First, I would like to thank everyone that voted in the ACAs! Your support means alot to me! If you haven't already, go ahead and
take a look at this month's AARlander for all the ACA results, as well as all the interesting and insightful articles as usual!
And to answer everyone's question - yes, there's an update today!
DarthJF - I asked everyone because I'd personally be split - the center has all the nostalgia, but undoubtedly the fringes are going to be the popping places as time goes on. We've got a lot of time left before the EU3 part, so there's plenty of time to decide...
Servius Magnus - There are alot of them... I don't want to spoil anyone, but there will be plenty to choose from
Actinguy -LOL, Nikolaios and Michael.
Glad to hear you're still enjoying things... as I look back, my writing way back then looks sketchy compared to later on... and if you like the intrigue there, wait till you see Manuel Komnenos in action!
canonized - Thank you, and congratulations on your wins as well! No surprise there... but then again, a story like
Timelines is
bound to do well!
English Patriot - Hey, congratulations on
I, Silvagensus! To my readers, if you haven't taken a look at EP's
magnum opus , or you get tired of waiting for an update here, head over there and enjoy yourself... both narratively and visually its a feast!
Cyreidel - The Spanish options look interesting precisely because they'll have access to the New World, and could, maybe, but the final impetus that pulls the post-Byzantine world's eyes away from the Mediterranean and to the broader world...
phargle - You would definitely be in favor of eastern options then, like Persia, and its probable perennial struggles with the Timurids and other Mongol successor states... and no, she's no Mongol
Antoku - Welcome to the AAR! Hmm... as for the Greek in this AAR, its horrendous! lol I don't know any Greek, and I don't have enough time to teach myself much (since I'm brushing up on Russian and French for my grad work), so half of it comes from internet translators, and half of it from me making things up (like Megos versus Megas). Thanks for pointing that out... Demetrios Megas will not be correctly referenced!
Glad to hear I inspired you to pick up CK - there's an old old Byzantine AAR that inspired me to the do the same back in the day, and ultimately led to this story (The Paleologi, or something like that). It hasn't been updated in years, but its narrative was good, and what I aspire to (but don't achieve yet).
Laur - A Romanized Egypt with provinces in Ethiopia is a personal favorite of mine... it's primed to explore the Indian Ocean and set up its own trade links, with all sorts of interesting implications for way way down the line... such as rulers of mixed descent, etc etc...
Ksim3000 - I've thought about the multiple nations route... it'd be the easiest to weave in alot of what people want. And the surviving Latin states would definitely be interesting too... Sortmark especially.
Leviathan07 - The two new Christian religious groups are Orthodox schismata... I'm also thinking of adding a third as well. If you've got MSN Messenger or AIM, I'm trying to find some names for them and flesh them out... hit me up!
AlexanderPrimus - Exactly... there's going to be alot of inter-empire politicking, especially when everyone and their uncle considers themself the "one true Roman Emperor..."
Fulcrumvale - Hmm... I've thought about that as well... doing a history book style of five year increments, attempting to follow as many people as possible. I'm not sure how that'd work practically, but I'm willing to explore the idea...
Avalanchemike - Hey, welcome to the AAR also! Hmmm... for David, Manuel and Thomas, its likely too late for Basil to sit them down and explain to them the good aspects of honor and chivalry... Heraklios is still a child though, you can certainly expect that Basil is doing that to his fourth son. Perhaps it isn't too late yet? And please don't thump me on the head - the update is below! hehehe
Nikolai - Yeah, Constantinople would have that great nostalgic feel to it... watching as Emperors go by, remaining eternally the same as the world rapidly changes around them. It'd be interesting to see how an Emperor, surrounded by 6th century ceremonies, court etiquette and expectations lives in an 18th century world...
Alfred Packer - Long time no post! Yes, they'd definitely have a huge grudge... and it'd make a compelling story if they manage to cow those successor states into line, starting the Fifth Empire (I've already imagined the timeline of how historians will see the Komnenid Empire, etc...
First Empire - old Roman Principate
Second Empire - Roman Dominate
Third Empire - Eastern Empire until Komnenids
Fourth Empire - Komnenid Empire
Fifth Empire - ?
Enewald - No, she's not a Mongol. She's Hellenized, she's a Komnenoi, and arguably, she single handedly administers the deathblow to the Fourth Empire...
January 8th, 1188
Mehtar Lainez sighed uneasily as he sat in his chair – a noise from fear, as much as from weariness. The afternoon’s setting sun bathed him in a warm light, yet the Master of Spies for the Exarchate of Tarraconensis still shivered with a slight chill. He closed his eyes, and tried to brush the memory of what had happened twenty hours before from his mind – but it wasn’t easy to erase.
“How is he?” Ioannis Kaparalis,
Domestikos for the Exarchate of Tarraconensis asked quietly. He was a vapid man, in Mehtar’s eyes, but he’d been Thomas’ most faithful cavalry commander during the northern campaign.
“How do you think?”
Logothetes Konstantinos Anastarikos grumbled. Another man Mehtar considered vapid. A good money counter – with few skills beyond making sure budget’s stayed in the black. “His wife brutally murdered on the day he returns from Cordoba?”
Mehtar gritted his teeth, but said nothing, instead shuffing several parchments in front of himself. He’d planned things so carefully, only to have them go so wrong…
“Bloody hell,” Kaparalis shook his head. “There’ll be hell to pay. Is it true what they said?”
“I heard someone beat her to a bloody pulp.”
Mehtar focused all of his mind and willpower to not grimace. How things turned out were not as he’d intended. It was supposed to be a quick death, a clean death – he’d painstakingly planned out every aspect of it. He’d use corridors he was sure only he knew about, sneak into her bedroom as she slept, and smother her with a pillow. Yet it’d all gone awry…
“I saw it,” Anastarikos added. “Took a candelabra and broke every bone in her body. Maidservants heard a strange noise, but that’s it.”
Mehtar winced – she’d been awake when he’d entered the room. He still remembered her eyes – wide, paralyzed by fear at the apparition in the dark. His moment of indecision – she’d struggle if he smothered her, she’d scratch him. He’d have to explain those. Then her hand reaching for a dirk near her bedside, and his rage and anger at her trying to fight back, trying to resist, trying to take his Thomas away…
“Damned frightening,” the
domestikos murmured. “That the mistress of this exarchate could be murdered in the middle of the night in such a brutal manner…”
Mehtar didn’t remember the act itself – just standing there, looking at that bloody, broken body, blood seeping into the sheets, the heavy iron candelabra in his hand, blood dripping everywhere…
Mehtar had gotten himself into a fine mess… a fine mess indeed…
“Here he comes!” one of the attendants in the hallway outside the council chambers hissed, and immediately all three men present rose stiffly.
Mehtar had expected to see a storm cloud, but nothing could prepare him for the howling tempest that stormed into the meeting room. The
Exarch fairly exploded into the room, clad in white robes that draped a shuddering form. At once, Thomas Komnenos looked haggard, weary, excited and furious – clearly Thomas had been told of his wife’s death as soon as he arrived at the palace. Dark rings circled his blood-shot eyes, red from tears, and Mehtar could see his jaw trembling from how tightly he clenched his teeth. No one said a word – there was nothing that could be said – and Thomas did not oblige any greeting. Instead, he abruptly yanked his chair back, hovered above it for a moment, before shoving it over on its side. The light of the setting sun fittingly cast him in shadow… an image that made everyone in the room recoil ever so slightly…
“Kaparalis,” he said quietly.
The
domestikos looked up uncertainly, fidgeting – even without the news of Sophia’s brutal murder, the
exarch would have been in a murderous mood. By all accounts, the Council in Cordoba had been a disaster.
Exarch Enguerrand had demanded that Thrakesios hand over the port of Cadiz to Lusitania on pain of war, a call that David had backed with the threat of Mauretanian force. The
hyperexarch had sided with Baetica, which caused Mauretania and Lusitania to storm out of the meeting.
Then Thomas had attempted his own powerplay, pressing the
hyperexarch for the rights to Pamplona, but the Jimenez man had proven far tougher than Thomas had expected – he held firm, long enough that both David and Enguerrand got wind of the demand and returned to the table to undercut the Lord of Tarraconensis. It’d been an unmitigated disaster for Thomas – all four of the other
exarchs had joined cause against him, and forced him to cede sections of Navarre to the
hyperexarch as punishment.
Silence hung in the air for a moment, before the
Exarch spoke again.
“How soon can we muster a fleet to sail our forces to Basiliopolis?” Thomas asked quietly, his jaw trembling.
“Um… pardon, Highness?” Karapalis said slowly, a slight tremble in his voice. An audible gasp went around the room. Yes, David had outmaneuvered Thomas in Cordoba. But surely…
“I want his head on a pike,” Thomas said slowly, deliberately, annunciating each and every syllable. Slowly, his voice rose from that deadly, quiet calm into a full, thunderous rage. “I want his mouth stuffed with the shit from my stables! I want his eyes plucked out and tossed into the sea! I want his tongue cut out and served to me in a stew!”
“Who has so offended you, Highness?” the
Logothetes asked quietly. Mehtar watched Kaukadenos’ eyes – he was clearly stalling for time, hoping… “Surely Your Highness doesn’t believe that your own brother had anything…”
“David did it,” Thomas said quietly, his eyes wet and shimmering. He slammed his hands into the table. “David did it! He stole Navarre from me! Then he stole my wife from me!
And I want him dead!”
“Highness! Why would your own brother kill your wife?”
Logothetes Anastarikos asked. Why David would side with Jimenez to take Navarre was apparent.
Mehtar watched as Thomas’ nostrils flared, the sure sign that his friend was about to explode. Mehtar’s mouth hung open, he wanted to tell his friend the truth – that he’d killed the sorceress, to free him from her power. That they could now be together, free from interference!
But as Thomas lashed out at his own
logothetes, hurling a goblet at the man and yelling and snarling more than a rabid dog, Mehtar’s heart sank. He’d never be able to tell Thomas. His friend wouldn’t understand, he clearly wouldn’t – even in death, the witch had him under her spell. He grieved for her, raged for her – her magic had even blinded him to the fact he was now free…
Mehtar’s mind flashed back to the bloody scene – the candelabra laying on the floor, covered in blood and gore, Sophia’s bloody body, battered beyond recognition, blood staining all of her sheets and the floor. His footprints – oh god, the footprints that led to the secret passage…
Mehtar shuddered. It was only a matter of time. Another goblet sailed through the air, over Anastarikos’ now cowering form. If Thomas looked, and looked hard – he’d surely see…
“…I know he did it! And any man who tries to tell me otherwise has accepted David’s coin!” the
Exarch snarled, a deadly finger pointing towards the
domestikos and Anastarikos.
“Thomas,” Mehtar heard himself say. He was surprised at how shaky his own voice sounded. “I have evidence.”
Those tear-stained eyes flashed towards Mehtar, rage, anger boiling within their shimmering depths.
“Evidence?”
Mehtar could feel the eyes of both Anastarikos and Karapalis boring in on him, their fear palpable even though he didn’t look at them.
Part of Mehtar Lainez couldn’t believe he’d said those words – patent lies. Yet something needed to be done. He’d been sloppy – given time, he
knew the evidence would point back to him. Better to head off an investigation at the pass – or better yet, take it over, and pin it on someone else. And who better than the Imperial sibling, the man who Thomas hated, the man who’d embarrassed Mehtar himself?
“Of David’s involvement,” Mehtar said after a suitably long second and a half. “Kasparalis and Anastarikos, I have all confidence, have always remained your humble servants.” A quick glance in their direction – their eyes were wide, Anastarikos barely peeking above the edge of the table. They would be in his debt.
“What evidence?” Thomas said, his voice dropping precipitously as he crumpled into his seat.
Mehtar had thought hard on this moment, ever since he’d left the secret passages for the baths, deserted all those hours ago. Scrubbing off blood and gore did wonders for his mind’s power of concentration.
So Mehtar spoke – bits of circumstantial evidence here, a shifty glance there, all the fruit of fifteen minutes of trying to scrub a murder off of his body and out of his mind. To anyone with Mehtar’s caliber of mind, the proposed plot would seem flimsy, whimsical even, but to an enraged Thomas, goaded, angered and hurt, it all made perfect, damning sense. Of course David’s coin was involved, and of course David thought removing Sophia would cut links between his brother and the
Megos Domestikos. Of course it was a part of his brother’s devious, cunning plot to remove Thomas completely from the succession…
Yet as Mehtar spoke, saving his skin, his mind reached another, just as important problem he had not considered – what to do about David.
“The armies?” Thomas rumbled after Mehtar’s explanation was finished. By Thomas’ eyes, it was apparent what the
exarch wanted to do – take to the field, and run David through the eye with his lance.
Yet Mehtar knew all to well how a battlefield meeting would turn out – Thomas would charge valiantly, and
die valiantly, against one of David’s stratagems – if matters even reached the battlefield at all.
And Mehtar couldn’t bear to lose Thomas – not on account of a lie. So as Thomas quizzed his
domestikos on the plans for a surprise assault on Basiliopolis, Mehtar’s brain worked, examining possibilities, situations, the next time David would leave himself exceedingly vulnerable.
“There is… another way,” he heard himself say slowly.
“Oh?”
Mehtar recognized that tone – it was the tone Thomas had immediately before he exploded into a raging inferno that someone had suggested an idea other than his. A deft, delicate touch was required, and Mehtar knew his man. He had a few seconds before Thomas erupted into a fury – he used them wisely. Suggesting David had more strategic prowess than Thomas would be… unwise. So Mehtar quickly approached the problem from a different angle.
“War would be unwise, Thomas,” Mehtar said in measured tones. “Would you ascend to the throne with everyone knowing your brother’s blood was on your hands? Also, marching to war against your brother would undoubtedly get your lord father involved – and he would be most displeased,” Mehtar understated. The Emperor might be in Konstantinopolis, he might have taken to drink over the actions of his sons, but Basil III Komnenos was still the most feared warrior alive. If he decided to support one son over the other, Mehtar had little doubt who it would be. “While we could defeat David, would you wish to face your father’s fury?”
Mehtar knew his charge – Thomas’ enraged eyes quickly dimmed. Thomas was a bully, and above all, jointly worshipped and feared his father.
“What would you suggest?” Thomas’ tone was still rumbling, but Mehtar knew the explosion had been stifled. What puffs of anger were coming out now were show for everyone else present. “We walk into Basiliopolis and kick him in the shins?”
“No,” Mehtar smiled and shook his head. “I would ask you to leave him to me, Thomas. I can solve this problem… quietly. We won’t have to use armies, involve your lord father, or even anyone knowing it was you.” A smile. Mehtar read Thomas’ face, and saw a downcast look of disappointment.
“Very well, Mehtar,” Thomas sighed. “No word of this must leave this room, on pain of death. I have only one requirement for this whole operation, Mehtar.”
“Milord?”
“David… must… die. A life for a life.”
==========*==========
The alternative if Mehtar fails…