The beginning of the Great Plague arc which ends uptimer dominance in Norway.

December 5th, 1323
Ask’s estate
Norse Law, south of York

“This is their village, sir.”

Gunnar squinted through the rain, silently cursing Ask for having the bad taste to run foul of the King so late in the year. Running people off was bad enough at the best of times, without having to send children into an English winter. It was a typical enough village for the Norse Law, houses of rough timber holding men and cows, thatched roofs, fields in long strips suitable for heavy wooden ploughs. This close to York and the center of Norse power, it wasn’t walled, which was just as well. His party drew up in the middle with much stamping of hooves and snuffling, and he took out shield and sword, beating the one against the other to summon the people. They came out of their houses cautiously, tall swarthy men mostly, hook-nosed and black of eye.

“Who is in charge here?”

One of the men bowed.

“I have that honour; m’lord, should it be his wish, may find it convenient to address me as Hassan.”

“Very well, Hassan. I am Gunnar, son of Gunnar; I am now lord of this estate and all its land. Ask Norvaldsson is dead, and out of favour; and your deal with him is broken.”

Hassan looked grim, but unsurprised; these men were used to the world being against them. Gunnar noted, from the corner of his eye, that daggers and spears were making an appearance, and let his hand drift down to his sword hilt. He hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight; these were no peasants, they were fighting men as well trained as his own, and familiar with the ground.

“That is unfortunate. Still, it may be that our deal can be extended.”

Gunnar shook his head. “I fear not. Ask’s influence with the Yngling counsels are at an end, and Assassins are no longer welcome on Norwegian soil.”

Hassan looked around for a moment, perhaps considering resistance, perhaps just looking over the lands he had spent ten years improving.

“It is as the God wills it; all things are accomplished according to the will of the God. Will m’lord permit us some time to prepare for our journey?”

Gunnar considered. After all, these men weren’t at fault; Ask had used them for his own purposes, and they could not have known that the Billungs would lash out madly and kill the King’s sons. He nodded.

“I take no joy in these orders. You have three days.”

Hassan bowed. “M’lord is generous.”

———————————————-

December 9th, 1323
Ask’s estate
Norse Law, south of York

“Now,” Gunnar continued, “we come to the matter of Ask’s personal effects.”

The steward nodded; he was a Saxon, a taciturn sort, but competent enough with his lists and parchments. “Indeed. The armour and weapons you have already seen; as instructed, I packed them for return to Geirvirke. The clothing and such are in this chest; by old custom, they come to his wife, but if there are other instructions?”

Gunnar shook his head. “No, no, Elfrida shall have her rights. But he would have had a small chest, with a key he carried on his own person.”

“Ah yes. It is in his bedroom. May I inquire, what were the contents of that chest?”

“Coloured bottles.” Gunnar closed off that subject with finality, and followed the steward. The man – Edgar was his name – led him to a small bedroom, and indicated a wooden chest, with heavy steel bands. Gunnar nodded, and bent down to unlock it, getting out his list.

“Right then. Yellow, five ounces, check. Pink, five ounces – no, four. I wonder what he used it for?”

The steward coughed discreetly. “I believe, sir, that you may be referring to what the master gave his son when he had the bad cough.”

“Ah so. Fair enough, nobody will begrudge him that. White, five ounces, check. Purple, handed out to Assassins for the Poison War, damn him for a fool, check. Black.” A long pause. “No black.”

“No, sir?”

“None. See for yourself.”

Edgar scratched his head. “Indeed, sir, no black. But I’ve never seen the insides of that chest before, so I can’t speak to what there should be.”

There was ice in Gunnar’s stomach, and his tongue was dry. Surely Ask couldn’t have been such a fool as to give out that bottle. Or even brag about it. Surely. He bent down to examine the lock. Wrought iron, the best that could be had in this benighted downtime, huge and clumsy, but strong. And – he picked up the chest and held it to the light from the small window – yes. Scratches along the keyhole, fresh, such as might be made by a good lockpick. He turned to Edgar, and his voice was dead calm.

“Who knew of this chest?”

“Well. There’s the master; his wife… but no, wait. We all knew of the chest. But the bottles, no, I think only the master. He was a close-mouthed man.”

“Not close-mouthed enough.”

“What was in that bottle, then, that’s so important?”

“Death. More death than you’ve ever seen. Thousands, and tens of thousands.”

It was clear that Edgar didn’t believe, though he nodded. Gunnar did, and felt sick. He looked down at the list again; just what had Ask been carrying? He wished he believed in the downtimers’ God, so he could pray it was just weaponised Ebola, or accelerated lungfever, or something else with a short incubation time. A few hours would be ideal. Please let it be one of those quick-acting diseases intended to wipe out a village or two for punishment, and not spread further. Not one of those meant to destroy China. Please.

Pentathol 7, interrogation use, five ounces.
Fortified antibiotics, oral administration, five ounces.
Muscle stimulant cocktail, injection, five ounces.
Stroke inducer, liquidations, five ounces.
Y. pestis, weaponised. Five ounces.

Little black spots swam before Gunnar’s eyes, making the letters meaningless. It didn’t matter. The words tolled in his mind. Y. pestis. Weaponised. Thousands, and tens of thousands… Bring out your dead.

He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, drew old lessons to his mind. “What is, is. No loss is made better by dwelling on it; no pain is cured by the mind’s eye regarding it. Accept the casualties. Assess your capabilities. Continue the mission.” The recitation made him feel a little better; a cold clarity came to him.

“Message. Recipient, garrison commander, York. Copies, Bergenhus fortress, Geirvirke. Message begins. Information. Black bottle missing from Ask Norvaldsson’s personal effects. Suspect indiscretion on the part of Ask revealing black capabilities, probably to Assassin leader ‘Hassan’. I am declaring a biowarfare emergency.”

He looked at Edgar, who was frantically scribbling. Good. Perhaps some of the urgency had got through. “Action. All available forces to converge on Norvaldsson estate for search of villages. Use destructive interrogation techniques where necessary. No traffic in or out of the estate can be permitted. Intentions. I will lead a party in pursuit of Assassin group to complete isolation of estate. I expect to be resisted by trained soldiers outnumbering my own force. Send reinforcements as soon as possible. Message ends.”

His voice was metronome steady as he stalked out of Ask’s bedroom, calling for his men. Edgar followed, looking worried. “Sir – what is ‘biowarfare’?”

Gunnar paused. “Pray that you have no need to know.”

The requested maps :

Europe; the borders are largely unchanged from 1590. The infrastructure is a lot improved, though, especially in Burgundy.

Asia – a different matter! AI Bengal isn’t doing too badly, though the players have raped it for the COTs. China is put back together again. England dominates southern India, and has gotten the good COTs and Japan, the bastards.

South America, where the rivalry has basically ended in Spanish victory. The remaining Norwegian possessions are unimportant, the Polish stuff even more so.

North America, jewel in my crown. The last AI nation is gone. Norway looks huge! Of course, most of that is colonies and piddling little cities of 2000, largely unfortified. Still, it does give me quite an impressive census tax. Note all the little Burgundian islands; every last one of them produces sugar, and has a refinery! A most tempting target for looting, to be sure, if you happen to have a strong navy sitting around just collecting its pay.

Not much happened this session, except that I tripled my trade income, which now exceeds my production income for the first time in the game. (At last!) I built some ships; my blue-water navy is now larger than Spain’s and approaches England’s, though my galleys for Baltic defense are still rather scarce. A few manus, including my first naval ones; some chief judges; a lot of colonising; some forts. A quick war with the Huron, dividing them with the English. But mainly, managing my trade.

This being so, I thought I would instead dip into the archives of the Norwegian court, and take a look at the diplomacy behind the scenes – red-hot secrets in their day, but old and stale now, and safe to bring forth. Here, for example, are some PMs that went back and forth between me and Trav in the bad old days when Poland was a colossus threatening to swallow all of Europe :

Trav to me, ca 1200

Dear King of Norway

It is imperative that you respond with haste to this dire emergency. Poland has become a demon in the east. Devouring huge tracts of land, and swallowing whole kingdoms. This danger if unchecked could foretell the destruction of our Kingdoms. Castille, Flanders and Byzantium are all of like mind with myself. I must know if we can count on your aid when the time comes. I have more details upon request.

Naples

A piteous plea, to be sure! Well, I was certainly not averse to attacking Poland together with the powerful king of Italy, so :

Me to Trav

I don’t have time to reply in character, as I need to go to work, but I have to tell you, I’ve been worried about Poland for a long time. I’m certainly with you if you want to go to war to re-establish the Rus and Cuman kingdoms. To tell you the truth, I’m not too thrilled with Hungary extending so far east, either, but that can wait.

Is Norway’s situation really as bad as RP and Sterk have been saying? I hope I can bring a bit more than 50k to the Second Baltic Crusade.

Later, back from work :

(…) That said, Poland is my more immediate worry. I have age-old claims on Novgorod and Gotland that I think I will try to get this time, since just releasing Rus doesn’t seem to slow him down appreciably.

On tactics, I think one thing we learned from the previous Great War is that it is not good to concentrate your men too much. 20k soldiers is about the maximum practical size of army. So, given that Lurken can muster (last I checked) somewhere in the region of 500k men, I don’t think he needs to confine himself to one front. Maybe his Middle Eastern provinces could invade Jerusalem while his Iberian troops attack Burgundy? But these are details.

Trav was probably not very surprised, Norwegian-Polish wars had been a staple of the game for a while. Anyway, he sent me a Battle Plan :

Trav to me

Dear Olaf II, King of Norway and Denmark etc. etc.

Brother your positive response to this dire situation emboldens us all. As you requested I shall endeavor to explain how we may deal with the terror in the east. With the help of my faithful Spy Master and Capable Marshal I have devised a magnificent battle plan. Know this, the double crossing Duke of Bavaria, the nefarious Spiders, will most likely fight against me and join with the Poles. Therefore my plan takes into account this inevitable treachery.

The key to victory is the complete control of Poland’s demesne. The impetus for war will be the arrival of these “Mongols” you’ve spoke of. Once on the scene I will declare war on Poland using my claim on Venice. Bavaria will no doubt strike at me.

I will now take this opportunity to break down the Order Of Battle (OOB).

[list]
• Naples strike Venice, move to subdue Bavaria then strike Krakowski
• Castille will stage in Byzantium, help subdue Bavaria then strike Krakowski
• Byzantium will stage in Hevest, strike Galich, Lyubech, Pronsk then Sieradzko
• Norway will stage in Finland, strike Novgorod then Plock
• England will stage in Norway, strike Scalovia, Aukshayts, Polotsk then Plock
• Flanders will stage in Anhalt, strike Praha then Sieradzko

[/list]


Battle Map detailing Staging Points and OOB for each Kingdom.

With our Allied Kingdoms pre-staged for attack and moving in concert we should over-whelm the Polish dogs. Our War Goal will be the establishment of a free Rus kingdom. Rus’s new ruler will have absolutely no relation to any Piast. The ruler can be any worthy courtier from one of the Allied Kingdoms. The War Goal will be given to Poland upon the commencement of hostilities.

I hope this worthy goal and battle plan meet with your approval. With God’s blessing we shall triumph over this evil that has gripped the east. I eagerly await your response.

You brother for life,

Drogo de Hauteville

(OOC) Please talk to Dominus. If he could convince Prime that he won’t double cross him Prime will be more than willing to help. Also if Dom could use any political clout with France to have them either join us or promise not to attack Prime while he’s at war with us would be helpful as well. Lurken and Blackeye are 100% in favor of this attack and have viewed the battle plan.

Strong stuff! I must say I wasn’t totally convinced of the merits of his battle plan, but at least it did have an overall goal and order of battle. You gotta start somewhere. Either I’ve lost a PM somewhere, or Trav was being eager, for the next document in the archives is a suggested treaty from him to me :

Draft of Pact

To all those present know this. That on the nineteenth day, of the month of July, in the year of our Lord twelve-hundred and eleven, the undersigned rulers met. Those rulers, hence forth referred to as members, who signed below do agree and swear before God to uphold the following articles here in.

Article I
That the purpose of this conflict is to retake the Rus lands usurped by the King of Poland and to establish a new King of Rus not of the Piast line.

Article II
That during the ensuing war members will support one another and protect each other from attacks by other kingdoms until Poland surrenders and agrees to the terms of Article I.

Article III
That no lands, wealth, or spoils of any kind will be appropriated, accepted or received by a member from Poland.

Article IV
That for a period of not less than five years from the cessation of hostilities with Poland, each member will support the other if attacked by Poland.

Article V
That during the same five year period from the cessation of hostilities with Poland, any member nation that is attacked by another member shall be supported by the remaining members. The aggressor member shall receive no quarter and will suffer the most severe punishment the righteous members can inflict.

(OOC) I did my best, if you can add to the artful use of words in the Pact please send me your amendments. Thanks.

Well, I like Trav, but I have to say, he’s not the best wordsmith I know, especially when he tries to be formal. I tried to improve a bit on his treaty, thus :

Did a bit of research into treaty language, I suggest the below.

Year of Grace 1211

Declaration at Lubeck

To all those unto whom these presents come : Hear ye! Know, that on the nineteenth day, of the month of July, in the year of our Lord twelve-hundred and eleven, met in the city of Lubeck the undersigned rulers; and as God saw fit to move them to accord, they do agree and swear to uphold these high principles :

Whereas the man Mieszko Piast, who now styles himself King of Rus, has by foul and unnatural means come to the sovereignty of the cities of Rus,

whereas he has by his heresy transgressed against God and nature, and given offense to the High Contracting Parties by reason of his arrogant contumely,

whereas there is in all things a higher justice, that moves mankind to great deeds, the High Contracting Parties do hereby proclaim that they shall not rest until the Crown of Rus rests on the brow of its rightful possessor. And to this end they have signed these Articles :

Article the first
That the purpose of this conflict is to retake the Rus lands usurped by the King of Poland and to establish a new King of Rus not of the Piast line.

Article the second
That during the ensuing war the High Contracting Parties shall see it as a duty to come each the other to aid, as brothers, stinting nothing, either in men or armament, in gold or ships, even to the blood of kings. And this aid shall last, until the man, Mieszko Piast, surrenders and agrees to the terms of Article the first.

Article the third
That no lands, wealth, or spoils of any kind will be appropriated, accepted or received by any of the High Contracting Parties from Poland; for it is not for wealth or power we fight, but only to restore the natural order of things.

Article the fourth
That for a period of not less than five years from the cessation of hostilities with Poland, the High Contracting Parties shall come to the aid, each of the other, if any one of them is attacked by the armies of the Polish Realm.

Article the fifth
That during this same five year period from the cessation of hostilities with Poland, each High Contracting Party undertakes to come to the aid, each of the other, if God should so will it that one of the High Contracting Parties should fall upon another. The aggressor Party shall receive no quarter and shall suffer the most severe punishment the righteous members can inflict.

Signed this day by

Olaf II, Rex Norvegiæ et Danorum
Drogo de Hauteville, King of Naples

This particular correspondence ends there. As you know, the war failed of its purpose, and Poland remained overlord of the Russian lands. Still, they were weakened by the loss of Bavaria and (IIRC) Novgorod and Gotland. (In the end, seeing that the alliance would not hold, I went for a gain to Norway rather than see all that blood spilled for nothing. At least, I remember this happening in one of the Great Eastern Crusades. It might not be this one, though.)

Ah, well, old wars, old peace, old arts that cease… Here’s another; I must say, I’m still absolutely shocked at what those people have done to the nice place that used to be France, but Sterk’s treachery made it impossible to do anything about it :

Me, around 1440?

Hi Sterk, I don’t know if you noticed, but Dominus has annexed what was left of France except for Paris itself. I would venture to suggest that this is in nobody’s interest, especially since he is also waging war against Burgundy, and is allied with Castile. Perhaps we should consider intervening in that war on behalf of Burgundy, or rather, of France. We should be able to force the restoration of considerable territory, and therewith quite a bit of balance in Western Europe. We really cannot be having with a England dominating France so completely; the Loire should be a fine border. (I don’t know that I want Burgundy getting much bigger, either, but that’s a somewhat separate problem that we can hammer out at the peace conference, depending on the fortunes of war.)

I will also contact Trav with this; I suspect he will be appalled at what is being done to France, and eager to force the release of some lands. That will presumably bring in Byz. I don’t know if I want to bring in Hungary, mainly for metagame reasons : Ego is likely to take it as a gangbang, which is true, and quit, which would be bad. Anyway, Ear might not be too concerned about a strong England. Still, a promise of neutrality would be good; failing that, I would support you with troops in any defensive action against Hungary, even including the release of Persia – nothing, though, that adds territory to Poland, as I’m sure you will understand.

I believe I have a sufficient navy to defend the Baltic and contest, if not dominate, the North Sea. Between us, we should be able to come up with considerable expeditionary forces, and Burgundy is still in the fight – indeed, the battle is on English soil. (Of course, our interests and Burgundian ones are not identical; I would like to ensure a France that is, if not necessarily strong, at least viable. I suspect Burgundy would rather annex the territory to himself, which is not in my interest and perhaps not entirely to yours, either – traditional ally, well and good, but you’d be exchanging one hegemon for another.)

We’ve had our differences, but a unified France-England threatens Europe in a way that even Poland-Russia doesn’t. Can we work together to deal with this?

Here is Sterk’s reply :

Yes, I believe we can work together. I have been concerned with England’s growing power in France for a long time now, but I’ve been able to do little about it (an AI Burgundy and no way to get troops west means no war). I would be quite interested in bringing down England and Spain, especially as the war might weaken Italy somewhat (and hopefully delay its expansion into colonial areas a bit in the future). My goals for the near future are to hold most countries from expanding into the New World and to free Persia from Hungary so they don’t explode into India. Also I believe it would give Sid a better nation to play than China (I think China would be far, far too powerful by Victoria if played by a human through the entire EU2. That is unless I circumnavigate the globe and land in Beijing with Jan Sobieski’s Hussaria).

And now England is indeed the dominant power on the continent, and therefore in the world, and Sterk’s betrayal (he inveigled me into delivering the DOW, then stabbed me in the back) has robbed him of much of his strength, and Novgorod. Who says there’s no justice?

While I was at it, I spoke to Trav. This is me being rather Machiavellian, I must admit.

Hi Trav,

(The same as I say to Sterk, and then…)

After this is done, we should perhaps think again about Eastern Europe. Have you noticed that Poland has no less than three COTs? Perhaps Ear might take the one in Ukraine (right on his border) as compensation for the release of Persia? Of course, such a thing would have to be done in a secret clause of the treaty, with Sterk not told about it, since we’d need his support in the war to make Ear accept the loss of Persia. I do strongly feel, however, that Poland is actually more of a threat to the BoP than Hungary. Its territories are more compact, it has those three COTs, and above all, Sterk is perhaps the most skilled of our players. I urge you to consider this potential hegemon in the most serious light.

Hah, I was worred about three European COTs, and now Bob has nine, of which most are Asian!

I also find this little fragment, a little later in my archives. I sound quite desperate, don’t I? How things have changed.

Ear, we have [i]got[/i] to deal with Poland. Three COTs, major manpower, and now all the gold in Russia. If he gets into Siberia we are both done for. It is now 1451 and your NAP is over; the AI annexed some of your vassals for you; and you have a vast army. In a year or so I will annex Finland. When that is done, let us for God’s sake grind Poland to dust.

More specifically, I suggest Kazan and Samara to me, Ukraine (with its COT) and another province of your choice to you. We cannot let Sterk colonise Siberia, he’ll be unstoppable.

Well, it’s now Hungary that’s unstoppable, but what do I care? I have no quarrel with them. Anyway, their economy is rather behind; without Norwegian subsidies, they’d be in trouble in any long war. (Still, I wish I was the one that money was the limiting factor for. All the manpower of Siberia… *Drools*)

So, gentlemen, that ends our archive tour, for now at least. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. There are more diplomatic messages in the archives, to be sure, but as they approach the present day, they must remain hidden from public view for another little while.

June 12th, 1315
Ask’s estate
The Norse Law, south of York

“Hassan, a word with you.”

The Assassin straightened from where he was showing his son how to string a bow. His name was actually Massoud, and if Ask had wanted to discuss some detail of the running of the village, he would have used that name. “Hassan” indicated that he wanted to speak with the leader of the Assassins, and that meant serious business. Hassan’s face was instantly unreadable, where a moment before he had been smiling at his eldest child.

“I am at m’lord’s service.”

“Are you familiar with the term, ‘plausible deniability’?”

Hassan’s mouth twitched. “No, m’lord. But I see that it is a useful one.”

“Indeed so. Now, the Ynglings are at vendetta with the Billungs. As a matter of tactics, we prefer that this not come to open warfare. But a death in the night through a random act of God, or at worst perhaps due to an overzealous servant… you see?”

“I do indeed, m’lord. I see how the cause of the Ynglings is advanced thereby. What of the cause of the Assassins? I remind you of the terms of our alliance: We are given a base here in the Norse Law for our children, and for striking against the Worm Kings. In exchange we have given you what we knew about the Angel – “

“Which was little enough.”

“What we knew, I say; and also we work the farms and fields, and give you such information as we come by on our travels through Europe, which you have several times found useful already.”

“It was not my intention that you should work without pay.”

“That is a different matter; it is then a question of business. What pay are you offering?”

“A weapon against the Worm Kings.” Ask held up the little violet flask. “Add three drops of this to a man’s drink or food. It is tasteless and scentless. In three days that man will die.”

Hassan raised his eyebrows, impressed. The poisons available to the downtimers were crude things: Either uselessly weak or splashily fast and obvious, and easily detectable by taste in either case. It was rare for anyone to be killed by poison, and even rarer for the assassin to escape.

“That is a fair offer. If a servant’s curiosity be not out of bounds, where comes m’lord by such treasure?”

Ask smiled, enjoying the bragging rights. “The Ynglings have their ways, and I am not without influence in their councils. Have we a bargain?”

“Aye, m’lord”.

———————————————

September 3rd, 1323
Geirvirke farm

King Haldor’s face was lined with grief and grey with age, but he glared at Ask with the vigour of a man of twenty. “Plausible deniability, you said. Your denials have cost me two sons!”

Ask bowed his head and thought for a moment. There was a law in Norway, and the King was not above the law. But that was not a perfect shield; the Kings had power, which was vastly magnified if the consensus of the Ynglings was with them. And besides, if an accusation was laid against him of killing by poison, he could be convicted and hanged within the absolute letter of the law, and half the kingdom would stand up and cheer his death. If he could not carry this meeting, his life would be short.

“At least twenty Billungs are dead, and – “

“What do I care for dead Billungs? What harm had they done me? Give me back my children!” Haldor turned to spit, tears of rage and grief glittering on his cheeks. “A poisoner stands in my hall and brags of his kills. Is this what the Ynglings have come to? Killing children, because we cannot stand against their fathers?”

Ask blanched. That was… a very uncharitable way of looking at his actions. He sought frantically for an argument, any argument, that would cast it in a better light; he found none. Perforce he fell back on his prepared speech, to save his life. He would consider the ethics of it later. What counted now was to keep his neck out of the noose.

“Germany is in disarray! The nobles grumble that the Ynglings are only scapegoats, that Markward seeks to distract attention from God’s punishment on his dynasty. They say that killing Tormod was a nithing’s deed, and speak openly of holding elections for a new king.”

“Killing Tormod a nithing’s deed… indeed it was. But even so, he was killed in an ambush, fighting; and his wounds were to the fore. Not by poison! God’s punishment, hah. Plausible deniability, hah. The German nobles are gullible fools; but we here know better, and Markward knows better. You, Ask, you have wrought these deaths. If not for you, my sons would live. Do you deny it?”

“I… Your sons fell in a war! The Poison War, I’ve heard it called, and it is a good name. Would you cast blame and seek punishment if I had led your sons into battle, and they fell?”

“No. But neither Gudmund or Tormod would have shirked that; they would have followed you willingly into a fair fight, however desperate, and had my blessing. Did you tell them they were on the front line of your Poison War? Not a word of it! You wrote them out, conscripted them to your armies will they or nil, and did not even tell them they were in a battle! And what’s worse, you have done the same to every Yngling child!”

There was a deep, rumbling snarl in the hall, and Ask knew his cause was lost. There was nothing for it now but to cut his way to his ship and try to escape; if he could make it to the ship, he could flee into exile. The thought lagged the deed; his knife was in his hand and he was sprinting towards the door before his plan had reached the word ’ship’. But he was not the only Yngling in the room; not even the only one with uptime training. Ask moved like a blur; but Gunnar, twenty-five years younger and with the prestige of Dovre to protect, was faster still. Ask avoided a crippling kick to the kneecap by reflex, but he couldn’t maintain his sprint; Gunnar blocked his dagger strike for the throat, caught his wrist, and twisted. Ask punched left-handed towards the younger man’s stomach, but again found the blow blocked – then Gunnar’s fist thundered into the space between his ribs, where even a fit man has no muscle, and he collapsed nervelessly, choking for breath.

“Hang him for a poisoner”, Haldor ordered, and not a man demurred; someone brought a rope and threw it over a roof-beam, and tied a noose. They weren’t even going to drop him, Ask realised; it would be a slow death. There was nothing to be done now to avoid it, though. Then the door opened and a courier came in, and his heart raced again in hope. Only the most important news could be allowed to interrupt this meeting.

“Markward is dead! He has fallen in battle, impiously leading the siege of the Pope’s fortress at Julich. His wife rules in his son’s stead, but the nobles of Germany dispute the inheritance. Bavaria and Holland have risen in rebellion!”

Ask found his voice. “Now is our chance! Strike now, while our foes are in disarray – this is the opportunity I’ve been working these five years to create! Muster the Hird and march south!”

Haldor hesitated. Success, as always, was a powerful argument. Killing a poisoner was one thing; killing the man who had single-handed created a civil war in Germany, quite another. Then his face firmed and his eyes narrowed.

“Right. Call out the Hird; we are retaking Denmark. And as for him…” the hall held its breath, teetering between anger and admiration. “As he has been successful, we shall be merciful. Don’t hang him.” Ask let out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, and felt the Ynglings exhale with him. Then Haldor continued. “Just kill him.”

Gunnar’s sword was a burning streak through the hall.

Well, I think I shall follow Bob’s excellent suggestion, since the only thing that really happened this session was the war between Hungary and Poland, with Spain intervening on the Polish side. I sent Hungary considerable money, and also persuaded Burgundy and Italy to do the same, so that Ear was able to hold the Poles to a compromise peace where Sterk just gained Bogutjar. Considering the price of really massive inflation, not to mention the rebels, I do think Sterk might have been better off giving in gracefully a few years before, but whatever. It’s not as though I mind a weakened Poland.

In fact, matters have progressed to the point where I’m not really that worried about the Baltic anymore; it’s the North Sea I look nervously across. England has a navy equal in size to mine and Spain’s (respectively second and third in naval power) combined; the two-Power standard is alive and well, two centuries before its time. And with the utter defeat of Italy’s navy in the last war, there are no other naval powers to speak of. Then there are the nine (yes, nine!) COTs. Control of southern India is just icing on the cake. What’s worse, Bob is a peaceful sort, unlikely to provoke a vast coalition against him by making an obvious bid for hegemony. England’s one weakness is its lack of manpower; but with the largest economy in the world, that can be made up for by mercenaries – indeed, the recent Polish-Hungarian war is a fine example of mercenaries being decisive, though Hungary hired them with subsidies rather than her own monies. With that said, though, England does have a vulnerable point in her French and American colonies, not to mention the scattered COTs; the Royal Navy isn’t that dominant, it would find it difficult to defend the whole Empire simultaneously. The world waits for the first English mis-step; we’ve seen potential hegemons before, and where are they now? Groaning under 30% inflation.

Speaking of Poland, the former Colossus of the Baltic now takes its life in its hands whenever it goes to war. Between the inflation, the relatively low technology, being late into the colonial game, and (with respect to Hungary) the low manpower, Poland doesn’t look very scary anymore, to the point where their partition has been seriously discussed. Alas, both England and Spain want them kept alive as an ankle-biter, and also to prevent Norway and Hungary gaining their COTs. I am considering if it would be possible to, at some point, inflict a really crushing defeat on the Poles and destroy them as a Great Power capable of real warfare; a vast come-down from the days when the Piasts inherited the Kingdom of Rus, and all of Europe mobilised against them!

Then there is Hungary. Vast, but poor and backwards; their strength is their huge manpower reserves, and in Vicky, of course, they’ll have all the resources of Siberia. Sort of like Russia, really. But they desperately need to industrialise. Still, they’ve been taking the occasional bite out of the Mughals for some time now, and none of their neighbours can really stand up to them. When Hungary marches, Kings tremble.

The two minor powers of the eastern Med, Byzantium and Jerusalem, have beaten each other into exhausted impotence. Byzantium nominally ‘won’ the latest round of warfare, annexing Aleppo with its COT; but neither of them is a significant factor when the Great Powers clash, even on the ankle-biting level of Poland. Inflation, no industries, and no colonies to speak of; they will no doubt go on beating on each other until the end of time. Well, what do you expect? It’s the Middle East, after all.

Italy, having just lost no less than two COTs in a war, can, I think, safely be considered a revisionist, not to say revanchist, Power. Their trouble is the loss of their navy; their strength is the small size and high income of Italy proper, allowing them to hypertech considerably. I expect them to spend this session recovering, building up their navy again and investing in military technologies, and then burst out at a well-chosen moment to attack Burgundy or England. Or they may form the core of a balancing coalition against England; certainly they have every reason to be annoyed at the English. With Italy’s income, rebuilding a large fleet would not take so long as all that.

We now come to Burgundy, which by my rough estimate is the third of the Great Powers. (I think there are three real giants, England-Spain-Burgundy, then a bit of a drop down to Italy-Norway, then another step down to Hungary-Poland, and then minors. Everybody down to Poland, or possibly Hungary, can defend themselves reasonably well and force a compromise peace on an attacker; but the three top Powers are the major leagues, capable of fighting on several fronts and projecting force anywhere. I would not care to fight either England, Spain or Burgundy on my own.) Burgundy is the most heavily industrialised country in the world; but its trade and colonies are not of the best, and it has a large Protestant and Catholic population in Europe which is still being converted. Nonetheless, the wealth of the Rhine valley feeds vast armies; not so much of a navy, at this time, but one could be built quite fast. At this moment Burgundy is an ally of England, having used English money (gained by renting out Calais) to finance their factories. Presumably they will remain so at least until the lease on Calais runs out; a COT makes a fine hostage. Even after that, I see no real reason for Burgundy and England to quarrel; they have no clashing colonial or European interests – unless, that is, one of them should decide to attempt French culture. If it hasn’t happened in the first 200 years of the game, though, it presumably won’t. One might expect Burgundy and England to remain allies for a considerable time to come, then, cooperating in holding down the rest of us.

That leaves Spain as the outsider of the three largest powers; and Ego is a fairly aggressive sort, who won’t be happy until Spain is pre-eminent. I have no doubt he will try to put together an anti-British coalition. He should have no difficulty recruiting Italy. Norway has issues with both sides, and can presumably bring in Hungary – our alliance is long-standing – and should therefore be eagerly sought as having the balance of power. Poland is not really sufficiently powerful to add anything to this discussion, except as a biter-of-ankles to distract Norway and Hungary. However, Ego may reasonably feel that he is unable to move until his navy has been considerably expanded; while I doubt he can build something capable of dealing with both Norway and England, if the chips should fall that way, he should certainly be able to put together something to contest one of us in one ocean. I do know that it is an ambition of his to get the three Norwegian colonies that remain in South America; he may decide to knock Norway out of the running first, and turn to deal with England later. (If so, we’d have a nice rerun of the Cuban campaign, now with the Norwegian DP sliders adjusted for battle.) Spain, then, is the wild card, the one Power both dis-satisfied with the status quo and having sufficient power to change it all by itself.

Finally, Norway. I am no longer very worried about my control of the Baltic; between the second-largest navy in the world, and a much larger economy than Poland, I am fairly confident of my ability to sit on the Piasts in a one-on-one war; coalition warfare is something else again, but that cuts both ways. The question is, however, how I can expand. Industrialising is one option; I’ve also got a bunch of pagans that need to be turned into good Scandinavian Protestants; and there are a lot of unfortified provinces about. But somehow, only new provinces Really Satisfy. One option is to partition Poland to the point where I could claim Russian culture; alas, the other powers would probably object. I do intend to continue expanding my trade; in particular, there are a lot of European COTs where I could dominate – not as lucrative as the Asian stuff, but rather less competition! Economic dominance of Poland may the best I’m going to get. Then, I do expect a showdown between Spain and England, with their various allies, at some point; intervention to create a winning side could be highly beneficial, though I’d have to be careful not to antagonise both parties by too openly playing them against each other. (Antagonising one of them is probably unavoidable.) At the moment, I do lean to Spain, what with the English threat to become hegemon; but then again, I also have some long-running quarrels with Spain that England could help me settle. Decisions, decisions… I see several options, but powers not quite of the first water have to tread carefully! Perhaps I should just annex large tracts of China, instead.

I shall give myself an extra point of plutocracy for this.

Today we had several incidents of interest, which I relate OOC for easier understanding of the IC explanation later. First, note that the major powers are colluding to keep the Pope homeless, by attacking and annexing him wherever he pops up. As it happens, my son Guttorm was an extremely pious sort, and managed to get elected Pope. Twice. Both times he was thrown out and had to return to my court. Shortly after the second time, I got – and unfortunately didn’t take a screenie of – the event “You are a vengeful person” for him. Indeed I am!

However, that was a minor incident. The major thing that happened in this session was the Poison War. That is to say, the vendetta between Yngling and Billung. Last session I had carefully arranged an inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, a German duke on the Baltic coast. Carillon paid to change its law to Salic, and I was out one inheritance. I retaliated by diligently searching the save for Billungs in courts with low Intrigue, and sent out my assassins – partly to kill Billungs, and partly in the hope of making Carillon do something ill-considered. Carillon, just as I had intended, paid me back in kind; I lost two excellent sons. Carillon, however, got his badboy up to the very edge of a Death Spiral, and then God delivered him into my hands! In particular, while his king was besieging the latest incarnation of the Pope, he got the event “Into the Breach”, and the King led the charge. And died. And his 3-year-old son with the 0 diplomacy and 0 prestige inherited. And all hell broke loose.

At the beginning of the session the Norwegian-German border lay north of Skåne, thus:

At the height of the rebellion, Germany looked like this:

And now, ten years later, we are negotiating whether the border will be on the Elbe or on Danevirke:

Note also how Prussia has grabbed some extra Baltic coastline. Truly, those assassins were worth every penny!

South of Cuba
June, 1603

“Ok, boys, that’s the plan, and I think it’s not too bad. But, well, you know what they say about plans. So, don’t get too stuck on it; there’s always going to be some luck in the thing. If it comes right to it, you can’t go too far wrong if you just get alongside a Spaniard and damn well shoot the buggers.”
The captains nodded; they knew about plans, and they also knew that a Norwegian ship of 60 guns was a match for a Spaniard of 72. Outnumbered or none, they expected to win. There was confidence in their steps and their looks as they dispersed to the launches, heading back to their own ships. Soon, sails were being rolled out and boarding pikes gotten out of storage all across the Norwegian fleet. Shouts of “Run out your guns!” and “Out tompions!” floated on the fitful dawn breeze. The Spaniards were downwind, between the Norwegians and Jamaica, with nowhere to run. They’d have to fight. It looked as though they were willing enough; the entire fleet, more than sixty ships, was flying battle ensigns, gold and scarlet flowing lazily as they tacked north.

Naval battles of the Caribbean campaign. Norway smash!

———————————————————-

The Spanish captain was icily correct as he surrendered his sword. The moaning of wounded men was stunningly loud without the rolling cannonades that had assaulted Trygve’s ears for hours; only at the fringes, where frigates pursued the fleeing Spaniards, was there still any firing. He looked about; nobody could say the Spaniards hadn’t fought to the end, the Madre de Dios had been battered near to wreckage. There wasn’t enough left of the main mast for even a jury rig; it would have to be put under tow. Men were lying all about the deck, fallen where they’d tried to stop the boarders from the Håkon Håkonsson; the little murdering pieces along the railing were all dismounted. The gun decks would be worse. There wasn’t a single gunport left intact, they’d all been smashed into a long hole going the length of the ship. He decided not to inspect it until the surgeon had had a chance; he was as unsqueamish as the next Yngling, but there was nothing pleasant about looking at the ruin of bodies. He’d have to think about a prize crew; his own casualties had been heavy, it would be a difficult job getting both ships back to port. Water, a watch over the Spanish prisoners, he’d have to detail someone to confiscate their arms, and there was always the risk of some zealous underofficer setting a fire to deny the ship to the Norwegians. Work, work, work…

Even so – he looked again at the Spanish captain. His face was a mask of control over utter rage and despair. Better the problems of victory.

———————————————————-

Siege of Cuzco
August, 1604

Einar heaved an exhausted sigh. The siege was not going well; he’d had to put down another three of the Inca auxiliaries. The smallpox seemed to get them much faster than his own men, or the Spaniards. At least they worked well with a touch of the whip, not like the Iroquis. Useless in a fight, of course, but then he didn’t really have enough ammunition for his hirdsmen, anyway. He looked out at the Spanish works; no real cannon, just little three-inchers unloaded from some ship. They’d be in range tomorrow. He wasn’t sure whether his improvised earth barrier would strengthen the drystone walls enough to stand up to them; still, it would take them at least a few days to batter a hole. He reckoned out again the days that remained of his life. Spanish guns making a breach, maybe three days plus however long they could hold the breach. Several months if the embrasures worked. Running out of food, two months. Running out of water, two weeks unless it rained. Running out of ammunition, two, perhaps three Spanish assaults, but they hadn’t made any in a while. Tired of losing men, perhaps. Mutiny among the men, an unknown quantity. It depended on whether they believed his story that the Spanish would let the Inca sacrifice prisoners to stop the smallpox. It had worked so far, hird regulars weren’t usually very bright. Some of them might even still be hoping to win, and get out of here. He decided that he would shift his mental bet with himself; the water looked like the most likely option, it hadn’t rained in a month.

He fingered the little pistol in his pocket; a gaudy thing, taken from a Spanish officer with more money than sense. It would be inaccurate beyond three paces. But good enough for his purposes. Ynglings were not taken alive.

———————————————————-

San Jose hill
May, 1605

“Stand firm, you dogs! I’ll gut the first man who turns!”
It was no use; the regulars had had enough. Harald suited action to words, running his sword through the kidney of a young German who had thrown down his musket and was turning to run; but he could not stop the flood wave of rout. The hird was not going to stand still and be cannonaded, and that was that. For the hundredth time he wished he’d had just one more regiment, one more company, of the Guards to send. Just half an hour, fifteen minutes even, until his counter-attack worked its way through the hills and came in on the Spanish flank. He had hoped the hird would stand that long; but no. Three little cannon, popgun three-pounders from some sloop posted here against pirates, had sent his last reserve running; and now the Spanish regiments were shouting their triumph as they came forward, advancing on his flank. There was nothing for it; he’d have to disengage, pull back, and hope he could rally enough men to make a stand short of Havana. He was almost crying from frustration as he turned about to canter back to his staff. They’d been so close! Just this one battle, and the Spaniards would have had nowhere left to run. They could have held Cuba forever, perhaps even retaken Jamaica.

The Cuban campaign :

Three guns, and half an hour; of such things are empires made, and lost.

———————————————————-

Håkon’s Hall, Bergen
January, 1609

“Brothers, we must face facts. Our army is just not good enough.”
“We did well enough in Poland.” The older man spoke in the tone of one who knows perfectly well that his objection will be met, but who wants to have it on record as being shot down.
“Yes, against garrisons and trained bands! The Piast’s regulars were all away in the south, fighting the Hungarians. What battles did we win against regular troops in the open field? Mexico, Cuba, even Danzig – when did we face equal numbers and prevail?”
“True. But what’s to be done? There are not enough Ynglings to make the Guard our only army; and if we give the stril good weapons and training, how are we going to keep them down?”
“Well – it need only be a temporary expedient. In a few generations there will be enough of us to do our own fighting. Anyway, how do we keep them down now? The regular hird outnumbers the Guard three to one.”
“And we are careful to station German with Russian, Iroquis with Balt. Half the men in our regular units don’t speak the language of the other half! We don’t give them powder until the day before a battle, and drill them half as much as the Guard. We give the sergeants privileges over the men, and the Norse privileges over the Germans. So we creak along, and put down the occasional revolt easily. But it’s not a system for making good fighting men.”
“Well, that’s just it! We need good fighting men. Suppose we gave them more privileges?”
“No. It’s not the downtrodden slave who rises up, it’s the man who has a little, enough to see what more he might want.”
“Do you have a better idea? We can’t go about losing wars every five years!”

There was silence for perhaps half a minute. The King stirred uneasily; he had let his ministers argue freely, as was Yngling custom, ready to step in and impose the consensus when it was reached. Usually the agreement would come much faster, though; Yngling thought like Yngling, as the saying went. At length the Minister of Trade spoke; he had been diffidently silent while his more senior colleagues of War and Outland Relations argued.

“I have an idea, though perhaps you won’t like it.”
“Well, nobody else has any. Speak out, brother.”
“It seems to me there are two problems. One, we haven’t enough Ynglings. Two, we can’t really trust the regular hird, because we can’t give them the opportunity to rise to our level. There just isn’t enough wealth in Norway, and anyway someone has to do the scutwork. I think we can solve both problems. Brothers, my father has two sons; he also has three daughters.”
“Well? What’s your point?”
“Suppose we recognise our sisters’ children as Ynglings?”

A less disciplined group might have had uproar, but one did not rise to command Ynglings without command of oneself. Besides, the idea was so radical that it took time to shock. The Minister of War was first to recover; he spoke reasonably, in the tone of one pointing out an obvious flaw in another’s plan, overlooked no doubt simply by a minor bobble.
“Only men carry the blood of the Ynglings. Women don’t have the spirit that gives the mind form, they only carry the life essence. Children of a father who isn’t descended from Olav or Magnus, well, they just won’t have the Yngling spirit, that’s all there is to it. You can call them Ynglings, but they won’t be, any more than you can make bread out of rock by saying it so!”
Trade snorted. “Ridiculous superstition. You’ve been reading too much Aristotle; what does some ignorant wog know about breeding? If you’d visit your estate for more than swiving the stril girls, you’d know that the female is just as important as the male. Try getting fat pigs with thin sows, and see how far you get!”
Outland Relations broke in. “But humans are not pigs. The body is one thing, but what about the spirit? That’s shaped by the Yngling essence that we all carry.”
“Well, brother, I’ll match my sister Gudrun against you any day. Female she may be, but she has the fighting guts of any three men I know.”
“Still – let us suppose we let the women in. Come to think of it, some of my nephews are quite scrappy little buggers, might not do too badly in the Guard. How does that solve the problem of trusting the hird?”
“Well, in the first place, it doubles the number of Ynglings. That’s a start right there. But in the second place, who are all these women of ours going to marry?”
“The upper layer of stril, presumably, and sometimes their more distantly related Yngling cousins. Same as now.”
“Ah, but what if we permit soldiers with their time expired to marry Yngling women?”
“Then their children will be Ynglings…” The minister of War’s face lit up in a slow, almost unwilling smile. “And we’ll be able to trust them, because they’ll have a hope of joining the established order without the risk of a revolution!”
“Exactly. Of course, we’re still going to have to change our recruiting policies. Right now we get our soldiers from the dumbest, poorest part of the population, because we don’t want to give the smart ones guns. But we don’t want the dumb ones to be marrying our sisters and, even worse, fathering our nephews! So, we’ll have to start recruiting among the tradesmen, the farmers, that sort of man. It’ll take time.”
“Yes. Another thing – we still don’t want any strils thinking they can fight as well as an Yngling. Maybe we can look into the Guard drill – it’s been a while. There might be something we can improve. Right now a Guard unit can beat three times its number of regulars, and I don’t see any reason to change that. So if the regulars get better, the Guard must, too.”

———————————————————-

Demographic note : At this time there are about 60000 male Ynglings alive, meaning maybe 20000 of an age to fight. (Of course, the EU2 engine shows me with about 140000 casualties from this little fracas, but that’s ridiculous. Divide by ten, and call most of them regulars.) Acknowledging females as Ynglings would double the raw number, though not the fighting number (even Trade isn’t that radical, not yet anyway); but it halves the doubling time. On the down side, the Minister of War has a point : Every one of those male Ynglings is descended in the male line from one of the two Yngling brothers alive in 1066. That means they all share the same Y chromosome. (Well, in law and theory, anyway. Actual fact might be something else, fidelity in humans being what it is. Still, adultery tends to be with people of one’s own class – meaning Yngling males, presumably.) This would no longer be true if you permitted descent in the female line. Of course, ethnic identity is rarely constructed along rational lines!

As you can perhaps tell, I did not enjoy having the crap kicked out of my armies on a regular basis. It seems that in fine-tuning my DP sliders for economic competition, I’ve been falling behind in the military. Well, no more! Quality and Offensive is the order of the day. (Indeed, you’d think an Yngling Guards unit would be quite offensive just from the stench of arrogance rising from it. The looks down the nose ought to kill at a hundred paces.) I’ll also get more freedom and less plutocratic. Inno will remain low, however; the ones lucky enough to marry into the Yngling family will not be wanting to extend any of their new-found privileges to the ones still outside, dirty strils that they are! And also, there’s the plus royaliste que le Roi effect, where the new Ynglings want to show that they aren’t soft on the outsiders. There’s a safety valve that co-opts the best and the brightest, now; but if you aren’t lucky enough to marry an Yngling, Norway is about to become a rather worse place for you.

On a more comic relief note, I wonder what this guy thinks he’s doing? I mean, death to the Yngling oppressor pigs, sure, but – a one man army?

I haven’t been idle on the infrastructure front, either. Governors all over Russia!

And Germany, of course, but I’ll only show the one picture. Burgundy’s looks rather more impressive anyway, his provinces are much smaller so the little men are closer together. He’s building judges over the whole of northern Germany, simultaneously.

It may perhaps be worth recapping a little bit of diplomatic history at this point. The fifty-year Cold War between the Holy Roman Empire (Italy, Bohemia, Germany, Arabia, and briefly England before its final collapse) and the Roman Commonwealth (Georgia, Russia, Byzantium, Brittany, Serbia until its attempted betrayal and resulting annexation, England before it switched sides, and Norway as an associated neutral) ended, not in the Great War everyone was expecting, but in the collapse of one bloc, much like 1989 in OTL. The trigger was Bohemia attempting to switch sides, getting cold feet, and ending up annoying both leading powers (Georgia and Italy) sufficiently for them to find common ground in punishing Bohemia. The upshot was that Italy gave African lands to Arabia, Arabia gave over parts of the Levant to Georgia, and Germany and Italy recouped their losses at Bohemia’s expense. Further, the HRE was disbanded and all the world joined the Roman Commonwealth, which was redrafted from a military alliance into something more like the United Nations. It now contains a clause limiting war gains to 5-10 provinces, enforced presumably – nobody has tested this yet – by the Hegemon declaring war on any offender and all the rest of the RC joining in.

This, of course, did not solve the actual security concerns that had led to the formation of the two blocs in the first place. This was demonstrated by

• Skirmishes on the Russian-Bohemian border when Russia had rebel troubles and Bohemia (now with a new player, and renamed to Prussia, so I shall refer to it as Prussia from now on) tried to take advantage.
• Norway and Brittany attempting to inherit and/or cause to defect each other’s vassals. Due to a NAP lasting until 1330, this has not yet caused a war, although Brittany has promised retaliation when their hands are unbound. Neither side got any actual advantage from this; we each managed to take over three counties from the other, of roughly equal value. Since this makes the borders rather ugly, we decided to hand back our gains and start over.
• Norwegian assassins striking into Germany and Prussia to remove inconvenient heirs, clearing the way for Ynglings to inherit. Stiff diplomatic protests and retaliation in kind followed, not to mention the ethnic cleansing of Skåne. I have now decided that in the interests of not pissing off the entire world at once, I will not use this method to inherit any counties in Prussia.
• Prussia, Germany, and Brittany ganging up on Byzantium to move the border south a bit. Budgetary and logistical contraints forced a WP.
• Byzantium, Russia, and Georgia signing a defensive alliance, the Samoyeds Pact, thus recreating the original Roman Commonwealth. Note the parallel to the United Nations and NATO. The war alliance that won the Second World War no longer served its defensive purpose, since it contained both the opposed states. It was therefore converted to a debating society, and a new organisation set up to manage actual military defense.
• Which instantly called into being its opposition, the Warsaw Pact. Or in this case, a military alliance between Germany and Brittany. Note that all of these are members of the Roman Commonwealth; they just don’t trust that organisation to safeguard their security, so they sign proper alliance pacts with nations who can.
• And finally, the ongoing war between Norway and Germany. We had been clashing (in chat) over my assassins (the targets were Billungs, carillon’s dynasty) and his ethnic cleansing. Relations were not improved by my excomming carillon when I was briefly PC. He got out of that (by event?), but in the ensuing disloyalty I managed to snipe the Duke of Sjælland. In spite of our NAP, carillon decided that this was intolerable provocation, and declared war, accepting another excommunication as the price for punishing me. Ulmont decided that Germany could handle Norway alone, and chose not to eat an excommunication just to help. But I definitely saw blood in his eye when he longingly mentioned the date 1330. (When our NAP expires.) The war began quite successfully for me; 15k German invaders were met in Finnveden by 20k Swedish levies and comprehensively smashed; roughly 1000 escaped. It remains to be seen whether I can follow up this success; the manpower statistics show Norway and Germany roughly even in current manpower, with Germany superior in long-term manpower. But then there are the logistics; we will both have difficulty invading the other. We may end up with me in possession of Skåne and him taking Sjælland back. My war aim, though, is the recovery of at least the northern half of Denmark.

As we all know, I’m not an economist, but I do occasionally apply my formidable brainpower to thinking about issues outside my field. So today I’m thinking about government spending and loans versus taxes. We sometimes hear that borrowing money is “stealing from our children” or “moving consumption from the future to the present”, which puzzles me. Unless someone has been making breakthroughs in fundamental physics and/or dark-energy engineering and selfishly keeping it to themselves, we cannot literally move any loaves of bread from 2020 to now; what we can do is make notes on paper, or shuffle electrons around. Being a simple-minded physicist, I always get confused when I try to think about economics in terms of dollars; it’s a lot easier to ignore the little pieces of paper and look at the actual movement of loaves of bread. So in these terms, what is the difference between taxing and borrowing?

Let’s suppose the government wants to give a loaf of bread to a welfare recipient, in this year 2009. Clearly this loaf has to come from somewhere: Either it is extracted by taxation from the population as a whole, or it is borrowed and will be repaid later, with interest. Let’s have four economic entities: Welfare recipient, government workers, taxpayers, and me. For simplicity we’ll ignore that I and the government workers are also taxpayers.

Now then; suppose the loaf of bread is extracted by taxation. Some extra must go to feed the government workers doing this unpleasant task; let’s call this proportion ‘x’. Additionally there is some deadweight loss, where people who might, in the absence of taxation, have gone to work and made some bread decide, instead, to stay at home and do something that’s not taxed, like play with their children. Call this ‘y’. So, in real terms we have a transfer of goods like so:

All very straightforward, but observe that this is negative-sum – nobody ends up getting that y which the taxpayers lost. That’s why it’s called “deadweight”. Now for the case of the loan. The government decides not to make itself unpopular by increasing taxes this year; instead it’ll put out some thirty-year bonds. These are in effect promises to return lots of bread in 2039 in exchange for one loaf now. I, having more bread than I need at the moment, kindly step in and take this bond. Then, in 2039, the government (I hope) pays me back, with interest – 2 loaves, let’s say. So now the transfers look like this:

Notice that the 2039 payouts become more complicated. To find those 2 loaves I’m owed, the government has to tax (or borrow some more, but we’ll ignore that option, it doesn’t add anything to the discussion) 2 + 2x loaves out of the population, because it still needs to pay the people who check tax forms and arrest cheaters. The deadweight losses are different, y’ rather than y, because the tax rate is now higher – but on the other hand, one hopes, it’s being levied on a much larger economy. As a percentage of their actual wealth, that (2+2x+y’) may in fact be rather smaller than the 2009 (1+x+y). Perhaps not, though; it depends on the interest rate of that thirty-year bond, which is based partly on my estimate of how much the economy will grow in 30 years – if I think I can do better by lending my loaf of bread to a venture capitalist, I won’t take the government bond. Of course, predicting GDP growth 30 years in advance is not a trivial task either. At any rate, though, it’s now clear how borrowing transfers money from the future: It doesn’t, rather it transfers some money today and creates the promise of another, compensating transfer later on.

Promises, of course, can be broken; governments do sometimes default on bonds. Assuming it doesn’t, though, we can think a bit about whether the rhetoric of stealing from our children is reasonable. First, it’s clear that the borrowing option imposes a larger tax burden, in terms of loaves of bread, on the 2039 taxpayers than the taxation option imposes on the 2009 taxpayers. (Going back to dollars, it is of course possible that the debt will inflate away and when I get my payout, I’ll actually be left with two crumbs rather than two loaves. To guard against this possibility I’ve also got some of my savings in gold. But let’s assume for the moment that they are inflation-protected bonds.) However, it is not immediately clear that it is a larger tax burden as a percentage of the number of loaves they’re producing. If I am a good estimator of growth rates, it will be, though, because I want to be paid something for not having that loaf of bread for the next 30 years.

Still, this argument can be made for any form of saving. Suppose I had socked away my loaf of bread into the stock market; then the transfer would look like this:

Do I end up with more goods, as a percentage of GDP, than before? Who knows? But what we don’t have is the deadweight losses and the transfer to government bureaucrats.

So: With taxes, we have to pay (1+x+y) right now. With borrowing, a slightly different set of taxpayers, presumably including some children of ours, pays (2+2x+y’) in 2039. But wait; what am I going to do with my 2039 loaves of bread? Well, at least some of it will be passed on to – my children, right. The net effect of borrowing is to redistribute the wealth of 2039; some to government bureaucrats, some to the lenders of 2009 and their children. But whoever finally ends up with those 2039 loaves of bread, we have created an obligation for the 2039 taxpayers which some fraction of them did not get to vote on.

So, I’ve actually convinced myself that the rhetoric is not without foundation: Do I want to be taxed to pay for whatever programs were being funded by borrowing in the late seventies? No. Consequently I should not put anyone else in that position. But against that: I’m ok with being taxed to pay for WWII. So in the end, it depends on how worthy you think the goal is, just like any other government spending. You could put “build a bridge” or “invade Iraq” in place of my “welfare recipient”, and the transfers remain the same.

It does seem that if you want to use 2009 resources for Worthy Cause X, it would be more honest to just do so, even if the pill can be made easier to swallow by saying “but don’t worry, in exchange for your loaf of bread now, we’ll make people work a bit extra in 2039 to give you two loaves.”

Well, it was the wool, you see. We pretty much had the corner on the market in smokes. And they couldn’t get sugar to grow properly in New Norway, so the Spaniards had that all to themselves. But wool, well, everybody’s got sheep, right? So that’s where we were competing directly, like. Of course, the dons had a bit of an advantage, what with having their sheep in Iberia. So you might think we’d resort to tricks like burning down warehouses, that kind of thing. Not a bit of it! See, two can play at that game. We burn down theirs, they burn down ours, that’s fair, right? And nobody could make a profit off that. Ynglings would have done it, sure – well, the old guys, anyway, the ones who fought in the Reformation. Burn down a house as soon as look at it, some of them. But my boss, Herr Richter, he just wants to make a profit. So, subtle does it! Once, he paid some Jews to move into a couple old apartments, close to the Spanish quarter. Then he sent me off to the taverns to spend a bit of time drinking and talking over all that old drinking-the-blood-of-Christians stuff. Of course, it’s not very difficult to set off a nice murderous riot against Jews! And in your basic riot, of course, nobody is surprised if a bit of stuff disappears, you know? It’s a bit unusual for a whole warehouse full of wool to run off, I give you that, but it’s been known to happen. It was all untraceable stuff like that – we didn’t even keep the wool, we sent it off to be sold in Alexandria.

Of course, you can’t do stuff like that too often. Hey, dagoes are pretty dim, but by the third time they lose a warehouse full of wool, well, even a polak would get that hint! In fact, tell you the truth, that’s why we don’t trade in Venice anymore. Seems one of the Italians there was a bit sharper than the next guy, and had connections at court. Well, at the time there were more Italians in Novgorod than Norwegians in Venice, so the King, he just up and chucks the wogs out. Ynglings, y’know – getting an apology from them is like pulling teeth. I guess he felt kind of stupid when the Italians grabbed Kutch and kicked us out of there too! It’s tough at the top, as they say. I suppose he’ll be swallowing his pride and paying the wog King some money. I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that! It’s not often you see an Yngling bend the knee.

But I digress. I was talking about the wool trade. Well, tricks and all, we’re just about holding our own now. The Spaniards have begun subsidising their traders with the profits of their gold mines, though. I don’t know how long we can hang on against that. Oh, sure, they say there’s a big war coming, but they’ve been saying that for as long as I’ve been alive. Besides, even if we did win a war, how’s it going to change things? You can’t stop the outlanders from selling stuff to each other, not unless you was to conquer the whole world, and even the Ynglings don’t dream of that. Not yet, anyway.

————————————————————-

Another peaceful session, apart from the collapse of China, that is; then again, who cares about them? I got into a brisk little trade war with Spain, which isn’t settled yet; he insists that the monopoly of Aleppo is rightfully his. I also managed to annoy Formula down in Italy badly enough that he banned me, to which I retaliated with a counter-ban instead of soft words and some money. At the time his trade in my COTs was bigger than vice-versa. Alas, I did not foresee his conquest of the rich Kutch COT. o Still, Norway’s trade income increased by about 50% this session, putting me behind, but in sight of, the big boys. Here’s a snapshot of the Aleppo situation :

Note that the actual owner of the COT doesn’t have a single merchant in it. Economic imperialism at its finest!

Here’s my current domestic situation :

I’m moving towards plutocracy, since as the Ynglings become more numerous, there just isn’t enough land to support them as a traditional land-owning aristocracy. (And anyway, I need the trade efficiency; diplomacy is really not a consideration for this game, there’s no AI countries to speak of.) Likewise I’m going towards free subjects for the morale and production efficiency, not to mention literacy in Vicky. This also reflects the increasing numbers of the Ynglings : The more Ynglings there are, the freer the average subject of the Kingdom gets, since the Ynglings are contributing more to the average! (Admittedly I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here – there aren’t enough Ynglings yet to have such a large effect as this slider shows.) You’ll note that, on the other hand, I’m extremely narrowminded; this reflects the increasing arrogance and intolerance of the Ynglings, and even of the second-class subjects (those Norwegians and Finns who are not Ynglings) towards their foreign subjects. You’ll note that my narrator above is not very politically correct; a truly minor example of the sort of attitude that’s coming to permeate Norwegian society.

Finally, a look at the colonies :

Poof go the Shawnee, with the usual dose of rape and pillage – if anything, they’re even worse off than the Iroquis. Although it doesn’t show on the map, my colonies have expanded quite a bit in numbers, and I’m now the leading manufacturer of tobacco. Bwah-hah-hah, I beat them with cancer sticks!

August 27th, 1294
Gora Dzhimara
Alania Province, Georgia

Ask blinked, more slowly than he was used to. The wine the monks had given him had been laced with something; marijuana, perhaps? Whatever it was, he ought to see if it could be imported to Norway; he felt calm and relaxed, and the sight of the stone – coffin? tomb? – chamber the monks were urging him into bothered him only distantly. It was about half filled with scented water, and large enough for two men to float in, three if they were good friends. He lowered himself into the water – blood temperature, and salted so he floated effortlessly – and the monks closed the stone lid with a scraping thud.

It was very quiet. Even the sound of his own breathing was absorbed by the velvety darkness. After a while he realised what had been bothering him: Where had these primitives come up with the idea of a sensory deprivation chamber? It was a good one, too, within the limits of the technology. He worried at the problem for a moment, then set it aside and blanked his mind as instructed. If the monks knew what they were talking about, he’d have answers to his questions shortly.

He drifted for a while, half asleep. Some time later – days? hours? – he became aware that he was not alone, that a presence – the Angel? – had been floating in the chamber with him for a long time, and that he had known of its presence, but not been aware of the knowing. The feeling was dreamlike, but unmistakable: Something was in the chamber with him – something that made no sound, projected no menace, and yet was an unfathomable threat merely by its existence. His breath caught, and there was a quite unintentional quaver in his voice when he asked his first question.

“Who are you?”

No words came back out of the darkness; but a flood of images sprang into his mind, memories, thoughts, associations long buried. Skiing across the Jotunheim, a rifle on his back. Swimming, a fiord somewhere, icy water and hot sun. Women – Jorunn, Gunhild, a dozen stril girls whose names he had forgotten. Commanders, teachers, officers who had impressed him. Soldiers he had commanded, in the Rockies hunting for tribesmen, on the Russian border, smuggling weapons in the Spanish colonies. He almost cried out with the feeling of thoughts not under his own control; the images flitted madly, one, another, gone before he could think or assimilate them. Cold sweat sprang out all over him, and he understood the purpose of the tank; here indeed was a reply that could drive a man to madness from sheer overload. The tank helped, freeing all his mind to work on the images. Gradually he mastered them, and a single thought/feeling came to to fore, and dominated. The Yngling stands on a mountain, broad-shouldered, legs apart, hands on hips. He is master of all he sees. No law, no outside will binds him. He is truly free, and men will follow him merely for the privilege of serving their superior. Nothing can stand before him, and between him and his naked will there is no more than a wolf has. He is outlaw, rebel, vigilante. He is Yngling.

Ask gasped with the effort; something was wrong. He could feel his mind buzzing in turmoil, and mentally apologised to the Georgians who had warned him this was dangerous. There was something alien here, a form of communication fundamentally mismatched to the human mind. Whatever it was, the Angel was surely no Yngling, and certainly not the cliched Overmann of uptime power-porn; but somewhere in that image lay the closest match between truth, and what could be ripped out of Ask’s memories. For all his work to get here, the answers he got might well be useless. Nonetheless, any answer was better than none. He pressed on, bracing himself for the flood.

“How did you come here?”

The return chamber of the Quantum Device. Quiet technicians punching buttons, countdowns flashing. Dovre Mountain disintegrating, a malignant radioactive mushroom punching to the top of the atmosphere. A tsunami washing over an Indonesian coastline. A man washed away. A child crying.

Accident, disaster, frustration; Ask knew all about that. An accident triggered by the Quantum Device? The old timeline should have been destroyed, but – here was Ask. Just how good had the Secret Hird’s theoretical physicists been, anyway? The best scientists disliked working in secret. Perhaps, just perhaps, it wasn’t impossible.

“Where are you from?”

A cloudless sky, a pitiless sun. Blackness, scattered with stars. An old diagram from a school book, Sun-Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune.

Not China. Or it might be lying – but no, if the Chinese had had the means to fake this, the Long War would have been long over. Which left – perhaps something worse. Ask considered, grimly. There were enemies and enemies; better human rule, even if Communist, than… not. Still, the Angel didn’t actually seem hostile. Surely it might have taken over the world by now if it wanted to, not that the Seljuk Empire wasn’t a fine starter-set for that ambition. But the overtones were grief more than triumph, regret more than anger.

Distantly, he could feel himself shaking with the strain of the communion, and knew it for a bad sign. Already he was numb, dissociated from his body. It could not take much more of this to kill him from brute overwork overloading his heart and brain. He would have one more question, at most, before the stroke or heart attack finished him, and even that would be a gamble. Coldly, he gambled. His kin knew where he was; if he died, they would send another.

“What do you want?”

A long pause, then: Boots of the Ynglinga Hird trampling through the streets of Beijing. Heroic bronzes toppling; others going up in their place. Guerrillas hiding in the Rockies. Farmers on the Polish plains, working as they had for generations. The technicians tending the Quantum Device again, and the countdown – but it was reversed, the numbers flashing upwards. Vegard dying with the Russian bullet in his lung – and the blood went back into his mouth, he rose, his gun was back in his hand, and when time went forward again Ask was just a little quicker with his own shot and the Russian went down.

Slowly, Ask translated into words; the strain was a little less now, as he and the Angel became more familiar with each other. Survive until victory; correct a mistake. The words, “What mistake?”, trembled on his lips – but no. He could take no more; another flood would finish him. He had the information he needed, now, and now right to gamble further merely to fill in the details. He had to survive, to return to Norway and warn his kin. He had to get home.