Imperial Blood: A CK2-Stellaris Megacampaign
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If anything could come close to a medieval world war, this would be it. On one side, an Empire spanning the world over with the power to call thunder upon their enemies. On the other, a Union of hardened men which started with war and has been the dominant player in Europe with a people ready and willing to face death and punch it in the balls. (Oh and the Russians, but who care about them)
$20 on a Pyrrhic victory, period. That is just how the Mongols would go out. Although I do have $5 on a diplomatic solution (And Finn isn't shabby with diplomacy)
Oooh! Nice big coalition. Is it not ironic? Fighting to protect those pesky Russians?
Subbed. I already follow the mega campaign of the cathays currently in eu4, and you shall be not far behind
Part Three
Wines and Horses
For three centuries, the Asatru of the North and the Christians of the south had been locked in a violent and vengeful stalemate for the fate of Europe; the former for their divine birthright over all mankind, and the latter for the salvation of the former's souls. Certainly, the Christian communities of southern Germany and Bohmia existed under Asatru rule, but their sect was so far detached from the streams of Catholicism and Orthodoxy - even if those men still did profess allegiance to the Pope in Rome - that most considered them simple accessories to the Northern savages. Under normal times, the concept of Christian and Imperial working together would be an abomination - to work alongside one who had relentlessly plotted your demise, slaughtered your ancestors, desecrated your temples.Wines and Horses
These were not normal times.
The Fylkir and Tzar met on genuinely cordial terms. The Mongols had chosen a terrible time for their equally terrible advance; the first snow had begun to coat Russia like a suffocating blanket this late in November, and soon the lands of Rus would be impassable, rendering the western-facing armies largely immobile. The main Mongolian advance would not arrive until mid-1239 ER at the earliest, but for either army to reach the natural defenses of the Urals, perhaps their only chance for defeating an army supplanted with soldiers from Kazakhstan to China, would be a terrible challenge.
Especially considering Finn was gathering the largest army ever raised by the Union.
Ten years ago, he had laughed off the threat of the Mongols, and even been impressed as they had torn through the cities of the great Arabian empires with casual ease. But the time for laughing had long since passed. If Russia was to fall, to truly fall to the Mongols, the rich slopes of the baltics would be this rampaging horde's next logical target. They would have to be stopped at Rus, or at least sufficiently repulsed. Russia's promise to sell off their Baltic territory would be appreciated, but stopping the Horde before it snowballed out of control to swallow all of Europe in its maw was infinitely more so.
Over a hundred thousand men rallied across the Western powers, soldiers from Iceland to Bulgaria. Not an Empire as large as the Great Khan's, not unified under a single leader, with poorer equipment and technology across every rank. Twenty years ago, few would have called a unified army of two hundred thousand inferior to anything. Times change quickly.
As winter approached again at the end of 1239 ER, hundreds of thousands of soldiers waited in makeshift camps on either side of the Urals. More soldiers than had ever been seen before in Europe sharpened spears and grazed horses on what little grass remained. Shifts went out regularly to bury the first casualties; those who had starved or frozen in the unforgiving Russian winter spent with tents and furs.
The sun rose over Russia on the first warm day of spring, in March of 1240. In some cultures, spring is called the season of blood - because armies can move only when the snow clears away for the pretty leaves of Spring.
The scattered and disorganized armies of the West found themselves woefully unprepared for the Mongol's first advance skirmishers.
They came in absurdly large groups, over and across the freshly unfrozen mountains of eastern Russia; nearly fifteen thousand of them in a single pairing, led by the Khagan Buri himself. Warchief Palnatoke, the head of the Jomsvikings, led the Imperial contingent that fell across the Mongols - a proud Leidang of Asatru's most skilled and pious, leaning heavily on the heavily-equipped infantry and cavalry that had so effortlessly shattered the armies of other European nations, cleaving through lighter melee troops like wheat before the scythe.
The Mongols played by their own rules entirely.
The devastation was unimaginable. Palnatoke was a veteran of three of the Union's most savage wars, a renowned leader of men and a commander who had proved his worth in battle time and time again. But against such a force as the Mongols, his contingent was slaughtered nearly to a man. Equipment and training mean nothing when one's opponent relies purely on mobility; shieldwalls that would be unbreakable before most armies could simply be whittled away by an entire army of quick-moving bowmen. Heavy cavalry could be outpaced and outmaneuvered, while being pelleted with arrows the entire time - lighter cavalry simply withered from the force of arrows before they could even get close. The skill and technique with which they wielded their tactics was outstanding, and the tactics themselves, revolutionary.
The few survivors from that initial ambush made it painfully clear that the Mongols would never be beaten by attrition or bouts of traditional maneuvering. They were a force unto their own, something entirely new and unpredictable. Although the freezing cold and scarce prey of the Urals made it a painful task, the armies of the Union regrouped with their Russian allies, both to formulate an entirely new strategy against an incomprehensible foe - and to establish a final bulwark against them.
That bulwark forms at a small village at the foothills of the Urals. Bilyar.
For the first time since the ancient days of Rus when Viking settlers paid their heed to the old Gods of the Asatru, Russians and Northerners have not stood as allies. Never have the Russians acknowledged the authority of a Fylkir; Rurik was a companion of Sigurd, but his son, Maximilian, was cast aside by the Eastern Vikings when he thought to proclaim himself the lord of the Asatru. Such a thing was an affront to the religion, the destruction of the once-strong alliance between the two. Even before they had converted, the Russians had sneered at the 'Imperial' religion and their once-brothers' claims to rightfully rule mankind - after the Rus turned to the arms of the Christians, any kinship that might have been was lost forever.
Until now, that is.
War makes for strange bedfellows.
There was, to be honest, something quite exciting about the war tent. Finn's was perched atop a hill to oversee the camp at large, a massive, sprawling fortress of wood and earth with thirty thousand Imperial Leidangr at the ready, and half that number in Russian troops supporting the construction of ramparts and blockcades. True, most of the work had been in managing a nightmarish tangle of supply routes throughout Russia to maintain this stopgap at the mouth of the Urals, in an unknown patch of ice and snow. But still, it was exciting. Perhaps this is what Sigurd had felt during his raids to Jerusalem and Constantinople. Or Elisa, as she shattered the Karlings and conquered the South Germans. Or perhaps this was something entirely different, something new, something that none of his ancestors had experienced before.
Sigurd, certainly, had not made trying alliances with other Empires. And yet the Tsar of Russia stood before him - not Sigurd, but Finn, Emperor-and-Fylkir Finn the First. No, this was something unlike what his ancestors had done before. This was a new strain of war entirely. Something - different.
"Emperor Finn."
The Tsar was a young man, younger than he was. They still neglected to call him Fylkir; the Russians held a longstanding grudge from the many centuries ago when they, too had been Asatru. Of the kind that refused the Emperor Maximilian's proclamation of the Fylkirate. He was smaller than Finn as well, thin and pale and with gaunt, sunken cheeks. Yet for all he was, the Tsar was not boyish.
Finn offered a cordial smile, cocking his head in the peculiar manner of greeting that the av Sverdklydige were so accustomed to. "Tsar Vyshata! What a pleasure to meet in the flesh. I only knew your father."
"We are not here to discuss pleasantries." The Russian said coldly. His High Norse was heavily accented and choppy, but passable. "Time is short, and we will be swept away without a new plan. Have you your commanders here already?"
"Of course." Finn said, his smile unfazed. "In fact, we have already begun a draft."
Most in the Union thought of Finn as something of a playboy. Charismatic, capable, and handsome, certainly. A good host, liked by his court and council, and a decent enough judge and administrator when dragged out of his women and booze. He was a well-liked Emperor, certainly. But the thought of Finn leading an army or drawing a war council seemed almost laughable. What business does a tenth-generation Emperor, coddled and swaddled from birth, have in the middle of a bloody battlefield?
As it turned out, plenty.
When the Mongol troop arrived in Bilyar, they were ready. This time, they would not be caught into a game of mobility and arrows, perpetually chasing after troops they could never really land a hit on. The Mongols needed to hold this mountain pass if they were to strike into Russia as they intended.
They would not be allowed.
The path through Bilyar was narrow, and months spent on earthworks and fortifications had made it narrower still. To get through, the Mongols had to clamber through the Ural's passes, and when they did, cohorts of Northmen and Russians closed the gaps behind them. Unlike a traditional fort, stagnant in a single place until Mongolian cannons and arrows could burn it down, Bilyar's makeshirt defenses had been set up like a snare, with gaps capable of sealing Mongolian troops in tight spaces where their mobility and range was worthless.
Bilyar had been made into a floating fort; a mobile deathtrap that crushed the Mongolian advance inbetween solid walls of shields. Unable to exploit their significant mobility and forced into direct fights against those slow-moving soldiers with heavy pikes and swords, the Mongols could be turned - they could be beaten.
The sheer force of those unending hordes of troops still put a heavy dent in the Russians and Imperials.
But not enough of a dent.
For the first time since Buri had taken control of the Great Horde, the Mongols were forced to retreat.
They were back a month later, of course. With twice the strength, led by the Khagan Buri personally. To allow a defeat would be an unending shame, and now that they knew the passes of Bilyar, the Westerners would be unable to repeat their plans of snares and entrapments. The Golden Horde had torn through China, India, and the Middle East - Russia would not prove so much a challenge to them, surely. They would not be beaten twice.
And yet, they were.
Bilyar was impassable. To a lesser foe, perhaps this would have ended the war in and of itself - the clear route into Russia proper had been blocked off, and wandering into Bilyar a third time would lead to the same heavy casualties that chipped away morale and numbers more so than any prior foe had ever been able.
Of course, the Mongols were no lesser foe. Attacking Bilyar again had been a matter of honor. But honor was less important than victory.
Instead, the Mongols pulled back and crossed over the river Volga through Alania, conquering the smaller kingdom with remarkably little resistance.
So perhaps they could not get to Russia through the mouth of the Urals. But the Caucasus was wide open. And what few troops had been stationed across the main cities of Russia were far insufficient to stop them from pushing through - nor were the main bulks of the Northern forces fast enough to effectively counteract the Mongols from razing much of southern Russia, or, perhaps, even capable of stopping them once they were in the wide rolling plains past the Urals and Caucasus.
With much of Southern Russian in ruins, Finn urged the Tsar to pursue a joint treaty off earlier terms. The Mongols would keep the vast swaths of the rich and plentiful south they had conquered, and Russia would agree to pay a tribute; one that the Imperial Union would foot the bill for, on top of the high prices they had already agreed upon for Russia's Baltic territory.
The Tsar was understandably offended, at first. But Finn has always found a way with words, a manner of speaking that makes one feel as though he always has a plan, one that will surely work. Some took to calling him 'The Victorious' or 'The Eagle' after the Emperor's dramatic victory at Bilyar, even if much of Russia had been devastated regardless. There was simply a way that Finn spoke that made one think that he had some way to fix it all, and set the world back on its proper course.
At times, he didn't, of course. No one can plan for every situation, and Finn was much too fond of partying and drugs to have a clear and sober plan for every occasion.
But it isn't always such a bad thing to trust a man so nimble with words.
Sometimes they're not lying.
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When you get to Stellaris, are you going to diaspora mankind across the stars or will you base the United Earth on whatever is the strongest nation between the mid 20th and the 23rd? Also I'm new here, what language do these people speak?
Sounds like a bit of a slugfest for a time there - but survival brings its own rewards. And, of course, allows for more parties for Finn.
There is a missing picture in the preparation for the 1st battle of Bliyar.
Otherwise, wonderfully dramatic chapter. I loved it!
Otherwise, wonderfully dramatic chapter. I loved it!
I have a plan for a wider galactic lore that I think people will enjoy. As for the prospect of a united humanity.... Well, diplomacy has always ultimately been a means towards the advancement of one's own nation. Humans have a distinct tendency towards self-interest. Keep watching.
(The Union's commoners speak a wide variety of languages based roughly around geographic/cultural barriers, mostly what you'd expect; Germans universally speak German, but Estonians speak Finnish. Diplomatically 'High' or 'Old' Norse is used, although it's generally only spoken during formal affairs or diplomacy as Scandinavians speak their individual dialect instead of a unified language.)
I hope everyone has been enjoying Finn's aggressively double entendre titles. I worked hard on them.
Missing picture fixed, thank you. And always glad you've enjoyed.
Part Four
Leechsting
Leechsting
Conventionally, the Mongolians were nearly unstoppable. They had already well proven their resilience to standard tactics, and it had taken a unified front of most of Eastern and Central Europe to slow their advance into the Mother Continent; not to stop, but only to slow their pushes. Enough glory had been gained from fighting the horse archers futiley with heavy infantry and well-armed cavalry. Finn was an Emperor who could realize when a fight was unwinnable, and the charge the Mongols once more, whether they made the first move or not, would be suicide.
Fortunately, problems tend to have more than one solution.
While it would be far from the truth to claim that the Muslim and Imperial worlds had ever been anything close to allies, it was true that they had some measure of respect for another, as stalwart enemies of the central Christian states and their expansive creed. Rarely did anything come of this, due to both distance and distrust, but rarely, the so-called Hashashin and their scattered heirs will listen when the Union calls - particularly for a good cause or a hefty sum of gold. Finn had both, which meant that he had the ears of the Assassins.
A prominent Duke, Gudrod of Orkney, was sent across the frozen deserts of the North to speak with the Khan of Khans at the collection of wood and stone that had been fashioned into something like a palace over the year; as much of a palace as the traveling hordes of the Mongols could craft at Kuala Lampur, or at least however large of one the Khans had cared to build. Supposedly, Gudrod was an envoy for the Union, dedicated to peace and stability. On a surface level, this would mean recognizing the presence of the Mongols in Europe as legitimate, an idea difficult to refuse even for a sprawling state such as the Horde. Of course, his real purpose was far more important - to ensure the death of a Great Khan.
The key element to Finn's plan was the Emperor's wife, the Khatun Gurbesu. Their marriage had been a political one, arranged by Buri's great father, the uniter of the Mongolian tribes. While she bore no ill will towards Buri, having a strong figurehead at the top of the Empire limited her own opportunities for advancement - and Gurbesu was a notoriously ambitious woman. Perhaps a poor choice for a wife.
The final piece was the young Khan of Alania, a nephew of the former King who had been allowed to take the title in exchange for a profession of loyalty. Religion and birth does not fade quite so easily, of course, something that Buri's father understood far better than his son did. The courtiers and layabouts at Kuala Lampur scarcely needed to enter the picture - not with such an arrow pointed directly at the Khagan's heart.
Buri, of course, heard of the plot soon, through whispers in the air of men from deserts and snowfields that plotted to kill him; but without specifics. Just enough to force a warrior Khan into seclusion and hiding. Enough to be perceived as legitimate. And although Finn had not intended for such an outcome, it served much of the intended effect - that is, to take the Mongolians out of the picture. At least for the moment.
It wouldn't be a long-term solution, though. The great armies of the Mongolians marched across China and Arabia alike even without Buri at their head, and they remained just as indestructible. Though their generals were renowned, in truth it was hardly military brilliance that had led the Mongols to success, but rather innovative designs; the presence of Buri made little difference when generals were still able to trample Fatmid armies under hoof and arrow.
Buri's seclusion was not enough. Not enough to slow down the campaigns, not enough to leave generals murmuring. He needed to die.
It took nearly four years, even with the help of the Khagan's wife and the inscrutable Hashashin, but no man can hide forever from so many prying eyes; and so skilled. Hashashin dissapeared into the ranks of the great Mongolian armies, those loyal to the Khatun took breaks on their guard duty, and a knife edged ever-closer to the Khagan's back as he plotted campaigns across the globe at the helm of the largest Empire the earth had ever seen.
There was no grand explosion or battle at the gates of Kuala Lampur, no dramatic cry of agony in the middle of the night, no shadowy figure darting out into the night. Only a concubine discovering the Khagan with his throat neatly slit and - according to which account one reads - a note with a symbol of some kind, harsh squiggles in lines in a far-foreign language from one end of the earth or another. The true Architect behind the death of the mighty Khagan was never decisively found; perhaps because the splinters that erupted in the wake of his death became far more of a pressing issue.
The Khagan, after all, had died at the young age of twenty-eight, but left behind no less than eight legitimate heirs, three of them male, and a great number of brothers and uncles from his father before him. Worse still, he had not named a proper successor, and the precise rules for the succession of the great Empire had never been quite formally established. That left the decision to the massive number of Khans spread from the Caucasus mountains to central China, retreating to Kuala Lamur to consider, debate, and fight with one another in a cluttered mess of democracy, strong-arm politics, and gavelkind inheritance.
It had been a far more decisive strike than any traditional battle could ever have been. Succession had been wrenched away from the nominations of respected warriors to the musings of a hundred different spiteful Khans, without the changing of a single law or tradition. And to think some claim that the pen is mightier than the sword!
The man to emerge from these proceedings, the Khagan Nakhu, was far more devious and clever than his brother - but weak, cowardly, and meandering, precise with his words and nothing else. His father had seen through Nakhu enough to appoint Buri as his successor, but to an assembly of clans, he seemed a perfect fit.
The Mongolian advance in Europe slowed to a crawl. Within a year, the thoughts of incompetence and passivity that had lingered throughout Buri's seclusion grew into whispered voices. And all it had taken was the death of one man.
Two years later, the pet cat of the Emperor-and-Fylkir in Central Europe died.
More Europeans mourned that cat than the Khan of Khans.
Not in the least because the Emperor falls ill himself soon after the death of that cat; one of the first to be recorded with a name ('Spotter') in European history. Finn had ruled the Union for nearly two decades, and bordered on fifty, but he was still a strong and hardy sort. The whispers from his physicians claimed at first that the coughing and fatigue was merely a symptom of a bad case of pneumonia from the cold Northern rain, caught from a few too many walks out in the elements.
It was not.
The head physician of the Union during the mid-13th century, a Bohemian by the name of Rajmund, was clever enough to link Finn's symptoms to that of his ancestors - in particular, that of Maximilian 'The Jackal', founder of the Union. Though it had been three centuries since the time of Maximilian, neither Europe nor the world was much closer to understanding the strange blotches and pains that sapped Finn's energy as anything other than a particular affliction of the av Sverdklydige line, some kind of pox that had intermittently plagued a family renowned for its resistance to most other forms of disease ever since the time of Balder and the Black Plague.
The Northern Kings were truly a tremendously resilient people, and Finn was no exception. A diagnosis of incurable cancers would not be enough to level Finn. At least, not immediately.
In 1252 ER, the Mongols seemed to have recovered from their stumble after the death of Buri and the succession of Nakhu. Mongolian forces pushed into the Byzantine Empire's powerful hold on the southern Caucasus, and, through it, towards the heart of the Middle East and the two powerful Caliphates that split it down the middle. Compared to the lunges of Buri and his father, they were, however, sluggish, disorganized, and unmotivated; while they made gains, the powers of southern Europe and Arabia won their fair share of battles, too. It had been many years since the Mongols had first pushed into Europe, and while their tactics were just as devastating, they were no longer revolutionary. Certainly, the raw power of skilled horse archers were not to be underestimated, and even the massive armies of Caliph and Basileus were often crushed beneath their hooves. But now, they were understood tactics, and that which is understood can be countered.
Nakhu's meandering leadership helped none. Slowly, steadily, the Mongols took land from the great empires of the Earth, but far slower than they had just ten years ago. The world, it seemed, was beginning to successfully push back against an unstoppable force. In any case, it became very clear that the age of unchecked Mongolian expansion had come to a decisive and timely end.
For a state barely a stone's throw from the largest and most violent Empire to ever exist, the Imperial Union observed a surprising period of peace and prosperity as Finn grew older. Without the Mongols quite close enough to be an immediate threat and the apparent slowing of their aggressive expansion, trade and growth across the Imperium - while not flourishing - grew at a steady pace. Some in the Thing vigorously advocated for an aggressive pursuit against the Mongolians and a reigntion of formal alliance with Russia, but when there were good harvests to collect and profitable trade to take, the notion of sending young Imperial men off to die again in the mountains of Russia was thoroughly unpopular both with the Union's people and its Emperor.
Instead, Finn's eyes turned to the West with the rare spirit of cooperation.
Although the Union had served as the unofficial protector of Frisia, its 'special relation' of half essential trade-state and half gateway to Europe, it had generally been left to fight its own smaller wars, with the implicit threat of Union intervention if England or France as a whole sought to step into the smaller lowland state. This policy, while preserving Union soldiers for larger wars, had cost quite a hefty sum over the year as small trade wars with Normans or French Dukes cast out trade posts and raided ships over minor scuffles. Only under Finn was the guarantee of Frisian independence - with the condition of submission to the rightful rule of the Fylkirate, if not the Union - actually granted, with an overarching guarantee to protect Frisian trade from 'unwarranted aggression'.
The official notarization of the Frisian alliance came in response to a particularly aggressive trade war between Frisia and the Duke of Orleans, after a series of conflicts with English mechants had resulted in a severe weakening of Frisia's immediate military might - much of which was based around hiring mercenary forces. The sending of Union forces to reinforce Frisia and force out the Duke of Orleans would, at the risk of dragging France as a whole into a thoroughly unwanted war, send a very clear message that Frisia would no longer be a target for easy English and French aggression. A bold message, to be certain.
Finn would not live to see it delivered.
A fifteen year old boy might not send quite as powerful of a signal, to be sure. But the Union had sent messages more powerful with younger sorts before.
Well, 15 is nearly a man, and with a whole life ahead of him Felix may well determine much of the Union's future. And one hopes his name is auspicious.
Finn leaves the Empire with a legacy of peace and prosperity, and having saved Europe from the Mongol threat - something no one will probably never know, however. May he feast on the halls of Valhalla and may his son's famous name be a sign of more prosperity to come!
On another note, looks like Burgundy will transition into Switzerland if it keeps its current lands.
Unfortunately, no genetic base is perfect. The av Sverdklydige might have some prodigious ancestors, but they are, so it seems, devastatingly prone to certain destructive cancers.
Thank you!
I'm not quite sure what you mean by a map cover. A political timelapse, maybe? I'm sure someone's done that before - I may do myself near the end.
It's true, the Union has a rather good record with young Emperors. They do, of course, need the approval of the Grand Assembly and its nobles before being appointed Emperor - which means that those who are appointed at young ages tend to have a spark of something special in them. But human judgement is notoriously fallible..
I'm not so sure if we can say 'saved' quite yet- there *is* still a massive Mongol horde with armies in the hundreds of thousands that reaches well into continental Europe. All Finn did was make them a little... unstable. And help stop them from totally overunning the Russians (for what little thanks he got)!
Very, very possible. We'll have to see.
Very, very possible. We'll have to see.
Here in the Netherlands, Burgundian is synonymous with good (if slightly lazy) living. In other words, I'm looking forward to a country full of mountain chefs to grace the scenery of your world
