Imperial Blood: A CK2-Stellaris Megacampaign
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It's easy to see how both Norse and Catholic would see this as the end of times.
The self-appointed Fylkir has an uphill struggle to restore order and his dynasty's righteous name.
The self-appointed Fylkir has an uphill struggle to restore order and his dynasty's righteous name.
The people of the North are famed for their poetry!
Two important things to balance for the young Fylkir. His position is not an easy one - but such is the stuff of greatness!
Interlude
Europe after the Plague: 1094 ER
Europe after the Plague: 1094 ER
The tides of the plague wash over Europe at the end of 1094, leaving only small pockets of its cold, skeletal hand by the end of the year. The populations of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East drop enormously. Entire villages and cities are ruined as the Plague crosses, leaving universal devastation in its wake. By the time the clouds of plague clear, over one hundred and fifty million people are dead - about three times as many people as the total of the Roman Empire at its height. The death is unimaginable.
Instability reigns everywhere, and less stable nations dissolve entirely. The perpetually-quarelling Kingdom of Ireland finally collapses once more into a collection of squabbling tribes, as England and Scotland hang on by a thread. Even still, the legendarily cruel and ambitious Onorio Bonifazi of England, having survived with both wife and children from the Plague, looks over to the now-weak Irish Kingdoms with rising interest, having already subdued Wales as part of the growing kingdom of England.
France recovers slower still from the plague, reeling from post-plague landgrabs by both Burgundy and England on its borders, having suffered the death of its monarch in the early years of the Black Death. The eleven-year-old monarch and his inefficient regency council all but ensures that the great continental power will be rendered impotent at least for the next few years, and surrounded on every side by increasingly consolidated, organized threats - England to the North, the Union to the East and, now, the Spanish to the south.
The Spaniards suffer among the least of the great powers from the plague, having consolidated Portugal, Castille and Navarra as a single power mere years before the Black Death hit. The Empire they fashion is larger and more powerful than nearly any other in Western Europe, capable (albeit ravaged by the plague) of standing on the same level as the likes of Byzantium and the Imperium. The reaches of Hispania extend down to deep within Africa, claiming the coast of Morocco and north Mali as part of the powerful Spanish Empire - and spreading the Plague into the heart of Africa in the process.
Along the rest of the Mediterranean, the perpetual conflict between Byzantium and Italy rages on, though now with the League of Dreiteilig forming a barrier between the two quarreling powers. The League's presence makes continued warfare between Italy and Byzantium far more complex of a game to play; engaging in all-out war would leave either party exposed to an attack of opportunity from the boxed-in League, close with Poland, too afraid of France to attack Burgundy, and much smaller than the Imperial Union across the majority of its border. The three parties lock themselves into a sort of stalemate - an unfavorable proposal with looming threats from all sides.
In that aspect, the Byzantines have it far worse. All the Italians and League have to worry about is the Union and France; the Byzantines have not only the ever-watchful Western powers, but also a resurgent Islamic south to be concerned with. Defying the trend of disunity and destruction the Plague left upon Europe, the Crescent faith takes the oppurtunity of the plague to exterminate the many split factions, most prominent among them the enormous Arab Company. Mecca falls back into the hands of the Fatmids, and the Tulunids manage to finally put down the southern revolts that had plagued them for decades. Attention now turns to the coast of Africa, in Christian hands - and the resilient empire of Byzantium, hanging over the north.
The Russians, too, recover from their instability. The black death hits them lightly, hindered by the sparse population and few inroads of the rural country; the Tsar is able to quickly refocus back onto the southern Pecheng horde, battling with the Asiatic southerners for supremacy in the East. Within a few years of the plague clearing, the Russians gear up for war once more, bringing forth sickly peasant's sons in a motley facsimile of the once-grand Russian army to march against the Circadian tribes.
The Bulghars continue to dwindle in strength and power. Now completely boxed in by the Byzantines, the Russians, and the League, Bulgaria finds itself as the smallest and least relevant power on the Black Sea. Without small powers nearby to absorb, the Bulgarians are forced to play a dangerous game of political manipulation, trading favors between the three powers and ensuring they stay, opportunistically, on the winning side at all costs. It's a game that cannot be played forever, of course, and The Bulghar Kings are watching hawkishly for a new solution.
The small powers of Poland and Prussia are left in a dangerous situation. Small dukes and counts have been steadily eating away at Prussian land, and the Polish lost a significant chunk of territory to claimaints within the Union after a string of plague deaths; without relief from an external power, it seems that their absorption is increasingly just a matter of time. The plague provides them with a silver lining; the Union, disorganized and annihilated, is unable to capitalize upon their weakness for at least a short while longer. But when they recover, it seems not a question of if the Northerners will invade, only when they will choose to do so.
Europe hobbles back from the Plague battered and confused - but alive still. The massive death and destruction in the wake of the Plague has caused not only significant political upheaval, but social as well; faith in both the Old and New Gods is shaken across the Old world, and the growing political models of feudalism and hierarchical society is met with a major challenge. With the plague disproportionately affecting the peasantry across Europe while leaving many noble lines mostly intact, labor is no longer available for dirt-cheap. The nobility are forced to offer incentives and conditions for work; merchants and commoners gain some reputation, entrenching a tradition across Europe of peasant-noble negotiations and more open forum with middlemen. These new traditions are seen in a giant range of ways, from the reemergence of the Northern Thing in the Union to the creation of powerful guilds and associations in France and Spain.
The plague has changed Europe forever, that much is already obvious. The question of whether its ceaseless ruin will ultimately be for the better or the worse - that is yet to be decided by the stunned and terrified survivors, coming out nervously from half-destroyed villages. Free from the shroud of the Black Death, Europe emerges once more, and its old rivalries spark with renewed passions. Not even death and pestilence together seem capable of defeating the mighty Horseman of War.
It's helpful to get such an overview of how things stand.
The League of Dreiteilig and Russia seem currently crippled for manpower, but it sounds as if they are recovering faster than the likes of the Bulgars, Prussians and Poles.
The Byzantines must be infuriated. They could make gains in any one direction - if they didn't have to fear the rest of their neighbours.
The League of Dreiteilig and Russia seem currently crippled for manpower, but it sounds as if they are recovering faster than the likes of the Bulgars, Prussians and Poles.
The Byzantines must be infuriated. They could make gains in any one direction - if they didn't have to fear the rest of their neighbours.
I hope the great spanish empire shall extend from Lisbon to Paris, and from Tunis to Timbuktu. That would be a truly formidable enemy for this game and the subsequent games.
It would be interesting if Poland and Prussia formed a personal union, and vassalized the now insignificant Teutonic Order. Realistically, rivalries between Poland and Hungary would polarize mid-eastern Europe.
Ooh, and is that a Burgundy I see? Another rival for the league, or perhaps a new league member...
Ooh, and is that a Burgundy I see? Another rival for the league, or perhaps a new league member...
Sorry about this next update taking so long! Part of it has been the holidays but mostly I've been running into a lot of mechanical issues recently; the biggest one being that having such a large and powerful Empire means that my vassals are constantly declaring war on ALL my neighbors and taking huge swaths of territory every few that I have to painstakingly return with the console, since I have no way of stopping them. I'm currently trying to figure out how to permanently stop this from happening (since setting vassal war declaration to illegal won't work without imperial government form, which can't be taken unless I have two further levels of technology, which would mean serious and unfair cheating) because otherwise states like Poland and Burgundry get absorbed within a few years, EVERY few years, which slows the pace of me playing the game down to an absolute crawl. If anyone could PM me about how to fix this, it'd be appreciated.
Would the allow_laws command let you set vassal war declaration to illegal regardless of your technology?
Please PM me - I don't want to clutter the thread. It doesn't, but I did set vassal war declaration to illegal via save file editing, which doesn't work because I don't have Imperial administration.
I'm going to take another crack at messing around with the gamefiles tomorrow. If I can figure out a fix to this, there should be an update in the next few days. Thank you for the support!
DEATH COME NOT SILENT
Part One
The Ballad of the Broken
There lived in the land of ever-snow
Seventh Son of a fat angry man
Born ugly, clubfooted, and queer was he
And the fool of the court's mighty clans
But yae how their pleas still turned to he
When Hel's foul gaze looked down
And that ugly, clubfooted and queer little man
Took up the great frozen crown.
Imperial drinking song. Unknown.
Part One
The Ballad of the Broken
There lived in the land of ever-snow
Seventh Son of a fat angry man
Born ugly, clubfooted, and queer was he
And the fool of the court's mighty clans
But yae how their pleas still turned to he
When Hel's foul gaze looked down
And that ugly, clubfooted and queer little man
Took up the great frozen crown.
Imperial drinking song. Unknown.
The Uncrowned Fylkir Bård does not even have enough servants or guards to properly staff the massive palace of his ancestors as he assumes the Imperial throne. Gathering what few advisers and nobles remain of the Grand Assembly at Oslo, the young Emperor sets up the imperial proceedings and attempts to send notice to far-flung lands from Germania to the Baltics that the Emperor has returned. In many villages across Scandinavia, the Plague still festers, but it is slowing; Hel's fury seems to finally be nearing an end after decades of leaving nothing but barren wastelands in its wake.Bård's messengers quickly receive responses. Few of the larger lords - save the King of Sweden - immediately respond, many taking the opportunity presented by the Imperial absence to muscle out additional lands and rights from weaker and now unprotected neighbors. While the smaller lords and peasants rejoice at the news of a Fylkir (even an unlawful, plague-scarred clubfoot), those in prime positions such as the kings of Denmark and Bohemia mutter curses in private, both over the new Fylkir's illegitimacy and
that their extortionist tactics will undoubtedly be put to an end. With enormous and powerful thieves guilds, marauder bands, and rogue lords across the Empire, it is clear that Bård has his work cut out for him.
Above and beyond the most common grievance brought to the new court at Jafnadgr is against the Jewry.
The peoples of the Imperium are, for the most part, united by a sense of common ancestry; there is a sense of connection between the Icelander and the Bavarian, or even the Latvian as 'Imperials', untouched by Roman influence as proud and independent tribes and unified together through Germano-Urgic blood. The Jewry, increasingly common residents of the rich merchant enclaves in cities like Gotland and Oslo, fit none of these qualifiers. To the Northern Pagans, they are weak, impotent parasites, kin of the accursed Christians from far-off lands; and even to the Southern Christians, they are sinful usurers, once puppets fallen to the Roman Empire who now profit off the misery in the North. It is one of few things that both sides of the deep division within Imperial society can agree on, and the one ethnic group that shares none of the Roman defiance and Northern blood the Union so celebrates. Bård is quick to read the tea leaves.
The edict of expulsion that banishes those of Jewish faith from the Union issued in 1094 ER is met with widespread celebration, and restores some of the peasantry's faith in the long-absent throne. More immediately, the seizure of huge sums from wealthy Jewish estates across the Union is soon put to work from the large post-plague deficit both rebuilding the Imperial army to crush the roving gangs across the Imperium and planting new fields across destroyed farms.
The social pressure is more acutely felt in foreign crowns. In England, as the surviving Bonifazi king Ontorio attempts to rally the country's nobles in a post-plague conquest of Scotland, he finds himself muscled down by gentry and nobility alike; the cost and effort of his war allows a group of nobles to wring extensive privileges out from under him, turning the once-insignificant parliament of ministers and noblemen to the crown into a significant political force. The English Parliament draws more eyes than even the once exceedingly liberal Imperial Assembly, as it gives the merchants and laymen relegated to advice and debate in the Imperial system an independent political tool in the English one, unseen anywhere else in Europe. Though inspired by the ancient senates of Rome, the departures of both houses from that system are readily apparent.
Bård's efforts ramp up exponentially. By 1095 he forges an armistice between the warring elements of the Union's nobility leftover from the Plague, restoring Imperial authority and ending the intermittent infighting between lesser nobles; by 1096 the last traces of the plague are wiped out from Scandinavia, and with it, the Black Death is eliminated off the face of the world. That same year, Ingrid bears his first son, a bright-eyed and astoundingly healthy boy, taking after his father's height and regal countenance without the clubfoot - or the pox scarring.
Almost exactly a year later, Ingrid dies from, in a particularly cruel twist of fate, a poorly-treated case of the Flu. Though only married for just under three years, Bård is deeply and openly affected by her loss. In an uncommonly rash act, he orders the physician attending blood-eagled. He is not blamed.
Even still, the young Fylkir refuses to allow himself to be devastated by the loss of his equally young wife. Instead, he grows only more diligent and attendant to his court and people, eventually earning him the nickname of 'Uknuselig' (Unbreakable) or, more sardonically, 'The Undying'. The second nickname displeases Bård greatly enough to issue a proclamation against its use, seeing the name as a cruel reference to the fact that he, at twenty-four, is very nearly the only living remnant of his direct relations. This was a time when people still respected such things, and usage of the nickname withers. With the homefront finally secure and the plague having dissipated, Bård turns his attention to foreign affairs - in specific, the heavily weakened state of Prussia, left without protection and standing as the only state stopping the Union from complete and undisputed control of the Baltic sea.
A Miklakveð is soon declared against Prussia, testing the reforged Imperial army against a serious opponent for the first time as they storm into Prussia. Outnumbered two-to-one by the vastly better equipped and led Imperial forces, the capital falls in three months, and King Daugvilas formally surrenders and converts to Asatru two months later. With Rome and the major western nations occupied with dramatic societal change and the fallout of the plague, Prussia only receives aid from the nearby Teutonic order, who continue a noble but impossible campaign in the capitulated Prussian state for four full years. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the Teutons win a number of inspiring victories during their campaign, regarded by some as the 'Last gasp of the Teutons'. The image of the enormously outnumbered Teutonic knight standing alone to protect the plague-ravaged and burnt farmlands of Prussia-Lithuania quickly becomes part of the area's cultural identity and all but assures it a lasting christian identity.
The next years are peaceful. The Unbroken King splits his time between doting upon his only son and attending to the still-pressured court, affording the young prince an upstanding education. Aleksandr is the model of what many now imagine the Fylkirate ought represent; tall, proud, sharp-witted and elegantly combining a fierce sense of personal independence with moderated intellectual civility.
His education, in traditional Imperial style, still pointedly neglects both actual day-to-day governance and the intricacies of intrigue. Aleksandr further shows nearly no interest in theology, though the increasingly emaciated religious responsibilities of the Fylkir hold little challenge for him. In spite of these shortcomings, the only son of Bård is widely viewed as a proper successor to the throne (owing in a large part to his favorable and affable personality), and there is little dissent when Bård appoints his son as successor to the Assembly at sixteen. The confirmation vote is unanimous.
A year later, the balance in the east radically shifts. Poland, troubled for half a century by internal religious conflict and a lack of neighbors to the point of considering joining the League of Dreiteilig against the Union, enters into a short period of proceedings with the Teutonic order and a Papal representative. Through extensive legal meddling, the Teutonic lands in Poland are returned to the Poles (as the Teutonic order itself shifts to a location on the French-Frisian border, leaving a token force of Teutons at their old castle in Ostroleka), acquiring a significant chunk of land within the Union's borders by peaceful turnover from local Pommeranian-Polish lords. The practical swindle is backed by the League, the Papacy, and France together, leaving Bård with no choice but to approve the transfer - lest the Union enter into a war along its entire southern border from three separate powers, backed by a Pope itching for the opportunity to rally Catholicism at large once more against the North.
While Aleksandr pushes his father for war, Bård better understands the limits of the Union, still recovering from the aftershock of the Black Death. Europe further south is better rebuilt, the plague having entered and left sooner, and the Imperial Army is still nowhere near the size it was three decades ago; fighting those three alone would be a steep uphill battle, and were the Pope to manage to bring in the huge states of Italy or Hispania alongside? Or, perhaps, if the Russians were to take the opportunity to grab a piece of Baltic or FInnish territory? No - it is not a fight worth taking.
That is a fact that profoundly depresses Bård.
The frantic energy that had driven the Unbroken King for three full decades of attentive and diligent rule finally begins to dissipate, leaving in its place a very noticeable depression. He remains a skilled and popular governor and politician, but the vigor of his youth all but evaporates overnight. The intense stress of the Emperor's difficult life appears to have finally caught up with him.
This coincidences with his first signs of leprosy.
A year later, talk of the Emperor's leprosy has spread far and wide. It gets bad enough that by July of 1114 ER, Bård is forced to wear a custom made full-facial mask along with a set of lengthy gauntlets to conceal his withering and terrifying body at every public appearance. The Leprosy is rapidly-advancing, and Bård is well aware that even his massive, powerful body has only a few years left of life at the most. More than that, his energy - physical and mental alike - for the post of Fylkir and Emperor has completely vanished. Bård considers how he wants to spend the last few years of his life extremely carefully, retreating from Jafnadgr's throne room to spend many months in quiet, personal contemplation. With Alkesandr nineteen years of age and married, with provisional lands of his own outside of Oslo, there is absolutely no one to stop him.
After two months of delegated rule with minimal outside contact, the Emperor emerges once more. Without offering explanations, the edict of Jewish explusion is overturned and a significant amount of the Union's funds are put into construction of a new modern temple within Oslo.
The magnificent, expensive building is called Erindring: 'Remembrance'. It is erected alongside a runestone explaining the ravages of the Black Plague, with an estimated death count numbering around seven to ten million. The very same day the church is commissioned, the first of September, 1115 ER, Bård formally abdicates the throne, the only Emperor to do so other than Helge and the first by pure voluntary choice.
A grand ceremony is held for his departure in the newly-opened Erindring at Bård's departure. A large crowd of peasantry and nobility alike assemble to see him off, leaving in a full plate of custom-forged armor to support his lumbering frame, taking with him little more other than his warhorse and broadsword. No one is quite sure how to react to the Emperor's departure; the proceedings are a somber affair as a result, It's entirely unrecorded just what Bård went on to do in the final years of his life, although local legend holds that he took to personally destroying the maurader bands that remained across the Union; the historical record indicates that he most likely dedicated those last few years to humanitarian work, rebuilding the destroyed regions still unrecovered from the plague. Regardless, Bård remains a sort of early urban myth of Imperial legend, particularly in a few drinking songs and shanties still popular to this day.
It sounds like he was just the ruler the union needed after the Death. And a successful one too.
Bard was a damn good emperor, but I have to ask. How did Aleksandr lose his quick trait?
Responding a bit earlier than usual to explain that while my original problem remains unsolved, I've been able to work around it by keeping notifications on high for when my vassals declare a war so I can shut it down.
Indeed he was!
Good eye, I didn't notice that. There seems to have been some kind of a bug around turning adulthood, I'll re-add his quick trait in the console.
Indeed he was!
Good eye, I didn't notice that. There seems to have been some kind of a bug around turning adulthood, I'll re-add his quick trait in the console.
The Fylkir is dead...
Long Live Fylkir Aleksandr!
It will be interesting to see what happens to Burgundy. I remember a previous post by myself that suggested that Burgundy become part of the League, but I'm not sure if I support this anymore.
Maybe the Burgundian people go on a max exodus to somewhere they may left in peace, like a mass migration, and their territories are ceded to France. Maybe they sail to Algeria, as a crusading nation! That would be interesting.
Long Live Fylkir Aleksandr!
It will be interesting to see what happens to Burgundy. I remember a previous post by myself that suggested that Burgundy become part of the League, but I'm not sure if I support this anymore.
Maybe the Burgundian people go on a max exodus to somewhere they may left in peace, like a mass migration, and their territories are ceded to France. Maybe they sail to Algeria, as a crusading nation! That would be interesting.