Postscript to a Lost Game: A Jerusalem AAR

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Postscript to a Lost Game: A Jerusalem AAR

Hi all, this is my first AAR attempt and I've decided to use a game that actually got deleted when I had to restore my dying laptop back to its factory settings.

The game in question is a Jerusalem one, starting as Baudouin I about a decade after its founding, when the Kingdom was perhaps at its most secure. The game was finished when I lost it and I'm aiming to do my AAR in a sort of epistolary style, as a series of in-universe documents such as letters and histories, dealing with events mostly occurring after the end of the game.

As such, some background about the state of Europe in the late 14th century (when the game ended) is required.

Let's start with Jerusalem:

• Jerusalem is a Catholic Kindgom with an absolute monarch (I think Baudouin IV and that's what I'll call him, but it could have been a Tancred)
• It consists of Palestine, Syria, most of Mesopotamia, the West coast of the Arab Penninsula (including Mecca and Medina), Egypt, Sinai and Aragon (which was won in a Crusade)
• It has a special relationship with its daughter Kingdom of Nubia and with Lithuania, which was once in a Personal Union with Jerusalem but was cut loose because it was hard to reach
• Its neighbours are Leon in Iberia, the Eastern Roman Empire to the North, the Ilkhanate to the East, Nubia to the South, and the North African (Oronosid) sultanate
• At the end of the game Egypt was trying for independence (a few others joined, but for narrative purposes, it's Egypt)

The Middle East:

• Ilkhanate is Catholic and controls Iran, Iraq, bits of the Caucasus and most of Arabia
• The Golden Horde are Orthodox and have horribly irregular borders in the North as well as owning a section of Asia Minor that they won from the ERE
• The Eastern Roman Empire is as strong as ever and usually allied by marriage to Jerusalem, they've recently come out of a period of revolving door coups detats and have their first hereditary Emperor for a while now
• Islam is on the back foot to say the least, traditional Sunnism is essentially dead, North Africa is Ibadi and there are a few Shia holdouts around the tip of Arabia and between the two Hordes
• The game ended pre-Timurids so there's a distinct possibility of a Shia resurgence

Iberia:

• Leon now controls this area, they have been trying to make some headway in Morocco, but without much success
• France was making inroads but was reveresed, more on that later
• Aragon has been Jerusalemite for at least 2 centuries now, Barcelona is part of the Royal Demnese (as is Damascus)
• Iberia is boring, nothing happens except that Valencia can be relied upon to join every single rebellion against me, because the Duke is a distant cousin whose ancestor once tried to take the throne

Northern and Eastern Europe:

• 
  Gods below, where to start...
• France is no more, I don't know what happened but one day I looked and Aquitaine was independent and ruling pretty much everything in the Southwest, the Northeast then degenerated into feuding duchies and an anaemic Kingdom of France, the title has since evaporated
• Burgundy and Champagne seem fairly powerful as these duchies go, so is Anjou but it's a vassal of Aquitaine and currently attempting to depose the ruler
• England is a theocracy with Papal investiture. The current King-bishop is called Waleran (no surname, he's lowborn)
• England has been making inroads in the Low Countries and Normandy
• The HRE no longer exists, like France, I just looked one day and it was gone, chaos reigns in central Europe, Denmark/Sweden creeps South ever so slightly
• Bavaria is a merchant republic
• Italy is divided between Pisa, Venice, Genoa (all republics) and a few Duchies
• Sweden united Scandinavia recently
• Eastern Europe is a mess, I went on a Mongol killing spree and basically upended my manpower reserves at them every chance I got to kill off their attrition free doomstack so a lot of Eastern Europe remained inepdendent, although nowhere was unmauled
• Lithuania exists but is small
• Poland exists but has very ragged borders
• The rest is a jumble of duchies and counts really, the ERE and GH control most of the Black Sea coast though
• Russia is sort of clinging to the edges of the GH, but has the potential to make a comeback

Africa

• The North Coast and Mali et al are Ibadi, Egypt and Nubia are Catholic
• This is the only area where Islam still really rules, as mentioned above

Something I'm inventing purely for the story: The Timurids in this universe, put off by a strong, unified Ilkhanate, turned East first of all and attacked Delhi and the Deccan sultanates.
They then wheeled around to focus on some of the Khanates surrounding the Timurids and GH but I envisage Timurid dominance in India as being restricted mostly to the area around Delhi and the Deccan Plateau. I can't really see them dominating the subcontinent without abandoning all Westward expansion, thus the Eastern Timurids are more a network of vassals punctuated by the ruins of places Timur decided to make examples out of.

Most of the character names I'm making up here, aside from standout characters like Queen Adelaide the Great and her daughter Queen Beatrix/Beatrice (her name just changed at some point, I have no idea why) The Pious (aka Beatrix the Kinslayer) I can't remember a great deal of detail and I have no way of retrieving it.

Finally, I'm a junior doctor and work hours which are often long and irregular so updates might not be entirely regular

 

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There comes, from the East, a great Shadow which is cast across this land that is called Persia. It is not a Shadow cast by the Sun, but by a fearsome Mars that has arisen, outshining all else around him. The Shadow is that of Enyo, Deino and Pemphredo who stride through Persia even as I write, and cast all about them into Chaos. It is said, of this new Genghis that he has piled the skulls of a hundred thousand of his enemies into mountains and set them ablaze high into the night, that he has walked unscathed through storms of arrows and that he has styled himself the Sword of Islam and gathered to himself a fearsome army of Mongols and Mohametans to burn the West.

What is certain is that he has taken India and now worries at the edges of the Persian Ilkhanate. The Great Shah of Persia, Khagan Ilkhanate and King of the Southern Mongols, Arghun. The Khagan, who is known throughout all of Christendom for his piety, has proclaimed a day of mortification so that his subjects may be made ready to face the Battle ahead of us, and has summoned many legions and armies back from Arabia.

In fact it seems to my naïve eyes as though all of the armies of the world pass through Baghdad. The city has swollen with warriors, tradesmen, and all manner of hangers-on who fill its streets. The camp outside the walls now dwarfs even the city itself, and the smell offends all those who dwell within, Prince Gazan has left for Damascus where he hopes to enlist Jerusalemite aid against Timur, but there are those who say he goes simply to escape this invasion by his own subjects!

The smell is but a sign of the rot that accompanies our soldiers. Such is the state of the city that I wonder whether such men can ever defend Christendom. Beggars plague every corner, and thieves walk about boldly, knowing that whenever they steal, a crowd will envelop them. Worse! All manner of sorcerors, diviners and Alchemists have descended on the city to ply their blasphemous trades, and men and women perform such acts in the very streets that no good married folk would conceive of within their own walls. The Pope has called no Crusade yet all behave as if their martyrdom were guaranteed, and their sins washed clean before they have even set eyes upon the infidel.

And yet, so many of the peasants and traders of the city, and of its noble class, have fled from Baghdad and for all of the flood of strangers through its gates, the city itself has begun to empty as people head West. It is strange that I find myself wishing for the company of the heretics and heathens that usually frequent this place, instead of the Catholics who have descended upon it of late.

There has been a good deal of blood spilt between the Mohametans and the Christian soldiers, and the citizens. For there is a fear that the Shi'a among us will open the gates to Timur who professes their faith. In Shiraz there has been a great Massacre and the Shi'a were driven from the city, by mobs of Christians and Sufists. There is a man, a Shi'i named Amed who is a trader of some renown in silks here in the city, beneath his great beard and broken nose, for he is quick to use his fists, I have seen fear in his eyes when he breaks bread with us now, his fear is not just of such attacks, but also the fear of Timur, and the purges he might deliver upon the Shi'a who have lived side by side with Christians

From the writings of John Trebiso, diarist and chronicler to Prince Chaghti of the Persian Ilkhanate, writing in Baghdad circa 1388

 

[gremlok]

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