Crusader Kings II

Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton, part III

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(I played and wrote about these events more than a week ago. As of this morning, I’ve played this game as the Duke of Chariton to 2701, so there’s plenty more to come.)

Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton

III: War and Rebellion
January 2670 – April 2676

In April 2670, Duke Truman purchased an indulgence from the Pope, and news of the pope granting absolution reached Duke Truman near Des Moines mere days before King Franklin summoned his vassals to war, announcing his intent to return Rock Island to Iowan rule.

In late April 2670, Rose, the young wife of Duke Truman’s marshal, was the subject of salacious rumors after she was supposedly seen in a compromising position with the Count of Thompson, who was 22 years her elder. In early June, Rose died after a brief illness.

In June 2670, heathens from Michigan raided the country near Hannibal.

In July of that year, Count Napoleon requested to be allowed to duel his rival, Duke Truman’s marshal, over affronts to his honor. Duke Truman allowed the duel.

Duke Truman’s marshal, a man named Phineas, would later marry Maisy, a woman from the Canonate of Boone, part of the Boonslick Republic (also known as the self-styled State of Missouri).

In September, the heathens from Michigan who had pillaged Count Hamilcar’s lands were raiding near Ottumwa, so Duke Truman sent orders to muster men from his lands around Kirksville in order to defeat the pagans. 600 Chariton men under the command of Count Hamilcar and Lavon Graham marched north from Kirksville to Ottumwa and met the 500 Northmen near Ottumwa, where they were also joined by 500 men led by the Canon of Shoquoquon.

The 1000 Iowans met the Northlanders south-east of Ottumwa in early November. Count Hamilcar commanded the Duke of Chariton’s men on the Iowan left, while Canon Flint of Shoquoquon commanded his men in the Iowan center. After putting the Northlander scouts to flight by his vastly superior numbers, Count Hamilcar joined the Canon of Shoquoquon in attacking the Northlander center.

On November 24, His Holiness Praised-Be died in battle against the heathen King Louis of Louisiana at the age of 48. The College of Cardinals quickly elected Pleasant Cottonclad, the Abbot of Doniphan (a vassal of the Duke of Lead Belt, in southern Missouri).

Upon his hasty election, the 31-year-old new Pope, who had been commanding troops near Rapides in Louisiana, assumed the name of Cruxipher. Continue reading →

Draft: Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton, part 2

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(This is almost everything I’ve written in the past few days, after restarting my post-apocalyptic North America Crusader Kings 2 game as Duke Truman Still of Chariton earlier this week.)

Part II:

War, Peace, and Succession
July 2666 – January 2669

After swearing fealty to King Franklin in 2664, Duke Truman served as his Lord Treasurer, usually spending a part of each year in Des Moines and in his own lands near the kingdom’s southern borders when he wasn’t traveling in either direction or on His Majesty’s business. Continue reading →

Draft: The Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton, part I

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written 28th of February, AD 2015

Truman Still was born in the Year of Our Lord 2635, the second year of Franklin Greysnow’s reign as King of Iowa. Unfortunately, very little is known of his early life, and several possible tales are widely known. The most popular story begins with Truman’s birth in Independence (or St. Louis, Jefferson City, or Kirksville) and continues with his apprenticeship to either a merchant or the steward of a minor lord. The various tales tend to differ on his life between roughly the beginning of his apprenticeship and before his oath of fealty to King Franklin. Depending on the tale, in the early 2660s he either established himself as the independent ruler of the lands formerly known as northern Missouri or he spent some time at the court of King Franklin in Des Moines. Whatever the truth, it is known with some certainty that on the first of January in the Year of Our Lord 2664 Truman Still swore an oath of fealty to King Franklin of Iowa near the headwaters of the Chariton River in southern Iowa, and in return for his oath received the title Duke of Chariton and the counties of Nodaway and Paho. The source of Duke Truman’s standard of a red horseman on a black field is not recorded, but it is believed to date to a time before the Deluge. After his oath, Duke Truman is believed to have established his seat in Maryville, though most of the surviving records begin in 2666, the second year of his reign and the 33rd year of King Franklin’s rule.

Author’s note: I wrote about a page before going to bed this morning, and this is the result of my combining revision and editing with typing. More revision and compilation to come.

A Brief Introduction to CK2: After the End

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I’ve written here before about Crusader Kings II. The After the End mod, which I discovered a few months ago, is set in North America and begins in July 2666, approximately 600 years after an ambiguous Event which brought about the end of what we would recognize as “modern” society (and supposedly took place at some point between 1945 and 2077). The mod is still very much a work in progress, but for the most part it’s playable, provided you want to play somewhere between the Atlantic Ocean, California/Oregon/Washington State/Nevada, southern Canada, and Central America (Costa Rica, approximately).

In America of the mid-27th century, there are several major religions- Catholicism in the Midwest (the Pope resides in St. Louis), Protestantism in the South (based out of the Holy Columbian Confederacy which rules the Carolinas), the Rust Cult of the country between Chicago and Pittsburgh, the Occultists of Appalachia and New England, the Revelationists of the Midwest and South, Voodoo in Louisiana, and, if I remember correctly, Rastafarianism and Santeria in the Caribbean and various syncretic religions in Mexico and Central America. I just realized I had almost forgotten the Norse, which is followed by most of the “Northlanders” of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Michigan. There’s also the Americanists, who exist in various places across the former United States and, if I remember correctly, worship Washington and various other figures from American history as gods. The Consumerists, who tend to rise some time in the 2660s or 2670s but don’t exist in 2666, believe that the Old World collapsed because they failed to properly venerate the Almighty Dollar, and seek to avert the apocalypse by spending as much as possible.

Sometime I’ll have to write a better introduction, and maybe even make a map, but I had started to type the rough draft of a “history” I started writing early this morning when I realized an introduction to the mod might be helpful.

Science fiction and writing ideas

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Recently, I’ve been on a reading kick. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but the Internet and various other unfortunate facts of life (i.e., work) ensured that, for a time, I read less than I used to. This year, I’ve read in fits and spurts – reading voraciously for a time, and then not reading for a while due to being occupied by books, school work, moving, and various other petty and quotidian concerns.

In the past week or so, since my university’s winter break started nearly two weeks ago, I’ve been devouring science fiction via my Kindle – more specifically, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Iain Banks’ novels Inversions and Look to Windward. Early this morning, after finishing Look to Windward, I began reading Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade. This is the story of an alien scouting ship landing near a medieval English village, which is promptly taken over by the local Baron after a brief skirmish. After loading his entire village aboard the alien craft and trickery by the sole surviving alien who had been taken captive, the ship’s autopilot takes the ship back to its home base. The Baron sets his sights above merely going to France and the Holy Land, and instead sets about taking on the alien empire- beams, cannon, and starships versus steel, longbowmen, and horse. This story is told by the monk who was initially tasked with learning the alien’s strange tongue, and, after some initial confusion when said alien lacks knowledge of Latin and fails to burst into flames when hearing the Paternoster (I paraphrase), eventually serves as his lord’s interpreter to the aliens. Hearing concepts familar to nearly any science fiction fan (faster-than-light travel, 20th century weaponry, and astronomy, among others) translated through a 14th century monk can be quite entertaining. Suffice it to say that metal detectors are ineffective against wooden trebuchets. 

Anyway, this has given me more ideas for writing Crusader Kings II-inspired after-action reports. I’ve already begun work on a narrative that’s supposed to be similar to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and today’s idea is writing a chronicle from the viewpoint of a monk. This could prove exhaustive, now that I think about it, but I had already been thinking about slight modifications – claiming that it had been translated into more modern language, or something along those lines. Maybe a mere history would suffice without having to do extensive research on medieval monastic chronicles – “In this year the harvest was poor due to the depredations of the Norsemen, may their pagan souls be damned” and so on.

Character generator idea

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Recently I was suffering from an attack of ennui. I was bored and having trouble thinking of anything to do that sounded interesting. This came in spite of my impending move and need to clean my room, finish the books I checked out from the local library a couple weeks ago, and then the various projects I’m currently sporadically working on or at least thinking about working on.

Then I re-discovered another saved game of Crusader Kings, and I think that my most recent attack of ennui might have passed. Heck, if nothing else, I have a blog I can write on now, right? 🙂

I think I’ve thought about something like this in the recent past, but while at work earlier today I was thinking about writing a program to generate characters for role-playing games or stories. Now that I think about it, I should probably write a post about Crusader Kings II. Anyway, in brief, Crusader Kings II is a combination of a grand strategy game and a role-playing game in which you play as a dynasty in medieval Europe. Technically, it’s medieval Europe and the Near East – modern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. For example, instead of playing as the Kingdom of France, you might play as the Capet dynasty and try to keep your family on the French throne while also trying to put your relatives on other thrones in Europe through marriage, assassination, warfare, and various other stratagems.

In Crusader Kings II, each character has a variety of traits that affect how the AI acts and, in the case of the player, gives you certain events to respond to. For example, if a character is Lustful, they are less likely to remain loyal to their spouse and more likely to, say, have an affair and father or give birth to illegitimate children. Conversely, if a character is Chaste, they are loyal to their spouse, though this has a cost of a slightly lower chance of children.

Before this turns into a Crusader Kings II post, I was thinking about using at least some of the traits from Crusader Kings II in this character generator. I’ve already sort of written a very basic piece of software to generate a basic physical description (hair and eye color, height, weight, and age), which I think could be, at some point, fairly easily combined with software to generate a list of traits that might make interesting characters.

I was thinking each character would probably have three to five traits, which seems like a number small enough to not be overwhelming but large enough to have some dramatic potential. A character that’s Tall, Kind, and Slothful would, of course, be different from a character who is a Cruel, Diligent, Drunkard. I was thinking earlier about somehow having a (pseudo-)random way to generate what list to choose the traits from. A character with only negative traits (e.g., Cruel, Lustful, Drunkard) or conversely only negative traits (Pious, Chaste, Temperate) would, or could, be boring, while a character with a mix of positive and negative traits seems like it would be more interesting.

I was thinking earlier that this idea for a character generation program seems like an indication that either I’ve been playing too much Crusader Kings (which I’ll readily admit is possible) or not enough Dungeons and Dragons. Technically, I’ve only played D&D a few times, and the last time I played any kind of tabletop roleplaying game (in this case, Pathfinder) was last November. I’m hoping to join or find a gaming group once I move, though.