"Then we shall attack Morocco. Their allies are weaker."
"..."
"You vastly underestimate our power."
Andreas managed to pull off one diplomatic trick by convincing the emir of Algiers to let him station troops in his country. He and the sultan of Morocco had some bad blood that they had yet to work out. Naturally, Kastor was sent to lead troops personally on this campaign.
"I absolutely loathe the Sahara!" he shouted to his underlings from the safety of his personal barque.
Overwhelming force was the order of the day. On July 4th, 1555, war was declared. A few weeks later, it became apparent that something was very wrong with Morrocan diplomacy.
"Their allies aren't going to help them?" sneered Aedryn. "What, did their Sultan take a dump in the others' vineyards?" Nobody had rushed to help the Moroccans. Because of this, Morocco began to collapse in a nasty fashion.
The fighting devolved into a series of hot weather sieges.
On February 3rd, 1557, Kastor died of some unknown desert disease. Andreas II didn't really care what it was; he was merely glad to be rid of him.
"Opinion: Your actions were very effective in strengthening your power," Eligos told Andreas in private once he'd heard the news. Andreas didn't get it. He really wasn't a people person.
"Hypothesis: By ridding yourself of your father's puppet, you have secured greater autonomy," continued Eligos.
"Uh, right." Andreas didn't sound very confident about this.
"Corollary: You must at least feign grief over Kastor's death, otherwise people will become suspicious of you." Eligos really didn't like having to tell Andreas such basic things, but he didn't want to openly take power, no matter how much people enjoyed cosplaying as him (luckily, that trend was on the decline, as the average Byzantine nobleman had went back to wearing proper clothing). Regardless, it was a small price to pay for decades of entertainment.
Morocco was forced to cede its moderately prosperous holdings near the strait of Gibraltar. It looked to be a difficult area to subdue, but now Byzantium could more easily bully the people in the region and protect Rumi interests. It'd be a long time before this power could be extended much beyond the African coast, though.
Other sweeping changes in the world were likely to happen in the meantime. Skandistan, for instance, was dealing with a massive insurrection of Norwegians. While they had converted to Islam several generations ago, they had never really forgiven their Skandistani overlords for taking over their ancestral homeland.
Whether they would succeed or not was up for debate. Meanwhile, the Jochids continued to suffer at the hands of their neighbors - the Ukraine, for instance, launched another successful crusade at their expense. Faransa was reclaiming its southern holdings. Malacca was trying to increase its influence in Southeast Asia. Needless to say, with its increasing access to the world's oceans, Byzantium was ready to take an ever more active role in planetary affairs.
The obligatory map of the world follows.
Yes, that is Arawak in New Hampshire, and Carib in South America. I'm not sure, maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a little weird, but what are you going to do? The Asians aren't doing very well at colonizing despite what I said about how Dark Continent is supposed to force them to try. I guess it's just a fluke, and hopefully the Amerindians will pick up the slack.
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I'm kind of taking a different approach to my 'State of the World' update here. Now, with my conquests, Byzantium increasingly IS the world, but there are nations out there that I don't have the ability to assert hegemony over... yet. I felt like writing some brief vignettes to illustrate some of the effects nations are having on each other - mostly Byzantium on non-Byzantium, with one exception. We'll be getting back to Alexander Phokas next week.
Episode 14.5: Globalism
A poster emblazoned with the face of Eligos. "Voted 'Sexiest Man Alive' by the Bulgarian Council For Free Trade", it said.
"Do you think we might be interfering too much?" was a question Eligos had never asked. Not once in Maygaristan, not once in Byzantium. He simply wasn't that sort of person. On the other hand, his companions had been known to question Eligos' interest in warping history, and one time during his residence in Maygaristan, a strange incident had occurred.
"Excuse me, but could I have a moment of your time?" a male voice had said about a century ago. "I'm doing some research on Hungarian nationalism in the 19th century, particularly in the context of Budapest, and..." At this point, the man had trailed off, looked around, and apparently found something deeply unsettling about his surroundings.
"...and I appear to be in the wrong place," said the stranger before vanishing from this existence.
Eligos had never hid his future heritage, but to be fair, he'd never really emphasized it beforehand. He'd had to explain the event to his advisors, and it was from then on that the concept of time travel began to disseminate through the world.
That, and a few other things.
February 15th, 1487:
"I've decided to tax the coffee trade. It appears to exploded in volume in recent decades," said Ahmad Rasulid, the ruler of Yemen, when his chief minister (Isma'il Saleh) asked him what he was doing to improve the economy. Exports of coffee beans had risen almost fourfold since Ahmad's birth in 1454. Most of those beans had went to the north, although Ahmad didn't know (or care) who'd been drinking them. If he had, he might've noticed the posters in Sana'a that proclaimed local coffeehouses were now serving drinks in the 'Greek' style.
"However," Ahmad continued, "I intend to reinvest the money gained from this taxation directly back into the plantations, in order to make them more productive."
"What are you going to do if people stop drinking coffee?" asked the advisor.
"...I don't know. How does one make a staple out of a luxury?"
"You grow more of it, I assume."
"We've come full circle, Isma'il."
July 23rd, 1504:
In the city of Howrah, across the bank of the Hoogli River from Calcutta, two men bent from years of crippling arthritis fought a desperate struggle against the teahouses. In Bengal, coffee had never really taken off, probably due to the rich tea plantations of the region... and richer ones in China. As a result, their coffeehouse was virtually deserted and falling into disrepair.
"We have to stop doing this. The stress is killing me," said the younger and slightly less decrepit of the two.
"No. I've put too much time and money into this to stop now," the older one rasped. He'd spent much of his life chewing betel leaves, until he'd become so destitute and poor that he couldn't even afford them. Before that, they'd damaged his mouth to the point his diction was affected.
Both of them, unfortunately, were living through the collapse of the kingdom they had called home for so many years, as the Kingdom of Nagpur fought against the Marathas for influence over the Bengal Delta. Howrah was swarming with soldiers at the best of times, and with refugees at the worst. Sure, the soldiers were callous and otherwise disrespectful, but they would at least pay for the goods they took. Sometimes. At this point, two brigands in tattered clothing carrying rusty swords barged up to the old men and demanded all their money.
"There is no money," muttered the younger proprietor. That probably wasn't the right thing to say, as the burglars began pillaging the coffeehouse. Culinary implants were damaged, tables were knocked over, and anything that looked valuable was treated callously.
"No! If we can't pay rent, our landlord beats us-" the older one began to say, before being knocked to the ground by a half-hearted punch. In the end, all the thieves ended up making off with was a bag full of beans and some ornamental spoons. The two began jabbering at each other as they left the building.
"We can pawn the spoons, but what are we going to do with all these beans? If we try to grind and cook them, they'll just turn into sludge," complained one.
"If you had stolen more, we could use the sack as a bludgeon," responded his companion.
They walked through the streets of Howrah. Things were clearly bad, as they were able to amble leisurely through the city without a single person even reporting them to the local police. At a local hideout, several other thieves looked at their latest haul with disappointment and scorn.
"You need to attempt bigger heists," said one with inexplicably greasy hands. It was clear that he had some reputation here, as when he reached forth to steal a handful of roasted coffee beans from the newcomers' sack, they did not resist. He idly popped one in his mouth, chewed it, swallowed, didn't regurgitate it at any point.
"Huh. There might be something to these. What are they called again?"
March 2nd, 1525:
There were two paintings in the second Hongwu Emperor's (born Zhu Yangfeng) palace in Jinan that he was particularly proud of, and both of them depicted lands to the west - places that, until a few decades ago the Chinese had thought irrevocably lost to the plagues.
The first was a portrait of a man born from a dynastic marriage. Surprisingly, Luther Stuart Basileous stopped traveling outside the borders of Byzantium after leaving his native Scotland. However, he had visited the semi-autonomous Georgian provinces on many occasions. In Kartli, there was an embassy of the Golden Horde, and word of Luther's existence had spread over the years throughout the steppe, and into mainland China through the mountainous west. It was the Hongwu Emperor himself who had commissioned a painting of Luther, on the grounds that he represented an example of the constant spread of Confucian virtues.
Luther would've laughed at the absurdity of this. The Hongwu Emperor's domains were limited to a small area around Jinan and the trading city of Beijing. Everywhere else was held by warlords who swore nominal loyalty to the Emperor at best. The remnants of the Ming dynasty really existed only at their whim, as each warlord feared that the others would devour his lands if he tried to assert dominance over the Emperor. Calling back to the first Hongwu Emperor, who had united the warlords to drive out the Yuan dynasty, seemed like a politically useful idea. The only slight problem was that the first one had then angered his subjects so much that the warlords broke off and formed autonomous polities. In the past 125 years, they had only drifted apart.
The other portrait, unusually, depicted Thomas III, the spiritual leader of Christianity (especially after the Romans had deposed their metropolitan and given the administration of their territory to a king). Surrounding him were the three immortal 'angels' who had supposedly advised Rome throughout the centuries - a Greek, a Celt, and a Maygar according to the tales. According to the emperor, these tales were nonsense, and the three were probably members of his family - perhaps a beloved wife and two brothers. Since the painter had no idea how any of those cultures dressed, everyone in the picture was wearing traditional Han clothing. Clearly, nobody in China really understood Europe, but most Europeans were still a bit edgy about going beyond Iran, or the Arabic peninsula. It was about the same for mainland Asia, but as Byzantium expanded ever closer to the Red Sea, cross-cultural contact would probably increase.
April 4th, 1551:
"Wise Bear, we bring your people the gift of plants from our lands-"
A man in feathers slapped a man wearing woven cloth in the face.
"You are but a slobbering moron. My name is Nahuel. Get it right."
Both men were out of place. They were sitting in the study of a townhouse in an area roughly corresponding to Belem. Nahuel was a merchant from the city of Cuzco, and Suleiman was an interpreter for Ammar Traore, the great explorer from the (now heavily Africanized) city of Lancashire. Before his efforts, the people of Europe believed the Atlantic Ocean to be far larger than it really was (or would be after a hundred million years of continental drift). Meanwhile, Nahuel had heard isolated whispers of the occasional strange ship washing up onto the coast of his own country, but even if true, it probably just meant free driftwood and human sacrifices.
"The people of the Amazon basin rejected your plants after your diseases spread to them. Why should we eat the foods of an unsanitary people?" Nahuel snarled at Suleiman, who translated for Ammar. Ammar winced, and began his own recitation in Mandinka, laced with Arabic, Gaelic, and English loanwords.
"You call us unsanitary and unhealthy, but the average European grows larger and stronger than you despite this supposed burden of disease."
Nahuel really didn't want to be in Belem, but the Nazca emperor had sent out a call for foreign goods. He was hoping just to pick up something nice from an Arawak or Carib trader, but instead he just had to bump into these weirdos from across the Atlantic-
"We did not come here to argue about the merits of our foods relative to yours. Regardless of what the truth is, the Amazonas have began to cultivate our grains and slaughter our cows, while we have done likewise with maize and tomatoes," Suleiman claimed, interrupting Nahuel's train of malignant thought.
"It's not up to me, anyways. My emperor demands new things from the outside world," responded Nahuel, idly drumming his fingers against the wall.
"Our rulers have similar demands. But I think we'd have made the journey even if they turned a blind eye. In fact, we intend to go inland after this, and visit the Nazca people."
"Do not take the jungle route. It is treacherous and kills many who are inexperienced in its ways. You should take a Carib ship."
"The Carib people have found a naval passage to Peru? I always thought that the lands south of the Cape of Good Hope were iced over at any altitude."
"Where'd you get such a bizzare idea? Either way, it's a longer trip, but it is much safer. I speak fluent Antillean Carib, and seek passage back to my own land anyways."
Surprisingly, Suleiman and Ammar accepted this proposal. Nahuel still didn't like them, but was able to hold his distaste in check until they reached the Carib nation's Pacific outpost, somewhat to the south of Nazca lands. It was the last time any of them would see a forest for quite a while. From then on, it was a lengthy trip through arid, mountainous terrain and gradually increasing elevation. The Djatans found this terrain rather troublesome, to say the least.
"Not so well fed now, are you?" Nahuel taunted. It wasn't true - due to the small villages dotting the mountains, the party was always well provisioned with food, water, and a few basic medical items for emergencies. On the other hand, Ammar and Suleiman were having trouble with a lack of air.
"Don't worry about me... I'm fine... I just need to lay down... forever... and we can maybe discuss this trade... in the next life," wheezed Suleiman, who seemed to be having trouble standing.
"He's delirious. How soon... can we get to a lower altitude?" Ammar must've had stronger lungs on him, as he was marginally less effected.
"We're nearing the lowlands in Ica. Anyways, we'll be a few hundred feet lower by sunset if we can keep the pace up," Nahuel said in a more level tone of voice. They had to lift Suleiman's arms to keep him walking, but as they went down, he recovered slightly.
"I must have said some insane gibberish up there," he claimed after Nahuel forced him to drink a fortifying beverage he couldn't quite identify. All he could say was that it was frothy and bittersweet.
It only took a few days' walk to reach Ica from there due to the excellent roads.
"Have you ever had a Xipe Totec sundae?" Nahuel asked suddenly, as they were finding lodgings. Neither of them had.
"Well, there's this cafe here that sells them. You'd have to go to Mexico to get the true experience, but the place is run by some Aztec immigrants, so it's about as close as you're going to get in Ica."
A "Xipe Totec sundae" was made by taking ice from the nearby mountains, mixing it with concentrated fruit juice, salt, and mixing the results as they froze. In short, a sorbet. After that, pieces of fresh fruit were added, and the entire thing was served with a drink made from cacao beans and chili peppers. Ammar and Suleiman had once eaten ice cream in Granada, so the idea wasn't entirely alien to them, much to Nahuel's surprise... at least until Nahuel took out a small knife and made an incision on his lower arm.
"For authenticity's sake, you're supposed to consume your dessert with some of your own blood," explained Nahuel to their shocked faces, as he allowed a few milliliters of his own to dribble on his food.
"I see. I... don't think I'm going to be doing that," Ammar said; Suleiman nodded in agreement. They noticed about then that many of the patrons of the restaurant had arms riddled with small scabs and scars - especially the richer looking ones.
"In fact, I'm more interested in how they made this drink they serve with it. I imagine the ingredients are imported from Mexico. Is this true?" continued Ammar.
"Most of them, although some farmers are trying to grow cacao beans and chili peppers in the valleys."
"I'll have to look into that."
It wouldn't be long until Eligos could get a chocolate bar without having to travel through time.
One of the disadvantages of narrative AARs in this game is that it is rather difficult to keep persistent characters without resorting to speculative fiction tropes. If you've been reading this AAR, you'll see I've been doing so.
Episode 14.5: Globalism
A poster emblazoned with the face of Eligos. "Voted 'Sexiest Man Alive' by the Bulgarian Council For Free Trade", it said.
"Do you think we might be interfering too much?" was a question Eligos had never asked. Not once in Maygaristan, not once in Byzantium. He simply wasn't that sort of person. On the other hand, his companions had been known to question Eligos' interest in warping history, and one time during his residence in Maygaristan, a strange incident had occurred.
"Excuse me, but could I have a moment of your time?" a male voice had said about a century ago. "I'm doing some research on Hungarian nationalism in the 19th century, particularly in the context of Budapest, and..." At this point, the man had trailed off, looked around, and apparently found something deeply unsettling about his surroundings.
"...and I appear to be in the wrong place," said the stranger before vanishing from this existence.
Eligos had never hid his future heritage, but to be fair, he'd never really emphasized it beforehand. He'd had to explain the event to his advisors, and it was from then on that the concept of time travel began to disseminate through the world.
That, and a few other things.
February 15th, 1487:
"I've decided to tax the coffee trade. It appears to exploded in volume in recent decades," said Ahmad Rasulid, the ruler of Yemen, when his chief minister (Isma'il Saleh) asked him what he was doing to improve the economy. Exports of coffee beans had risen almost fourfold since Ahmad's birth in 1454. Most of those beans had went to the north, although Ahmad didn't know (or care) who'd been drinking them. If he had, he might've noticed the posters in Sana'a that proclaimed local coffeehouses were now serving drinks in the 'Greek' style.
"However," Ahmad continued, "I intend to reinvest the money gained from this taxation directly back into the plantations, in order to make them more productive."
"What are you going to do if people stop drinking coffee?" asked the advisor.
"...I don't know. How does one make a staple out of a luxury?"
"You grow more of it, I assume."
"We've come full circle, Isma'il."
July 23rd, 1504:
In the city of Howrah, across the bank of the Hoogli River from Calcutta, two men bent from years of crippling arthritis fought a desperate struggle against the teahouses. In Bengal, coffee had never really taken off, probably due to the rich tea plantations of the region... and richer ones in China. As a result, their coffeehouse was virtually deserted and falling into disrepair.
"We have to stop doing this. The stress is killing me," said the younger and slightly less decrepit of the two.
"No. I've put too much time and money into this to stop now," the older one rasped. He'd spent much of his life chewing betel leaves, until he'd become so destitute and poor that he couldn't even afford them. Before that, they'd damaged his mouth to the point his diction was affected.
Both of them, unfortunately, were living through the collapse of the kingdom they had called home for so many years, as the Kingdom of Nagpur fought against the Marathas for influence over the Bengal Delta. Howrah was swarming with soldiers at the best of times, and with refugees at the worst. Sure, the soldiers were callous and otherwise disrespectful, but they would at least pay for the goods they took. Sometimes. At this point, two brigands in tattered clothing carrying rusty swords barged up to the old men and demanded all their money.
"There is no money," muttered the younger proprietor. That probably wasn't the right thing to say, as the burglars began pillaging the coffeehouse. Culinary implants were damaged, tables were knocked over, and anything that looked valuable was treated callously.
"No! If we can't pay rent, our landlord beats us-" the older one began to say, before being knocked to the ground by a half-hearted punch. In the end, all the thieves ended up making off with was a bag full of beans and some ornamental spoons. The two began jabbering at each other as they left the building.
"We can pawn the spoons, but what are we going to do with all these beans? If we try to grind and cook them, they'll just turn into sludge," complained one.
"If you had stolen more, we could use the sack as a bludgeon," responded his companion.
They walked through the streets of Howrah. Things were clearly bad, as they were able to amble leisurely through the city without a single person even reporting them to the local police. At a local hideout, several other thieves looked at their latest haul with disappointment and scorn.
"You need to attempt bigger heists," said one with inexplicably greasy hands. It was clear that he had some reputation here, as when he reached forth to steal a handful of roasted coffee beans from the newcomers' sack, they did not resist. He idly popped one in his mouth, chewed it, swallowed, didn't regurgitate it at any point.
"Huh. There might be something to these. What are they called again?"
March 2nd, 1525:
There were two paintings in the second Hongwu Emperor's (born Zhu Yangfeng) palace in Jinan that he was particularly proud of, and both of them depicted lands to the west - places that, until a few decades ago the Chinese had thought irrevocably lost to the plagues.
The first was a portrait of a man born from a dynastic marriage. Surprisingly, Luther Stuart Basileous stopped traveling outside the borders of Byzantium after leaving his native Scotland. However, he had visited the semi-autonomous Georgian provinces on many occasions. In Kartli, there was an embassy of the Golden Horde, and word of Luther's existence had spread over the years throughout the steppe, and into mainland China through the mountainous west. It was the Hongwu Emperor himself who had commissioned a painting of Luther, on the grounds that he represented an example of the constant spread of Confucian virtues.
Luther would've laughed at the absurdity of this. The Hongwu Emperor's domains were limited to a small area around Jinan and the trading city of Beijing. Everywhere else was held by warlords who swore nominal loyalty to the Emperor at best. The remnants of the Ming dynasty really existed only at their whim, as each warlord feared that the others would devour his lands if he tried to assert dominance over the Emperor. Calling back to the first Hongwu Emperor, who had united the warlords to drive out the Yuan dynasty, seemed like a politically useful idea. The only slight problem was that the first one had then angered his subjects so much that the warlords broke off and formed autonomous polities. In the past 125 years, they had only drifted apart.
The other portrait, unusually, depicted Thomas III, the spiritual leader of Christianity (especially after the Romans had deposed their metropolitan and given the administration of their territory to a king). Surrounding him were the three immortal 'angels' who had supposedly advised Rome throughout the centuries - a Greek, a Celt, and a Maygar according to the tales. According to the emperor, these tales were nonsense, and the three were probably members of his family - perhaps a beloved wife and two brothers. Since the painter had no idea how any of those cultures dressed, everyone in the picture was wearing traditional Han clothing. Clearly, nobody in China really understood Europe, but most Europeans were still a bit edgy about going beyond Iran, or the Arabic peninsula. It was about the same for mainland Asia, but as Byzantium expanded ever closer to the Red Sea, cross-cultural contact would probably increase.
April 4th, 1551:
"Wise Bear, we bring your people the gift of plants from our lands-"
A man in feathers slapped a man wearing woven cloth in the face.
"You are but a slobbering moron. My name is Nahuel. Get it right."
Both men were out of place. They were sitting in the study of a townhouse in an area roughly corresponding to Belem. Nahuel was a merchant from the city of Cuzco, and Suleiman was an interpreter for Ammar Traore, the great explorer from the (now heavily Africanized) city of Lancashire. Before his efforts, the people of Europe believed the Atlantic Ocean to be far larger than it really was (or would be after a hundred million years of continental drift). Meanwhile, Nahuel had heard isolated whispers of the occasional strange ship washing up onto the coast of his own country, but even if true, it probably just meant free driftwood and human sacrifices.
"The people of the Amazon basin rejected your plants after your diseases spread to them. Why should we eat the foods of an unsanitary people?" Nahuel snarled at Suleiman, who translated for Ammar. Ammar winced, and began his own recitation in Mandinka, laced with Arabic, Gaelic, and English loanwords.
"You call us unsanitary and unhealthy, but the average European grows larger and stronger than you despite this supposed burden of disease."
Nahuel really didn't want to be in Belem, but the Nazca emperor had sent out a call for foreign goods. He was hoping just to pick up something nice from an Arawak or Carib trader, but instead he just had to bump into these weirdos from across the Atlantic-
"We did not come here to argue about the merits of our foods relative to yours. Regardless of what the truth is, the Amazonas have began to cultivate our grains and slaughter our cows, while we have done likewise with maize and tomatoes," Suleiman claimed, interrupting Nahuel's train of malignant thought.
"It's not up to me, anyways. My emperor demands new things from the outside world," responded Nahuel, idly drumming his fingers against the wall.
"Our rulers have similar demands. But I think we'd have made the journey even if they turned a blind eye. In fact, we intend to go inland after this, and visit the Nazca people."
"Do not take the jungle route. It is treacherous and kills many who are inexperienced in its ways. You should take a Carib ship."
"The Carib people have found a naval passage to Peru? I always thought that the lands south of the Cape of Good Hope were iced over at any altitude."
"Where'd you get such a bizzare idea? Either way, it's a longer trip, but it is much safer. I speak fluent Antillean Carib, and seek passage back to my own land anyways."
Surprisingly, Suleiman and Ammar accepted this proposal. Nahuel still didn't like them, but was able to hold his distaste in check until they reached the Carib nation's Pacific outpost, somewhat to the south of Nazca lands. It was the last time any of them would see a forest for quite a while. From then on, it was a lengthy trip through arid, mountainous terrain and gradually increasing elevation. The Djatans found this terrain rather troublesome, to say the least.
"Not so well fed now, are you?" Nahuel taunted. It wasn't true - due to the small villages dotting the mountains, the party was always well provisioned with food, water, and a few basic medical items for emergencies. On the other hand, Ammar and Suleiman were having trouble with a lack of air.
"Don't worry about me... I'm fine... I just need to lay down... forever... and we can maybe discuss this trade... in the next life," wheezed Suleiman, who seemed to be having trouble standing.
"He's delirious. How soon... can we get to a lower altitude?" Ammar must've had stronger lungs on him, as he was marginally less effected.
"We're nearing the lowlands in Ica. Anyways, we'll be a few hundred feet lower by sunset if we can keep the pace up," Nahuel said in a more level tone of voice. They had to lift Suleiman's arms to keep him walking, but as they went down, he recovered slightly.
"I must have said some insane gibberish up there," he claimed after Nahuel forced him to drink a fortifying beverage he couldn't quite identify. All he could say was that it was frothy and bittersweet.
It only took a few days' walk to reach Ica from there due to the excellent roads.
"Have you ever had a Xipe Totec sundae?" Nahuel asked suddenly, as they were finding lodgings. Neither of them had.
"Well, there's this cafe here that sells them. You'd have to go to Mexico to get the true experience, but the place is run by some Aztec immigrants, so it's about as close as you're going to get in Ica."
A "Xipe Totec sundae" was made by taking ice from the nearby mountains, mixing it with concentrated fruit juice, salt, and mixing the results as they froze. In short, a sorbet. After that, pieces of fresh fruit were added, and the entire thing was served with a drink made from cacao beans and chili peppers. Ammar and Suleiman had once eaten ice cream in Granada, so the idea wasn't entirely alien to them, much to Nahuel's surprise... at least until Nahuel took out a small knife and made an incision on his lower arm.
"For authenticity's sake, you're supposed to consume your dessert with some of your own blood," explained Nahuel to their shocked faces, as he allowed a few milliliters of his own to dribble on his food.
"I see. I... don't think I'm going to be doing that," Ammar said; Suleiman nodded in agreement. They noticed about then that many of the patrons of the restaurant had arms riddled with small scabs and scars - especially the richer looking ones.
"In fact, I'm more interested in how they made this drink they serve with it. I imagine the ingredients are imported from Mexico. Is this true?" continued Ammar.
"Most of them, although some farmers are trying to grow cacao beans and chili peppers in the valleys."
"I'll have to look into that."
It wouldn't be long until Eligos could get a chocolate bar without having to travel through time.
One of the disadvantages of narrative AARs in this game is that it is rather difficult to keep persistent characters without resorting to speculative fiction tropes. If you've been reading this AAR, you'll see I've been doing so.
Hi InvisibleSandwich!
I admit I haven't been following your AAR very closely as I'm not a natural fan of the premise or genre - I'm trying to catch up in my spare time - but I felt that I had to reply to this statement. It's a fact that this observation about persistent characters could apply to three out of Paradox's four big series, so you're certainly not alone in grappling with this issue when presenting a narrative AAR.
The main issue is how you would like to frame your writing - and you've chosen the frame of speculative fiction, which is just one of many. Others have used methods such as immortal characters, an omnipotent deity, metanarrative, fourth-wall breaking, or simply glossing over the issue of just who is narrating the story. If you're feeling uncomfortable of the way you're framing your story, don't hesitate to change or to experiment, and if you are comfortable with it, there's no reason not to feel confident with your choice.
I thought I'd put this out because you sound a little discouraged in that last statement (I apologise for misunderstanding if this really isn't the case!). I'd like to see you keep on writing in the style with which you're most comfortable, and I hope you'll continue to hold the flag for narrative AARs, whatever the style, especially in a subforum like this one outwith the ubiquitous character-based domain of CKII!
@aniuby:
If there's anything that discourages me in this AAR, it's not the style in which I write it, but more the problem of power creep that makes it hard for me to finish games in general. That's why I decided to do the most recent update in this style, and why I've been considering a tag switch once I get into the colonial period. Anyways, I've had an interest in sci-fi since I was maybe 9 or 10 years old (and am, outside this working on my second novel in the genre); I actually have an AAR on my blog that I abandoned that was alternating gameplay/narrative, and sci-fi/fantasy elements were beginning to creep in very early onwards. My attempts to keep a regular schedule are, in my opinion, part of why I've kept this AAR going.
Incidentally, I've been following your AAR. I don't think I've commented in it, but I'm impressed with the quality of your work; it's consistently entertaining and I hope you see it through to its conclusion.
If there's anything that discourages me in this AAR, it's not the style in which I write it, but more the problem of power creep that makes it hard for me to finish games in general. That's why I decided to do the most recent update in this style, and why I've been considering a tag switch once I get into the colonial period. Anyways, I've had an interest in sci-fi since I was maybe 9 or 10 years old (and am, outside this working on my second novel in the genre); I actually have an AAR on my blog that I abandoned that was alternating gameplay/narrative, and sci-fi/fantasy elements were beginning to creep in very early onwards. My attempts to keep a regular schedule are, in my opinion, part of why I've kept this AAR going.
Incidentally, I've been following your AAR. I don't think I've commented in it, but I'm impressed with the quality of your work; it's consistently entertaining and I hope you see it through to its conclusion.
I'm glad to hear that you're still pursuing a childhood interest! I tried my hand at writing fantasy and actually got quite far into a story, but I had to put it down as a result of technical failure (having 1/2 years of irreplaceable work wiped is not encouraging in the slightest). The way you mentioned scifi/fantasy elements 'creeping' into your work reminds me of how I feel everything's a little less bland without some narrative and characterisation in it.
Since I've commented a little prematurely, I felt it was only right for me to finish reading the entirety of your AAR before speaking further. While I do feel certain elements like futuristic sci-fi and the Dark Continent scenario are not my cup of tea, I do enjoy the differentiation in personality, behaviour, and motive that you've written between the characters within their separate archetypes (namely time travellers and hapless 'historical' figures). This is something which I have a bit of difficulty with as my characters tend to behave similarly if I do not make a conscious attempt to differentiate them. I also enjoy your subtle sence of humour as I find myself chuckling when imagining the tone some of these conversations even though there's no directly-delivered punchline. So please keep up the good work - I might have slightly different tastes but I certainly respect your excellent writing ability.
And thank you very much for reading my AAR - as a matter of fact you have commented once, on the first page - but I do hope you'll grace it with your comments again in the future =)
No update this week (that of 3/11), I'm afraid. I'm back home for spring break, but I've spent the last 48 hours or so helping my family with their recent move, socializing with them, reading texts for college, and (frankly) getting addicted to Victoria II. In addition, when I went to play this week's update, EU3 crashed before I could get very far. I've decided to incorporate what happened up to my latest save into the game, as opposed to starting over from 1558. I'll keep an eye on my schedule in the upcoming weeks.
And before you ask, I am not planning to continue this AAR in VicIIria, but it's more a "WAMMO probably is hard to convert" thing than a narrative issue.
And before you ask, I am not planning to continue this AAR in VicIIria, but it's more a "WAMMO probably is hard to convert" thing than a narrative issue.
I'm sorry to hear about your game crash - hopefully it's just a one-off problem. And I'm envious to hear that you're in the process of getting addicted to Vicky II; I'd like to have it too, but my budget is such that I can't allow myself to buy it unless it's on sale =(
I shall wait patiently for the next update.
I shall wait patiently for the next update.
I decided to make the crash mentioned in previous posts work for me; more on that in the update itself. For now, I'll just say that I focused more on narrative than gameplay. Also, this update is a day early, but that's because I had a rare moment of simultaneous spare time and discipline. With the next update, I should return to Mondays.
Episode 15: The Most Shocking Episode of the AAR
One problem with past escapism was that the days began to blur together. Then the weeks would follow, and pretty soon, before you knew it, you blinked twice and an entire year had gone by. So it was with Alexander Phokas, although it'd been less of a problem as familiar ways of thought (and, frankly, the people espousing them) began to accrue in Constantinople. Dimensional travelers were beginning to serve as a source of taxes for the city, as an increasing swathe of humanity (which itself had infinite variations) came from realities with shattered Europes and resurgent Byzantine empires, and wanted to know what they owed their success to.
Alexander was actually getting tired of them. Amongst other things, they disrupted the Metropolitan's staff meetings and often refused to pay their coffee tabs.
"Look, man. There's an infinite amount of universes. I'm sure this isn't my doing in all of them. Besides, during the first few decades I barely interfered at all!" he would say, prompting disappointed looks from most of the visitors, lectures about chaos theory from the stupider ones, and something trippy from the occasional weird exact doppelganger, perfectly mimicking Alexander's appearance except for some bizarre feature like a second nose, or a gigantic beard, or-
Wait. That wasn't right.
"The first Alexander Phokas!" said one of the particularly unoriginal clones one day, as Dolarasteron geared down to close, and Alexander was checking inventory. This was not very comforting to turn around to. Whether or not the clone bore any significant genetic relation to the real thing was up for debate. Regardless, this one had copied Alexander's appearance almost perfectly, except for the slight problem that his eyes were featureless, spherical red orbs.
"Probably not. I think one of my ancestors in the early 20th century was named thusly," Alexander responded. He hadn't really begun to comprehend the visitor.
"We must merge to form a higher being!" And so, the Alexander with unusual eyes began to slowly advance on the first one, with arms outstretched as if he wanted a hug. It took a few seconds for one to desperately scrabble away from the other.
"...You're weird!" was all the normal Phokas could say. It apparently wasn't the most diplomatic option.
"Oh, so you don't want to merge? I'll have to destroy you for this-" And the clone raised its arms further, bending its legs like it planned to lunge at Alexander- A sudden blast of incandescent energy, and then there was only one Alexander Phokas... accounted for. Luckily, whoever had made the shot had aimed for the right person.
"Don't worry! Aedryn let me borrow her gun," a voice shouted from across. Alexander was still a bit dazed from recent events; An unidentified woman, but definitely a Greek, and a contemporary one.
"Aedryn let you borrow her gun? That's... probably not a good thing at all," responded Alexander. "Who are you, anyways?"
"Metropolitan's sister. My name is Selene. I don't know why your wife let me borrow this thing either."
Aedryn was definitely not Alexander Phokas' wife, but Alexander was still too dazed to question that. It was a surprisingly common misconception.
"You're that gun factory person, right?"
"Yes, I own the family factory." A hypothesis dawned on Alexander at this point.
"Oh, it must be one of those feminism things. Well, make sure to give it back if she asks for it."
Apparently, something was very, VERY wrong in Byzantium. Or maybe Aedryn just wanted to create some chaos in the country. These were not mutually exclusive, and Alexander figured that enough interference from the right kind of people would cause Byzantium (or for that matter any state) to topple.
If something was going wrong in Byzantium, it wasn't affecting the strength of the state just yet. Imperialism was on the rise... imperialism was always on the rise, as each metropolitan found himself ruling over more lands than the last and wanting even more.
But first? The importation of Rumi entertainment.
Several accomplished actors from the northern parts of Ruma had traveled to Constantinople and began performing entirely new types of plays for the locals. Andreas II was especially satisfied with its format, and suggested to the local inhabitants that they could stand to learn from the Rumi example. The Greeks put a bit more religious symbolism into their interpretations of the stock stories, but all that meant was that they became especially popular with the clergy. It helped that the Metropolitan decided to shower administrative duties on any bishop that didn't keep up with this development.
Alexander made a mental note - Andreas II was the first metropolitan in almost 160 years to have any real interest in recreational activities. That probably wasn't entirely a bad thing...
Then, on the 7th of June, 1559, Alexander was walking through the streets of Constantinople, when he saw Andreas near a local law enforcement station. His hypothesis at this point was that the Metropolitan was doing some sort of inspection or otherwise public visit, and he wouldn't have thought much of it except for a glint of steel around Andreas' wrists-
Suddenly, the men flanking the Metropolitan didn't quite look like bodyguards.
"What's going on here?" Alexander shouted.
"Didn't you hear the news? Andreas II got caught embezzling from the state! It's horrible!" responded the largest and most imposing of what were, in fact, policemen.
"I didn't do anything," Andreas complained in a feeble tone, causing one of the policemen to slap his face with the back of their hand.
"The money was found in your sleeping quarters in a tabernacle box! How could you be so stupid as to steal from God?"
Particularly disturbing was that a tabernacle was being used to store money instead of eucharistic bread and wine. Later, he mentioned this to Eligos, who had considered the Metropolitan little more than his personal plaything.
"Confession: I grew tired of Andreas and his diplomatic bungling," Eligos said rather suddenly. This was a shame, because Phokas could've used a less formal head of state.
"Well, I hope you're happy. We're out one metropolitan-"
"No, we are not. Peace be with you," interrupted an unfamiliar voice. What was most likely the new Metropolitan came out from behind a conveniently placed doorway.
"I was nominated by the bishop's council to replace Andreas. They have conferred the name of Ioannes VIII on me," the owner of the voice continued. Judging from the way this person held themselves, and the fact that Eligos was not moving to cause grievous bodily harm, he was most likely telling the truth.
"Historical background: Ioannes was assigned to become the archbishop of the Levant as part of the administrative reform mere months before this unfortunate incident occurred," Eligos said, placing far more drama in his voice than was appropriate. Alexander took it in stride and tried to get a good look at the new guy. Ioannes was a bit less Greek, Turkish, or potentially Georgian looking than he'd expected.
"My grandfather came from the kingdom of the Kongo, and was a mercenary for the Mamluks. Unfortunately for him, he was on the wrong side of the fighting. Fortunately, his descendants have reached high positions in life..."
And here, Alexander's attention wandered as Ioannes launched into a lengthy, boring account of his exploits in the Orthodox church. They seemed, with the exception of partial doctrinal reconciliation with the Ethiopians, rather typical. Phokas also figured that Eligos had complete control over the new guy, but he wasn't exactly sure why Eligos would choose such a dull person to lead Byzantium.
On the other hand, Ioannes VIII became exceedingly popular with the rest of the government in a very short time, probably because of his sermons. Perhaps there was a market for tedium.
After about a year's worth of Ioannes, Alexander concluded that Eligos was now seeking his cheap thrills from outside the government proper.
"Plan: I intend to pay a visit to the city of Astrakhan. Would you like to come with me?" asked Eligos one day, when Alexander and Aedryn were in the middle of mocking the metropolitan's stodginess.
"Eh, sure, why not?" Alexander wasn't opposed to traveling far from Constantinople at the moment; in more interesting times he generally liked to keep the semblance of caring about his in-universe exploits.
"Warning: I intend to take a contingent of bodyguards with me. They may smell bad."
"How bad are they going to smell-" Alexander began, before he was interrupted.
"How many?" asked Aedryn.
"Estimate: Approximately 15,000 or so."
"That's quite a lot. Won't the Golden Horde interpret that as aggression?"
"95 percent likelihood."
"Then I'm definitely going."
They departed at the beginning of April. Surely enough, the Golden Horde interpreted Eligos' "bodyguards" as a threat and called their vassals to defend the borders.
One of said vassals, however, was dealing with a slight problem, as the horde's rivals in the Black Sheep Turkmen were engaging in some rather aggressive acts of their own.
In the meantime, one of Ioannes' close advisors published a book on statecraft, earning him a bit of prestige. It was still somewhat misguided by Alexander's standards, but he liked to think that it would lead to the production of better books.
The Golden Horde was doing especially poorly in its wars; it was forced to cede territory to the Ukraine when that country had declared its own crusade. It seemed the Ukrainians were getting increasingly good at carving little chunks out of their neighbors.
In the midst of this, the Djatans decided to attack Scotland yet again, and Byzantium moved its fleet to counteract this. That was probably a good idea considering how little aptitude the Golden Horde had for managing its navy. Needless to say, the war against the Horde was a curbstomp on the land frontier as well. The Djatans were suffering significantly from the blockade, yet the Greek fleet must've arrived a few days too late, as the decided Scottish conceded territory to them.
Meanwhile, the Horde war was drawing to its bloody conclusion. and Byzantium was about to exact severe concessions from the Horde (although they intended to let the Turkmenis take their share first and then act accordingly). The three travelers, being somewhat related to the government and in a convenient location, were chosen to lead negotiations.
"Opinion: Astrakhan is a very nice city, at least by the standards of the steppe," Eligos had said to the local provincial governor a few days before the formal declaration of war, who was basically little more than the fact that the Horde had settled a long time ago given the shape of a small, shrewish man. As it was, the governor did not respond to this.
"Fact: It would be quite detrimental to the economy of your country if this city were to be burnt to the ground. The traders would simply move a bit south, to Kartli," added Eligos some months later, when it was drawing to a conclusion.
"Come on, man! I've seen this guy throw someone to their deaths for insulting his physical appearance! Imagine what he could do to you if you don't talk to us!" Alexander interjected. Needless to say, the governor of Astrakhan wasn't very talkative. For some reason, the Golden Horde's administrators weren't much for negotiations.
"Hypothesis: They probably don't speak Greek."
"This'd be a lot easier if we shifted to a universe where Greek comprehension was a bit better."
"Fact: It would also be much less satisfying."
"I know."
Neither of them was really in the mood to use force on an enemy that had been wrecked. Aedryn, on the other hand was. She jammed her gun into the governor's head.
"Either you say something, or you die silently." No response. Aedryn exerted a bit of pressure on the poor guy's skull. Her entire arm passed through as if the man was a hallucination.
"Hey-"
And then, the universe apparently realized that something that shouldn't have happened, in fact, had happened. Instead of resolving the situation or apologizing, it fled, leaving Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos floating in a colorless void. Not necessarily colorless anymore with three surprisingly well illuminated bodies floating it, but close enough.
"What the hell?" Alexander spoke, somehow. Apparently the nothingness that universes inhabited also had the budget to spring for high fidelity sound effects; like Andreas II, it probably embezzled.
"I think the universe broke," continued Alexander after a while. "That's probably not good."
"I'm ditching. I'll send for you when I find a safe place," Aedryn told them, before disappearing from the void to unknown locations. A few seconds later, she reappeared, looking rather discouraged.
"I don't get it! Somehow, there's only our Byzantium out there."
"What's that supposed to mean-"
"It's like everything in the multiverse except where we were before this happened just... disappeared."
"Hypothesis: Your travel device is broken. I will search for a location myself." After saying that, Eligos disappeared, only to appear a moment later, clearly not happy with what he saw.
"Aphorism: Two breakdowns are unlikely to be a coincidence," explained Eligos.
"I guess I should try my own devices..." said Phokas, before he did the same, to a broadly similar result.
"Nope, no luck. I think we have to go back. But why did we get knocked here in the first place?"
"Warning: I have insufficient data to give you a satisfactory answer."
So they went the only place that they could, and were soon back in Constantinople.
"Something's wrong here," Aedryn muttered. She scanned the horizon - everything seemed subtly off.
"Remember that apartment complex they started in 1561? That's gone. It's like it never existed!" A few moments of silence. Alexander began furtively pressing buttons on his machinery.
"Okay, I've been checking this thing's operating manual. It boots you back into the area between multiverses if it detects some sign of universal collapse. I guess it beats dying," Alexander explained.
A pedestrian walked by them.
"What year is it?" asked Alexander.
"It's 1560. Everyone knows that!" the pedestrian responded, before walking away and muttering something incomprehensible under his breath.
"That's... nonideal," Aedryn said.
"Suggestion: We should find out what caused this incident."
"How? What if it's something that's not even on Earth? Without time travel, we can't get a fix on when this happens, much less what it is."
"Warning: If what you say is true, we only have four years to come up with a solution."
A few days' inspection revealed that they were now the only time travelers in Byzantium's borders. Where they had gone to was unknowable, although it was probably better for the world not to have so much interference. After resolving that, the three redoubled their efforts in finding the cause of their imprisonment to the point that their other interests suffered; the native Greeks were quick to notice.
"You look stressed," Metropolitan Ioannes said to Eligos out of the blue one day. "I could give you a few days of vacation time if necessary, since it looks like you need them. Perhaps you could go to the theater, or whatever it is that you do for entertainment."
When a normal noticed that Eligos couldn't discretely wander through time to resolve his tensions, something was exceptionally wrong in Byzantium.
Episode 15: The Most Shocking Episode of the AAR
One problem with past escapism was that the days began to blur together. Then the weeks would follow, and pretty soon, before you knew it, you blinked twice and an entire year had gone by. So it was with Alexander Phokas, although it'd been less of a problem as familiar ways of thought (and, frankly, the people espousing them) began to accrue in Constantinople. Dimensional travelers were beginning to serve as a source of taxes for the city, as an increasing swathe of humanity (which itself had infinite variations) came from realities with shattered Europes and resurgent Byzantine empires, and wanted to know what they owed their success to.
Alexander was actually getting tired of them. Amongst other things, they disrupted the Metropolitan's staff meetings and often refused to pay their coffee tabs.
"Look, man. There's an infinite amount of universes. I'm sure this isn't my doing in all of them. Besides, during the first few decades I barely interfered at all!" he would say, prompting disappointed looks from most of the visitors, lectures about chaos theory from the stupider ones, and something trippy from the occasional weird exact doppelganger, perfectly mimicking Alexander's appearance except for some bizarre feature like a second nose, or a gigantic beard, or-
Wait. That wasn't right.
"The first Alexander Phokas!" said one of the particularly unoriginal clones one day, as Dolarasteron geared down to close, and Alexander was checking inventory. This was not very comforting to turn around to. Whether or not the clone bore any significant genetic relation to the real thing was up for debate. Regardless, this one had copied Alexander's appearance almost perfectly, except for the slight problem that his eyes were featureless, spherical red orbs.
"Probably not. I think one of my ancestors in the early 20th century was named thusly," Alexander responded. He hadn't really begun to comprehend the visitor.
"We must merge to form a higher being!" And so, the Alexander with unusual eyes began to slowly advance on the first one, with arms outstretched as if he wanted a hug. It took a few seconds for one to desperately scrabble away from the other.
"...You're weird!" was all the normal Phokas could say. It apparently wasn't the most diplomatic option.
"Oh, so you don't want to merge? I'll have to destroy you for this-" And the clone raised its arms further, bending its legs like it planned to lunge at Alexander- A sudden blast of incandescent energy, and then there was only one Alexander Phokas... accounted for. Luckily, whoever had made the shot had aimed for the right person.
"Don't worry! Aedryn let me borrow her gun," a voice shouted from across. Alexander was still a bit dazed from recent events; An unidentified woman, but definitely a Greek, and a contemporary one.
"Aedryn let you borrow her gun? That's... probably not a good thing at all," responded Alexander. "Who are you, anyways?"
"Metropolitan's sister. My name is Selene. I don't know why your wife let me borrow this thing either."
Aedryn was definitely not Alexander Phokas' wife, but Alexander was still too dazed to question that. It was a surprisingly common misconception.
"You're that gun factory person, right?"
"Yes, I own the family factory." A hypothesis dawned on Alexander at this point.
"Oh, it must be one of those feminism things. Well, make sure to give it back if she asks for it."
Apparently, something was very, VERY wrong in Byzantium. Or maybe Aedryn just wanted to create some chaos in the country. These were not mutually exclusive, and Alexander figured that enough interference from the right kind of people would cause Byzantium (or for that matter any state) to topple.
If something was going wrong in Byzantium, it wasn't affecting the strength of the state just yet. Imperialism was on the rise... imperialism was always on the rise, as each metropolitan found himself ruling over more lands than the last and wanting even more.
But first? The importation of Rumi entertainment.
Several accomplished actors from the northern parts of Ruma had traveled to Constantinople and began performing entirely new types of plays for the locals. Andreas II was especially satisfied with its format, and suggested to the local inhabitants that they could stand to learn from the Rumi example. The Greeks put a bit more religious symbolism into their interpretations of the stock stories, but all that meant was that they became especially popular with the clergy. It helped that the Metropolitan decided to shower administrative duties on any bishop that didn't keep up with this development.
Alexander made a mental note - Andreas II was the first metropolitan in almost 160 years to have any real interest in recreational activities. That probably wasn't entirely a bad thing...
Then, on the 7th of June, 1559, Alexander was walking through the streets of Constantinople, when he saw Andreas near a local law enforcement station. His hypothesis at this point was that the Metropolitan was doing some sort of inspection or otherwise public visit, and he wouldn't have thought much of it except for a glint of steel around Andreas' wrists-
Suddenly, the men flanking the Metropolitan didn't quite look like bodyguards.
"What's going on here?" Alexander shouted.
"Didn't you hear the news? Andreas II got caught embezzling from the state! It's horrible!" responded the largest and most imposing of what were, in fact, policemen.
"I didn't do anything," Andreas complained in a feeble tone, causing one of the policemen to slap his face with the back of their hand.
"The money was found in your sleeping quarters in a tabernacle box! How could you be so stupid as to steal from God?"
Particularly disturbing was that a tabernacle was being used to store money instead of eucharistic bread and wine. Later, he mentioned this to Eligos, who had considered the Metropolitan little more than his personal plaything.
"Confession: I grew tired of Andreas and his diplomatic bungling," Eligos said rather suddenly. This was a shame, because Phokas could've used a less formal head of state.
"Well, I hope you're happy. We're out one metropolitan-"
"No, we are not. Peace be with you," interrupted an unfamiliar voice. What was most likely the new Metropolitan came out from behind a conveniently placed doorway.
"I was nominated by the bishop's council to replace Andreas. They have conferred the name of Ioannes VIII on me," the owner of the voice continued. Judging from the way this person held themselves, and the fact that Eligos was not moving to cause grievous bodily harm, he was most likely telling the truth.
"Historical background: Ioannes was assigned to become the archbishop of the Levant as part of the administrative reform mere months before this unfortunate incident occurred," Eligos said, placing far more drama in his voice than was appropriate. Alexander took it in stride and tried to get a good look at the new guy. Ioannes was a bit less Greek, Turkish, or potentially Georgian looking than he'd expected.
"My grandfather came from the kingdom of the Kongo, and was a mercenary for the Mamluks. Unfortunately for him, he was on the wrong side of the fighting. Fortunately, his descendants have reached high positions in life..."
And here, Alexander's attention wandered as Ioannes launched into a lengthy, boring account of his exploits in the Orthodox church. They seemed, with the exception of partial doctrinal reconciliation with the Ethiopians, rather typical. Phokas also figured that Eligos had complete control over the new guy, but he wasn't exactly sure why Eligos would choose such a dull person to lead Byzantium.
On the other hand, Ioannes VIII became exceedingly popular with the rest of the government in a very short time, probably because of his sermons. Perhaps there was a market for tedium.
After about a year's worth of Ioannes, Alexander concluded that Eligos was now seeking his cheap thrills from outside the government proper.
"Plan: I intend to pay a visit to the city of Astrakhan. Would you like to come with me?" asked Eligos one day, when Alexander and Aedryn were in the middle of mocking the metropolitan's stodginess.
"Eh, sure, why not?" Alexander wasn't opposed to traveling far from Constantinople at the moment; in more interesting times he generally liked to keep the semblance of caring about his in-universe exploits.
"Warning: I intend to take a contingent of bodyguards with me. They may smell bad."
"How bad are they going to smell-" Alexander began, before he was interrupted.
"How many?" asked Aedryn.
"Estimate: Approximately 15,000 or so."
"That's quite a lot. Won't the Golden Horde interpret that as aggression?"
"95 percent likelihood."
"Then I'm definitely going."
They departed at the beginning of April. Surely enough, the Golden Horde interpreted Eligos' "bodyguards" as a threat and called their vassals to defend the borders.
One of said vassals, however, was dealing with a slight problem, as the horde's rivals in the Black Sheep Turkmen were engaging in some rather aggressive acts of their own.
In the meantime, one of Ioannes' close advisors published a book on statecraft, earning him a bit of prestige. It was still somewhat misguided by Alexander's standards, but he liked to think that it would lead to the production of better books.
The Golden Horde was doing especially poorly in its wars; it was forced to cede territory to the Ukraine when that country had declared its own crusade. It seemed the Ukrainians were getting increasingly good at carving little chunks out of their neighbors.
In the midst of this, the Djatans decided to attack Scotland yet again, and Byzantium moved its fleet to counteract this. That was probably a good idea considering how little aptitude the Golden Horde had for managing its navy. Needless to say, the war against the Horde was a curbstomp on the land frontier as well. The Djatans were suffering significantly from the blockade, yet the Greek fleet must've arrived a few days too late, as the decided Scottish conceded territory to them.
Meanwhile, the Horde war was drawing to its bloody conclusion. and Byzantium was about to exact severe concessions from the Horde (although they intended to let the Turkmenis take their share first and then act accordingly). The three travelers, being somewhat related to the government and in a convenient location, were chosen to lead negotiations.
"Opinion: Astrakhan is a very nice city, at least by the standards of the steppe," Eligos had said to the local provincial governor a few days before the formal declaration of war, who was basically little more than the fact that the Horde had settled a long time ago given the shape of a small, shrewish man. As it was, the governor did not respond to this.
"Fact: It would be quite detrimental to the economy of your country if this city were to be burnt to the ground. The traders would simply move a bit south, to Kartli," added Eligos some months later, when it was drawing to a conclusion.
"Come on, man! I've seen this guy throw someone to their deaths for insulting his physical appearance! Imagine what he could do to you if you don't talk to us!" Alexander interjected. Needless to say, the governor of Astrakhan wasn't very talkative. For some reason, the Golden Horde's administrators weren't much for negotiations.
"Hypothesis: They probably don't speak Greek."
"This'd be a lot easier if we shifted to a universe where Greek comprehension was a bit better."
"Fact: It would also be much less satisfying."
"I know."
Neither of them was really in the mood to use force on an enemy that had been wrecked. Aedryn, on the other hand was. She jammed her gun into the governor's head.
"Either you say something, or you die silently." No response. Aedryn exerted a bit of pressure on the poor guy's skull. Her entire arm passed through as if the man was a hallucination.
"Hey-"
And then, the universe apparently realized that something that shouldn't have happened, in fact, had happened. Instead of resolving the situation or apologizing, it fled, leaving Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos floating in a colorless void. Not necessarily colorless anymore with three surprisingly well illuminated bodies floating it, but close enough.
"What the hell?" Alexander spoke, somehow. Apparently the nothingness that universes inhabited also had the budget to spring for high fidelity sound effects; like Andreas II, it probably embezzled.
"I think the universe broke," continued Alexander after a while. "That's probably not good."
"I'm ditching. I'll send for you when I find a safe place," Aedryn told them, before disappearing from the void to unknown locations. A few seconds later, she reappeared, looking rather discouraged.
"I don't get it! Somehow, there's only our Byzantium out there."
"What's that supposed to mean-"
"It's like everything in the multiverse except where we were before this happened just... disappeared."
"Hypothesis: Your travel device is broken. I will search for a location myself." After saying that, Eligos disappeared, only to appear a moment later, clearly not happy with what he saw.
"Aphorism: Two breakdowns are unlikely to be a coincidence," explained Eligos.
"I guess I should try my own devices..." said Phokas, before he did the same, to a broadly similar result.
"Nope, no luck. I think we have to go back. But why did we get knocked here in the first place?"
"Warning: I have insufficient data to give you a satisfactory answer."
So they went the only place that they could, and were soon back in Constantinople.
"Something's wrong here," Aedryn muttered. She scanned the horizon - everything seemed subtly off.
"Remember that apartment complex they started in 1561? That's gone. It's like it never existed!" A few moments of silence. Alexander began furtively pressing buttons on his machinery.
"Okay, I've been checking this thing's operating manual. It boots you back into the area between multiverses if it detects some sign of universal collapse. I guess it beats dying," Alexander explained.
A pedestrian walked by them.
"What year is it?" asked Alexander.
"It's 1560. Everyone knows that!" the pedestrian responded, before walking away and muttering something incomprehensible under his breath.
"That's... nonideal," Aedryn said.
"Suggestion: We should find out what caused this incident."
"How? What if it's something that's not even on Earth? Without time travel, we can't get a fix on when this happens, much less what it is."
"Warning: If what you say is true, we only have four years to come up with a solution."
A few days' inspection revealed that they were now the only time travelers in Byzantium's borders. Where they had gone to was unknowable, although it was probably better for the world not to have so much interference. After resolving that, the three redoubled their efforts in finding the cause of their imprisonment to the point that their other interests suffered; the native Greeks were quick to notice.
"You look stressed," Metropolitan Ioannes said to Eligos out of the blue one day. "I could give you a few days of vacation time if necessary, since it looks like you need them. Perhaps you could go to the theater, or whatever it is that you do for entertainment."
When a normal noticed that Eligos couldn't discretely wander through time to resolve his tensions, something was exceptionally wrong in Byzantium.
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I'm considering moving the update day for Nostalgia Freaks up to Sunday, because it might fit better into my current schedule. If you start seeing all updates on Sunday... that's the explanation.
Episode 16: The Era of Desperate Flailing
"Protip: A devastating coincidence remains a coincidence."
Evidence was rapidly piling up suggesting that the timeshift was a fluke. Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos were still trapped in 16th century Byzantium and wanted a way home, preferably one that didn't involve them waiting centuries for time travel to be invented. Given the nature of such, their motivation was entirely selfish, if understandable.
Despite everything, they couldn't shake the feeling that someone with more resources than the average Byzantine wanted them dead.
"Maybe we were expected to leave Astrakhan alone?" asked Alexander, who was still a bit addled from the incident after a few weeks.
"Never! We really ought to make it ours," Aedryn responded. She was nothing if not predictable.
Since there was no way of telling whether Astrakhan was a temporal vortex or something similar, Eligos repeated his "15,000 bodyguards" trick in that world's June of 1560.
Within months, it was shaping up to be a repeat of the previous war.
By November of 1561, it was becoming evident that the Horde's glory days were decades past them. The small population of Greeks who had at one point accepted Horde rule out of the fear of Muslim wrath were now in open revolt against it. A few well placed ducats sufficed to arm them.
You know, I probably should have done something about Transylvania earlier. Oh well.
By May of 1562, Byzantium had pushed so far into Horde lands that it might've been considered a violation of their personal space, if anyone was enlightened enough to care about that at the time. The peace treaty that Byzantium asked for eventually was somewhat conservative in comparison to what they could have asked for, but as Eligos later claimed in the peace treaty, Astrakhan made a nice summer home for getting away from the Mediterranean.
This also meant Byzantium had finally gained de jure control of the Black Sea, and also obtained an outlet on the Caspian (which in comparison was considered a filthy puddle of brackish water not even fit for swimming in). The only real problem with this was that merchants were avoiding their former haunt of Astrakhan like the plague after Byzantine conquest.
"Muslims! They only wish to trade amongst their kind," Metropolitan Ioannes claimed when informed of the (admittedly limited) trade shriveling up. Byzantium's merchants were only too willing to ignore Astrakhan after that, and the city began to shrivel.
The three travelers had remained in Astrakhan throughout its occupation and eventual change of ownership, and noticed the gradual depopulation of the city as its commercial interests fled for more Islamified markets. For Alexander, this was almost new, as he hadn't really participated in warfare for over a century now... and Constantinople had assimilated a long time ago. Assimilation was what Constantinople did best, clearly. The occasional flood of Berbers or Turkmenis or Magyars tended to result in a lot of bible thumping converts who married Greek nobles. Astrakhan clearly wasn't like that - on the other hand, it didn't have a growing empire to sustain.
Aedryn had gotten into the habit of pillaging during the occupation of Astrakhan. While the average person in the city had very little of worth to anyone from a different century, she claimed that picking up loot and distributing it to lusty eyed locals sharpened her wits. What she didn't say was that it also lead to the occasional person of interest. One day, she took a brief intermission from one of her crawls to introduce someone to Alexander and Eligos.
"I figured you might want to know of this one's existence," she said, pointing to an impeccably groomed man who seemed a bit out of place in his mannerisms, but more importantly his clothing. It seemed there was one more displaced time traveler in the world than anyone had accounted for, unless some nutcase had invented the '1980s metalhead' look slightly ahead of time. Alexander Phokas studied the fellow, and decided that it was probably the sneakers that gave him away. His companions probably would've disagreed had he brought it up.
"So I was in this apartment, going through my usual routine. I must've gone into some sort of sorting trance, since I heard myself saying, 'Rubbish, rubbish, valuables, heirloom, diamonds, nutcase...'. Clearly something was up, because I usually notice the people I'm stealing from as I break in and start robbing," continued Aedryn. It looked like the newcomer wanted to speak for himself, but wasn't going to get the opportunity any time soon.
"Opinion: This person's appearance strikes me as very impractical," Eligos interrupted.
"I know, right? With hair like that, you'll probably get stuck in a doorframe some day." Afros were unknown in Byzantium at this point. The stranger's was well cared for, probably due to some degree of 'futuristic' technology, and as a result had been allowed to grow quite large. Still, it was at Aedryn's (admittedly quite absurd) remark that the stranger decided to speak.
"When you're through mocking my physical appearance-" began the stranger. It was an honorable attempt in light of what followed.
"Nope. We've barely started," Aedryn sneered. A moment of silence. "...Actually, it can wait. Who are you, and what are you doing in this time period?"
"Looking for you." Clearly, this person had succeeded.
"Why do you care about us? It's not like we're the most interesting people in this world," claimed Alexander Phokas.
"Maybe not, but you're clearly the most important."
"Then I'm doing something wrong."
"Look, it's a long story. You see-" Before he could begin, Aedryn blew a raspberry at him.
"Hold on. What's your name? You know, so we know who to call an idiot when you're done blabbering." The stranger had to think for a moment.
"My name? It's... it's George. George... something. What's the point of having two names, anyways?"
"Fact: You're going to have to come up with your own surname. But do tell us your story," Eligos sneered.
"It all began on a sunny morning in the middle of a 22nd century AD in a decent version of Toronto, moving about 3 years backwards per iteration..."
"Hypothesis: Your story is gibberish due to your high stress levels. Come back to Constantinople with us, then we can talk."
"But... but... this is important!"
"It's also boring. You're a time traveler; your stories can wait a very long time," said Aedryn, causing George's face to light up with recognition.
"Oh, right. I sometimes forget, what with the fact I can't go back home. It's clearly more important than you think."
Unfortunately for George, the three people he'd been looking for didn't give a damn... yet.
If the Byzantine Empire was ambitious in its persecution of heathens, then so were the rest of its Christian brethren. When Alexander and friends came back to Constantinople, they found out that Ethiopia had become so zealous that they had declared war on the steppe nomads themselves. The government later found out that they had rushed to the defense of the principality of Yaroslavl, only to be completely unable to project any sort of force (real or imagined) in the area. That was probably a blow to their prestige.
Unfortunately for Ethiopia, they had asked for Byzantine help only after they had left the lands of the Golden Horde; during the truce the Horde was very unlikely to let them run amok in their lands. The Jochids were even less likely to consider it, so this war would essentially boil down to the factions involved sitting and growling at each other half-heartedly. In other words, Byzantium was available to fight a real war. They got one. Sort of.
The Mamluks declared a war of revenge and managed to bring some reasonably strong allies in with them. Unfortunately, their capital was still only a few day's march from Alexandria or similar.
The situation got "worse" - the sultanate of Swahili decided to "conquer" Mecca back for the Islamic world again. This was laughed off, since the odds of Swahili even participating in this supposed war were considered to be about nothing. In an ironic twist of fate, only the Swahilians were willing to engage in any serious fighting; their coalition sent tens of thousands of reasonably drilled troops to the Muslim holy land. Compared to the battered Mamluks, this was actually worth paying attention to, but even they had lost the urge to continue after about 1564.
The wars kept continuing, though, as Ruma began its own crusade against Tunisia, which Byzantium briefly participated in (mostly by defending its Tripolitanian holdings). For some reason, Byzantium's recent antagonists decided to focus their efforts on Ethiopia soon afterwards - surprisingly, Ethiopia came out of this with Arabian territory courtesy of Yemen.
And then, sudden tragedy, as the Metropolitan went missing one day, never to be seen again. His successor, who took the name Thomas V, was very likely also a puppet of Eligos.
"Fact: Byzantium needs a period of protracted peace in order to recover from the last war," Eligos told Alexander; a day later, Thomas V said nearly the exact same thing.
"I have decided to fund the steelmakers in Damascus. Their traditions will certainly serve us well," Thomas V claimed after imitating Eligos. This was clearly not relevant to a peaceful Byzantium, as the country lacked the quantities of steel required to use it for infrastructure and such.
"Use Domestic Steel" is a generic version of Sweden's national decision. WAMMO adds quite a few generics, but they usually have stricter requirements. For instance, the generic version of the Prussian military reforms ("Establish General Staff") requires either lots of military ideas, or an excellent leader and military tradition. You also have to be exceedingly land-oriented to enact it.
So far, Thomas V's imitation of Eligos was limited to ideas - he wouldn't last long if he started imitating Eligos' speech impediment. Regardless, he began many projects, such as the development of a shipbuilding industry in Sinai. Thomas V also made the semi-popular decision of formally abandoning the pagan Estonians after a lengthy period of nominal alliance. After this, some of the more troublesome elements in Judea decided that the Patriarchate was acting consistently enough for their tastes, and formally renounced Islam.
Years had passed, and George remained the newcomer without a last name. He was getting tired of it, but wasn't putting any real effort into resolving the situation, as he claimed to have far graver matters on his hands.
"How can you even tolerate this place? Byzantium is horrendous! It's the most effective repressive mechanism in the history of humanity and it's all your fault!" he shouted at Alexander Phokas one day.
"Not really. Mostly, I just run a coffee shop," responded Alexander, who had learned to take these accusations in stride long before he visited Byzantium.
"I kill indiscriminately," Aedryn claimed when George gave up on trying to get Phokas' attention.
"Trend: Under my period of rule from the shadows, Byzantium has become slightly less oppressive," stated Eligos. Given the Byzantine bill of rights and existent (if weak) printing industry, this had some weight to it.
"If you want to make yourself useful to us, why don't you fetch my next shipment of specialty beans from Yemen?" Alexander suggested. Mostly, he wanted to see how capable George was of fending for himself. No response, but George was nowhere to be found in Constantinople a few hours later. If he survived the trip, he'd probably return, but whether he'd survive was questionable...
Thomas V's period of peace came to an end in 1567, when the Djatans launched another "warpath" against the Scots, and the Byzantine navy had to cut off all their trade in order to keep Scotland alive.
In the meantime, the government began a project which was sure to have significant ramifications for the future expansion of Byzantium - the establishment of a naval base in East Africa.
Meanwhile, the Transylvanian Greeks formalized their defection from the Golden Horde, reducing the amount of enclaves in the world and causing cartographers in the empire to celebrate.
Without scary Christians to unite them, the Islamic nations around Byzantium dissolved back into war with each other. Now, surprisingly, Muslims slaughtering Muslims was seen as surprisingly negative in Byzantium - after all, how would they get into heaven if they died before seeing the light of Christianity? This was how Thomas V justified a war against Qara Koyunlu, who had only a few years back served as a distraction in the war against the Golden Horde. Byzantium wasn't much into justifying its wars against the heathens, but Thomas V liked the formality of the gesture. Needless to say, it was an infectious bit of rhetoric in the conservative court of Ruma as well, as the people of that nation declared a war against Granada.
After about two years of bloody fighting in the Caucasus, Byzantium had made significant gains into Turkmeni lands, which was used as an excuse to establish another one of the buffer states Byzantine politicians held so dear. One of the leading families of the nation had one of their progeny placed in in the elite ranks of the new government - enter Cassander Argyros.
He made a rather pompous speech claiming he would retain close ties to Byzantium while also trying to forge his own path - rather moderate claims given the way they were delivered.
After this, the Mamluks decided they hadn't had enough punishment and declared war on Byzantium, bringing in the usual ship of fools who quickly jumped ship. It was quickly becoming evident that the Mamluks would never stop trying to get revenge on Byzantium, no matter how much it destroyed them. The solution? No more Mamluks, but that would take a while...
As proof of Byzantium's dislike of the Mamluks, the country was forced to release some Nubian land on their border with Ethiopia, and Cairo was made even more vulnerable to Byzantine occupation. If that didn't stop the Mamluks from bothering, nothing would. As for the people of Funj, it was assumed that the Ethiopians would eventually assimilate them.
And then, an old foe long thought to be impaled rose up against Ruma, who asked for Byzantine assistance. 1575 was going to be an interesting year.
You know, I always say I should take more screenshots of my wars, but to be honest, the difficulty of them went significantly downhill after that epic struggle with the (then powerful) Mamluks in the 1430s. I still have some powerful enemies, but the way I see it, they're more interested in keeping the peace than antagonizing the Byzantine Empire. Obviously, the nation that declared war on Ruma (who you'll find out about in the next update) is a bit of an exception.
Episode 16: The Era of Desperate Flailing
"Protip: A devastating coincidence remains a coincidence."
Evidence was rapidly piling up suggesting that the timeshift was a fluke. Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos were still trapped in 16th century Byzantium and wanted a way home, preferably one that didn't involve them waiting centuries for time travel to be invented. Given the nature of such, their motivation was entirely selfish, if understandable.
Despite everything, they couldn't shake the feeling that someone with more resources than the average Byzantine wanted them dead.
"Maybe we were expected to leave Astrakhan alone?" asked Alexander, who was still a bit addled from the incident after a few weeks.
"Never! We really ought to make it ours," Aedryn responded. She was nothing if not predictable.
Since there was no way of telling whether Astrakhan was a temporal vortex or something similar, Eligos repeated his "15,000 bodyguards" trick in that world's June of 1560.
Within months, it was shaping up to be a repeat of the previous war.
By November of 1561, it was becoming evident that the Horde's glory days were decades past them. The small population of Greeks who had at one point accepted Horde rule out of the fear of Muslim wrath were now in open revolt against it. A few well placed ducats sufficed to arm them.
You know, I probably should have done something about Transylvania earlier. Oh well.
By May of 1562, Byzantium had pushed so far into Horde lands that it might've been considered a violation of their personal space, if anyone was enlightened enough to care about that at the time. The peace treaty that Byzantium asked for eventually was somewhat conservative in comparison to what they could have asked for, but as Eligos later claimed in the peace treaty, Astrakhan made a nice summer home for getting away from the Mediterranean.
This also meant Byzantium had finally gained de jure control of the Black Sea, and also obtained an outlet on the Caspian (which in comparison was considered a filthy puddle of brackish water not even fit for swimming in). The only real problem with this was that merchants were avoiding their former haunt of Astrakhan like the plague after Byzantine conquest.
"Muslims! They only wish to trade amongst their kind," Metropolitan Ioannes claimed when informed of the (admittedly limited) trade shriveling up. Byzantium's merchants were only too willing to ignore Astrakhan after that, and the city began to shrivel.
The three travelers had remained in Astrakhan throughout its occupation and eventual change of ownership, and noticed the gradual depopulation of the city as its commercial interests fled for more Islamified markets. For Alexander, this was almost new, as he hadn't really participated in warfare for over a century now... and Constantinople had assimilated a long time ago. Assimilation was what Constantinople did best, clearly. The occasional flood of Berbers or Turkmenis or Magyars tended to result in a lot of bible thumping converts who married Greek nobles. Astrakhan clearly wasn't like that - on the other hand, it didn't have a growing empire to sustain.
Aedryn had gotten into the habit of pillaging during the occupation of Astrakhan. While the average person in the city had very little of worth to anyone from a different century, she claimed that picking up loot and distributing it to lusty eyed locals sharpened her wits. What she didn't say was that it also lead to the occasional person of interest. One day, she took a brief intermission from one of her crawls to introduce someone to Alexander and Eligos.
"I figured you might want to know of this one's existence," she said, pointing to an impeccably groomed man who seemed a bit out of place in his mannerisms, but more importantly his clothing. It seemed there was one more displaced time traveler in the world than anyone had accounted for, unless some nutcase had invented the '1980s metalhead' look slightly ahead of time. Alexander Phokas studied the fellow, and decided that it was probably the sneakers that gave him away. His companions probably would've disagreed had he brought it up.
"So I was in this apartment, going through my usual routine. I must've gone into some sort of sorting trance, since I heard myself saying, 'Rubbish, rubbish, valuables, heirloom, diamonds, nutcase...'. Clearly something was up, because I usually notice the people I'm stealing from as I break in and start robbing," continued Aedryn. It looked like the newcomer wanted to speak for himself, but wasn't going to get the opportunity any time soon.
"Opinion: This person's appearance strikes me as very impractical," Eligos interrupted.
"I know, right? With hair like that, you'll probably get stuck in a doorframe some day." Afros were unknown in Byzantium at this point. The stranger's was well cared for, probably due to some degree of 'futuristic' technology, and as a result had been allowed to grow quite large. Still, it was at Aedryn's (admittedly quite absurd) remark that the stranger decided to speak.
"When you're through mocking my physical appearance-" began the stranger. It was an honorable attempt in light of what followed.
"Nope. We've barely started," Aedryn sneered. A moment of silence. "...Actually, it can wait. Who are you, and what are you doing in this time period?"
"Looking for you." Clearly, this person had succeeded.
"Why do you care about us? It's not like we're the most interesting people in this world," claimed Alexander Phokas.
"Maybe not, but you're clearly the most important."
"Then I'm doing something wrong."
"Look, it's a long story. You see-" Before he could begin, Aedryn blew a raspberry at him.
"Hold on. What's your name? You know, so we know who to call an idiot when you're done blabbering." The stranger had to think for a moment.
"My name? It's... it's George. George... something. What's the point of having two names, anyways?"
"Fact: You're going to have to come up with your own surname. But do tell us your story," Eligos sneered.
"It all began on a sunny morning in the middle of a 22nd century AD in a decent version of Toronto, moving about 3 years backwards per iteration..."
"Hypothesis: Your story is gibberish due to your high stress levels. Come back to Constantinople with us, then we can talk."
"But... but... this is important!"
"It's also boring. You're a time traveler; your stories can wait a very long time," said Aedryn, causing George's face to light up with recognition.
"Oh, right. I sometimes forget, what with the fact I can't go back home. It's clearly more important than you think."
Unfortunately for George, the three people he'd been looking for didn't give a damn... yet.
If the Byzantine Empire was ambitious in its persecution of heathens, then so were the rest of its Christian brethren. When Alexander and friends came back to Constantinople, they found out that Ethiopia had become so zealous that they had declared war on the steppe nomads themselves. The government later found out that they had rushed to the defense of the principality of Yaroslavl, only to be completely unable to project any sort of force (real or imagined) in the area. That was probably a blow to their prestige.
Unfortunately for Ethiopia, they had asked for Byzantine help only after they had left the lands of the Golden Horde; during the truce the Horde was very unlikely to let them run amok in their lands. The Jochids were even less likely to consider it, so this war would essentially boil down to the factions involved sitting and growling at each other half-heartedly. In other words, Byzantium was available to fight a real war. They got one. Sort of.
The Mamluks declared a war of revenge and managed to bring some reasonably strong allies in with them. Unfortunately, their capital was still only a few day's march from Alexandria or similar.
The situation got "worse" - the sultanate of Swahili decided to "conquer" Mecca back for the Islamic world again. This was laughed off, since the odds of Swahili even participating in this supposed war were considered to be about nothing. In an ironic twist of fate, only the Swahilians were willing to engage in any serious fighting; their coalition sent tens of thousands of reasonably drilled troops to the Muslim holy land. Compared to the battered Mamluks, this was actually worth paying attention to, but even they had lost the urge to continue after about 1564.
The wars kept continuing, though, as Ruma began its own crusade against Tunisia, which Byzantium briefly participated in (mostly by defending its Tripolitanian holdings). For some reason, Byzantium's recent antagonists decided to focus their efforts on Ethiopia soon afterwards - surprisingly, Ethiopia came out of this with Arabian territory courtesy of Yemen.
And then, sudden tragedy, as the Metropolitan went missing one day, never to be seen again. His successor, who took the name Thomas V, was very likely also a puppet of Eligos.
"Fact: Byzantium needs a period of protracted peace in order to recover from the last war," Eligos told Alexander; a day later, Thomas V said nearly the exact same thing.
"I have decided to fund the steelmakers in Damascus. Their traditions will certainly serve us well," Thomas V claimed after imitating Eligos. This was clearly not relevant to a peaceful Byzantium, as the country lacked the quantities of steel required to use it for infrastructure and such.
"Use Domestic Steel" is a generic version of Sweden's national decision. WAMMO adds quite a few generics, but they usually have stricter requirements. For instance, the generic version of the Prussian military reforms ("Establish General Staff") requires either lots of military ideas, or an excellent leader and military tradition. You also have to be exceedingly land-oriented to enact it.
So far, Thomas V's imitation of Eligos was limited to ideas - he wouldn't last long if he started imitating Eligos' speech impediment. Regardless, he began many projects, such as the development of a shipbuilding industry in Sinai. Thomas V also made the semi-popular decision of formally abandoning the pagan Estonians after a lengthy period of nominal alliance. After this, some of the more troublesome elements in Judea decided that the Patriarchate was acting consistently enough for their tastes, and formally renounced Islam.
Years had passed, and George remained the newcomer without a last name. He was getting tired of it, but wasn't putting any real effort into resolving the situation, as he claimed to have far graver matters on his hands.
"How can you even tolerate this place? Byzantium is horrendous! It's the most effective repressive mechanism in the history of humanity and it's all your fault!" he shouted at Alexander Phokas one day.
"Not really. Mostly, I just run a coffee shop," responded Alexander, who had learned to take these accusations in stride long before he visited Byzantium.
"I kill indiscriminately," Aedryn claimed when George gave up on trying to get Phokas' attention.
"Trend: Under my period of rule from the shadows, Byzantium has become slightly less oppressive," stated Eligos. Given the Byzantine bill of rights and existent (if weak) printing industry, this had some weight to it.
"If you want to make yourself useful to us, why don't you fetch my next shipment of specialty beans from Yemen?" Alexander suggested. Mostly, he wanted to see how capable George was of fending for himself. No response, but George was nowhere to be found in Constantinople a few hours later. If he survived the trip, he'd probably return, but whether he'd survive was questionable...
Thomas V's period of peace came to an end in 1567, when the Djatans launched another "warpath" against the Scots, and the Byzantine navy had to cut off all their trade in order to keep Scotland alive.
In the meantime, the government began a project which was sure to have significant ramifications for the future expansion of Byzantium - the establishment of a naval base in East Africa.
Meanwhile, the Transylvanian Greeks formalized their defection from the Golden Horde, reducing the amount of enclaves in the world and causing cartographers in the empire to celebrate.
Without scary Christians to unite them, the Islamic nations around Byzantium dissolved back into war with each other. Now, surprisingly, Muslims slaughtering Muslims was seen as surprisingly negative in Byzantium - after all, how would they get into heaven if they died before seeing the light of Christianity? This was how Thomas V justified a war against Qara Koyunlu, who had only a few years back served as a distraction in the war against the Golden Horde. Byzantium wasn't much into justifying its wars against the heathens, but Thomas V liked the formality of the gesture. Needless to say, it was an infectious bit of rhetoric in the conservative court of Ruma as well, as the people of that nation declared a war against Granada.
After about two years of bloody fighting in the Caucasus, Byzantium had made significant gains into Turkmeni lands, which was used as an excuse to establish another one of the buffer states Byzantine politicians held so dear. One of the leading families of the nation had one of their progeny placed in in the elite ranks of the new government - enter Cassander Argyros.
He made a rather pompous speech claiming he would retain close ties to Byzantium while also trying to forge his own path - rather moderate claims given the way they were delivered.
After this, the Mamluks decided they hadn't had enough punishment and declared war on Byzantium, bringing in the usual ship of fools who quickly jumped ship. It was quickly becoming evident that the Mamluks would never stop trying to get revenge on Byzantium, no matter how much it destroyed them. The solution? No more Mamluks, but that would take a while...
As proof of Byzantium's dislike of the Mamluks, the country was forced to release some Nubian land on their border with Ethiopia, and Cairo was made even more vulnerable to Byzantine occupation. If that didn't stop the Mamluks from bothering, nothing would. As for the people of Funj, it was assumed that the Ethiopians would eventually assimilate them.
And then, an old foe long thought to be impaled rose up against Ruma, who asked for Byzantine assistance. 1575 was going to be an interesting year.
You know, I always say I should take more screenshots of my wars, but to be honest, the difficulty of them went significantly downhill after that epic struggle with the (then powerful) Mamluks in the 1430s. I still have some powerful enemies, but the way I see it, they're more interested in keeping the peace than antagonizing the Byzantine Empire. Obviously, the nation that declared war on Ruma (who you'll find out about in the next update) is a bit of an exception.
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Given the emphasis on science fiction themes, the plot of this AAR is getting to the point where a lot of the important events can't necessarily be simulated within EU3/WAMMO. This means the AAR is going to get more narrative heavy, even when I'm trying to make the reader laugh.
It's not lost on me how 'Nostalgia Freaks' is slowly turning into a story of the worst vacation ever.
Episode 16.5: How To Destroy Byzantium Without Really Trying, Part I
"I realize you don't care about me, but I don't care about Byzantium, because absolutely nothing about it is relevant to your continued survival!"
George still needed a surname. Alexander Phokas found this particularly problematic, since this George was (in his opinion) markedly inferior to the George whom he'd befriended before he first came to this world.
"Just try to enjoy it," Alexander responded. It was how he always responded to George's complaints, which had become ever more vitriolic since his return from Yemen. To be fair, he seemed to have a knack for selecting coffee beans.
"No! You've already wasted over a decade since I got here. I thought you'd eventually come around, but you haven't," shouted George.
"Well, it's not like this will matter once we get our time travel functionality back. Our friends and relatives either won't notice any difference, or won't care."
It was an effective way of ignoring one's situation, to say the least. George saw it as further evidence that time travel was making Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos sluggish and weak.
"That's not going to be possible. I've waited 15 years for you to pay attention to that, and I don't want to have to keep waiting."
"You'll have to. I don't believe you."
George had tried to tell the other three time travelers in the region what he believed had happened - an attack on the 'glue' between universes that made time travel/alternate reality travel plausible and popular. Given the amount of universes, an infinite amount of reactionaries opposed to the idea of a multiverse were apparently in constant battle with an infinite amount of opponents horrified by their assault on spacetime.
"I mean, how this wasn't the first thing you noticed when you started jumping around is beyond me, but whatever," George said while rolling his eyes, the first time he'd explained this. Perhaps the fact he'd insulted his audience was why they were proving so resistant to his doomsaying.
Regardless, the 'universe of Byzantium' that they now inhibited was isolated from the others, and barring the surprisingly unlikely event of some benevolent pan-universalist finding it and bringing it back into the fold entirely out of the good of their own heart, the only thing they could do was acquire enough energy to brute-force their way into the space between universes, although once they did that, they'd eventually be make their way 'home'.
Where to get that energy was sort of a problem, given that technology in this world was quite primitive.
"I think we need at least a petajoule per person, That's about the amount of energy released by a large volcanic eruption, and if you guys haven't screwed up the geological activity of the Earth too much, there's a significant one coming up in 1600 in Peru - in a place called Huaynaputina," suggested George when faced with this issue, some time in 1565.
"Sure, it'll release energy, but what makes you think it'll be in any form we can use? How are we going to use it?" Aedryn asked in response.
"This is where you come in. You have the most obvious capacitors and energy collection facilities of any of us, so if we go for volcanic activity, it'll be up to you to geothermal the hell out of the volcano, and then release all the energy you get into some machinery I'll have built for the occasion." George didn't miss a single beat; he'd clearly been planning this for a long time.
"That's stupid and unlikely to work," was a phrase George heard often these days. Mostly, he just shrugged it off.
"Got any better ideas?" sneered George. No response.
Needless to say, George was a poor diplomat.
After his failures, George thought back to his 'expedition' to Yemen. While it had benefited Alexander's coffee business significantly, it'd been a dismal failure for saving the universe. The first part didn't seem so bad - George had taken a boat to Alexandria and set up some deals with the local(ish) coffee plantations. That was easy. Then, he'd traveled east to commission a boat that would take him through the Red Sea. It wasn't long until he reached the land of sand and ruined dams. As a result of Yemen's thriving coffee trade, some of those dams were gradually being rebuilt.
What struck George about his business trip was how easy it was - the Yemeni merchants and farmers of the area were more than willing to accept the money Alexander had given him in return for their product. He returned to Constantinople some time later without any incident and delivered the beans to Alexander, who had them placed in his storehouse without so much as a 'thank you'. It turned out he just wanted George to go away.
George continued to insist that the three other travelers had crucial skills that he would need for even one of them to break through the universe. Aedryn's firepower, Eligos' cybernetics, Alexander's supposed 'diplomatic' prowess would suit his purposes, and he'd initially figured it would not take a long time to persuade the three to help him. Now, however, it was 1575 and he had yet to succeed. It seemed George would have to do something drastic in order to get the attention he felt he deserved.
"I haven't seen George in over a week. Should we celebrate?" Aedryn asked one day, when what she had just mentioned became apparent.
"Warning: He may return at an awkward time. I recommend we wait another week," responded Eligos.
They didn't know George was in the Maygari capital of Sopron, didn't find out that he would move to Al-Alemand a week after that, and generally be found making a tour of the European Islamic world. When he received word of the Faransi attack on Rome, however, it forced George to go a bit further east than he'd expected.
"So, traveler. Word has reached us that you have been traveling the lands blessed by Allah and calling for a unified, massive war against the aggressive, expansionist Christian empires of the Mediterranean."
George was, under the assumed name of Muhammad Nejem, now visiting the court of the sultan of Baluchistan. It wasn't very much of a kingdom, but he needed every monarch or sovereign he could get.
"Mecca has already fallen under their sinister grasp. Byzantium claims it will tolerate the religious practices of the tribes of the Hijaz, but that is a blatant lie," he told the Sultan in the coldest voice he could.
"That is a very grave matter, but as it happened decades ago, we are in no position to contest this."
"Not true. You must put down your squabbles with your neighbors and take up arms against Byzantium, lest they seek to take over Persia!"
"Have any of the other sultanates in the area pledged to join this crusade?"
"The Turkmenis to the west were very quick to do so, as they were forced to cede territory to the Armenian natives of the area. I believe the Khurusani sultanate intends to assist them. Further to the north, the Genghisid nations have fought against Byzantium for many years and would appreciate the help."
George may have been a poor diplomat, but it wasn't very hard to get a bunch of Muslims to coordinate a mission to reclaim their holy land if one was willing to conscript enough people. Whether or not this would draw the attention of the other time travelers depended mostly on whether George got back to Constantinople in time without being ousted for what could potentially earn him execution for the highest sort of treason.
"Interesting. Some guy named Nejem is trying to unite the sultanates and conquer us. He should've gotten the memo a century ago," Thomas V said, reading reports from his espionage division over a light lunch of flatbread and wine. Eating healthy was still rather difficult in the late 16th century, but at least the metropolitan had access to real bread instead of processed junk.
Either way, he'd dismissed any potential foreign problems quite handily. That was one of his talents.
In other words, I have particularly big in-game events planned for the next 25-50 years or so. Don't close out your 'Nostalgia Freaks' tabs, folks! There's the infinitesimal chance I might increase my update frequency beyond weekly!
It's not lost on me how 'Nostalgia Freaks' is slowly turning into a story of the worst vacation ever.
Episode 16.5: How To Destroy Byzantium Without Really Trying, Part I
"I realize you don't care about me, but I don't care about Byzantium, because absolutely nothing about it is relevant to your continued survival!"
George still needed a surname. Alexander Phokas found this particularly problematic, since this George was (in his opinion) markedly inferior to the George whom he'd befriended before he first came to this world.
"Just try to enjoy it," Alexander responded. It was how he always responded to George's complaints, which had become ever more vitriolic since his return from Yemen. To be fair, he seemed to have a knack for selecting coffee beans.
"No! You've already wasted over a decade since I got here. I thought you'd eventually come around, but you haven't," shouted George.
"Well, it's not like this will matter once we get our time travel functionality back. Our friends and relatives either won't notice any difference, or won't care."
It was an effective way of ignoring one's situation, to say the least. George saw it as further evidence that time travel was making Alexander, Aedryn, and Eligos sluggish and weak.
"That's not going to be possible. I've waited 15 years for you to pay attention to that, and I don't want to have to keep waiting."
"You'll have to. I don't believe you."
George had tried to tell the other three time travelers in the region what he believed had happened - an attack on the 'glue' between universes that made time travel/alternate reality travel plausible and popular. Given the amount of universes, an infinite amount of reactionaries opposed to the idea of a multiverse were apparently in constant battle with an infinite amount of opponents horrified by their assault on spacetime.
"I mean, how this wasn't the first thing you noticed when you started jumping around is beyond me, but whatever," George said while rolling his eyes, the first time he'd explained this. Perhaps the fact he'd insulted his audience was why they were proving so resistant to his doomsaying.
Regardless, the 'universe of Byzantium' that they now inhibited was isolated from the others, and barring the surprisingly unlikely event of some benevolent pan-universalist finding it and bringing it back into the fold entirely out of the good of their own heart, the only thing they could do was acquire enough energy to brute-force their way into the space between universes, although once they did that, they'd eventually be make their way 'home'.
Where to get that energy was sort of a problem, given that technology in this world was quite primitive.
"I think we need at least a petajoule per person, That's about the amount of energy released by a large volcanic eruption, and if you guys haven't screwed up the geological activity of the Earth too much, there's a significant one coming up in 1600 in Peru - in a place called Huaynaputina," suggested George when faced with this issue, some time in 1565.
"Sure, it'll release energy, but what makes you think it'll be in any form we can use? How are we going to use it?" Aedryn asked in response.
"This is where you come in. You have the most obvious capacitors and energy collection facilities of any of us, so if we go for volcanic activity, it'll be up to you to geothermal the hell out of the volcano, and then release all the energy you get into some machinery I'll have built for the occasion." George didn't miss a single beat; he'd clearly been planning this for a long time.
"That's stupid and unlikely to work," was a phrase George heard often these days. Mostly, he just shrugged it off.
"Got any better ideas?" sneered George. No response.
Needless to say, George was a poor diplomat.
After his failures, George thought back to his 'expedition' to Yemen. While it had benefited Alexander's coffee business significantly, it'd been a dismal failure for saving the universe. The first part didn't seem so bad - George had taken a boat to Alexandria and set up some deals with the local(ish) coffee plantations. That was easy. Then, he'd traveled east to commission a boat that would take him through the Red Sea. It wasn't long until he reached the land of sand and ruined dams. As a result of Yemen's thriving coffee trade, some of those dams were gradually being rebuilt.
What struck George about his business trip was how easy it was - the Yemeni merchants and farmers of the area were more than willing to accept the money Alexander had given him in return for their product. He returned to Constantinople some time later without any incident and delivered the beans to Alexander, who had them placed in his storehouse without so much as a 'thank you'. It turned out he just wanted George to go away.
George continued to insist that the three other travelers had crucial skills that he would need for even one of them to break through the universe. Aedryn's firepower, Eligos' cybernetics, Alexander's supposed 'diplomatic' prowess would suit his purposes, and he'd initially figured it would not take a long time to persuade the three to help him. Now, however, it was 1575 and he had yet to succeed. It seemed George would have to do something drastic in order to get the attention he felt he deserved.
"I haven't seen George in over a week. Should we celebrate?" Aedryn asked one day, when what she had just mentioned became apparent.
"Warning: He may return at an awkward time. I recommend we wait another week," responded Eligos.
They didn't know George was in the Maygari capital of Sopron, didn't find out that he would move to Al-Alemand a week after that, and generally be found making a tour of the European Islamic world. When he received word of the Faransi attack on Rome, however, it forced George to go a bit further east than he'd expected.
"So, traveler. Word has reached us that you have been traveling the lands blessed by Allah and calling for a unified, massive war against the aggressive, expansionist Christian empires of the Mediterranean."
George was, under the assumed name of Muhammad Nejem, now visiting the court of the sultan of Baluchistan. It wasn't very much of a kingdom, but he needed every monarch or sovereign he could get.
"Mecca has already fallen under their sinister grasp. Byzantium claims it will tolerate the religious practices of the tribes of the Hijaz, but that is a blatant lie," he told the Sultan in the coldest voice he could.
"That is a very grave matter, but as it happened decades ago, we are in no position to contest this."
"Not true. You must put down your squabbles with your neighbors and take up arms against Byzantium, lest they seek to take over Persia!"
"Have any of the other sultanates in the area pledged to join this crusade?"
"The Turkmenis to the west were very quick to do so, as they were forced to cede territory to the Armenian natives of the area. I believe the Khurusani sultanate intends to assist them. Further to the north, the Genghisid nations have fought against Byzantium for many years and would appreciate the help."
George may have been a poor diplomat, but it wasn't very hard to get a bunch of Muslims to coordinate a mission to reclaim their holy land if one was willing to conscript enough people. Whether or not this would draw the attention of the other time travelers depended mostly on whether George got back to Constantinople in time without being ousted for what could potentially earn him execution for the highest sort of treason.
"Interesting. Some guy named Nejem is trying to unite the sultanates and conquer us. He should've gotten the memo a century ago," Thomas V said, reading reports from his espionage division over a light lunch of flatbread and wine. Eating healthy was still rather difficult in the late 16th century, but at least the metropolitan had access to real bread instead of processed junk.
Either way, he'd dismissed any potential foreign problems quite handily. That was one of his talents.
In other words, I have particularly big in-game events planned for the next 25-50 years or so. Don't close out your 'Nostalgia Freaks' tabs, folks! There's the infinitesimal chance I might increase my update frequency beyond weekly!
Eligos is one to talk - he doesn't have a last name, either.
I'm actually of the opinion that George is probably the second-sanest time traveller, behind Alexander Phokas who's pretty far off the deep end himself. Go, George!
Hmm, I'm sure you'll be able to make something up if you try. But it would be nice to provide some screenshots, at least to connect your characters to the world of Byzantium, or at the very least pictures of some sort to help the reader visualise the situation. I've seen quite a few AARs in the EU3 and CK2 forums telling a story without using game screenshots, but it's the pictures which really add to the mood of the story and differentiate it from something which you might find on a fanfiction site.
Episode 17: Greeks Gone Wild
With the possible exception of an impending massive pan-Islamic crusade that the time travelers didn't know about yet, Byzantium was humming along quite productively. In fact, if one put their ear to the ground, they could probably hear it - melodic, rhythmic vibrations not entirely unlike machinery.
Of course, you had to be rather close to a church actively performing rites, although there were plenty of those in the empire. And you had to have good hearing. There was also the risk that someone might step on you if you knelt down and put an ear on the ground. And the ground was often dirty. Regardless, Byzantine 'efficiency' still meant that the composers of Orthodox chants had a steady audience.
Thomas V, through Eligos, was still in favor of expanding the reach of the state. The naval bases in Morocco and Majerteen were important, as they opened up entirely new oceans for Byzantine ships to safely explore.
Remember, having a naval base in Morocco means I'll be able to get Colonial Plans much earlier than I otherwise would be able, which means I can pick up useful ideas like Quest for the New World. Having a sea route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans, at least, would be useful to me.
Currently, the Indian Ocean was more tempting to the average Greek than the Atlantic - it had more guaranteed Muslims, but the Indians and Chinese were relatively peaceful, 'civilized' people who were importantly willing to trade with the Christians to their west. Scattered reports of other non-Muslims on the west side of the Atlantic suggested further opportunities for trade, conversion, conquest, and so forth - the usual tools of an empire.
But at the moment, there was no time for that. Faransa had mostly recovered from its crisis at the end of the 15th century, and wanted to slap the Christians around a bit. Approval on both sides was limited.
"Just send a fleet to blockade them and occupy their land as necessary," said the Metropolitan when he received the news. That part was easy, and it was assumed that Faransa would stop once their trade was cut off. It was a common belief, and a justified one, as the Faransis quickly called off their aggression.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia took the 'bait' as expected by attacking the newly freed sheikdom of Funj...
...and drawing the wrath of other Africans, leading to a variety of shenanigans to the south. Mostly, these were uneventful, but it just went to show that the Swahili nation would present a problem to Byzantine interests in the area for some time. They launched several raids on the Islamic holy cities, as well as the colony in Majerteen.
Funj itself quickly dropped out of the war being fought over it. it seemed that the Ethiopians were willing to allow them at least nominal sovereignty for a while. A few months later, Byzantium dropped out of the war, since it was apparent nothing of interest was occurring.
Incidentally, Funj's tech levels are terrible. I think they're what they had when they got annexed, but it seems to be one of the peculiarities of EU3. If you release a nation as your vassal, they get your technology levels (and I think they get your tech group too). If you a force a nation to release another that they'd conquered, they get the technology levels they had when they were annexed.
It seemed that as a result of this war, the Greeks had decided to brand a lot of people as 'war criminals'.
As it was, the tribunes were completely overworked and unable to process people who might've committed real crimes. Thomas V's solution was to expand the courts. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but it seemed to work, and a regulated court system was not the worst thing to hit the nation.
After that, a brief period of quiet, as Byzantium digested its last meal and prepared the next. It seemed that despite the existence of the Armenian buffer nation, there were some Turkmenis unpleasantly close to home in the form of Ak Koyunlu, and that none of the local states had ever been bothered to gobble them up after they lost the protection of the Golden Horde. With ambitions satisfied in the north, difficult to satisfy in the west, and on hold due to treaties in the south, the only way was, of course, to go east.
Needless to say, since Ak Koyunlu was so small, it'd acquired a few jingoistic allies willing to attack anyone who dared threaten it, even if doing so was suicidal. But the war was quickly over with - Iraq probably suffered the most as it was forced to pay reparations in lieu of anyone else. Back to peace. Conversions rolled in, Byzantine scientists worked on building new ship designs to brave the open oceans, and so forth. Unfortunately, they weren't very good designs. Byzantium still relied heavily on galleys with human propulsion to handle its ships, and that was just not going to work for oceanic travel; there was talk of buying new ones from the Djatans. Like clockwork though, Djata Kurafa launched another "Warpath" against Scotland, and again like clockwork Byzantium moved to put this down.
Like the last time, Djatan shipping was severely disrupted for a few weeks.
In general, it seemed Byzantium was in the middle of an age of small conflicts. In February 1583, a Byzantine noble (Saul Komnenos) made a huge fuss about being kicked off his island estate in Lesbos. Thomas V sent him a letter claiming that Byzantium formally had no jurisdiction there, to which the nobleman complained about the actual owner of that island (the Catholic papacy) being flagrantly not Greek Orthodox.
This nobleman simply used his money to bribe a nearby Greek regiment into invading and occupying the islands.
At this, the Metropolitan rolled his eyes... and allowed it. The Papal raids took some time to finish. On the island of Lesbos, the Catholics had built up colossal fortifications in a desperate attempt to stave off invasion. To be fair, it had worked for quite some time, but only because the Orthodox giants of the realm dissuaded any real threats. When one of them withdrew their favor, the results could be unpleasant.
Now, Saul Komnenos had conquered the land he technically owned, and his ambitions expanded. He started buying land and businesses at a colossal rate on the Anatolian peninsula (which was well on its way to being Byzantine heartlands again). Simply by collecting rent on the land he owned, Saul was very soon on his way to becoming the richest man in Byzantium, perhaps intending to buy the empire. His chances, to say the least, were quite good for a while. Naturally, this meant that Eligos (being the ambitious fellow he was) kept a close eye on the nobleman.
At this point, Byzantium was also in the process of expanding its East African presence, as some colonists in the area moved south. Saul Komnenos wanted to get in on this, and started throwing money into the general vicinity, reasoning that control of East Africa would eventually lead to control of India. That might've been a mistake on his part, as the government of the empire wanted to keep those lands under their control. On the other hand, he might've been able to power through it with even more money, were it not for the fact he woke up one day to find a corpse with a bloody knife in its head staring at him from the doorway of his room.
It wasn't anyone he knew, but given the offensive odor and pallid complexion, it wasn't anyone he wanted to know. Regardless, its very existence represented a threat to him, so once he got over his initial shock he made plans to dispose of it. He'd barely brought the body to the local staircase when he found another unknown murder victim in the doorway to his bathroom. This one was looking at him with utter horror on its face (or at least it was posed to look like it). At this point, any plans Saul had for protecting his name were gone - as he made his way through the rooms of his house, he found more bodies in increasingly bizarre positions - one appeared to be begging for mercy, one was caught in the process of trying to drag himself across the floor, three were playing some sort of card game. The last one Saul found before well trained Greek policemen descended on his home and legally abducted him was holding a memo calling for some sort of merchant driven takeover of Byzantium. Why hadn't he thought of that?
It took quite a while for the story of Saul Komnenos' unfortunate, debauchery driven demise to reach Constantinople, but when it did, it created all sorts of havoc in the financial center of the city. Merchants were deported en masse, along with their families and servants. A few retreated to the Ukraine (which was really not much more than a smaller, cuter version of Byzantium), but most of them ended up in Ethiopia, putting them close to the action in India.
"Let me guess, Eligos. You're directly responsible for this," Alexander said one day as merchants were being given trials of a sort, although he was fairly certain of the answer he'd get.
"Fact: Sometimes the usual machinations bore me. With access to the future still cut off, this seemed like the best solution."
In other words, Saul Komnenos was gone because Eligos had felt a twinge of ennui, and he had taken several thousand men from all swathes of Byzantine society with him in his death throes. There was some vaguely defined hope that the merchants would eventually return with even greater riches (which they would use to bribe their way back into the country), and that was the only reason anyone tolerated the economic disruption he'd created.
I enacted the level 10 Naval technology version of Colonial Plans. Fun, right? The merchants repopulated quickly, at least.
The merchant "expedition" first traveled to India, which was known to be prosperous. This meant, for the locals, a sudden influx of Greeks that they had trouble dealing with. After a while, the Greek expedition decided it wasn't very big on Hindus, and made plans to take some land for themselves. The expedition bought off one of the local petty princes for what (to him) was a gigantic amount of cash, and slowly began replacing his bureaucracy with their own people. When the local Maratha Empire figured out what the local Greeks decided to do, they sent an ultimatum to Byzantium demanding the reinstatement of Venad's original government. Thomas V didn't like being talked to like that, so he simply declared a crusade.
This might not've been such a great idea, since the Marathas were actually more technologically advanced than Byzantium and were much more able to bring troops into the area.
Religious and cultural tensions really do cut into my income. While this has become less painful in recent years, Byzantium is still not a technological marvel.
On the other side of the world, The increasingly Christianized Arabs of the Levant and Egypt were adopting to rule under Byzantium. As they became docile and harmless, they began reporting more of their taxable income.In the midst of this, the ever weaker Mamluks decided that this meant they could take back the entirety of the lands they had lost to Byzantium over the last 150 years and declared their own crusade the moment their official truce with Byzantium expired.
The problem, of course, wasn't so much them as their allies - the Magyars and Alemanni wanted an excuse to attack Byzantium and Ruma, and took the opportunity.
In light of this, Byzantium decided to buy off the Marathas so it could more easily focus on its domestic war. This meant that Byzantium could focus the forty to fifty thousand troops it needed to besiege Mamluk garrisons on the Mamluks, as opposed to some jingoistic Hindu state.
Meanwhile, with Mediterranean supremacy, Al-Alemand and Magyaristan could not protect the Mamluks, so they raided Byzantium's hinterland out of spite. Anything more could've provoked aggression - considering that Magyaristan had once had its own time traveler in the government, the nationals were aware of what could happen to a nation pushed to the breaking point while it still had one or more's favor. The last time that had happened, Jochi had collapsed.
As a result of this nonintervention and limited warfare to their north, the Mamluks were forced to pay their worst peace yet.
To celebrate, Thomas V had the state give some more money to the Greek expedition in India, who used it to further organize their business.
When he received a significant sum back, he invested that as well into imperialist concerns - amongst other things, a voyage to find passage around Africa. In the end, it became apparent that at least one branch of the Basileous family had survived the unpleasantness of the last coup - Diogenes, who claimed he didn't have a single drop of Scottish blood in him, was the one who ended up getting together the ships for the expedition and acting as its navigator.
"Should we tell him anything?" Alexander asked his companions (who were back to three, since George was still MIA and presumed irritating) when he heard about this.
"Nah, let him find out for himself. It's more fun this way," responded Aedryn.
So news came in of discoveries that the Djatans had already made, but Greeks wanted for themselves. By the middle of 1588, the expedition was seeing first hand what the average Byzantine citizen had only read about in books, or poorly scrawled graffiti on a church wall. Word spread quickly, and within months, the poorer strata of Byzantium were attempting to explore and settle the Americas. They found a strange world awaiting them - Europeans coexisted with the natives, but only because they were willing to develop the land the locals thought was too poor to inhabit.
Al-Alemand has become a colonial nation, and Tunisia has lost a few of its more... weedy holdings. Mali continues its gradual expansion, and Mewar doesn't know whether it's rising or falling. Outside the Americas and my immediate field of play, though, borders have been very static. I'd say that this is the main weakness of WAMMO, if anything - the AI is too restrained.
My current plan for the massive war I've been hinting at is to organize all the Islamic enemies Byzantium will be facing into a few blocs - like one for Europe, one for Iran, one for the steppes, etc. Since this is supposed to be an all or nothing crusade, I will only negotiate with nations I have occupied the capitals of. After the war, expect big geopolitical changes, followed by the much vaunted tag switch.
With the possible exception of an impending massive pan-Islamic crusade that the time travelers didn't know about yet, Byzantium was humming along quite productively. In fact, if one put their ear to the ground, they could probably hear it - melodic, rhythmic vibrations not entirely unlike machinery.
Of course, you had to be rather close to a church actively performing rites, although there were plenty of those in the empire. And you had to have good hearing. There was also the risk that someone might step on you if you knelt down and put an ear on the ground. And the ground was often dirty. Regardless, Byzantine 'efficiency' still meant that the composers of Orthodox chants had a steady audience.
Thomas V, through Eligos, was still in favor of expanding the reach of the state. The naval bases in Morocco and Majerteen were important, as they opened up entirely new oceans for Byzantine ships to safely explore.
Remember, having a naval base in Morocco means I'll be able to get Colonial Plans much earlier than I otherwise would be able, which means I can pick up useful ideas like Quest for the New World. Having a sea route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans, at least, would be useful to me.
Currently, the Indian Ocean was more tempting to the average Greek than the Atlantic - it had more guaranteed Muslims, but the Indians and Chinese were relatively peaceful, 'civilized' people who were importantly willing to trade with the Christians to their west. Scattered reports of other non-Muslims on the west side of the Atlantic suggested further opportunities for trade, conversion, conquest, and so forth - the usual tools of an empire.
But at the moment, there was no time for that. Faransa had mostly recovered from its crisis at the end of the 15th century, and wanted to slap the Christians around a bit. Approval on both sides was limited.
"Just send a fleet to blockade them and occupy their land as necessary," said the Metropolitan when he received the news. That part was easy, and it was assumed that Faransa would stop once their trade was cut off. It was a common belief, and a justified one, as the Faransis quickly called off their aggression.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia took the 'bait' as expected by attacking the newly freed sheikdom of Funj...
...and drawing the wrath of other Africans, leading to a variety of shenanigans to the south. Mostly, these were uneventful, but it just went to show that the Swahili nation would present a problem to Byzantine interests in the area for some time. They launched several raids on the Islamic holy cities, as well as the colony in Majerteen.
Funj itself quickly dropped out of the war being fought over it. it seemed that the Ethiopians were willing to allow them at least nominal sovereignty for a while. A few months later, Byzantium dropped out of the war, since it was apparent nothing of interest was occurring.
Incidentally, Funj's tech levels are terrible. I think they're what they had when they got annexed, but it seems to be one of the peculiarities of EU3. If you release a nation as your vassal, they get your technology levels (and I think they get your tech group too). If you a force a nation to release another that they'd conquered, they get the technology levels they had when they were annexed.
It seemed that as a result of this war, the Greeks had decided to brand a lot of people as 'war criminals'.
As it was, the tribunes were completely overworked and unable to process people who might've committed real crimes. Thomas V's solution was to expand the courts. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but it seemed to work, and a regulated court system was not the worst thing to hit the nation.
After that, a brief period of quiet, as Byzantium digested its last meal and prepared the next. It seemed that despite the existence of the Armenian buffer nation, there were some Turkmenis unpleasantly close to home in the form of Ak Koyunlu, and that none of the local states had ever been bothered to gobble them up after they lost the protection of the Golden Horde. With ambitions satisfied in the north, difficult to satisfy in the west, and on hold due to treaties in the south, the only way was, of course, to go east.
Needless to say, since Ak Koyunlu was so small, it'd acquired a few jingoistic allies willing to attack anyone who dared threaten it, even if doing so was suicidal. But the war was quickly over with - Iraq probably suffered the most as it was forced to pay reparations in lieu of anyone else. Back to peace. Conversions rolled in, Byzantine scientists worked on building new ship designs to brave the open oceans, and so forth. Unfortunately, they weren't very good designs. Byzantium still relied heavily on galleys with human propulsion to handle its ships, and that was just not going to work for oceanic travel; there was talk of buying new ones from the Djatans. Like clockwork though, Djata Kurafa launched another "Warpath" against Scotland, and again like clockwork Byzantium moved to put this down.
Like the last time, Djatan shipping was severely disrupted for a few weeks.
In general, it seemed Byzantium was in the middle of an age of small conflicts. In February 1583, a Byzantine noble (Saul Komnenos) made a huge fuss about being kicked off his island estate in Lesbos. Thomas V sent him a letter claiming that Byzantium formally had no jurisdiction there, to which the nobleman complained about the actual owner of that island (the Catholic papacy) being flagrantly not Greek Orthodox.
This nobleman simply used his money to bribe a nearby Greek regiment into invading and occupying the islands.
At this, the Metropolitan rolled his eyes... and allowed it. The Papal raids took some time to finish. On the island of Lesbos, the Catholics had built up colossal fortifications in a desperate attempt to stave off invasion. To be fair, it had worked for quite some time, but only because the Orthodox giants of the realm dissuaded any real threats. When one of them withdrew their favor, the results could be unpleasant.
Now, Saul Komnenos had conquered the land he technically owned, and his ambitions expanded. He started buying land and businesses at a colossal rate on the Anatolian peninsula (which was well on its way to being Byzantine heartlands again). Simply by collecting rent on the land he owned, Saul was very soon on his way to becoming the richest man in Byzantium, perhaps intending to buy the empire. His chances, to say the least, were quite good for a while. Naturally, this meant that Eligos (being the ambitious fellow he was) kept a close eye on the nobleman.
At this point, Byzantium was also in the process of expanding its East African presence, as some colonists in the area moved south. Saul Komnenos wanted to get in on this, and started throwing money into the general vicinity, reasoning that control of East Africa would eventually lead to control of India. That might've been a mistake on his part, as the government of the empire wanted to keep those lands under their control. On the other hand, he might've been able to power through it with even more money, were it not for the fact he woke up one day to find a corpse with a bloody knife in its head staring at him from the doorway of his room.
It wasn't anyone he knew, but given the offensive odor and pallid complexion, it wasn't anyone he wanted to know. Regardless, its very existence represented a threat to him, so once he got over his initial shock he made plans to dispose of it. He'd barely brought the body to the local staircase when he found another unknown murder victim in the doorway to his bathroom. This one was looking at him with utter horror on its face (or at least it was posed to look like it). At this point, any plans Saul had for protecting his name were gone - as he made his way through the rooms of his house, he found more bodies in increasingly bizarre positions - one appeared to be begging for mercy, one was caught in the process of trying to drag himself across the floor, three were playing some sort of card game. The last one Saul found before well trained Greek policemen descended on his home and legally abducted him was holding a memo calling for some sort of merchant driven takeover of Byzantium. Why hadn't he thought of that?
It took quite a while for the story of Saul Komnenos' unfortunate, debauchery driven demise to reach Constantinople, but when it did, it created all sorts of havoc in the financial center of the city. Merchants were deported en masse, along with their families and servants. A few retreated to the Ukraine (which was really not much more than a smaller, cuter version of Byzantium), but most of them ended up in Ethiopia, putting them close to the action in India.
"Let me guess, Eligos. You're directly responsible for this," Alexander said one day as merchants were being given trials of a sort, although he was fairly certain of the answer he'd get.
"Fact: Sometimes the usual machinations bore me. With access to the future still cut off, this seemed like the best solution."
In other words, Saul Komnenos was gone because Eligos had felt a twinge of ennui, and he had taken several thousand men from all swathes of Byzantine society with him in his death throes. There was some vaguely defined hope that the merchants would eventually return with even greater riches (which they would use to bribe their way back into the country), and that was the only reason anyone tolerated the economic disruption he'd created.
I enacted the level 10 Naval technology version of Colonial Plans. Fun, right? The merchants repopulated quickly, at least.
The merchant "expedition" first traveled to India, which was known to be prosperous. This meant, for the locals, a sudden influx of Greeks that they had trouble dealing with. After a while, the Greek expedition decided it wasn't very big on Hindus, and made plans to take some land for themselves. The expedition bought off one of the local petty princes for what (to him) was a gigantic amount of cash, and slowly began replacing his bureaucracy with their own people. When the local Maratha Empire figured out what the local Greeks decided to do, they sent an ultimatum to Byzantium demanding the reinstatement of Venad's original government. Thomas V didn't like being talked to like that, so he simply declared a crusade.
This might not've been such a great idea, since the Marathas were actually more technologically advanced than Byzantium and were much more able to bring troops into the area.
Religious and cultural tensions really do cut into my income. While this has become less painful in recent years, Byzantium is still not a technological marvel.
On the other side of the world, The increasingly Christianized Arabs of the Levant and Egypt were adopting to rule under Byzantium. As they became docile and harmless, they began reporting more of their taxable income.In the midst of this, the ever weaker Mamluks decided that this meant they could take back the entirety of the lands they had lost to Byzantium over the last 150 years and declared their own crusade the moment their official truce with Byzantium expired.
The problem, of course, wasn't so much them as their allies - the Magyars and Alemanni wanted an excuse to attack Byzantium and Ruma, and took the opportunity.
In light of this, Byzantium decided to buy off the Marathas so it could more easily focus on its domestic war. This meant that Byzantium could focus the forty to fifty thousand troops it needed to besiege Mamluk garrisons on the Mamluks, as opposed to some jingoistic Hindu state.
Meanwhile, with Mediterranean supremacy, Al-Alemand and Magyaristan could not protect the Mamluks, so they raided Byzantium's hinterland out of spite. Anything more could've provoked aggression - considering that Magyaristan had once had its own time traveler in the government, the nationals were aware of what could happen to a nation pushed to the breaking point while it still had one or more's favor. The last time that had happened, Jochi had collapsed.
As a result of this nonintervention and limited warfare to their north, the Mamluks were forced to pay their worst peace yet.
To celebrate, Thomas V had the state give some more money to the Greek expedition in India, who used it to further organize their business.
When he received a significant sum back, he invested that as well into imperialist concerns - amongst other things, a voyage to find passage around Africa. In the end, it became apparent that at least one branch of the Basileous family had survived the unpleasantness of the last coup - Diogenes, who claimed he didn't have a single drop of Scottish blood in him, was the one who ended up getting together the ships for the expedition and acting as its navigator.
"Should we tell him anything?" Alexander asked his companions (who were back to three, since George was still MIA and presumed irritating) when he heard about this.
"Nah, let him find out for himself. It's more fun this way," responded Aedryn.
So news came in of discoveries that the Djatans had already made, but Greeks wanted for themselves. By the middle of 1588, the expedition was seeing first hand what the average Byzantine citizen had only read about in books, or poorly scrawled graffiti on a church wall. Word spread quickly, and within months, the poorer strata of Byzantium were attempting to explore and settle the Americas. They found a strange world awaiting them - Europeans coexisted with the natives, but only because they were willing to develop the land the locals thought was too poor to inhabit.
Al-Alemand has become a colonial nation, and Tunisia has lost a few of its more... weedy holdings. Mali continues its gradual expansion, and Mewar doesn't know whether it's rising or falling. Outside the Americas and my immediate field of play, though, borders have been very static. I'd say that this is the main weakness of WAMMO, if anything - the AI is too restrained.
My current plan for the massive war I've been hinting at is to organize all the Islamic enemies Byzantium will be facing into a few blocs - like one for Europe, one for Iran, one for the steppes, etc. Since this is supposed to be an all or nothing crusade, I will only negotiate with nations I have occupied the capitals of. After the war, expect big geopolitical changes, followed by the much vaunted tag switch.
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I changed my mind about how to handle some aspects of the war; I decided some aspects of it were not as important due to the impending tagshift; as it is, I'm sure the Mediterranean will be able to manage without my intervention.
This seems to be a pretty long and complicated update, most likely a result of the relatively compressed timeframe.
Episode 18: How to Destroy Byzantium Without Really Trying, Part II
It was 1591, and Samarkand was tentatively the new capital of the Islamic world. A few misguided souls believed that the most vigorous city in the Islamic world was Kassel, in the sultanate of al-Alemand, but the people in Samarkand knew it was just a provincial backwater, even if they had never visited. It was here that most of the organized resistance to Byzantium was being planned.
"We must unify our governments in order to present a front against the Greek menace," said the sultan of Baluchistan in a form letter sent to most of the Persian kingdoms (not the Chagatayids, though. They were isolated and weird). As one of the few to gaze upon Muhammad Nejem and take up his cause, he naturally had become one of the regional motivators for the impending war. Naturally, he thought the others, seeing his wisdom, would prostrate themselves before him.
He was wrong. One day, he woke up with a sword at his throat. It wasn't as bad as waking up with the sword inside such, but it was still pretty dire.
"What is this insanity?" he asked his assailant.
"You've been replaced. The locals have conceded to the Timurids, and now it is your turn."
It'd taken years of negotiation, but the Sultan of the Timurids (ironically claiming descent from Chagatai Khan) had managed to convince the other petty monarchs of the region to join his kingdom, albeit with significant internal autonomy. His success had brought lands thought long lost back into the fold of Timur in a single day. Timur himself probably would've approved, even if he questioned the bravery of the diplomats involved in brokering the treaties for not simply conquering their targets.
Other nations weren't so lucky in unifying themselves, but they were at least touched by the pan-Islamic fervor of recent decades. Needless to say, unhappy diplomats began creeping into Constantinople to inform the government that their own governments had declared war.
"Another declaration? Have this man dismembered, and his skull stuffed with bacon and sent back to al-Alemand," Thomas V ordered, rather symptomatically of his declining tolerance of the states at his borders - it definitely had something to do with the crusade forming around him. For a few weeks before the start of proper hostilities, his days devolved into a series of executions. In the middle of it, he went to an unlikely source for advice.
Alexander Phokas, when he heard how many Islamic nations had simultaneously... as close as possible to simultaneously declared a war against Byzantium, took it surprisingly well, even considering his background.
"Let's face it. This could be a lot worse," he told the metropolitan.
"What? How? Do you realize how many people want our blood all of a sudden?" the metropolitan spluttered.
"Yep. It could definitely be worse. More of them, perhaps. Or they could've taken action fifty, or even a hundred years ago. Alternatively, Ruma and Ethiopia might not have stood by us. They did though, so that's good. And I've seen far larger and bloodier wars in my own time, so don't feel too special."
"So what are we going to do? I will not let you stand by and watch as our nation is torn apart by infidels!"
"We're going to talk to Eligos, because he's the one who's interested in this sort of thing."
And so they did.
"Fact: Most of the sultanates are weak and mismanaged. Simply occupying their capitals may be enough to convince them to concede," Eligos suggested. It seemed reasonable, but there was no way to find out except going on the offensive. While Byzantium's major allies were willing to support it, the buffer states of the Ukraine and Armenia were not.
In fact, the Armenian kingdom decided, rather pessimistically, to side with the Islamic bloc in order to potentially gain more territory for itself. On the other hand, the Ukraine had already been at war with the Magyar sultanate prior to this new crusade, so it really boiled down to where the parties in question were directing their aggression.
Either way, the war was quickly separating into theaters. The westernmost (i.e the Maghreb) was perceived to initially be fairly unimportant, after the local Moroccan troops suffered a quick route at Tangiers, while Magyaristan and al-Alemand were (contrary to Chagatayid cultural imperialism) perceived as most likely to cause havoc in a war.
Spies were also a problem - even those who wouldn't directly take up arms against Byzantium were more than willing to interfere with various Byzantine interests throughout the world, including more than one attempt on Thomas V's life.
WAMMO adds several options to the espionage. In this case, you just saw an assassination attempt on my country's ruler. They are expensive and unlikely to work, and when you're discovered it costs you 5 infamy points. This is the absolute first time I've ever seen the AI use the "Assassinate Ruler" option.
Aedryn was sent behind enemy lines to do anything that could potentially disrupt the jihad. When it became apparent that the Chagatai Khanate had fallen into disarray as a result of so many of its men marching off to war, she able to barge into the ruler's palace unnoticed.
"A woman? What are you doing undressed in my chambers?" asked the khan, who was due to cultural norms, a bit confused. A servant moved to shoot her with a convenient musket, but the khan motioned for him to put down his weapon. At that, Aedryn pulled out her gun and vaporized the ruler.
"I'd say something witty, but puns were never my strong point," she quipped.
Ma, come quick! EU3 is being chauvinistic again!
She then idly tossed a grenade at the completely shocked servant, who at least had the mental presence to jump out of a window. Luckily for him, the assassination had taken place on the first floor of the palace.
Meanwhile, Alexander suggested the sale of 'war bonds' to the Metropolitan as a quick way to raise cash.
"We'll have to pay them back, but I'm sure we can take some treasure from the sultans as punishment," he claimed. Luckily, this was mere days into the war, so the average purchaser had not frittered away their money on such things as hoarding. Thomas V was still displeased with the money raised, claiming that the peasantry wasn't taxed enough. Regardless, it seemed Byzantium would need the money - the northern frontier of the nation was beginning to buckle from the combined forces of all Byzantium's enemies.
Armenia turned out to be a bit of a paper tiger (or lion, according to the coat of arms Cassander Argyros had given the nation), and they were let off fairly lightly given the shock of their betrayal. Overall, by October of 1591, Byzantium was in the process of occupying several capitals... but much of their frontier territories were being occupied.
As a result of the rather unfortunate assassination of the Chagatayid khan, Byzantium began receiving peace overtures in massive quantities.
"What? I spit on their regrets! I demand nothing less than the destruction of their countries!" said Thomas to the first one.
"Suggestion: You should at least accept conversions to Christianity," Eligos sneered.
"But they'd be lying!"
"Hypothesis: The other Muslims wouldn't know that."
Yemen was the next to have their capital occupied, and naturally incurred harsher penalties since Thomas V still didn't approve of Islam. This took time, though, and as it happened, the northern states made further advances into Byzantine territory.
Then, terrible news - An Alemanni general won a massive victory in against the Rumi army in the Swiss Alps, and begged the Chagatai khanate for peace. Considering that their main ally and benefactor had won the espionage battle by murdering their khan, Rumi was allowed off with relatively minor terms, but it was enough to strike deep doubts into the Byzantine nation. More importantly, it allowed thousands of slightly more Germanic (or at least Slavic) infidels to swarm over the Byzantine border. When Tunisia and Najd heard about this, they immediately walked out of the neutral negotiation sites they had agreed on (Corsica and Aswan, respectively), although not without trying to murder the local Greek diplomats.
Eventually, in April 1592, Thomas V called an emergency meeting of all his important administrators.
"We need better ways to fight the Islamic menace! Does anyone have any ideas?" he asked.
"Concede," said Alexander, much to his own surprise.
"What."
"When you become so diplomatically hated that half the world tries to destroy you, you're going to have to give a bit of ground, you know?"
"What? Never! Surely we can beat the enemy back!"
"I'd like to think so, but they outnumber us at least 5 to 1, and we won't even be able to keep that ratio given the occupation of important territories in the Balkans and Caucasus."
Reasoning was no use. Thomas V had turned into a frothing mass of fundamentalism.
"I should've known you were the devil, Alexander! Nobody in Byzantium ever concedes to Islam!"
Alexander didn't care that reason was futile.
"We've conceded multiple times, Thomas. It was how we conquered the Mamluks, and the Golden Horde, and much of Mesopotamia, even when all of it was at our throats."
"You speak lies and slander! I ought to kill you on the spot!"
For a moment, Alexander thought Thomas was going to draw a knife or gun on him, leading to some sort of nasty assault. It was not to be, however - the metropolitan instead told his guards to do the nasty work.
"Sir? Alexander has advised our nation for almost 200 years. To kill him would deprive us of one of our crucial strengths," one guard complained, suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, Thomas V should've kept his temper.
"You dare oppose me? You'll die too."
"..."
The tips of the swords in the room were beginning to drift in Thomas V's direction, even when their wielders didn't know it.
"Ultimatum: 28 years is a good run for a metropolitan, but I think it's time you retired," Eligos suddenly interrupted, drawing himself to his full height. Some of the swords were definitely pointed at Thomas V now, although a few had drifted perilously close to Eligos.
"Guards, kill Eligos first. He is clearly the devil's right hand-"
"I don't think you'll be doing that," said a strangely accented voice. A shot rang out, and a red paste flew out of the back of Thomas V's head. He landed on it soon afterwards. The tension in the room dissipated, although a few swords (and a cape with bullet deflecting composite fabrics) had jerked in the direction of the newcomer. Alexander was preoccupied for a moment trying to determine what kind of bullet the metropolitan'd been murdered with. Then he realized it might be better to look at the gun. He peered up - a face from the deep past...
"Luther? I take it you got some sort of superhuman immortality treatment," he said once he'd pieced everything together.
"It took me twenty years to scrounge up the space cash, but yes." Luther Stuart Basileous hadn't changed much, then. He was a bit grayer, but he was also a bit more confident - biological enhancements could do that to a person.
"Right. When did you come back to Byzantium?"
"About 1555, local time. I've been alternatively laying low and having highland adventures in my native Scotland."
"Well, don't get yourself killed. Something went wrong with this universe and we're trying to find a way to get back our time traveling functionality."
"Don't worry about it! I got rid of my timepiece the moment I returned... well, it's probably in a safebox in Aberdeen or something, but whatever."
"I semi-recently met a guy named George who says he's going to try and fix it by making a volcano explode in Peru or something, but I don't think that's going to work."
Needless to, say, Alexander had lost the locals soon after Luther had assassinated the metropolitan. Why Luther hadn't shot at Eligos was something Phokas would have to figure out later.
"Well, I suppose you ought to give him a shot. Ever been to South America? I hear it's full of gold," said Luther.
"Yeah, and Jupiter's core is a gigantic diamond. You can do a lot more with carbon than you can with precious metals."
"Fact: We still are technically at war, and someone needs to administer the country for a brief period. I nominate myself," Eligos interrupted. Apparently, puppetry was something he could add to the ever growing list of things that bored him. Surprisingly, there were no objections from the guards or clerics. Anything would be better than Thomas V after what he'd done.
Eligos was, as a result of this, directly involved in negotiations with the Chagatayids. They'd reduced their demands after Byzantium won some victories in the Caucasus, so they were pleasantly surprised when Eligos offered them back the Muslim holy land.
"Theory: If we let them have their holy cities, they probably will not antagonize us... much."
Either way, this meant the pan-Islamic jihad had succeeded, if only mildly. Throughout the Islamic world, there were those who wanted to continue on and drive Byzantium out of Asia and Africa entirely, but cooler heads began preaching lessons of tolerance and social contracts. It was hard to say whether these would take hold, but the Byzantine Empire would have a long time to recover and face those threats if need be.
It wasn't the end of the peace talks, though. Amongst other things, Armenia was thrown to the dogs, since they had turned on the only country that was really willing to protect them. The Argyros family was humiliated by this. King Cassander wasn't so lucky - he'd been thrown into a dank prison cell somewhere in Georgia and underfed until he stopped complaining, moving, or doing much of anything except turning into a pile of bones.
Since the newly expanded Timurid lands were essential in the liberation of Mecca, it was setting a precedent for large unified nation states - one that the newly liberated Hijazi tribes wanted to take advantage of. After a few referendums and some noncommittal remarks from Eligos, the Arabian sultanates agreed to the Timurid example and declared themselves the Republic of Arabia. Clearly, the half century of Byzantine occupation had allowed some Greco-Roman ideas about liberty and representation to spread to the area.
Aedryn returned from her assassination mission a few days after the negotiations ended and the geopolitical situation 'stabilized'.
"I took a scenic route back. What'd I miss?" she asked. Her eyes seemed slightly glazed - the disruption she'd caused had probably brought her some pleasure, and perhaps kept the Islamic world from demanding more territories from Byzantium.
"We're ditching," responded Luther, which prompted a round of explanations.
"Where are we going?"
"South America. Eligos just wants to spite the Islamic world first."
And so, for a few weeks, Alexander and friends puttered around in Byzantium while Eligos spoke with the Rumi government about the recent war. Apparently, things weren't as successful as desired, though, as weeks turned into months. Alexander gradually turned over control of Dolarasteron to an enthusiastic, Christianized Arab with known coffee growing connections in what used to be Yemen's heartland.
Finally, though, in December of 1592, Eligos announced that they were no longer needed in Byzantium.
"Warning: I had to make some weird concessions, but they won't matter if we leave quickly," he said. They were quick to pack, and had just left the metropolitan's palace when they heard an Italian sounding fanfare.
"You gave Greece over to the Rumis?" Luther asked.
"Correction: I gave all of Byzantium over to them. The Greeks might not like it, but they're in no condition to resist."
"Well, I doubt it'll last long."
From Greece, it would take the group about two months to sail to South America. If the travelers were familiar with the geography and a bit of the recent history due to Byzantine colonization efforts, they certainly had no idea what matter of society awaited them. Meanwhile, Eligos had given Byzantium over to the Romans, creating a cruel echo of that nation's glory days.
When the travelers arrived in South America, in March 1593, what they found was what could only be properly described as a "nation under construction".
You'll get to find out what I've done with this new nation in the next gameplay update. There will be a time jump of an undetermined length (probably about a year or two), since all the editing I've done might cause some bugs. Needless to say, the newly expanded Greco-Roman monarchy would probably be able to declare war on it and annex it very easily if they so wished to at this point. I may produce some national statistics beforehand.
This seems to be a pretty long and complicated update, most likely a result of the relatively compressed timeframe.
Episode 18: How to Destroy Byzantium Without Really Trying, Part II
It was 1591, and Samarkand was tentatively the new capital of the Islamic world. A few misguided souls believed that the most vigorous city in the Islamic world was Kassel, in the sultanate of al-Alemand, but the people in Samarkand knew it was just a provincial backwater, even if they had never visited. It was here that most of the organized resistance to Byzantium was being planned.
"We must unify our governments in order to present a front against the Greek menace," said the sultan of Baluchistan in a form letter sent to most of the Persian kingdoms (not the Chagatayids, though. They were isolated and weird). As one of the few to gaze upon Muhammad Nejem and take up his cause, he naturally had become one of the regional motivators for the impending war. Naturally, he thought the others, seeing his wisdom, would prostrate themselves before him.
He was wrong. One day, he woke up with a sword at his throat. It wasn't as bad as waking up with the sword inside such, but it was still pretty dire.
"What is this insanity?" he asked his assailant.
"You've been replaced. The locals have conceded to the Timurids, and now it is your turn."
It'd taken years of negotiation, but the Sultan of the Timurids (ironically claiming descent from Chagatai Khan) had managed to convince the other petty monarchs of the region to join his kingdom, albeit with significant internal autonomy. His success had brought lands thought long lost back into the fold of Timur in a single day. Timur himself probably would've approved, even if he questioned the bravery of the diplomats involved in brokering the treaties for not simply conquering their targets.
Other nations weren't so lucky in unifying themselves, but they were at least touched by the pan-Islamic fervor of recent decades. Needless to say, unhappy diplomats began creeping into Constantinople to inform the government that their own governments had declared war.
"Another declaration? Have this man dismembered, and his skull stuffed with bacon and sent back to al-Alemand," Thomas V ordered, rather symptomatically of his declining tolerance of the states at his borders - it definitely had something to do with the crusade forming around him. For a few weeks before the start of proper hostilities, his days devolved into a series of executions. In the middle of it, he went to an unlikely source for advice.
Alexander Phokas, when he heard how many Islamic nations had simultaneously... as close as possible to simultaneously declared a war against Byzantium, took it surprisingly well, even considering his background.
"Let's face it. This could be a lot worse," he told the metropolitan.
"What? How? Do you realize how many people want our blood all of a sudden?" the metropolitan spluttered.
"Yep. It could definitely be worse. More of them, perhaps. Or they could've taken action fifty, or even a hundred years ago. Alternatively, Ruma and Ethiopia might not have stood by us. They did though, so that's good. And I've seen far larger and bloodier wars in my own time, so don't feel too special."
"So what are we going to do? I will not let you stand by and watch as our nation is torn apart by infidels!"
"We're going to talk to Eligos, because he's the one who's interested in this sort of thing."
And so they did.
"Fact: Most of the sultanates are weak and mismanaged. Simply occupying their capitals may be enough to convince them to concede," Eligos suggested. It seemed reasonable, but there was no way to find out except going on the offensive. While Byzantium's major allies were willing to support it, the buffer states of the Ukraine and Armenia were not.
In fact, the Armenian kingdom decided, rather pessimistically, to side with the Islamic bloc in order to potentially gain more territory for itself. On the other hand, the Ukraine had already been at war with the Magyar sultanate prior to this new crusade, so it really boiled down to where the parties in question were directing their aggression.
Either way, the war was quickly separating into theaters. The westernmost (i.e the Maghreb) was perceived to initially be fairly unimportant, after the local Moroccan troops suffered a quick route at Tangiers, while Magyaristan and al-Alemand were (contrary to Chagatayid cultural imperialism) perceived as most likely to cause havoc in a war.
Spies were also a problem - even those who wouldn't directly take up arms against Byzantium were more than willing to interfere with various Byzantine interests throughout the world, including more than one attempt on Thomas V's life.
WAMMO adds several options to the espionage. In this case, you just saw an assassination attempt on my country's ruler. They are expensive and unlikely to work, and when you're discovered it costs you 5 infamy points. This is the absolute first time I've ever seen the AI use the "Assassinate Ruler" option.
Aedryn was sent behind enemy lines to do anything that could potentially disrupt the jihad. When it became apparent that the Chagatai Khanate had fallen into disarray as a result of so many of its men marching off to war, she able to barge into the ruler's palace unnoticed.
"A woman? What are you doing undressed in my chambers?" asked the khan, who was due to cultural norms, a bit confused. A servant moved to shoot her with a convenient musket, but the khan motioned for him to put down his weapon. At that, Aedryn pulled out her gun and vaporized the ruler.
"I'd say something witty, but puns were never my strong point," she quipped.
Ma, come quick! EU3 is being chauvinistic again!
She then idly tossed a grenade at the completely shocked servant, who at least had the mental presence to jump out of a window. Luckily for him, the assassination had taken place on the first floor of the palace.
Meanwhile, Alexander suggested the sale of 'war bonds' to the Metropolitan as a quick way to raise cash.
"We'll have to pay them back, but I'm sure we can take some treasure from the sultans as punishment," he claimed. Luckily, this was mere days into the war, so the average purchaser had not frittered away their money on such things as hoarding. Thomas V was still displeased with the money raised, claiming that the peasantry wasn't taxed enough. Regardless, it seemed Byzantium would need the money - the northern frontier of the nation was beginning to buckle from the combined forces of all Byzantium's enemies.
Armenia turned out to be a bit of a paper tiger (or lion, according to the coat of arms Cassander Argyros had given the nation), and they were let off fairly lightly given the shock of their betrayal. Overall, by October of 1591, Byzantium was in the process of occupying several capitals... but much of their frontier territories were being occupied.
As a result of the rather unfortunate assassination of the Chagatayid khan, Byzantium began receiving peace overtures in massive quantities.
"What? I spit on their regrets! I demand nothing less than the destruction of their countries!" said Thomas to the first one.
"Suggestion: You should at least accept conversions to Christianity," Eligos sneered.
"But they'd be lying!"
"Hypothesis: The other Muslims wouldn't know that."
Yemen was the next to have their capital occupied, and naturally incurred harsher penalties since Thomas V still didn't approve of Islam. This took time, though, and as it happened, the northern states made further advances into Byzantine territory.
Then, terrible news - An Alemanni general won a massive victory in against the Rumi army in the Swiss Alps, and begged the Chagatai khanate for peace. Considering that their main ally and benefactor had won the espionage battle by murdering their khan, Rumi was allowed off with relatively minor terms, but it was enough to strike deep doubts into the Byzantine nation. More importantly, it allowed thousands of slightly more Germanic (or at least Slavic) infidels to swarm over the Byzantine border. When Tunisia and Najd heard about this, they immediately walked out of the neutral negotiation sites they had agreed on (Corsica and Aswan, respectively), although not without trying to murder the local Greek diplomats.
Eventually, in April 1592, Thomas V called an emergency meeting of all his important administrators.
"We need better ways to fight the Islamic menace! Does anyone have any ideas?" he asked.
"Concede," said Alexander, much to his own surprise.
"What."
"When you become so diplomatically hated that half the world tries to destroy you, you're going to have to give a bit of ground, you know?"
"What? Never! Surely we can beat the enemy back!"
"I'd like to think so, but they outnumber us at least 5 to 1, and we won't even be able to keep that ratio given the occupation of important territories in the Balkans and Caucasus."
Reasoning was no use. Thomas V had turned into a frothing mass of fundamentalism.
"I should've known you were the devil, Alexander! Nobody in Byzantium ever concedes to Islam!"
Alexander didn't care that reason was futile.
"We've conceded multiple times, Thomas. It was how we conquered the Mamluks, and the Golden Horde, and much of Mesopotamia, even when all of it was at our throats."
"You speak lies and slander! I ought to kill you on the spot!"
For a moment, Alexander thought Thomas was going to draw a knife or gun on him, leading to some sort of nasty assault. It was not to be, however - the metropolitan instead told his guards to do the nasty work.
"Sir? Alexander has advised our nation for almost 200 years. To kill him would deprive us of one of our crucial strengths," one guard complained, suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, Thomas V should've kept his temper.
"You dare oppose me? You'll die too."
"..."
The tips of the swords in the room were beginning to drift in Thomas V's direction, even when their wielders didn't know it.
"Ultimatum: 28 years is a good run for a metropolitan, but I think it's time you retired," Eligos suddenly interrupted, drawing himself to his full height. Some of the swords were definitely pointed at Thomas V now, although a few had drifted perilously close to Eligos.
"Guards, kill Eligos first. He is clearly the devil's right hand-"
"I don't think you'll be doing that," said a strangely accented voice. A shot rang out, and a red paste flew out of the back of Thomas V's head. He landed on it soon afterwards. The tension in the room dissipated, although a few swords (and a cape with bullet deflecting composite fabrics) had jerked in the direction of the newcomer. Alexander was preoccupied for a moment trying to determine what kind of bullet the metropolitan'd been murdered with. Then he realized it might be better to look at the gun. He peered up - a face from the deep past...
"Luther? I take it you got some sort of superhuman immortality treatment," he said once he'd pieced everything together.
"It took me twenty years to scrounge up the space cash, but yes." Luther Stuart Basileous hadn't changed much, then. He was a bit grayer, but he was also a bit more confident - biological enhancements could do that to a person.
"Right. When did you come back to Byzantium?"
"About 1555, local time. I've been alternatively laying low and having highland adventures in my native Scotland."
"Well, don't get yourself killed. Something went wrong with this universe and we're trying to find a way to get back our time traveling functionality."
"Don't worry about it! I got rid of my timepiece the moment I returned... well, it's probably in a safebox in Aberdeen or something, but whatever."
"I semi-recently met a guy named George who says he's going to try and fix it by making a volcano explode in Peru or something, but I don't think that's going to work."
Needless to, say, Alexander had lost the locals soon after Luther had assassinated the metropolitan. Why Luther hadn't shot at Eligos was something Phokas would have to figure out later.
"Well, I suppose you ought to give him a shot. Ever been to South America? I hear it's full of gold," said Luther.
"Yeah, and Jupiter's core is a gigantic diamond. You can do a lot more with carbon than you can with precious metals."
"Fact: We still are technically at war, and someone needs to administer the country for a brief period. I nominate myself," Eligos interrupted. Apparently, puppetry was something he could add to the ever growing list of things that bored him. Surprisingly, there were no objections from the guards or clerics. Anything would be better than Thomas V after what he'd done.
Eligos was, as a result of this, directly involved in negotiations with the Chagatayids. They'd reduced their demands after Byzantium won some victories in the Caucasus, so they were pleasantly surprised when Eligos offered them back the Muslim holy land.
"Theory: If we let them have their holy cities, they probably will not antagonize us... much."
Either way, this meant the pan-Islamic jihad had succeeded, if only mildly. Throughout the Islamic world, there were those who wanted to continue on and drive Byzantium out of Asia and Africa entirely, but cooler heads began preaching lessons of tolerance and social contracts. It was hard to say whether these would take hold, but the Byzantine Empire would have a long time to recover and face those threats if need be.
It wasn't the end of the peace talks, though. Amongst other things, Armenia was thrown to the dogs, since they had turned on the only country that was really willing to protect them. The Argyros family was humiliated by this. King Cassander wasn't so lucky - he'd been thrown into a dank prison cell somewhere in Georgia and underfed until he stopped complaining, moving, or doing much of anything except turning into a pile of bones.
Since the newly expanded Timurid lands were essential in the liberation of Mecca, it was setting a precedent for large unified nation states - one that the newly liberated Hijazi tribes wanted to take advantage of. After a few referendums and some noncommittal remarks from Eligos, the Arabian sultanates agreed to the Timurid example and declared themselves the Republic of Arabia. Clearly, the half century of Byzantine occupation had allowed some Greco-Roman ideas about liberty and representation to spread to the area.
Aedryn returned from her assassination mission a few days after the negotiations ended and the geopolitical situation 'stabilized'.
"I took a scenic route back. What'd I miss?" she asked. Her eyes seemed slightly glazed - the disruption she'd caused had probably brought her some pleasure, and perhaps kept the Islamic world from demanding more territories from Byzantium.
"We're ditching," responded Luther, which prompted a round of explanations.
"Where are we going?"
"South America. Eligos just wants to spite the Islamic world first."
And so, for a few weeks, Alexander and friends puttered around in Byzantium while Eligos spoke with the Rumi government about the recent war. Apparently, things weren't as successful as desired, though, as weeks turned into months. Alexander gradually turned over control of Dolarasteron to an enthusiastic, Christianized Arab with known coffee growing connections in what used to be Yemen's heartland.
Finally, though, in December of 1592, Eligos announced that they were no longer needed in Byzantium.
"Warning: I had to make some weird concessions, but they won't matter if we leave quickly," he said. They were quick to pack, and had just left the metropolitan's palace when they heard an Italian sounding fanfare.
"You gave Greece over to the Rumis?" Luther asked.
"Correction: I gave all of Byzantium over to them. The Greeks might not like it, but they're in no condition to resist."
"Well, I doubt it'll last long."
From Greece, it would take the group about two months to sail to South America. If the travelers were familiar with the geography and a bit of the recent history due to Byzantine colonization efforts, they certainly had no idea what matter of society awaited them. Meanwhile, Eligos had given Byzantium over to the Romans, creating a cruel echo of that nation's glory days.
When the travelers arrived in South America, in March 1593, what they found was what could only be properly described as a "nation under construction".
You'll get to find out what I've done with this new nation in the next gameplay update. There will be a time jump of an undetermined length (probably about a year or two), since all the editing I've done might cause some bugs. Needless to say, the newly expanded Greco-Roman monarchy would probably be able to declare war on it and annex it very easily if they so wished to at this point. I may produce some national statistics beforehand.
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If I'd delayed my tag shift until most countries hit Government 30 (the condition to get the 'Imperialism' CB in WAMMO, which only works for people outside your tech group), this AAR would be pretty different.
Anyways, for the rest of this AAR, I'm basically playing as a Byzantine/Rumi colony with funny ideas about how much autonomy it deserves.
Episode 18.5: The Role Of Nostalgia Freaks in International Politics
It was, perhaps by a stroke of luck that Byzantium had gotten a foothold in South America. The western side of the country was dominated by petty kingdoms squabbling for control of the rich Andean gold fields, while in the east, the natives of the Amazon basin sought to mediate the influence of Europeans, or at least harness it for their own use. They'd gotten used to colonialism when the people of the Caribbean began setting up outposts and slaving and whatnot.
Argentina, though, was slightly different. It was mostly flat and temperate, which made it good for farming. Unfortunately for natives seeking to exploit this, the crops that thrived in this sort of environment had only barely been introduced to the area by the time Greek settlers started clambering in because "Dude, it's the New World. Take your plow and make a fortune!" and other bits of rhetoric that were a horrendous dishonor to Greece. Colonization had accelerated after the humiliation of the pan-Islamic jihad, but since Byzantium had no idea how to properly run a large overseas colony (The princely state of Venad was basically a merchant republic with a king, and the exarchate of Morocco didn't count), many of the potential settlers died on the way, more died trying to eke out plantations, and so forth. Those who remained often began to wish they had died on their ships.
Eventually, the natives of the region took pity on the obviously primitive peoples of the area who clearly didn't know how to farm or hunt or craft or do anything, and (after a few unpleasant slaughters and forced conversions) began helping them out of pure generosity and kindness. And so, the colonies really began to thrive, with plenty of internal trade keeping things healthy and vigorous.
One slight problem - Romanization happened. While most of Byzantium grudgingly accepted a fullish restoration of the ancient empire, the people of what was increasingly being called La Plata (because the Spanish speaking immigrants owned all the good land) weren't interested in that. On the other hand, Ruma had the resources of two large, wealthy empires to work with, and a punitive fleet was brought into subdue the natives. When the leader of this punitive fleet saw the delta of the La Plata River, and the small settlement that had sprung up near it, though, he had second thoughts.
"Turn back. This land isn't worth conquering," he told his helmsman.
"Ferdinand, have you gone insane?" responded the helmsman, rather sensibly.
"The colonists complain, but there's perhaps a few hundred people here... we'll head up the coast to Panama, then march until we reach the rich lands of the Quechua states, and conquer those instead. It's not like the natives there can put up resistance to our modern weaponry. Then, we'll use the gold to bribe the colonists into joining the Rumi cause."
"..."
"You can't resist the glory of my idea, can you?"
"...no, I can't."
Needless to say, they were all quickly slaughtered by well drilled Nazca infantry.
A second boat left some months later with intent to inform the Platinese colony of its newly acquired independence. Alexander and friends had booked passage on it, with some difficulty. Amongst other things, they'd had to convince the king of Ruma that he could manage without their advice - such had been mostly Luther's doing. He'd walked into the king's palace in Rome and given a long speech about the development of Byzantium's administration, disciplined military, vibrant internal trade, matters of statecraft that would make any king proud.
It was all true, and it'd lead the king to give his blessing. But none of the travelers actually thought he was up to the task of managing two empires - Ruma had never been as exceptional as its eastern counterpart. Outside their core Italian holdings, Ruma had gained a small piece of southern Germany, and the poorer parts of Spain. That was about it, and it was rather mediocre legacy.
"50 years, and that's my final estimate," Luther said when it looked like part of the group wanted to know how long he thought it'd last. By then, they'd been traveling for about 4 days upon what (for the late 16th century) was a surprisingly nice ship. Sure, it was leaky, and there a bunch of odd smells, but the Puritans would've attended a play for it... if there were any in this universe.
"You're such an optimist. I'd give them 20 years before they collapse," responded Aedryn. "And I'd probably be a part of that if we weren't ditching them."
"If you hate Byzantium so much, why didn't you destroy it earlier?"
"Phokas would complain."
"I'd probably just jump over a universe or so instead, not that it's an option right now," Alexander opined in response to his behavior being predicted.
Silence, with the exception of the occasional boat noise. Some of these were very disturbing - the crackling, the popping, the snapping...
"So what is this Greek colony like?"
"It's a wasteland."
Unlike the boats, the maps on hand were wretched. In an attempt to inflate old Thomas V's ego, the cartographer had portrayed La Plata's territories as much larger than they really were. The problem was mainly that local control didn't extend much past the towns and trading posts the colonists had set up. Another problem was that it lacked adequate information on the development of foreign colonies, although Byzantium had known a decent amount about the more civilized natives.
"On the other hand," Alexander continued after explaining the map situation, "it promises to be a bit less oppressive than Byzantium was. I've heard rumors of a vibrant merchant class."
"Remind me why we left Byzantium in the first place."
"It had something to do with that one guy..."
"Summary: The one who calls himself George promised to break the time barrier for us by setting off a gigantic volcano in Peru," interrupted Eligos, who clearly had a better memory for this sort of thing.
"That sounds ill advised. We'll have to stop him," Aedryn responded after a moment. Everyone in the cabin looked at her as if she'd set the boat on fire.
"If we don't stop him, we ourselves might die." No response.
"If we die in this world, we die for good!"
"Aedryn, what happened to killing people yourself?" asked Luther.
"That's another thing - a supervolcano would take away my right to decide who lives and who dies."
"We'll probably have to invade Peru to keep him from carrying out his plan."
"Even better."
Newly founded Ruma is the wealthiest nation in a world by a long shot, and this is even with its recent stability hits, and few of its merchants placed. La Plata is not yet so fortunate.
However, the minor nations of Genoa and Iceland are very competitive from an income stance due to their trade. Since South America isn't nearly as prosperous as Greece and Turkey, I'll be relying on trade for a greater portion of my income than I did as Byzantium.
It really should go to show how successful Magyaristan and Al-Alemand have been; probably because I've mostly left them alone. Faransa, on the other hand, is a significant success story as well, since they managed to mostly recover from the 80 infamy penalty I gave them.
A map of the world follows. Besides the newly expanded Ruma, Timurids, and Arabia, very little has changed (it's only been two years in game), yet I figured it might help people visualize the sweeping changes that have happened.
Things have been relatively bug-free during the in-game prep period, so gameplay episodes should continue as normal as long as everything in my life works as intended. The sudden change of venue (and national philosophy) should shake things up nicely, and I'm interested in seeing if Ruma can handle the empire I gave them.
Anyways, for the rest of this AAR, I'm basically playing as a Byzantine/Rumi colony with funny ideas about how much autonomy it deserves.
Episode 18.5: The Role Of Nostalgia Freaks in International Politics
It was, perhaps by a stroke of luck that Byzantium had gotten a foothold in South America. The western side of the country was dominated by petty kingdoms squabbling for control of the rich Andean gold fields, while in the east, the natives of the Amazon basin sought to mediate the influence of Europeans, or at least harness it for their own use. They'd gotten used to colonialism when the people of the Caribbean began setting up outposts and slaving and whatnot.
Argentina, though, was slightly different. It was mostly flat and temperate, which made it good for farming. Unfortunately for natives seeking to exploit this, the crops that thrived in this sort of environment had only barely been introduced to the area by the time Greek settlers started clambering in because "Dude, it's the New World. Take your plow and make a fortune!" and other bits of rhetoric that were a horrendous dishonor to Greece. Colonization had accelerated after the humiliation of the pan-Islamic jihad, but since Byzantium had no idea how to properly run a large overseas colony (The princely state of Venad was basically a merchant republic with a king, and the exarchate of Morocco didn't count), many of the potential settlers died on the way, more died trying to eke out plantations, and so forth. Those who remained often began to wish they had died on their ships.
Eventually, the natives of the region took pity on the obviously primitive peoples of the area who clearly didn't know how to farm or hunt or craft or do anything, and (after a few unpleasant slaughters and forced conversions) began helping them out of pure generosity and kindness. And so, the colonies really began to thrive, with plenty of internal trade keeping things healthy and vigorous.
One slight problem - Romanization happened. While most of Byzantium grudgingly accepted a fullish restoration of the ancient empire, the people of what was increasingly being called La Plata (because the Spanish speaking immigrants owned all the good land) weren't interested in that. On the other hand, Ruma had the resources of two large, wealthy empires to work with, and a punitive fleet was brought into subdue the natives. When the leader of this punitive fleet saw the delta of the La Plata River, and the small settlement that had sprung up near it, though, he had second thoughts.
"Turn back. This land isn't worth conquering," he told his helmsman.
"Ferdinand, have you gone insane?" responded the helmsman, rather sensibly.
"The colonists complain, but there's perhaps a few hundred people here... we'll head up the coast to Panama, then march until we reach the rich lands of the Quechua states, and conquer those instead. It's not like the natives there can put up resistance to our modern weaponry. Then, we'll use the gold to bribe the colonists into joining the Rumi cause."
"..."
"You can't resist the glory of my idea, can you?"
"...no, I can't."
Needless to say, they were all quickly slaughtered by well drilled Nazca infantry.
A second boat left some months later with intent to inform the Platinese colony of its newly acquired independence. Alexander and friends had booked passage on it, with some difficulty. Amongst other things, they'd had to convince the king of Ruma that he could manage without their advice - such had been mostly Luther's doing. He'd walked into the king's palace in Rome and given a long speech about the development of Byzantium's administration, disciplined military, vibrant internal trade, matters of statecraft that would make any king proud.
It was all true, and it'd lead the king to give his blessing. But none of the travelers actually thought he was up to the task of managing two empires - Ruma had never been as exceptional as its eastern counterpart. Outside their core Italian holdings, Ruma had gained a small piece of southern Germany, and the poorer parts of Spain. That was about it, and it was rather mediocre legacy.
"50 years, and that's my final estimate," Luther said when it looked like part of the group wanted to know how long he thought it'd last. By then, they'd been traveling for about 4 days upon what (for the late 16th century) was a surprisingly nice ship. Sure, it was leaky, and there a bunch of odd smells, but the Puritans would've attended a play for it... if there were any in this universe.
"You're such an optimist. I'd give them 20 years before they collapse," responded Aedryn. "And I'd probably be a part of that if we weren't ditching them."
"If you hate Byzantium so much, why didn't you destroy it earlier?"
"Phokas would complain."
"I'd probably just jump over a universe or so instead, not that it's an option right now," Alexander opined in response to his behavior being predicted.
Silence, with the exception of the occasional boat noise. Some of these were very disturbing - the crackling, the popping, the snapping...
"So what is this Greek colony like?"
"It's a wasteland."
Unlike the boats, the maps on hand were wretched. In an attempt to inflate old Thomas V's ego, the cartographer had portrayed La Plata's territories as much larger than they really were. The problem was mainly that local control didn't extend much past the towns and trading posts the colonists had set up. Another problem was that it lacked adequate information on the development of foreign colonies, although Byzantium had known a decent amount about the more civilized natives.
"On the other hand," Alexander continued after explaining the map situation, "it promises to be a bit less oppressive than Byzantium was. I've heard rumors of a vibrant merchant class."
"Remind me why we left Byzantium in the first place."
"It had something to do with that one guy..."
"Summary: The one who calls himself George promised to break the time barrier for us by setting off a gigantic volcano in Peru," interrupted Eligos, who clearly had a better memory for this sort of thing.
"That sounds ill advised. We'll have to stop him," Aedryn responded after a moment. Everyone in the cabin looked at her as if she'd set the boat on fire.
"If we don't stop him, we ourselves might die." No response.
"If we die in this world, we die for good!"
"Aedryn, what happened to killing people yourself?" asked Luther.
"That's another thing - a supervolcano would take away my right to decide who lives and who dies."
"We'll probably have to invade Peru to keep him from carrying out his plan."
"Even better."
Newly founded Ruma is the wealthiest nation in a world by a long shot, and this is even with its recent stability hits, and few of its merchants placed. La Plata is not yet so fortunate.
However, the minor nations of Genoa and Iceland are very competitive from an income stance due to their trade. Since South America isn't nearly as prosperous as Greece and Turkey, I'll be relying on trade for a greater portion of my income than I did as Byzantium.
It really should go to show how successful Magyaristan and Al-Alemand have been; probably because I've mostly left them alone. Faransa, on the other hand, is a significant success story as well, since they managed to mostly recover from the 80 infamy penalty I gave them.
A map of the world follows. Besides the newly expanded Ruma, Timurids, and Arabia, very little has changed (it's only been two years in game), yet I figured it might help people visualize the sweeping changes that have happened.
Things have been relatively bug-free during the in-game prep period, so gameplay episodes should continue as normal as long as everything in my life works as intended. The sudden change of venue (and national philosophy) should shake things up nicely, and I'm interested in seeing if Ruma can handle the empire I gave them.
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Monday's scheduled update (April 29th) is being postponed. I have two detailed research papers that I need to complete soon (one is on nationalism in 19th century Hungary/Budapest, and the other is on intellectual property in a computing context). They should be done in time for the next scheduled update (May 6th), so unless something further academic turns up, another installment should be available then.
To be fair, the first research paper is giving me some ideas for Victoria II AARs, so when I'm done with this one, I might try my hand at that. Here's a list of my current AAR ideas; all names and approaches are tentative:
- "Death to False Metal" - EU3/WAMMO with Hesse; a full blown comedy AAR celebrating heavy metal music with a potentially heavy emphasis on conquest. Alternatively, I could play as as a pagan nation in Miscmods/WAMMO's "Shattered Europe" scenario - probably one of the Scandinavian ones, or Lithuania.
- "Century Child" - Victoria II HOD with an unknown nation. A relatively serious AAR focusing on the life of some unfortunate, long lived underling in an as of yet undecided nation.
- "Balkanize Me" - Another Victoria II HOD AAR - somewhat experimental and gameplay oriented in nature: Force all AI countries through war and/or crises to free as many nations as possible. Potential choices for nations to play as boil down to countries with relatively few releasable nations, like Spain and France.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
To be fair, the first research paper is giving me some ideas for Victoria II AARs, so when I'm done with this one, I might try my hand at that. Here's a list of my current AAR ideas; all names and approaches are tentative:
- "Death to False Metal" - EU3/WAMMO with Hesse; a full blown comedy AAR celebrating heavy metal music with a potentially heavy emphasis on conquest. Alternatively, I could play as as a pagan nation in Miscmods/WAMMO's "Shattered Europe" scenario - probably one of the Scandinavian ones, or Lithuania.
- "Century Child" - Victoria II HOD with an unknown nation. A relatively serious AAR focusing on the life of some unfortunate, long lived underling in an as of yet undecided nation.
- "Balkanize Me" - Another Victoria II HOD AAR - somewhat experimental and gameplay oriented in nature: Force all AI countries through war and/or crises to free as many nations as possible. Potential choices for nations to play as boil down to countries with relatively few releasable nations, like Spain and France.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
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I think the chaos into which Byzantium descends after the omniscient time travellers jump ship is a rather adequate parallel for the godawful way the AI can mishandle your lovingly built empire once you give it free reign.
I'm not a big fan of tag switches but you're free to do as you please to keep the game interesting for yourself. I can't imagine what you might do except just restart the process of trying to kill as many things as you can - although I do feel that there was still much action to be had in Byzantium when you decided to switch out of it. So, if you're a Byzantine colony, is your country also Greek? Is there anything left to colonise? And what allies or other immediate interests do you have?
Nationalism ... and intellectual property rights? Is this a liberal arts degree? We don't have any such thing in the UK, so I was just wondering. Here's my feedback on the future AAR choices.
For option 1, I have no interest whatsoever in heavy metal so I don't think I'd follow if that was going to be the theme. Of course, if you're writing for your own enjoyment, you're free to do as you like.
Option 2 seems quite sensible, but rather nondescript. You'd need to choose your nation carefully and find an interesting theme if you want to focus on the narrative rather than the gameplay. The theme sounds like it would best fit a unciv, or a particularly poorly-off country likely to be the punching bag of the world (Bolivia comes to mind...). All the same, if it's a narrative I'd prefer something with at least the occasional chance of humour =)
Option 3 reminds me of TristramShandy's Land of the Free, which is rather wonderfully done, so you'll be up against some heavy competition, but since he seems to be too busy to update these days and you've upgraded to HoD, you might be able to pull it off in your own style. If you try this I think you'll be best off picking a nation which is a direct counterweight to the USA - say, Mexico or a released Canada, so you can give the Yankee oppressors a taste of their own 'freedom'.
Overall, I'd love it if you decided to do a Vicky 2 AAR in general as you're a good writer and you also seem to be very knowledgeable about the game, so I would definitely be interested in reading and picking up on your insights. You can be assured of my support!
I'm not a big fan of tag switches but you're free to do as you please to keep the game interesting for yourself. I can't imagine what you might do except just restart the process of trying to kill as many things as you can - although I do feel that there was still much action to be had in Byzantium when you decided to switch out of it. So, if you're a Byzantine colony, is your country also Greek? Is there anything left to colonise? And what allies or other immediate interests do you have?
Nationalism ... and intellectual property rights? Is this a liberal arts degree? We don't have any such thing in the UK, so I was just wondering. Here's my feedback on the future AAR choices.
For option 1, I have no interest whatsoever in heavy metal so I don't think I'd follow if that was going to be the theme. Of course, if you're writing for your own enjoyment, you're free to do as you like.
Option 2 seems quite sensible, but rather nondescript. You'd need to choose your nation carefully and find an interesting theme if you want to focus on the narrative rather than the gameplay. The theme sounds like it would best fit a unciv, or a particularly poorly-off country likely to be the punching bag of the world (Bolivia comes to mind...). All the same, if it's a narrative I'd prefer something with at least the occasional chance of humour =)
Option 3 reminds me of TristramShandy's Land of the Free, which is rather wonderfully done, so you'll be up against some heavy competition, but since he seems to be too busy to update these days and you've upgraded to HoD, you might be able to pull it off in your own style. If you try this I think you'll be best off picking a nation which is a direct counterweight to the USA - say, Mexico or a released Canada, so you can give the Yankee oppressors a taste of their own 'freedom'.
Overall, I'd love it if you decided to do a Vicky 2 AAR in general as you're a good writer and you also seem to be very knowledgeable about the game, so I would definitely be interested in reading and picking up on your insights. You can be assured of my support!
As previously mentioned, events in-game might be a little weedy early on since I basically made my new nation out of nothing. So far, nothing game breaking has occurred, but strange things have occurred.
@Aniuby: I'm about to graduate with a bachelor of arts in history, and a minor in computer science. As for your gameplay questions, there is lots of land to colonize, despite how Dark Continent accelerates everything; I get a good swathe of South America in this episode. Anyways, I don't want to reveal too much outside the AAR's narrative.
It's probably worth noting if I'd given Ruma cores on Byzantium, it would do much better... but I didn't, since I'm okay with them collapsing.
Episode 19: I Don't Think We're In Constantinople Anymore, Toto
"What's happening in Rome?" were the first words Alexander Phokas heard when he disembarked from the ship that had taken him to La Plata.
"I'm hoping the usual, but it's been a couple months, so I don't know," responded Phokas. I'm sure he was being honest.
After this display, Alexander's interlocutor was at least nice enough to introduce himself.
"Ignacio Azcuenaga, formerly of the Roman province of North Hispania. I was getting tired of Granadan aggression, so I kind of fled," he explained.
"You're the local administrative type, aren't you?"
"A viable explanation. You should know that there are tons of us Spaniards here. What can I say? It beats living in Hispania!"
At this moment, Luther clambered onto the shore, somewhat bowlegged from his time at sea. He scanned the horizon, as if he were looking desperately for some highlands.
"Should've come to Scotland. It's much nicer," interjected Luther when he'd stopped swaying as much.
"I also wanted to get away from the oppressive religious climate. Besides, this is barely claimed land! Plenty of... espacio vital, as we called it back in the homeland."
The ships in the background were beginning to depopulate rapidly. Aedryn and Eligos were on dry land now.
"You see, if you have a strong trade network, like we're setting up, you don't need to actually own huge tracts of land, but it makes everyone rich enough that they can do so... if they want! If you don't, you can always head up to Eutychia in the north. That's where most of the merchants hang out-"
"Where are we now, then?" asked Aedryn.
"This is Bonvento, the largest Rumi city in La Plata."
"Isn't this supposed to be a Greek colony?"
"I guess I have a great deal to explain."
Turned out that La Plata had a bit more Italian/Spanish influence than one would expect - after all, what little Alexander Phokas knew about Ruma had lead him to believe their ambitions did not extend past the Mediterranean. He had to remind himself that the will of a government did not necessarily match up with that of the people it oversaw.
As usual, Alexander and friends promptly forgot about their mission when faced with the opportunity to meddle in local politics. Amongst other things, they encouraged peaceful expansion and trade with the local neighbors in order to keep the country stable.
"You need to expand the government quite a bit. If we don't have enough federal institutions, the further flung reaches of our empire will probably drift away and make us splinter," said Luther.
"Whatever you say, time traveler." Ignacio's major weakness as a politician was that he was far too willing to do what Alexander's group said, even when it wasn't useful.
As a result, La Plata quickly had a merchant's guild and a state controlled church.
"None of us want them going rampant, right?" Ignacio claimed.
As it was, the Platinese state was very quickly beginning to make a name for itself.
Scotland asked for an alliance, but it was rejected for geopolitical reasons. It would not be the last time.
Meanwhile, the state merchants' guild came in handy, as with the merchants banding together for profit's sake, other nations were more willing to commit to equitable trade relationships instead of scamming each individual out of their pennies. As a result, La Plata became slightly richer than it was a few years ago. Some of this money even found itself in the hands of peasants.
In January of 1596, La Plata saw an influx of Rumi clergymen fleeing a war in South Germany. The Rumi nation had never been very good at defending the area, and they apparently weren't doing too well even with a second empire's resources at their disposal. Upon arrival, they began raising a big fuss about how the Platinese weren't as devout as them. Ignacio asked Alexander to help defuse tensions. Alexander asked Eligos to help him with such, and things began to spiral out of control from there.
"How are you going to get people to attend church services?" Alexander asked the leader of the clergy, a mid-ranking bishop named Constantine Morsi who had clearly declared himself the leader of the expedition.
"There's an obscure law in this country's code that makes church attendance mandatory. I think we ought merely to enforce it, as closeness to God is, shall I say... important," intoned Morsi.
"I see. What are you going to do if people don't go to church?"
"Fine them, imprison them, maybe kill the really disobedient ones. It'll ensure compliance."
"Right. Are you sure you should be risking committing sins in order to prevent them?"
"Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty, Phokas! Were your services to the metropolitans for naught?" the bishop spluttered. He seemed agitated by Alexander's noncommittal approach.
"I learned not to interfere much. It causes problems."
"If we do not ensure the good conduct of our peoples, they will inevitably become the devil's pawns! Don't you get what I'm saying?"
"No they won't. The devil's stupid, and you're stupid."
As a citizen of a time period where freedom of religion was taken for granted, Alexander had never realized how much he disliked the alternative, even after spending so much time in Byzantium, until now. Unfortunately, his lack of tact meant that Constantine had raised his fists and was about to attack him, until a refreshingly familiar hand reached out, grabbed the bishop, and lifted him into the air by his neck.
"Demands: Refrain from crusading against individuals," Eligos said.
"Get thee behind me, Satan-" The crunch of disintegrating bones, as Eligos used his other hand to smash the bishop's head in. After a moment, the body was given the dignity of laying in a messy heap on the floor.
"Have you been taking advice from Aedryn lately?" asked Alexander.
"Anecdote: I used to bust heads for a living, although usually not with my bare hands."
"I guess we'll be having this law stricken from the books. The people probably won't mind."
There was actually significant controversy about removing the church duties, as the primarily Greek Orthodox population of La Plata was fairly religious. Ignacio decided to ignore it, which surprisingly enough worked after about a year. The church property that the Rumi religious expedition had brought with them was given to the merchants.
After the pan-Islamic jihad against Byzantium and the Rumi union, the situation in Europe and the Mediterranean had become volatile. Faransa continued to score victories against the Rumi army, and various nationalists began agitating in ways they had never thought of before.
A courier from what called itself the "Kingdom of Christian Turks" arrived in La Plata in the middle of August, asking for diplomatic recognition. Considering the relative size of the revolution, there was not much support for this, even though Ruma continued to suffer a beating at the hands of its Islamic neighbors.
Incidentally, for some reason, the Greek culture I had built up in Anatolia disappeared after I had Ruma inherit Byzantium. I'm not sure, but I think the fact I'm using a colonial revolter to represent this new Greek-ish state might have something to do with it - this means that other colonial revolters might be firing early, and therefore leading to culture/core changes throughout the world.
Meanwhile, Platinese merchants in Europe, fearing the decay of their favored markets, wrote desperate pleading letters to their governor asking that he promote local trade at home. This he was entirely willing to do.
Another nation - Tripoli broke off from Ruma in 1600, citing inadequate defense from the Muslim heathens in Tunisia. After that, it was complete chaos, as the Byzantine territories lost national coherence and devolved into civil war.
It wasn't only them who suffered - the Arabian union was faltering as Yemen and Oman declared independence.
As 1600 ground on and turned into 1601, Alexander and friends noted that there were no reports of extreme volcanic activity in Peru. They hypothesized that George had either failed in his attempts to get back home, or lost interest. Either way, it was one less thing to worry about, much less cause them to care about their ultimate fate.
Since La Plata did not utterly collapse in its first few years, Ignacio Azcuenaga was re-elected for a second term. He pledged to continue his legacy of prosperity for the peoples.
It's worth noting that WAMMO changes republics quite a bit. The first level (Noble Republic) is available at technology level 2, but you can't influence candidates, and they rule for life. Meanwhile, Administrative Republics have 10 year terms.
As it was, Alexander found himself replacing a rhythm of mindless religion with one of mindless money.
It was quite soothing, actually - while La Plata was unlikely to become as rich as Byzantium had, it was still doing quite well in that regard, and with refugees from the European wars it had become significantly larger and more densely populated in recent years; all without waging a single war. In the short term, at least, the population seemed devoted to pacifism.
The Roman Empire, though, had basically faceplanted, even having difficulty keeping a grip on its Italian territories.
A few references - Tripoli gained another province, and Cyrenica (added in EU3plus) is separating them... as well as being Islamic in general. Morea broke off in the Peloponnese, along with Georgia (who also gained some territory in the Caucasus). There's also Mega Candar... at least that's what they will be if they take enough territory from Ruma. Meanwhile, the Mamluks decided to dogpile Ruma, and a few provinces have defected to Magyaristan.
Ruma isn't the only territory suffering - Milan broke free from one of the Maghreb blobs at one point, and the newly expanded Timurids continue to have BIG problems with Mewar, which is more technologically advanced than them. Qara Koyonlu broke free as a Christian state- call them the successors to Armenia if you must.
If anyone asks, these massive rebellions happened because the Rumi-Byzantine union was negotiated without consent from anyone but a few elites. The borders in the Mediterranean are going to get worse before they get better.
Luther Stuart Basileous took his time adjusting to the fact his body wasn't aging, and late in 1606 he finally offered an appraisal to his friends, who had long since learned to take it for granted.
"Boring," was all he said, and he figured it'd be all he had to say. When the rest looked at him as if he'd gone insane, he reconsidered.
"I mean, they don't even have good beer down here! Someone should at least start a brewery," Luther continued.
"If you want to get drunk and the people around you came from the Mediterranean, you're going to have to stick to wine," chided Aedryn.
"What? Blasphemy! Wine's too sweet! Give me a good bitter lager any day."
"With your alleged religiosity, it's a wonder you ever took communion."
"It was a small price to pay for eternal salvation-"
A loud explosion interrupted Luther, followed by a lengthy period of subsonic rumbling.
"What the hell was that?" Luther asked when the worst of it had passed.
"Well... that was probably Huaynaputina exploding, although it's a bit late. I do hope that George fellow didn't actually try to use it as a time machine," Alexander explained, informing Luther of nothing.
"I think we're going to have to go up to Peru and check for ourselves," continued Alexander. It would be dangerous, but the alternatives weren't much better.
@Aniuby: I'm about to graduate with a bachelor of arts in history, and a minor in computer science. As for your gameplay questions, there is lots of land to colonize, despite how Dark Continent accelerates everything; I get a good swathe of South America in this episode. Anyways, I don't want to reveal too much outside the AAR's narrative.
It's probably worth noting if I'd given Ruma cores on Byzantium, it would do much better... but I didn't, since I'm okay with them collapsing.
Episode 19: I Don't Think We're In Constantinople Anymore, Toto
"What's happening in Rome?" were the first words Alexander Phokas heard when he disembarked from the ship that had taken him to La Plata.
"I'm hoping the usual, but it's been a couple months, so I don't know," responded Phokas. I'm sure he was being honest.
After this display, Alexander's interlocutor was at least nice enough to introduce himself.
"Ignacio Azcuenaga, formerly of the Roman province of North Hispania. I was getting tired of Granadan aggression, so I kind of fled," he explained.
"You're the local administrative type, aren't you?"
"A viable explanation. You should know that there are tons of us Spaniards here. What can I say? It beats living in Hispania!"
At this moment, Luther clambered onto the shore, somewhat bowlegged from his time at sea. He scanned the horizon, as if he were looking desperately for some highlands.
"Should've come to Scotland. It's much nicer," interjected Luther when he'd stopped swaying as much.
"I also wanted to get away from the oppressive religious climate. Besides, this is barely claimed land! Plenty of... espacio vital, as we called it back in the homeland."
The ships in the background were beginning to depopulate rapidly. Aedryn and Eligos were on dry land now.
"You see, if you have a strong trade network, like we're setting up, you don't need to actually own huge tracts of land, but it makes everyone rich enough that they can do so... if they want! If you don't, you can always head up to Eutychia in the north. That's where most of the merchants hang out-"
"Where are we now, then?" asked Aedryn.
"This is Bonvento, the largest Rumi city in La Plata."
"Isn't this supposed to be a Greek colony?"
"I guess I have a great deal to explain."
Turned out that La Plata had a bit more Italian/Spanish influence than one would expect - after all, what little Alexander Phokas knew about Ruma had lead him to believe their ambitions did not extend past the Mediterranean. He had to remind himself that the will of a government did not necessarily match up with that of the people it oversaw.
As usual, Alexander and friends promptly forgot about their mission when faced with the opportunity to meddle in local politics. Amongst other things, they encouraged peaceful expansion and trade with the local neighbors in order to keep the country stable.
"You need to expand the government quite a bit. If we don't have enough federal institutions, the further flung reaches of our empire will probably drift away and make us splinter," said Luther.
"Whatever you say, time traveler." Ignacio's major weakness as a politician was that he was far too willing to do what Alexander's group said, even when it wasn't useful.
As a result, La Plata quickly had a merchant's guild and a state controlled church.
"None of us want them going rampant, right?" Ignacio claimed.
As it was, the Platinese state was very quickly beginning to make a name for itself.
Scotland asked for an alliance, but it was rejected for geopolitical reasons. It would not be the last time.
Meanwhile, the state merchants' guild came in handy, as with the merchants banding together for profit's sake, other nations were more willing to commit to equitable trade relationships instead of scamming each individual out of their pennies. As a result, La Plata became slightly richer than it was a few years ago. Some of this money even found itself in the hands of peasants.
In January of 1596, La Plata saw an influx of Rumi clergymen fleeing a war in South Germany. The Rumi nation had never been very good at defending the area, and they apparently weren't doing too well even with a second empire's resources at their disposal. Upon arrival, they began raising a big fuss about how the Platinese weren't as devout as them. Ignacio asked Alexander to help defuse tensions. Alexander asked Eligos to help him with such, and things began to spiral out of control from there.
"How are you going to get people to attend church services?" Alexander asked the leader of the clergy, a mid-ranking bishop named Constantine Morsi who had clearly declared himself the leader of the expedition.
"There's an obscure law in this country's code that makes church attendance mandatory. I think we ought merely to enforce it, as closeness to God is, shall I say... important," intoned Morsi.
"I see. What are you going to do if people don't go to church?"
"Fine them, imprison them, maybe kill the really disobedient ones. It'll ensure compliance."
"Right. Are you sure you should be risking committing sins in order to prevent them?"
"Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty, Phokas! Were your services to the metropolitans for naught?" the bishop spluttered. He seemed agitated by Alexander's noncommittal approach.
"I learned not to interfere much. It causes problems."
"If we do not ensure the good conduct of our peoples, they will inevitably become the devil's pawns! Don't you get what I'm saying?"
"No they won't. The devil's stupid, and you're stupid."
As a citizen of a time period where freedom of religion was taken for granted, Alexander had never realized how much he disliked the alternative, even after spending so much time in Byzantium, until now. Unfortunately, his lack of tact meant that Constantine had raised his fists and was about to attack him, until a refreshingly familiar hand reached out, grabbed the bishop, and lifted him into the air by his neck.
"Demands: Refrain from crusading against individuals," Eligos said.
"Get thee behind me, Satan-" The crunch of disintegrating bones, as Eligos used his other hand to smash the bishop's head in. After a moment, the body was given the dignity of laying in a messy heap on the floor.
"Have you been taking advice from Aedryn lately?" asked Alexander.
"Anecdote: I used to bust heads for a living, although usually not with my bare hands."
"I guess we'll be having this law stricken from the books. The people probably won't mind."
There was actually significant controversy about removing the church duties, as the primarily Greek Orthodox population of La Plata was fairly religious. Ignacio decided to ignore it, which surprisingly enough worked after about a year. The church property that the Rumi religious expedition had brought with them was given to the merchants.
After the pan-Islamic jihad against Byzantium and the Rumi union, the situation in Europe and the Mediterranean had become volatile. Faransa continued to score victories against the Rumi army, and various nationalists began agitating in ways they had never thought of before.
A courier from what called itself the "Kingdom of Christian Turks" arrived in La Plata in the middle of August, asking for diplomatic recognition. Considering the relative size of the revolution, there was not much support for this, even though Ruma continued to suffer a beating at the hands of its Islamic neighbors.
Incidentally, for some reason, the Greek culture I had built up in Anatolia disappeared after I had Ruma inherit Byzantium. I'm not sure, but I think the fact I'm using a colonial revolter to represent this new Greek-ish state might have something to do with it - this means that other colonial revolters might be firing early, and therefore leading to culture/core changes throughout the world.
Meanwhile, Platinese merchants in Europe, fearing the decay of their favored markets, wrote desperate pleading letters to their governor asking that he promote local trade at home. This he was entirely willing to do.
Another nation - Tripoli broke off from Ruma in 1600, citing inadequate defense from the Muslim heathens in Tunisia. After that, it was complete chaos, as the Byzantine territories lost national coherence and devolved into civil war.
It wasn't only them who suffered - the Arabian union was faltering as Yemen and Oman declared independence.
As 1600 ground on and turned into 1601, Alexander and friends noted that there were no reports of extreme volcanic activity in Peru. They hypothesized that George had either failed in his attempts to get back home, or lost interest. Either way, it was one less thing to worry about, much less cause them to care about their ultimate fate.
Since La Plata did not utterly collapse in its first few years, Ignacio Azcuenaga was re-elected for a second term. He pledged to continue his legacy of prosperity for the peoples.
It's worth noting that WAMMO changes republics quite a bit. The first level (Noble Republic) is available at technology level 2, but you can't influence candidates, and they rule for life. Meanwhile, Administrative Republics have 10 year terms.
As it was, Alexander found himself replacing a rhythm of mindless religion with one of mindless money.
It was quite soothing, actually - while La Plata was unlikely to become as rich as Byzantium had, it was still doing quite well in that regard, and with refugees from the European wars it had become significantly larger and more densely populated in recent years; all without waging a single war. In the short term, at least, the population seemed devoted to pacifism.
The Roman Empire, though, had basically faceplanted, even having difficulty keeping a grip on its Italian territories.
A few references - Tripoli gained another province, and Cyrenica (added in EU3plus) is separating them... as well as being Islamic in general. Morea broke off in the Peloponnese, along with Georgia (who also gained some territory in the Caucasus). There's also Mega Candar... at least that's what they will be if they take enough territory from Ruma. Meanwhile, the Mamluks decided to dogpile Ruma, and a few provinces have defected to Magyaristan.
Ruma isn't the only territory suffering - Milan broke free from one of the Maghreb blobs at one point, and the newly expanded Timurids continue to have BIG problems with Mewar, which is more technologically advanced than them. Qara Koyonlu broke free as a Christian state- call them the successors to Armenia if you must.
If anyone asks, these massive rebellions happened because the Rumi-Byzantine union was negotiated without consent from anyone but a few elites. The borders in the Mediterranean are going to get worse before they get better.
Luther Stuart Basileous took his time adjusting to the fact his body wasn't aging, and late in 1606 he finally offered an appraisal to his friends, who had long since learned to take it for granted.
"Boring," was all he said, and he figured it'd be all he had to say. When the rest looked at him as if he'd gone insane, he reconsidered.
"I mean, they don't even have good beer down here! Someone should at least start a brewery," Luther continued.
"If you want to get drunk and the people around you came from the Mediterranean, you're going to have to stick to wine," chided Aedryn.
"What? Blasphemy! Wine's too sweet! Give me a good bitter lager any day."
"With your alleged religiosity, it's a wonder you ever took communion."
"It was a small price to pay for eternal salvation-"
A loud explosion interrupted Luther, followed by a lengthy period of subsonic rumbling.
"What the hell was that?" Luther asked when the worst of it had passed.
"Well... that was probably Huaynaputina exploding, although it's a bit late. I do hope that George fellow didn't actually try to use it as a time machine," Alexander explained, informing Luther of nothing.
"I think we're going to have to go up to Peru and check for ourselves," continued Alexander. It would be dangerous, but the alternatives weren't much better.
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