Scene 1: On the borders of Asgard
Hel, over here
Hallo Astarte what …
Ssshh, quick, do you really want Tuokki?
Yes, he seems to fit, pretty irreligious, often at war, essentially quite pleasant, sort of our type really
Good
Why?
Well Harry now thinks the rebellion is over and all is well (more accurately, its as utterly awful as usual down there) and he can concentrate on his renovation plans. If Gabi fails to land Tuokki that will create more chaos. I mean with all these male deities around, us sisters have got to stick together
Not least, you should see the colour scheme he's using - its magnolia and its already showing all the stains.
Scene 2: The courtroom
Raphael leads the questionning
Ok Tuokki, so you beat Simeon but that wasn’t the end of your wars?
Oh no, you see the N Ukraine was still split between independent rulers and an area owned by Byzantium. I decided I’d deal with the Byzantines later, so first was the single county of Pronsk, but the main goal was the ugly grey blob of Ryazan – I mean who wants to live in a country coloured grey?
Anyway the war was pretty easy, the only real event was finding that Ukko’s bastard, sort of my uncle, had gone all weird and pagan:
Could cope with that, but he wasn’t very good either.
And by April 1185 both realms were safely back in the bosom of mother Russia. It did start to all look so much better:
So can we be clear, you waged a war to ‘make the map look nicer’ and ‘grey is such a horrible colour’?
Yes, and to reward my loyal vassals. Anyway I didn’t really want to go any further east, or much further south, so the focus was on the Baltic and Poland.
But the problem of making a nutter like Simeon your vassal became obvious, not that I was unhappy at the chance to bash Hungary, after all this was a chance for revenge for the death of Izyaslavl, Mstislavl’s father a century or so ago:
Of course despite now being at war with 25-30,000 Hungarians, Ilya felt the need for greater challenges, especially as someone had referred to his dubious parentage
And then the war with Hungary sort of drifted to an end, we had little to gain and most of their army was dead, so it was ceasing to be much fun and I settled for:
The place was even infested with typhoid, but my new vassal certainly had a rather dinky coat of arms
He died pretty soon, presumably of typhoid, but my new Hungarian duke, Samuel, came looking for some good Rus blood to improve his lineage
So, just for clarity, 'running out of Hungarians to kill' is a good reason to make peace?
Of course, was becoming a bit hard to sustain the war. Anyway in preparation to more land grabs in the Baltic I made myself eligible to be Prince of Prussia …. Always good to plan ahead
Indeed, so we have one war ‘to make the map nice’ and one ‘to kill some Hungarians’?
Yes, and even whilst I was at war tosh like this turned up
As if anyone from our family could even be so gullible
However, even though I was having none of this nonsense, it seems there was some sort of religious revival amongst the kids
This piety thing even spread to the bishop
Who fairly promptly went and died
Well Ivan might be doing well as a soldier, but one fears for his social graces
However, Paivi continued to give cause for concern, her desire to burn heretics was wrecking her administrative skills
Ivan's unrequited love affair damaged his martial zeal:
And then Boris spent too long listening to his sister
Anyway I wanted a bigger Palace, so:
It also seemed a good idea to produce some more children, after all once that is finished it’ll need filling up.
Especially as Boris was getting worse
Gabi, is there anything you want to add?
No, seems like he's definitely one for Harry, I mean we have pride, lack of respect for religion, wars on dubious grounds.
Hel?
Well he could be ours you know, he's not exactly full of religion, think it'll come down to how he dies.
How will Tuokki deal with the religious revival in his family? Which part of the map needs to be corrected next? Is the demonic revolt just smouldering for the moment?