Chronicles of A Troubled Time-A Multination Semi AAR

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Hello everyone! This is just something I wrote after playing some M2. This, however, is not a story about a campaign, it will encompass many nations and many characters.

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Alexandroi Exotrochos looked over the walls of Trebizond, the westernmost outpost of the crumbling and decaying Byzantine Empire, recently retaken from the Seljuk Sultanate, also known as the Turks. Trebizond was surrounded and outnumbered. The Seljuks had recaptured all of the Anatolian peninsula with the finincial aid of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. The Fatimid navies, the most powerful in the Mediterranean, blockaded Trebizond's ports, while the Seljuks surrounded the castle by land.

The Seljuks needed only capture Trebizond to secure their conquest of Anatolia, and if they managed to do so, they would most likely cross the Bosphorus and attack the capital of the Empire, the Jewel of Civilization, Contsantinople. Therefore, the garrison of Trebizond under the general Evangelos of Nicaea was resolved to holding the citadel and dying if need be to do so.

The situation of the Empire in the west, in Greece, was immediately dire as well. The armies of the Republic of Venice moved towards the Empire from the northwest. Sicily's Prince Jiacobo made ready to assault Corinth for the third time, the first two attempts having failed. The Hungarian horse-bastards marched from the north, bringing with them news of the realm of the Kieven Rus, who had recently captured the land surrounding the Black Sea, all save Sarkel, and made ready for a naval invasion to the south. However, it was not known where this invasion army would go, whether or not it was planned for the Byzantines or the Turks. The reestablishment of friendly relations between the Byzantines and the Rus would make one think that the invasion was planned for the Turks.

Alexandroi was pondering this information--he was an exceptionally intelligent man for a soldier--when he spotted a lone horseman slowly walking his horse over the crest of a hill not more than 100 paces from the area of the wall where Alexandroi was keeping watch. The horseman stopped the horse and dismounted, looking at the wall. Crossbow in hand, Alexandroi took aim. What the hell, he thought, I might as well take a shot. He loaded the crossbow with a steel bolt, wound it up quietly, and took aim. He took a deep breath, and then pulled the trigger.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Ali ibn Muhammed was standing next to his horse, a strong Arabian horse, ten feet behind his esteemed and glorious Sultan. The Sultan of the Seljuks, Alim the Chivalrous, had desired to see the castle of Trebizond that would, once captured, cement his dominance of Anatolia. The Sultan had led the Seljuks to victory in hundreds of battles on many campaigns in the north and south, east and west. His dominion stretched from Sarkel on the northern steppes to Antioch in the Holy Land, from Cannakale in the west on the shores of the Aegean to the wonder that was the city of Baghdad in the east. He and his son, Crown Prince Mustafa, had conquered almost all of this in the short space of only 15 years.

Now, however, the great Sultan was defied by one stubborn castle and its garrison loyal to the Byzantines. While both father and son hated, with few exceptions, the Greeks, they both felt a certain sense of brotherhood with, and respected, them. The Byzantines had given the Seljuks their only major defeat apart from the Crusades at the First Battle of Nicosia. The Seljuks had desired the port in order to stop trade between the west and the Crusader States. Even though the Crusaders had lost Antioch to the Seljuks and Acre to the prince of the Fatimids, they still desperately clinged to Jerusalem and several small coastal villages. The siege of Trebizond had been arranged by the Seljuks and Fatimids to take place at the same time as the siege of Jerusalem, or Al-Quds as it was known in Arabic. Once the cities were taken, the remnants of the Crusaders would most likely flee, and Muslim dominance of Asia would be complete again.

Ali's attention was jerked back to earth when he noticed a silent whump! and a small groan from over the crest of the hill. Ali got up and rushed ahead, fearing that the worst had happened. As he came to the top of the hill, his fears were confirmed. The Sultan was dead, shot through the chest with a steel crossbow bolt. Screaming curses and the strongest oaths of which he could think at the walls of Trebizond and the faceless bowman who had killed his liegelord, Ali and his comrades lifted the Sultan's body onto his horse and brought them back to the camp.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

The mood at the tent of Evangelos of Nicaea was somber, gloomy. Morbid, even. Of course, this was not without good reason. Trebizond had only enough supplies to last for two more weeks, and it was unknown whether or not the Seljuks were aware of this. His informants in the Seljuk camp had informed him that rumors were abound that Sultan Alim had been killed, shot by a crossbowman on the walls of Trebizond. This was good enough news, but Evangelos did not rejoice as his troops did. "You had one hell of a run, you old bastard," Evangelos whispered, referring of course to his friend the late Sultan. Evangelos thought only of the time when he and the Sultan had fought together against the renegade king of Adana, Nicholous Exotrochos, and had captured the city. This had been in a period of peace between the two realms, unfortunately unable to last. However, during the peace, Evangelos and the Sultan had formed bonds of friendship that had been unbroken even by the hardships of war.

Now he prayed for the Sultan's soul, and made preparations for the attack in which he and his forces would sally out and attacke the Seljuk force, which was considerably numerically superior. He and his veterans were ready for battle and death. The Seljuks would pay dearly if they wished to capture Trebizond, and they would more likely break and run in the face of the more experienced Byzantine troops. Tomorrow would, for the garrison of Trebizond and many Turks, be the Day of Judgement.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

So I hope you enjoy it! After this is...resolved, we'll most likely go either to Scotland, Italy, or Spain.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Geez, no replies at all?

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Crown Prince Mustafa, recently crowned Sultan Mustafa, paced back and forth in his tent, considering a plan of action. His choices were threefold: attack, and this he did not wish to do for it would cause very heavy casualties; maintain the siege; or retreat. The most feasible course of action was to maintain the siege. Honor demanded that he capture the citadel and avenge the death of his father, and if he was to retreat, it would have to be after a battle that he lost. His troops, although half of them were untried, wished to assault the stronghold. This would, of course, be suicidal. His most likely, and sanest, course of action would be to continue the siege.

Sultan Mustafa was signing reports on the siege when a messenger burst into his tent.

"Sultan! The Byzantines have sallied forth from the fortress. General Nasser of Acre awaits your orders."

"Order the general to have the troops form up into battle lines. I shall join him very shortly."

"Yes, sir," the messenger acknowledged and ran off to inform his liege-lord.

Mustafa sent for Hamid, the leader of his bodyguard and a veteran of all seven campaigns led by Mustafa and his late father. He informed Hamid of the imminent battle and told him to make ready his men, the Golden Eagles. Hamid ran off to the stables, and Mustafa donned his armor. "Insh'Allah," he whispered, "I shall today avenge my father's death."

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Alexandroi stood on the field two hundred paces away from the walls of Trebizond and one hundred paces away from the Seljuk camp. He had been promoted to a swordsmen for slaying the late Sultan Alim. He stood at the very front and center of the battle line and awaited the Seljuk army to assemble on the field so that they may attack them. He was wearing a strange armour known as full plate armour, as was the rest of his unit, taken from a Venetian army defeated at a border fort near Thessalonica. It was said that knights encased in this were near invincible, and even though he knew that it was most likely not true, Alexandroi still took a small amount of comfort in that rumour.

A battle horn sounded from the Turkish camp across the field, and the Seljuks marched out and assembled in formation on the plain. Evangelos of Nicaea stood not fifteen feet behind Alexandroi when he began his speech.

"Men! The Seljuks, the horsebound Turk bastards, gather over there! When this battle is over and our foes are utterly vanquished, then a great number of sheep and goats in their camp will feel incredibly relieved!" At this, the troops exploded into raucous laughter. "Now, let's be done with this and then back to our wine and women!"

The troops cheered and Evangelos gave the signal. Alexandroi's comrades charged thirty paces towards the Turks. He raised his sword and brought it down, slicing through the skull of a Turkish spearman. Alexandroi grinned malevolently, raised his shield to shoulder height, and pressed forward into the Turkish ranks.

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So ends this portion of the Byzantine story! Where should I go next?

[Snoopy]

We want pictures!

Get some pictures, I am not good at visualizing.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Yes, I thought people would say that. I'm not using a campaign game, but I can put in things like paintings from Wiki and battles from M2.

ANYWAYS, I started another chapter, and I'll update once I finish it. But how do you like it so far, apart from the lack of pictures?

[Vor]

I think its fine without pictures. Keep up the good work.

[Roman Knight]

Good writing, I like the fact it is not one story, you always get left on the hook because no one finishes them.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

As the forces of two great empires crashed together on a distant battlefield, two men huddled close to each other in the rain in a back alley in London, England. One was the Baron, Robert, Duke of Yorkshire, the most powerful noble and general in all of the British Isles, perhaps more powerful than the King of England himself. He held the rights of trade and jurisdiction to all the territories north of the Nottinghamshire and the Northern Armies, which were completely loyal to him and him alone.

The other man was the Duke of Saxony, a member state of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire had expanded and conquered all of Poland, approximately the eastern half of France, and all of northern Italy. Their sights were now set on the Kingdom of England, with the rich cities of Exeter and London, and beyond that the Highlands of Scotland and Ireland, rich in mineral wealth. The Duke of Saxony, Heinrich von Saxony, was there to negotiate in secret with the treacherous Robert of York. Robert knew that an invasion was being planned to set sail for London and the English Channel coast very soon. Heinrich was negotiating with him to secure his cooperation and non-intervention when the invasion occured. In return for his neutrality in the conflict, and accepting vassalship to the the Holy Roman Empire, he would be made an elector in the Empire, granted rights to choose the new Emperors, and made a Duke of the Empire, answerable only to the Emperor himself. He would keep his armies, and any territories he conquered from other nations and peoples would be his to control but still subject to Empire-wide laws and edicts.

If the King of England were ever to hear of this plan, Robert would be executed along with his family and followers, and war be declared outright on the Holy Roman Empire. It was, obviously, because of that that the two Dukes met in this disgusting back alley full of whores and thieves. Robert had no complaints with the plan of action, sealing his reputation as a traitor of the worst kind.

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Oo, and now to the intrigue! Comments welcome.

[Evolution]

you want me to read all that

nice story.

+rep, i liked the part about the rabbits going to war with the gnomes.

[Immaculate]

Wow!

Your writing is really impressive. Each nation is alive and vibrant with its own culture which is very nice too.

Although i would also like some pictures, they aren't absolutely required and its excellent as it is.

I really like the amount of character development you've been able to achieve without overdoing; you are still able to stick to the action at hand.

I have my own AAR and i find that i can't write in an entertaining way (its been trained out of me), so this is a treat.

If i could give reputation, i would do so.



Immac.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Sorry for the long wait between updates, I was working to save money for a new computer, and my notebook, which is where I'm writing the story, is getting graded. I'll update later today.

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Well, better late than never, right?


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On the other side of the English Channel, two months after the agreement with Robert, Otto von Tyrol, Duke of Tyrol, camped with the Austrian Invasion Army near Ghent in Flanders. He had been collecting and organizing troops that had been secretly sent to him by other electors and member states all across the Empire for almost five months. He now had a force of almost 15,000 men and four fleets of 10 transports and 15 warships each, the largest force that western Europe had ever seen in preparation for an invasion. Otto had the supplies and the strength for an invasion, now he needed only the authorisation from the Kaiser.

While the position of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Austria was the leader and largest landholder, may have seemed strong, it was in reality highly precarious and dangerous. The recently conquered French territories were plagued by bandits and, more recently, since the explosion of French activity in Navarre, loyalist forces, who constantly engaged the Austrain forces in guerilla warfare, especially near Paris. The Danes, having finally pacified southern Scandinavia, set their sights on Hamburg and the Baltic regions under Pommeranian and Mecklenburgian control. The Venetians, at the same time that they were raiding western Byzantine regions, which were in decline due to the resurgance of Byzantine power, had attempted to take Bologna and Ancona, which were under control of Bavaria, multiple times. As a result, the Bavarians had almost destroyed Venice proper, and the Venetians now operated mainly out of Ragusa and Istria while they attempted to regain the strength to retake Venice. The Milanese, mercifully, had remained faithful allies and attacked Sicily, an enemy of the Reich and the last main defender of the Pope. The Polish provinces, for the time being, remained the only truly safe recently acquired provinces. The capture of Britain would allow the Austrians to control the English Channel, which would allow Austria to control not only the trade, but also the military movement between France and Denmark, two allies against the Holy Roman Empire.

The English could not possibly resist the invasion. Their northern armies made up 40,000 of their 47,000 soldiers, and they were all under the direct control of Robert of Yorkshire, who would not dare intervene in the conflict. This left the English Loyalists with only 7,000 troops, spread out among multiple armies, in the face of the Austrian 15,000, and the enemy had no reinforcements, while the Austrians could easily muster 10,000 more troops if need be. This English conquest looked to be the easiest campaign that Otto had ever been a part of.

[coffebean]

your stuff rules dude
keep it up