The frankly broken secret societies mechanic in Monks &
Mystics has claimed more victims. I have now had two of my kings (Kings of
England and Croatia) convert to Kharijite Islam. I’m almost 100% sure that my
highly suspicious Islam-sympathetic son is also a secret worshipper.
This raises some interesting questions. I wonder if I were,
in fact a Muslim, I would be able to call a Jihad on Christian-held territory?
FOR INSTANCE: The Duchy of Jerusalem. If I could pull that off… Muslim Roman
Empire? I’m almost 100% sure that this is too crazy to try. We’ll see though.
I decided to celebrate my factions getting down to 70% or so for the first time in years by declaring war on Georgia on behalf of a claimant. I’m not very keen on defensive pacts at this stage of the game, because for some reason now I start every war with -30 war score despite the fact I’m the biggest Christian empire in the game by a long shot and I have a non-aggression pact with the second biggest. So a coalition in which the biggest member is only bringing 15K troops to the table shouldn’t automatically give me that kind of disadvantage. Honestly, there’s nothing more galling than initiating a simultaneous blitzkrieg of your enemy’s four core provinces only to find you’re losing warscore because the AI is sieging tribal holdings with a 1k army somewhere in Scandinavia, half the map away.
Georgia, strategically speaking, doesn’t offer me much. But it used to be part of the Byzantine Empire and I consider that reason enough to retake it. In terms of usefulness, it does own Cyprus and Crete, and at some point I might be able to usurp those and use them as forward bases for my advances into the Holy Land. I expect it will not make a huge amount of difference though since my demesne includes much of the De Jure territory of Mesopotamia.
At this point I had to withdraw some of my troops to Hispania to deal with Innekentios, a claimant to the Byzantine throne. I believe he is the son of the child Uirup “The Holy” originally usurped to win the Empire back in 1317. Luckily I was able to field 25K men in that region to his 15K, and after couple of battles I captured the claimant. Ordinarily, I would just take his gold and banish him, but frankly at this point I just want his line to end so I don’t have to deal with claimants in future. To that end, Amalrich “The Cruel” lived up to his name and had poor Innekentios castrated. No hard feelings, Innekentios. Get it? No hard feelings?
With the adventurer threat dealt with, I was able to ship my forces back to the Black Sea coast just in time to reinforce the army there. The first wave of defence had been strong due to all the allied armies, but once those were beaten off the Georgians were left on their own and went down fairly quickly. Cyprus and Crete actually turned out to be sort of liabilities because it’s easy to land an army there and just siege without the AI launching its own seaborne reinvasion. Thus Georgia rejoins the Empire.
Amalrich then endeavoured to avoid war for a time, at least until the unrest from having levies raised for so long wore off. The factions were still sitting just on the cusp of being an issue, with Venice (now Muslim) being the prime mover of a faction that included the Kings of England, Sweden and Poland. To defend against future revolts, Amalrich married his daughter Klara to the Emperor of Francia and formed an alliance. Despite the fact this means I can’t attack Jerusalem, I think keeping the realm safe might be a bigger priority right now. Amalrich celebrated this diplomatic coup by blinding and chopping off the hands of a few prisoners, as is his wont, the complete bastard.
Plot twist time:
Amalrich II “The Cruel” Uerterio dies of ill health and is succeeded by his son Amalrich III, who immediately announced he’s converted to Islam. Surely this can’t be good.
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