The Lost Crusade
The True Story behind a Medieval Mystery
In 1339, Pope Martinus III declared the Seventh Crusade, wherein all faithful Catholics were called to help conquer Orissa from the Buddhists.
This Crusade was all but ignored as few Catholics had heard of Buddhists, let alone the Kingdom of Orissa and had little idea where it even was.
Initially, only the Count Aepak of Holstein and Duke Aleksander the Fat of Silesia answered the call, two small independent lords hoping for fortune and glory.
The Pope and the two lords raised their personal armies and marched east in search of the fabled Kingdom of Orissa.
Almost a year later in the waning months of 1340, Emperor Edward of Marcaich-Shine,
following his victory over the adventurer, Prince Wolfgang Salian, in his second war for the Marcaich–Shine Empire, also pledged his support of the Crusade. In the spring of 1341, the Emperor's 6th son, Prince Lennon Laird, and 10,000 men including the Knights Hospitaller, marched from his lands in Jerusalem to follow the Pope east.
The Emperor also informed his cousin, Heinrich X, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, that his brother, Wolfgang, had enthusiastically chosen to join the Crusade as well (though rumors that the Prince had been sent in chains to the muster point in Jerusalem persisted).
These four armies, all told some 20,000 men total, traveled east through the Muslim lands of the Fatimid, Abyssinia, and the Seljuk into the Hindu Kush mountain range and disappeared from history.
In 1350, after nearly 10 years with no word at all from the Crusade, the Church announced the election of a new Pontiff, Pope Silvester IV. The new Pope quietly declared the Crusade for Orissa a failure and spoke no more about it. Silesia and Holstein asked the Church about the fate of their missing Lords. The Church's answer is not recorded, however, no objections were raised from the Church when the heirs laid claim to those titles. The Storm Rider Emperor and his family quietly mourned their lost son.
The ill-fated Crusade for Orissa faded from memory and the Christian world moved on.
However, in the mythical lands of Hindustan, this Lost Crusade would not so easily be forgot.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter1 - The Crusade for Orissa
Chapter 2 - The Spoils of War
Interlude - Aepak's Last Stand
Chapter 3 - The First Council of Orissa
Chapter 4 - The War for Survarnapura
Chapter 5 - The Changing of the Guard
Chapter 6 - Glimpses of the Future
Chapter 7 - The Calm Before the Storm
Chapter 8 - The Best Defense is a Good Offense
Chapter 9 - Rebuilding
Interlude - A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of the Cumania Horde and the role of Clan Laird from 1066 to 1338
Chapter 10 - The Blood of Orissa
Chapter 11 - The Boy
Chapter 12 - Spring in Orissa
Chapter 13 - The Consolation Prize
Chapter 14 - The Grand Tournament of 1378
Chapter 15 - Sieges and Secrets
Chapter 16 - The Mihirid Wars
Chapter 17 - The Curse of Kirianagar
Chapter 18 - The Lion of Orissa
Chapter 19 - A Time of Troubles
Chapter 20 - Hard Choices
Chapter 21 - The Lions' Pride
Interlude - Farewell to the Maharaja
Chapter 22 - Triumph and Tragedy
Chapter 23 - The Unworthy
Chapter 24 - The Deaths of Princes
Chapter 25 - More War
Chapter 26 - The Three Kings
Chapter 27 - A Helping Hand
Chapter 28 - The Final Straw
Chapter 29 - Tiger Tiger
Chapter 30 - The Next 100 Years
Epilogue - Full Circle
Chapter1 - The Crusade for Orissa
Chapter 2 - The Spoils of War
Interlude - Aepak's Last Stand
Chapter 3 - The First Council of Orissa
Chapter 4 - The War for Survarnapura
Chapter 5 - The Changing of the Guard
Chapter 6 - Glimpses of the Future
Chapter 7 - The Calm Before the Storm
Chapter 8 - The Best Defense is a Good Offense
Chapter 9 - Rebuilding
Interlude - A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of the Cumania Horde and the role of Clan Laird from 1066 to 1338
Chapter 10 - The Blood of Orissa
Chapter 11 - The Boy
Chapter 12 - Spring in Orissa
Chapter 13 - The Consolation Prize
Chapter 14 - The Grand Tournament of 1378
Chapter 15 - Sieges and Secrets
Chapter 16 - The Mihirid Wars
Chapter 17 - The Curse of Kirianagar
Chapter 18 - The Lion of Orissa
Chapter 19 - A Time of Troubles
Chapter 20 - Hard Choices
Chapter 21 - The Lions' Pride
Interlude - Farewell to the Maharaja
Chapter 22 - Triumph and Tragedy
Chapter 23 - The Unworthy
Chapter 24 - The Deaths of Princes
Chapter 25 - More War
Chapter 26 - The Three Kings
Chapter 27 - A Helping Hand
Chapter 28 - The Final Straw
Chapter 29 - Tiger Tiger
Chapter 30 - The Next 100 Years
Epilogue - Full Circle
Author’s notes
This is my second attempt at an AAR, the first stalled early.
This AAR takes place almost 300 years after a Scottish exile and his followers became a vassal clan to the Khagan of Cumania. A descendant of that clan found himself winning a Crusade for a country half a world away from everything else he owned which lead to this story.
I didn't decide to try and do an AAR on this until after the Crusade was over, so did not have any screenshots during the war, I pulled the shots from an earlier save for some background information and pieced rest of war together from memory and the Laird Chronicle.
This will be played with all DLCs except the Conclave and associated patch, so will stay with version 2.4.5 with no mods, except one small one I created for the story. Will use the following house rules to keep with the premise is that the Christian world had no contact with the Crusaders after they marched, so :
- Will not call in any allies associated with family and marriages ties outside of India (will accept call to arms to
avoid prestige hits but not participate).
- Will make no marriages outside of India (won’t be able to stop AI from doing so but my characters
won’t.)
- Will use console commands to prevent inheritance of lands in India by characters in Europe especially if that
makes portions of Orissa become vassals of European rulers.
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