Crusader Kings II: Good Job High Chief Piast, 10/10 A+

Unit One, Chapter Three: The Eagle Plummets

He who rides too far, too fast, finds his horse no longer lasts.

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With that latest conquest, I have the clout to establish a couple more duchies, boosting my prestige and fulfilling a necessary qualification to become King of Ruthenia.

Unsurprisingly, the local chiefs are less than pleased with Ulfr's rule, and quickly begin to rise in rebellion. "Factions" are basically a mechanic where vassals will group around a certain cause (the biggest ones being reduced crown authority, a change of succession law, the installation of a new ruler, or independence) if they're displeased with their leader.

In this case, even if all three of them banded together, they wouldn't be that huge a threat. Otherwise, I'd put effort into placating them or maybe even grant one of them independence to ensure the stability of the realm.

For now, I could use some scratch, and having an army pre-raised won't exactly hurt.

Almost immediately after the conquest of the Severians, talk of sedition began to circulate. Ulfr paid it no heed; if his reputation and army had not placated them the first time, another go at them would surely resolve who the boss was.

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"No, I have changed my mind." Ahahahahahahaha.

After a brief series of raids, another Great Blot was held, this time sacrificing the long-suffering Igor. Contemporary texts widely agree that slitting his throat was one of Ulfr's very rare acts of mercy.

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It was pretty much only a matter of time.

The proclamation of Severian secession was delivered directly to Ulfr's feasting table; upon reading it, he hastily devoured the rest of his meal before giving a great battle cry and rushing out the door. The call quickly went out for soldiers to defend the homeland, and the men of the kingdom responded without delay.

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Lucked out here. Diligent is a rock-solid trait, giving you +1 to all your base stats. That plus Ambitious gives us a global modifier of +3, which is pretty cash.

More tech advances! I went with a Heavy Infantry upgrade, Castle Infrastructure (which increases tax income from castles, and allows you to build more things in them) and Majesty (which provides a small multiplier to piety and prestige gain over time).

Even as he led his troops into battle once more, though, Ulfr (by now known as The Drunkard for his legendary feats of indulgence) worked to spread his reputation, hiring anyone he could find to sing his praises, and determine better military practices.

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Though it was tempting to birch him, I decided that Ulfr didn't really have a reason to do that to his beloved kid. Now they can smash skulls against big ol' rocks together, as father and son!

The war proceeds without incident. I should note that there's a reason I'm taking a circuitous route here - attacking armies get a penalty if they cross a river into the target province. Sometimes speed is better, but often it's worth sacrificing some time to improve your chances of success.

Just as Ulfr was growing into an ever-more capable (if still rather unpleasant) ruler, his heir, Thorbrandr, was following his example. It took less than a month for nearly everyone in the kingdom to learn that the young prince was turning out just as brutal as his father, if not more so - and with an even greater devotion to the gods, which he would undoubtedly take out upon the Slavic populace. Prayers went out daily that they would be delivered from their wretched ruler, that Mechislav's rebellion would succeed.

But, of course, it didn't; it was easily crushed, and both participants tossed into the dungeons before being expelled from the realm.

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Somewhat annoyingly, even if your vassals would be okay with you revoking a title (which, if the target is a traitor, they always are at least once), they never accept banishment. I get it as a game balancing thing, though.

Two rebels eligible for banishment, and none of my other vassals would dip into the negatives from my tyranny. I go ahead with it and am now swimming in ye olde cashe.

I immediately blow said lucre on duchy-level titles. Delicious!

Their seized fortunes, rather than being spent on improvements to the fortresses or marketplaces of the land, was frittered away on frivolities and Ulfr's constant attempts to make his name ever greater. Though feared locally, he knew that his name was meaningless to most; he believed that with enough dedication, he would be known and feared as far as Spain.

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Let's talk ambitions. They're triggered by a certain lack in life - if you have a stat lower than 8, you can take an ambition to improve it; if you don't have a son or a daughter, you can take an ambition to make a baby of that particular sex; if your vaults are empty, you can take an ambition to hoard some gold, and so forth. They're pretty neat, and Become King would be very useful for Ulfr.

Would be useful.

But hey, let's not get into that now when we have another Vasiliy to take down!

Seriously. So many fucking Vasiliys. I checked and there's another one lurking around our southern border.

Rather than spend a moment in peacetime, The Drunkard immediately turned his army towards "Kind Father Vasiliy" in the west.

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Lots of consolidation to the northwest. Greater Poland is getting particularly big, and I expect Lithuania to be united by either the High Chief of Zemaiteje or the Tribe of Lettigallians very soon.

I build a militia training ground to get some more light infantry (but, more importantly, to get lots of archers in the future). I'll spare you the details of any further holding improvements unless it's something super special.

Awww, fuck. Slothful (as one might imagine) is the antithesis of Diligent, making you slightly shittier at everything. Birching the kid doesn't make him shape up, either.

Oh, my, somebody didn't get the message from the thrashing I gave his old lackeys.

More and more, the realm fell into despair. The heir apparent seemed in every way worse than his father; his brother, Frodi, was known to be kind and calm enough, but also a pathetic weakling who would never stand up to him and steer the kingdom to a better tomorrow. The remaining Severian chief, desperate to save his people and himself, rose up in revolt, but everyone seemed to know it was an empty gesture, even him.

And then... a miracle occurred.

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And here, my friends, is where Ulfr gets completely fucked. But we'll address that in a bit.

There is a brief glimmer of hope! I have as many guys as he does, plus I'm Offensive Pagan and he's Defensive outside of home turf. Surely my awesome Varangian warriors shall obliterate him!

Or we'll get completely wrecked. Piast not only has a larger army than us, but for some reason, his troops are roided up like nobody's business. On second glance, the reason for this seems to be that he has more archers, while we have more cavalry - remember how archers excel during Skirmish, but light cavalry is only at its highest potential during Pursuit? It's a small difference, but it's enough that if he has decent generals, the advantage quickly compounds itself.

Honestly, there's not a lot I could have done to foresee this coming, though if I had spent less money on duchies and more on shoring up my defenses, I might have had a greater chance. C'est la vie.

A Polish high chief, Piast, got a glimmer in his eye when he looked upon Konugardr. The land was beautiful, the fortresses strong, and most of all, the people needed a restoration of the old ways.

Ulfr, when he heard of the challenger from the west, laughed at first. He bragged that he had beaten greater men with an army half the size, and said that the war would be so one-sided that they'd need a second runestone dedicated solely to his triumph.

Then the two armies clashed, and it was not the Slavs that were routed, but the Norsemen.

For the first time anyone could recall, Ulfr Blood-Eagle had been well and truly defeated in battle. His army fled and dispersed, and he returned to his throne, battered and bloody; allegedly, he refused to say a word the whole time. But, not one to give up, he quickly mustered a second force to drive out the invaders.

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Though pricey, the mercenary troop definitely seemed worthwhile; once again, my forces were equal to that of my enemy, or so it would seem. You'd think I'd have learned from the first defeat.

I did have a plan, however - since Piast's army was in the forest and I was on the plains, I would wait for him to come to me, triggering Ulfr's terrain bonus.

Probably should have tried to lead him across a river as well, in retrospect.

The bastard won't even let me surrender, nor do any of his men bother killing me. He's really determined to rub it in.

Ulfr attempted to lure Piast into a trap; if he was commanding the defense, from his chosen arena of the plains near the Dnieper river, victory would be assured. Yet when the Polish chieftain "fell for it," it was Ulfr who, once again, slinked away in defeat.

The first time, he had written off as a fluke; but now, Blood-Eagle sank into a deep depression, which he tried and failed to drive away with food and drink. Never before had he been up against an enemy that truly worried him; now, he was perpetually consumed with the fear that Piast would overrun and steal his lands, just as he had done so many times in the past.

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Normally that bishop would be imprisoned and murdered ten times over, but I figured it was a pretty extreme situation.

I think that if he had managed to convert Ulfr before the war ended, he would have actually kept his land (since the Subjugation CB only applies to other pagans, I think it would have become invalid). But that's just one of many what-ifs.

When a preacher arrived from the south, the court all expected him to be slain without remorse; Ulfr had killed many men who thought they had a chance to convert him or his family. But when the priest bowed before the king, still bruised from his latest sally, they were shocked - for Ulfr the Drunkard knelt down, and gave the bishop his blessing. Where once he would have bellowed for the guards, now he simply waved Ljubomir off into town.

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Desperately trying to stave off defeat, I went for an assault on Konugardr. Heavy casualties resulted.

Needless to say, it was a pyrrhic victory.

Though he led a few last, desperate attacks on the occupied castles of Konugardr, it seems that Ulfr knew the futility of doing so. His legendary appetite quickly followed his bloodlust; he regularly needed to be reminded to eat, instead of poring over battle plans, desperately searching from some revolutionary new tactic.

Allegedly, when he heard the news that his former vassals had dropped all pretense of resistance, Ulfr was struck dumb, unable to speak or even move for three days. Eventually, he left for Gniezno, one of only two counties that he was left with.

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Naturally, I immediately started talks of rebellion. Piast responded by trying to buy Ulfr's loyalty with cheap, meaningless titles. What kind of slimy bastard would do something as ridiculous as that?!

I also worked on murdering Ulfr, since he had two sons; under the Gavelkind succession he's limited to, and since he has multiple duchy-level titles but no kingdom-level ones, his realm would have been split, giving Ulfr an opportunity at redemption.

(I fucked up a save and this time Ulfr's son ended up heading the Independence faction, but otherwise no major differences happened so don't worry about it)

Though all his outrage seemed to have turned to despair overnight, Ulfr soon returned to his desperate thrashing, acting as if he had not been defeated only weeks ago. He quickly rallied the conquered lords of Konugardr in a desperate bid to force Piast out of their lands.

It would have done little good, of course; even had they succeeded, the majority of Konugardr would remain with its new liege, and the still primarily-Slavic populace would not have had it any other way.

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EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ULFR, NOTHING WILL GO WRONG, EVERYTHING IS GREAT FOREVER

Oh, what, now people are snatching up provinces when they revolt? Whatever is this world coming to?

An initial strong showing raised the rebels' spirits, but an outside invasion quickly destroyed the fragile hope they retained. They could use swift guerilla tactics to strike at the still-weakened fortresses and towns of Konugardr, but they had no effective defense. Nonetheless, they did their best to fend off both sides, and managed to hold their position for a month or so.

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But inevitably, despite their desperate maneuvers, Ulfr and his comrades could not succeed in a war on one front, let alone two. The Drunkard's attempts on Piast's life - evidently attempted partly to fracture his realm, and partly for petty vengeance - also failed.

In the end, both Ulfr and his son Thorbrandr were jailed, where they would suffer the ultimate indignity...

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They were stripped of all their titles, just as Ulfr had taken the titles of those who would rebel against him. They were left to rot in Piast's dungeons, and the only Blodigorn man who retained any power was the cowardly Frodi, who immediately converted to the religion of his ruler, and dutifully aped his mannerisms and dialect, in an attempt to curry favor.

The kingdom of the Blood-Eagle, which he had so quickly conquered, had been stolen in the blink of an eye, and Ulfr the Drunkard would never see the light of day again. The fate he had visited upon his enemies - ignominy and imprisonment, with death the only escape - was now his own.

But for all he had lost, Piast (called the Savior by the liberated people of Konugardr, or as it would now be called, Kiev) had only made a temporary gain. His land was split in two by unconquered tribes, and could not be established as a kingdom proper - and with both outside and inside threats to the stability of the realm, it is likely that his conquest did little but set Greater Poland up for the ravages of the Brotherly War.

End of Unit One

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State of the World, c. 890

Looks like the High Chief of Zemaiteje did, in fact, manage to become King of Lithuania. Good for him, I suppose.

Up north, Rurik's managed to become a proper king rather than a petty one - King of Rus, specifically. Meanwhile, we're stuck serving some moron who by all rights ought to be a king, but expanded in a profoundly stupid way and just look at where we are now.

Things look a lot worse for us than they actually are, seeing as our ruler right now is chaste and stressed (both of which negatively impact his fertility) and he lacks any children. Thankfully, his brother produced a couple of sons, so we're not in "dynastic extinction" territory quite yet. It'll be tricky to recover from this trouncing, but we'll manage it. (Trust me, I already started working on the next update!)

Aiming for the Mediterranean next right? Those vikings need some salt in their veins.

I think the Mediterranean is perhaps a bit of a ways off. And it's about to get even harder to conquer, as you'll see in the next update. Think we're best served by focusing on domestic issues at the moment.