ScythiAAR! -- a Tall Tale of Alania
...by Sleight of Hand :unsure:
Excuse the pun. No, no, don't. I'm proud of shit puns and I'll use them at absolutely any opportunity.
Alright, so I thought I'd give one of these here AARs a crack. I also thought I'd try somewhere a bit different; as much as I love playing as the Saxons, Norse and Bretons it has to be said that AARs for them, however great, are ten a penny. They're also all fairly safe places to play, with quite traditional feudal setups.
So... Alania?
You won't find many huscarls lurking around here.
For whose of you who aren't in-the-know (ignorant swine), the Alans were an Iranian people who were split into two or three main groups after the Hunnic invasions, leading (as some theorists would have it) to the Great Migration.
The Alans represented in CK II are the group who settled in Alania, a land of steppes, plains, mountains and rivers in the Caucasus. They were a nomadic, pastoral people who had been under increasing generations of influence from their Byzantine and Georgian neighbors to the South, in contrast to their steppe brothers (oh yeah, soak that one up folks) the Cumans and Bulgars to the North. Moreover, the Alans were predominantly Orthodox Christian and often allied themselves with other nearby Christian states against Turkic and Persian invaders. Thus, by 1066 the Alans have been somewhat 'Byzantified.'
Well... most of them anyway...
Cyrus of Alania, heretical Eastern Christian and self-proclaimed #1 fan of his Achaemenid 'great, great, great grandfather twice-removed.'
Kurush is the founder of his apparent bastard Achaemenid line, which he refers to as House Ovseti after Ossetia, the land of his childhood. His coat of arms is somewhat anachronistic but represents the lush plains of Alania and the blue sky above it, two things any son of the steppes would immediately recognize so long as it was daytime and before October. In addition, he chose to add the white cross of the Crusaders on the basis that 11th century historians had recently 'discovered' (after some degree of arm-twisting) that Cyrus the Great himself had in fact devised the emblem when leading his Immortals against the heathen Greeks of old, the ancestors of the ruling Byzantines to the South and a people who disparagingly referred to themselves as 'Barbarians' -- though later Roman historians would arrogantly flip the label, such is the greatest truth of all: History is written by the victors.
The standard of Cyrus the Great, and also of his close relative (Ed: disputed; source?) Cyrus of Alania.
At this point it's probably worth giving you all an overview of the known world in 1066:
Culture
Point of note: for historiographical reasons we are in the Byzantine culture group, though linguistically and indeed emotionally we associate ourselves with grandfather's people to the East. That said, they do in fact loathe us and often send envoys stating that 'everyone here is Persian, just like everyone there is Roman... you just have to pass the initiation.'
Religion
Point of note: the red patch in Mesopotamia is the last remaining stronghold of the one true Nestorian faith -- aside from Alania itself, though for purely political reasons the populace choose to identify themselves as Greek Orthodox. If you've got them by the balls...
Finally, I'm playing CK II 1.07b on Hard, using my personal mod. The aim is basically just to survive, but expanding and spreading the Faith of the East would of course be a bonus. In fact, I think I've chosen a relatively difficult start (a heretic surrounded by AI-controlled hateful folks with no sense of humor or historical irony) so this will be a genuine test for me. I don't plan to reload unless I get annexed or die without an heir. My only red lines would be that I'd like my dynasty to remain Nestorian, and preferably Alan... though I'm not against becoming Persian at some point should fortune and circumstance favor such a conversion.
That's the intro. I'll do the first chapter as soon as I get time. Any and all contributions/suggestions/criticisms are welcome; this is my first AAR so I'm running blind here.
Please subscribe, comment and enjoy!
...by Sleight of Hand :unsure:
Excuse the pun. No, no, don't. I'm proud of shit puns and I'll use them at absolutely any opportunity.
Alright, so I thought I'd give one of these here AARs a crack. I also thought I'd try somewhere a bit different; as much as I love playing as the Saxons, Norse and Bretons it has to be said that AARs for them, however great, are ten a penny. They're also all fairly safe places to play, with quite traditional feudal setups.
So... Alania?
You won't find many huscarls lurking around here.
For whose of you who aren't in-the-know (ignorant swine), the Alans were an Iranian people who were split into two or three main groups after the Hunnic invasions, leading (as some theorists would have it) to the Great Migration.
The Alans represented in CK II are the group who settled in Alania, a land of steppes, plains, mountains and rivers in the Caucasus. They were a nomadic, pastoral people who had been under increasing generations of influence from their Byzantine and Georgian neighbors to the South, in contrast to their steppe brothers (oh yeah, soak that one up folks) the Cumans and Bulgars to the North. Moreover, the Alans were predominantly Orthodox Christian and often allied themselves with other nearby Christian states against Turkic and Persian invaders. Thus, by 1066 the Alans have been somewhat 'Byzantified.'
Well... most of them anyway...
Cyrus of Alania, heretical Eastern Christian and self-proclaimed #1 fan of his Achaemenid 'great, great, great grandfather twice-removed.'
Kurush is the founder of his apparent bastard Achaemenid line, which he refers to as House Ovseti after Ossetia, the land of his childhood. His coat of arms is somewhat anachronistic but represents the lush plains of Alania and the blue sky above it, two things any son of the steppes would immediately recognize so long as it was daytime and before October. In addition, he chose to add the white cross of the Crusaders on the basis that 11th century historians had recently 'discovered' (after some degree of arm-twisting) that Cyrus the Great himself had in fact devised the emblem when leading his Immortals against the heathen Greeks of old, the ancestors of the ruling Byzantines to the South and a people who disparagingly referred to themselves as 'Barbarians' -- though later Roman historians would arrogantly flip the label, such is the greatest truth of all: History is written by the victors.
The standard of Cyrus the Great, and also of his close relative (Ed: disputed; source?) Cyrus of Alania.
At this point it's probably worth giving you all an overview of the known world in 1066:
Culture
Point of note: for historiographical reasons we are in the Byzantine culture group, though linguistically and indeed emotionally we associate ourselves with grandfather's people to the East. That said, they do in fact loathe us and often send envoys stating that 'everyone here is Persian, just like everyone there is Roman... you just have to pass the initiation.'
Religion
Point of note: the red patch in Mesopotamia is the last remaining stronghold of the one true Nestorian faith -- aside from Alania itself, though for purely political reasons the populace choose to identify themselves as Greek Orthodox. If you've got them by the balls...
Finally, I'm playing CK II 1.07b on Hard, using my personal mod. The aim is basically just to survive, but expanding and spreading the Faith of the East would of course be a bonus. In fact, I think I've chosen a relatively difficult start (a heretic surrounded by AI-controlled hateful folks with no sense of humor or historical irony) so this will be a genuine test for me. I don't plan to reload unless I get annexed or die without an heir. My only red lines would be that I'd like my dynasty to remain Nestorian, and preferably Alan... though I'm not against becoming Persian at some point should fortune and circumstance favor such a conversion.
That's the intro. I'll do the first chapter as soon as I get time. Any and all contributions/suggestions/criticisms are welcome; this is my first AAR so I'm running blind here.
Please subscribe, comment and enjoy!
