Ged's Existential Nightmare

[TheButterflyComposer]

'Through me you pass into the city of woe:

Through me you pass into eternal pain:​

Through me among the people lost for aye...'

'....Before me things create were​

none, save things

Eternal, and eternal I endure.​

All hope abandon ye who enter here.'

-Dante Alighieri, Inferno​

This is the story of a man named Ged.
This is the story of a family named Ned.
This is a story about the kingdom they led.

Tred lightly, dear listener. Dark times lurk ahead.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The Bad Beginning​

Crusader Kings carries a…certain perception on the internet. It has Reddit rep, and 4chan cred, for being one of the greatest enablers of humanity’s darkest desires, matched in potential malice only by The Sims.

Paradox knows this. Paradox sees all, at least when it comes to marketing. So, whomever they got to write this tutorial worked to a fairly simple brief:

• Introduce players to core game-play concepts (but not the ones we will add in later for money).
• Walk the player through a typical start-up for a minor realm on noob Ireland (as dictated by Swedish law and forum custom).
• Feed the nihilists a taste of the hunger that will never be sated.

In this, they exceeded expectations.

Your actions have damned Ged​

This poor wretch is the tutorial character for the game, and thus doomed to an eternity of mistakes and ‘mistakes’ from stupid and sadistic new players. His name used to be Murchad mac Donnchad. But to truly encapsulate how fucked this guy is, I’m christening him Ged of House Ned. Not that you can customise characters or dynasties yet because heaven forbid Paradox transfer that in from the old game without three years development and thirty pounds of expansion.

So, we’ll all have to pretend. Now I understand some readers may think I am overstating the grimdark nature of Crusader Kings III. The Paradox Tutorial Maker (PTM) swiftly puts these thoughts to bed. After loading up the game and being treated to some truly beautiful watercolour paintings of knights and castles, backed by happy flutes and harp music, the game froze and screamed as soon as the map loaded, clearly and deliberately highlighting the eldritch horror I was about to unleash.

In fact, Paradox were so concerned to get this message across that it happened twice more before the map deigned to fully load and permit me entrance to the Nightmare. Such commitment to an overarching vision must be applauded.

Of course, I do dare imagine some of you might unworthily be suspecting this to be a bug not a feature. To these people, I present the first text you receive upon starting PTM’s vision:

The only way to win is not to play​

This is marvellous stuff. PTM is very upfront about how your game world is screwed now you have begun, and it’s all your fault. ‘Victory’, however you personally define it, will ultimately prove meaningless and futile against the vast eons of spacetime.

“I am doomed!” announces PTM happily, “and so are you, pilgrim.”

Marvel at your command over the camera. Struggle as you try to frame the perfect screenshot.
Curse the bastard who decided to make the text boxes glow​

Ged is also present, forced to watch frozen at the bottom of the screen as we learn to work the map movement functions (such earth-shattering concepts as WASD for movement and mouse scrolling for zooming). This may be disturbing, but it concerns another core aspect of the game world you are now minor deity of.

Gaze Upon Ye Mighty...​

The Map is beautiful. The People are small.

CK3 spans generations. These characters are tools, playthings of your whims and fantasies. It’s the Map, the Realm that is important. It is the kingdom that will weather the centuries, not Ged. Certainly not Ged. If it comes down to it, throw Ged to the badgers for the good of the realm. So long as he has babies to assimilate and possess, of course.

PTM is, outside of competently demonstrating the Nightmare for the new player, a bit of a prick.

You did that. You! You!​

This could of course be Paradox again demonstrating their unique perspective on their customer base as small, easily distracted and satisfied children. I don’t know. Then again, the fact I’m writing this thing indicates the strategy worked, so I can only bow to their superiority once again.

The theory that all this up to now was entirely for establishing the tone of existential dread and futility in a dark universe is seemingly confirmed by the next text box, happily exclaiming: “Now let’s talk about the game!”

It took 15 minutes for the tutorial to bring up the game​

And by game, they mean the map again, because taking beautiful screenshots was most assuredly on the dev teams top ten list.

Bravo, Barrisimo! Look at the mythical sea-serpents trying to make the seas interesting.
Cos heaven forbid they put naval combat in​

Down closer to the ground, the game map is terrain-focused and counties are now split into their constituent parts visually. You may be thinking that this, unless carefully defended against by excellent AI, will render most wars pathetically easy as Players can direct all their attention to just county capitals and ignore the rest of the holdings entirely now.

oops​

…you would be right, but more on that in a later update.

Your value is in the blood, mostly. Born a talent-less hack, and by God, dying a talent-less husk.
He's also really good at fighting in the woods​

We return finally to Ged, and his pathetically small realm of Munster. He has relatively few skills, and a bizarre combination of traits. He is apparently both impatient, wrathful and temperate (in what, the game leaves to our imagination).

Who knows which ones will be buffed three months from now?​

To support and enhance his and other PC skills, you pick a lifestyle choice. Guess which one PTM wants you to pick, you budding sociopath, you?

wooh, despotism!​

Finally, Ged gets some autonomy back. He gets to take his first wobbly steps under the new regime. This is a critical moment for him, that signifies the beginning, a re-birth of his life under our direct control. PTM of course, knows how to kick a man when he’s down.

You start off with 1000 gold. An absurd amount of dosh​

It turns out Ged is unloved, and untalented. But he is rich, and thus can buy happiness and affection with money. PTM gives some guff in the same pitch about ‘some things being beyond what money can buy’ but this is why they are going to Hell for lying. For, as all CK2 veterans know, prestige and piety can easily be got through war and building. Guess what pays for both of those things?

It may be pre-capitalist feudalism, but capital is still the golden idol around which the game-play bows down and worships.

And now, so does Ged.

'Try...sending a bribe to your son?'
For no reason either, he's not landed or anything. You're just pissing this money away​

Once a happy family man, PTM has taken that away so the Player can give it back with a nice big bag of fiscally indistinct coinage. Apparently, Ged’s son hates him enough to take his money, but is cheap enough that fifty quid makes it all better. I do hope nothing…terrible happens to him.

Take it then, you miserable sack of penguin excrement. No man who copies his own father's beard can be trusted​

To complete the fall into the pool of woe, or rather, force Ged’s head under one more time, PTM chimes in again with a helpful bit of bleak cynicism on human inter-personal relations:

-by bribing your own offspring, you have temporarily made him hate you less!
Love might be corrupting, but it isn't cheap​

So, what have we learnt thus far?

Well:

• Ged is doomed, obviously.
• Maps are pretty awesome. I mean, come on! Look at those maps!
• Paradox knows their audience better than I know when to stop.
• Death is certain.

Next Time, Ged enters the wonderful world of wedded life! Only to be told love is a lie, and happiness is cheap. Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and sleep well.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Hell is Other People​

Ged is still frozen in time, forced to watch as his life is systematically explained and deconstructed as part of a terrible grand game between cosmic entities. It is only going to get worse for him today.

Before that however, a bit of housekeeping from the prior toll. Whilst it is indeed true that Crusader Kings III is a beautiful game in many aspects, especially the Map (oh God, the Map!), at some point in the process something went terribly wrong and the monster that redesigned the forums got out of their prison. Thanks no doubt to the brave sacrifice of many Swedes, the damage was mitigated to one tiny, minuscule area of the game-play.

Unfortunately, that small piece was the text boxes for the entire game.

Scholars are as yet undecided on how a sapient mind can conceive of deciding upon grey text upon greyer background, yet it takes a kind of demented genius to not only do that, but have a slightly darker shade of grey text kick in for random paragraphs.

When the Great Day of Reckoning arrives, whoever okayed that decision will be put to the wall alongside the guy who wrote Fallout 3’s ending and everyone involved in creating Echo the Dolphin.

Watch out for 'accidents' and 'terrible disease'!​

Anyway, we were discussing Ged, were we not? So easy to forget him in the vastness of the game engine, isn’t it? The PTM remembers however, and does not like what they see. Ged is mortal and death is certain. We have covered this previously, but PTM feels the need (dare I say, the desire?) to spell it out for us. Not to worry, for children are there for parents to live through.

Brian inherits everything, but why not show me how screwed I'd be if he didn't?​

PTM is breaking out the exclamation marks again, which never bears well for Ged. They are particularly gleeful when describing how you may find out that your new character murdered your old one and got away with it. What fun! Anyway, Ged has only managed to sire and raise one son, and he is a gigantic disappointment.

It better not be identical to the CK2 system when it comes out...​

Similarly, pay no mind to the fact you can’t play as a republic yet, even though it was one of the first things added to CK2.

What a mess. Not just the inheritance. The screen is so dark when the UI is in use​

Believe it or not, Ged’s actually very fortunate he did not sire more useless children, as PTM reveals we have the worst inheritance law in the game (presumably, unless they’ve come up with another one…). If Ged dies, as he certainly will, the realm will be torn apart by his surviving male babies. I suppose the fact that Ged is worthless and only has one county to his name works in our favour.

Remember Ged, marriage sucks!​

Of course, this one benefit of our present terrible situation is a tiny light in the dark PTM swiftly moves to extinguish. Ged is reminded that he is alone in the world, unloved and unlovable. His son hates him (allegedly). His vassals do not like him. Marriage, what should be that most noble and sacred of institutions, has been bastardised into a sham of political manoeuvring and behind-closed-doors abuse. Ged is indeed fortunate that his ex-wife is so dead that she never technically existed.

I'm making you do it anyway!​

PTM immediately afterwards forces a marriage. CK3 has buffed up the genetics of characters to the extent that it has never been easier to commit a centuries-long eugenics programme with your own children as test subjects. Naturally, the wise player will carefully select from the choicest of potential fruits (the tastiest kind of fruit), bearing in mind political ramifications and benefits against promoting or degrading the family bloodline.

A pretty gene that makes you more attractive and fertile...
Presumably then this will spread like syphilis through the continental aristocracy​

Naturally, in the spirit of the game, I pick the first pretty woman I see. Apparently, her name is Urraka and she’s a content atheist. These two facts and her pretty gene are all we need to know going forward.

Now everyone will live unhappily ever after! A least until someone dies...then we start again!​

Ged doesn’t need to suffer alone however, and so we force his stupid son into marriage with a quick-witted girl, just to see what happens. The game and the wife (for some reason) wish Ged a long and fertile marriage. I’m sure he’ll enjoy shacking up with this random stranger for the rest of his life. Still, at least his son Brian is in much the same position.

We say 'technically' because our system is one size fits all and we're damned if we're changing it now ​

PTM then decides to tell us all about their pyramid scheme, or in common-parlance, feudalism. Just to affirm their lack of respect for Ged, they also talk about how ‘usually’ rulers have vassals but of course there is no way to guarantee say, Dukes, having control over their de jure realm. The tutorial isn’t even going anywhere with this until much later. PTM brings this up seemingly just to mock Ged’s tiny spread.

It takes three years for Irish tribesmen to build a wall and ditch around their capital in 1066 AD.
It also takes the entire Kingdom of Ireland in the 14th century three years to build canon-proof walls​

Holdings however, have been changed as well. Now with the county split on the Map, the Player can directly select their holds with greater ease. Of course, PTM is still spouting heretical nonsense about what you build ‘doesn’t really matter’ but we need not listen to their lies. We shall build an incredibly ambitious (and exceedingly a-historical) set of bastions and curtain walls around our wooden shack. The game cheerfully informs us we can upgrade these beauties all the way up to resisting canon fire (whatever those are). Who knew the Irish were such great builders?

If you are thinking differently, especially if you are thinking of that Faulty Towers episode, you’re being racist.

Yes, the earl is a viking. No, the county itself is not Norwegian.
Yes, he does suddenly decide in a few years that he's actually Irish​

We then meet our vassals for the first time, after being told the utmost importance of keeping them happy. Needless to say, like everyone else, they shit on Ged. I’m not sure what he did to these people (or why a Norwegian Viking is pretending to be landed gentry) but I’m sure it was justified. If we go down that rabbit hole, we’ll start wondering why tribal Irish leaders are being called ‘Earls’ in 1066…

Not a particularly loyal or competent bunch. A fairly good example of typical CK councils​

PTM then introduces us to even more people who don’t like Ged all that much. The new council system has the wife of the ruler in her own place, and switched things around so the Bishop of your council is the one going around committing active fraud by fabricating title claims. This rather impressively makes the Church even more fundamentally corrupt than in CK2.

Time to do the masochism tango. The only language these priests understand is interpretive dance!​

For some reason, even though we have an absurd amount of money and have already been told how to bribe people, PTM forces us to ‘sway’ with Bishop Fernando instead. You may wonder why they didn’t have it so bribing council members (something everyone does all the time in Crusader Kings) and influencing family members (ditto) wasn’t the order of the tutorial, rather than the opposite. We all wonder, for there is much to wonder about in this sick world.

Ged is wrathful and temperate, and now can be wholesome and a blackmailer. Variety is the spice of life in CK3​

Although swaying with characters is a more ‘wholesome’ way of scheming, according to PTM, they then enthusiastically talk about all the blackmail material you can gain on some sucker by doing it. Perhaps this is why we had to target the bishop, as PTM has already set it so they are doing something unspeakable we can use against them (I genuinely do not know if this is the case. If it is, it hasn’t come up yet). If religious figures didn’t like Paradox already, they certainly aren’t winning any friends here.

So, what have we learnt today?

Well:

• There is no end to Ged’s suffering.
• Someone at the Dev Office needs to say no to that designer.
• Eugenics is perfectly acceptable as long as you know you are doing it.
• Republics are impossible. Can’t be done. *cough* Got any change, gov’na?
• The medieval Irish possessed at least the theory of sloped artillery forts.
• Do not believe the vicar’s lies.

Next Time, Ged enters the wonderful world of warfare! Marvel at the death and destruction, as well as the inherent class-discrimination of the medieval battlefield. Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

To the Bloody End​

We have been taught the art of space-time manipulation. How to mess with people. How family is both valuable and expendable. How everyone else it out to get you and need to be enslaved to your whims. How to bribe, corrupt and fabricate your relationships rather than get close to other people.

You want a whole regiment of siege equipment to smash through walls and get slaughtered in open combat?
Go for it, champ! All sorts of fun to be had here.​

Finally, PTM snaps and demands blood. They’re back to full condescension pretty quickly however, helpfully telling us that the most important part of war is battle, which are fought by armies. Which are made up of soldiers. Who you can hire more of. For money.

I hope you are keeping up at the back.

There is an actual lesson here, in fairness. Troops are split in CK3 between levies (victims), Men-at-Arms (actually have weapons and armour) and knights (actual characters). So far as I can tell, levies are basic peasant fodder, barely armed with pointed sticks and sacks for clothes. You can however, impress a lot of them into service, and you better believe your vassals are sending you these rather than expensive (actual) soldiers. Men-at-Arms I haven’t played with or seen yet, but they seem to be the retinue of CK2 but on steroids. A proper standing army with training, equipment and loyalty to your deep purse. Knights are the interesting one. These are your commanders from CK2, and also, I guess any ‘character’ who happens to be on the battlefield. So, your ruler, if they are there, your brother, your son etc. This presumably means that many strange and terrible things can happen to and around these guys both on campaign and in battle.

You need a legitimate reason. Now, let me tell you how to fake one...​

PTM has calmed down enough to start joking again: ‘to start a war, you need a legitimate reason’. Hilarious. Especially as they go on to explain the most common excuse is making one up using your bishop. I give them a pass however because, you see, they are just so excited that after a several hour long lecture on the dire nature of humanity and the medieval ages, as well as disturbing insight into the morals and drives of a bunch of Swedish game designers, you ‘soon will get to un-pause the game!’.

Goodness, I can barely contain myself. It makes me want to play Rule Britannia in Parliament.

Pyramid schemes and speed. We live life on the edge in AARland.​

First though, PTM has to hook us onto speed. Five variants of it. Not only can we make Ged freeze in time and torture his life, we can burn through his remaining life at varying and exciting paces! Whilst PTM assures you there is ‘nothing wrong’ with playing at slower speeds, especially if you want to make it hurt for Ged, making his life whizz past is certainly the implied suggestion.

Sure he seems pretty hateful but look at all those happy children...​

Then we are shown the portrait of an evil, sadistic earl who holds land rightfully belonging to us. Apparently PTM stacked the deck heavily against this guy to ensure we would want to murder him and his men, so I am curious to see if anyone has played as him and it turns out he’s a nice chap with a loving family. He sure does have a lot of kids for an evil arsehole.

Eh, let's go gank this fool for not bowing before Ged's mediocrity.
He totally deserves it. Probably. Not like PTM would lie to us.​

Declaring war is a little more complicated than in CK2 where you stroll up to the character’s face, deck them with a war goal and run away. Now, you open a separate tab, can change and vary the objectives of the war, see what happens if you lose or white-peace. The game will even tell you if the enemy is inferior or not. Murder brawls have never been so complex to activate.

Wait, NOW we raise an army and come up with a war plan? Did you work under the Bush administration?​

We are coming for Desmond, have declared our complicated war goal of ‘taking all your land) and only now is PTM explain how to raise an army. If I did not have god-like control over space-time, we would be in trouble. You call up your men, it takes a few days for the levies to gather in strength (as you would expect from asking the farmers to drop everything and get to a random field for war) and then you can move out. With your supplies fully stocked. Yes, now the game explicitly has supply mechanics rather than incredibly dubious ‘exhaustion’ from CK2. Now we know exactly how far our troops are from starvation at all times.

Which I’m sure is lovely for them to know.

Who knows what armies are for? Certainly not me...​

PTM is suddenly full of helpful advice for your army. For example, it is ‘probably’ going to fight some other army at some point. Apparently, this is optional. As armies can only fight these potential battles when they walk into other armies, you need to un-pause time so they can move. I’m very glad the game points this out, for otherwise we would be stuck in this Hellscape forever, staring at Ged’s despairing face as he screams at us to save him.

I'm bringing all my guys, including the pricks who hate me, into battle. What could possibly go wrong?​

Ged is freed from the freeze, and immediately gets drafted into a war against his deliciously evil yet fairly fecund neighbour. Him and 600 other saps march to war with their pointy sticks and sack-clothes. Heaven knows how many of them will make it back.

Um...does anyone speak Spanish?​

For some reason, the game takes this opportunity to plan Ged’s wedding. It turns out that you can’t really get married if time stops. Not that we’re going to have Ged not lead troops into battle. Someone else can meet the bride and take the vows. Not like we’ve ever met the woman after all, we can’t break her heart by not showing up. Anyway, the event gives us the chance to either take a small amount of cash or some prestige for the marriage, and since we have a bath of gold, we’ll take the credibility of not showing up to our own wedding.

Battles are incredibly complicated thanks to the realistic simulation of the game.
That's why they take two weeks to complete.​

The tactical genius PTM is back again, telling us how to win a battle (it has something to do with killing).

This is literally the most important thing I needed to know right now. Not that the tutorial will explain inheritance any further than it already has...​

Mind you, it seems the Irish need all the help they can get. We’re in the middle of our first battle, and all they can think about is how much they are gosh-darned inspired by Hereditary Rule Innovations. Some legendary conman must be busking his heart out in the middle of the battlefield. The Irish, as we learnt last time, are apparently destined to be great builders. But they suck at fighting.

We’re also fighting near the delightfully named Dingle Bay. That has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to let you know.

How...did you get here?​

Ged’s wife was so impressed by our no-so at the wedding that she’s written a passionate love letter, and teleported over to the battlefield to give it him. Ged is so shocked by the war that he’s in his tent going over his papers rather than fighting, and thus the pair meet in a moment of passion as the screams of Irishmen fill the air. A chill runs down Ged’s spine as he reads the note declaring his wife’s ‘secret’ love for him. We can’t really blame him for being terrified of any positive emotion or attention given what he’s been through, especially being as he is just out of time-prison.

So many dead. So many faceless peasants dead.
All the named characters are fine though. It's like a movie!
Yay!​

The battle is won, somehow, without Ged paying any attention. I do know his wife is back in town however and apparently never left, so was all that some mystical vision, or the hallucinations of a madman? The masterful PTM and the devs at Paradox aren’t saying, committed as they are to player interpretation and choice. We gave the enemy a damn good thrashing, although I’m not quite sure how the game figures that given that they were outnumbered yet killed almost as many as we. Perhaps death in general is a goal to aspire to in CK3?

But...how do you attack holdings? You didn't explain aside from just sit there and wait.​

The moment of dread for all players arrives and we face a long, drawn out siege whilst the enemy army regroups behind our backs and makes trouble elsewhere. Or rather, I thought that was where the tutorial was going with this. As it turns out, CK3 has made a number of…unique changes to the mechanics of siege warfare.

Return to the embrace of the mother, my children. Back under the cold darkness of open waters.​

For starters, the enemy isn’t regrouping or planning further attacks. In a moment of situational awareness, the enemy commander dazed or despaired decided to end it all and walk his army into the sea.

No, really. I watched them do it. Even in victory, it must sting Ged to know that mass suicide took more enemy combatants than his own efforts.

We've been here a year. It's surprisingly dull.
I'm amazed PTM hasn't found something else to torture Ged with in the downtime.​

Um…anyway, the siege details have been updated to be more visual (surprise surprise). Now you know the state of an enemy’s walls (you can breach them with siege equipment you’ve brought or just stare at them until everyone’s dead), the state of the garrison (morale, strength etc.) and the supply situation. Annoyingly, PTM decided to give the town maxed out supplies and a garrison with the discipline and patience of militant train spotters. They didn’t flinch or even move much for seven fucking months whilst the town around them rioted over food shortages and the mild spot of plague going round. I sure would like to meet them afterwards if only to strangle them myself but alas, they vanished as soon as the town fell.

I assume they walked into the sea.

How...did you do that? Does anyone speak Spanish?​

The Queen contuse to worry me and Ged. Now she’s saying she’s pregnant with his child. Again, I must highlight that they have met once (if it wasn’t an hallucination) and it was in the middle of a battle. Ged has an impressive amount of spunk and detachment to reality if he can impregnate his wife or a ghost whilst fighting a war. Or, of course, Urraka had her wedding night with the stand-in groom as well as the ceremony…

We probably should have got someone who spoke Spanish to tell her that wasn’t her real husband. Naturally I turned to the wisdom of a power greater than my own, but PTM was surprisingly silent on the matter. Oh well.

Two men stare awkwardly at each other as I make this moment last literally five hours. Mwhahaha!​

The war summary screen is pretty nice to look at. It shows the area contested, the two sides of the conflict and their allies, war score, possible outcomes at any moment…and for some reason, the total soldiers each side has. Which seems like cheating to me, unless Ged has the best spies in the world or the enemy post regular updates on their army size to him using the same method Urraka used to shack up with him (allegedly).

I expect nothing but good from this suicidal, maniacal and treacherous vassal.​

Similarly, the victory screen is pretty fun. A nice letter of surrender full of forced platitudes covered presumably in sweat. Fully rendered 3D model of enemy lord weeping into his hand. And a nice long list of what you won. Then again, this is Ged of Ned we are talking about, so it’s only one county and the evil dick we just fished out of the ocean is still technically in charge of it.

He just works for me now.

Yes, ONE aspect. Where are you going? Come back!!!​

PTM congratulates us in our moment of victory and with tears in their eyes tells us we have seen all there is to be seen, done all that there is to be done…or rather, they’re bored and the dev team only paid them to do half a tutorial. Bye sucker!

Many things we could do, but really, we're a tiny Irish duchy ruled by Ged.
If not try for the Irish throne, what else? Attain spiritual balance and happiness? Get real.​

Words fail to describe how confused I was when the tutorial packed up and left. We have to my mind barely scratched the surface of many things, such as what the council even does (I know what it does, I played CK2 for 3000 hours. Will Noobie from 2025 have done that when they pick up the game?). The oft-touted and advertised hooks system was alluded to briefly but not demonstrated. How does one change a law, or inheritance? What about religion in general? What even is Pope?

As it turns out, though the game does a fine job of making it seem like they just cut you dry and told you to swim in your concrete jammies, PTM is not slain but merely sleeping. Every so often they will emerge from behind a shrub or tree and smack Ged in the head with new text boxes and ‘suggestions’. Oh, we’ll get to the suggests tab.

Technically however, the mission I set out to do has been completed. The tutorial is over, we win. We are alone, Ged and I. Abandoned by Paradox, forsaken by the gods. As the war screens fade away and the music calms, a final text box appears, mocking us. What do you do now, it sneers, as Ged and I fall to our knees and weep. You cannot win in Crusader Kings III. Victory is impossible. Survival is improbable, and only delaying the inevitable. Death is certain.

No.

We may be barely trained. We may be forsaken. We may be damned. But there is nothing I won’t do to Ged to shove this message deep down PTM’s treacherous throat. They believe us limited and small. I say, the smallest spark can light the biggest house fires. Ged is going to burn Ireland to the ground and remake it in his own name, or die trying. Actually, he’s probably going to do both.

So, what have we learnt today?

Well:

• Ged is the world’s greatest lover. And potentially just shagged a ghost.
• His wife may be cheating on him with a fake-husband we set her up with.
• PTM is a prick, and a total workshy.
• Paradox cannot make a good tutorial that is also complete.
• The people of Desmond need to be put under collective suicide watch.
• Hereditary Rule Innovations are fascinating.

Next Time, Ged strike out on his own and makes something of himself, only for it to all go horrible wrong. Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

More than a Woman​

Ged at 40. Look at that frowny face...​

Hey Ged. Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot with that cock PTM whispering demonic suggestions in my ear and forcing you through a marriage and a war. I feel we can rise beyond that however. Y’know, going forward. Since you’re stuck with me, and you might as well learn to like it.

This world is full of nasty things, Ged. Everyone wants to get at you. Even your wife wants to get at you, and she’s disturbingly good at doing it. Turns out she wasn’t sleeping with the groom after all and that kid is yours. Try not to think about how that worked. Honestly, the fact that the best-case scenario is you two rutting like pigs in the middle of a battle disturbs me a little.

She’s a strange woman, Ged. And frankly, she gives me the willies.

Anyway, you’re going to have another child soon, which is not only great in and of itself (well, unless you consider the philosophical implications of bringing forth new life into this existential nightmare) but if it’s a boy, we can get rid of our horrible heir! That’ll be fun, right? It’ll be cheaper than bribing him to like you for the rest of your life.

Ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re only forty after all. Bound to have at least five more years left in the tank. Hopefully. Unless some terrible accident occurs.

Hey look, the readers are here. Okay, got to go now Ged. Just do your thing. Don’t walk into the sea though. Not sure why the Irish keep doing that…

These 'suggestions' might more properly be called 'crimes', PTM...​

Hello again, dear readers. Welcome back to the Nightmare. PTM may be gone but their presence lingers in the helpful suggestions tab. This is a little button at the top of the screen full of wonderful little things to do in the world of CK3. As you might expect, they all involve doing nasty things to people for my own amuse-er, for the quest to make Ged King of Ireland.

The guy’s been through a lot this past year. Let’s start with something painful for someone else. And hey, I can teach you parts of the game Paradox couldn’t be bothered to cover.

How beautifully laid out. And yet, more lives can be ruined with this screen than many others in the game​

This is the new vassal tax screen. Unlike CK2, where all vassals of a given type (feudal, city, church, tribal) got served together, now you can embrace your destiny as Jonny Taxman and build in loads of loopholes and benefits for your friends and allies. Every vassal has their own private deal with you, which means that some trusted/powerful types are going to do some serious negotiating with you or find someone else to take your place. However, most will not be that powerful, and so you can feel free to dick them around to Dublin and back. Earl Viking here currently gives normal amounts of tax and levies. However, I have a ‘weak hook’ with him so can change any one aspect of our relationship with impunity. I can force him to partition his realm upon death. Give him a tax cut…or ramp them up.

You don't need to like Ged. But you do need to pay me​

Well, it’s not like Ged is well-liked anyway so let’s get some high taxes in and start acting like a proper king. Despotic. Demanding. Daddy…

That’s one vassal down, but let’s check back in with the Council and perhaps find out what the hell it is they actually do.

The Bishop of the Realm isn't the Court Chaplain anymore, which means you still may have a useless priest
on the council awkwardly and bitterly sat next to this guy​

PTM actually shows up to tell us the Bishop member is indeed the most important councillor this time around (as opposed to CK2 where they are pretty boring and useless). They seem to serve as the equivalent of an Archbishop to a King…basically they are the top dog priest in the realm and thus put their fingers in every orifice. Church money? Goes through them. Church levies? Goes through them. They also commit fraud on demand by fabricating claims of lands not your own. All in all, these are fairly important gentlemen to keep happy.

This is Ged however and so he is unhappy. Apparently, he does not like swaying, and bribery of a Church official is a sin (at least in the amounts we were able to offer).

God...your vassals despise you, Ged. What were you doing to them before I showed up?​

There’s not much I can do about it, so let’s take it like a true monarch and pettily dish out our frustrations on those beneath us. First, I’ll have Ged seize more power in his realm, which is actually pretty pathetic when you look at it. Now he can finally take his own land back from vassals, and demand a little more manpower and money from people. The vassals freak out of course but they don’t have much of a chance to complain because…

Extremely far away foreign war always works in politics. Always. The more frivolous the better​

I’m sending all of them, and Ged, to the other side of the country to fight for this random courtier’s claim. Northern Ireland should crunch down and spit out at least a few of them before it’s all over, and a few hundred dead should make everyone forget about the tyranny. Plus, this keeps me and Ged from having to go home to finally meet this wife of his.

Gimme all your money. And then pay your taxes, you evil man. Clearly you have far too much cash​

Whilst Ged is cursing his luck and packing his bags in the southernmost county in order to march to the northernmost, I pass the time by selling my new vassal’s children back to him for money. I didn’t even lop any body parts off or violate his wife sexually. Apparently, people seem a lot more eager to get family members back from foreign prisons in this game cos in CK2, there’s no way I’d get three kids and a wife off my hands in one go. Again, this so-called evil sadist seems pretty reasonable and family-friendly. I’m beginning to think PTM may have been lying to me…

Murder time, fun time! Further long and complicated Irish place names to catch out my international audience.
And a personal duel between one of my knights and the enemy lord, how exciting!​

Ged is back in battle, this time sans paperwork, and seems to be doing pretty well for himself. The knights, as readers pointed out last time, seem to be beasts in combat, killing everything in their path whilst the levies with their sticks and sacks die slightly more than they kill. Oh well. Hey, we went through a whole battle without anything weird happening with the-

How...did you do that?​

Oh. Look, I know we were all banking on a boy child. And yes, John-Paul is a very catholic name, if anachronistic to this time period. But I can’t help but notice that Ged’s new daughter might not fit that name or expectation. Unless the game’s biology is even deeper than advertised and we’re dealing with some form of transgender or non-binary issue here.

What do you know that we don't, CK3? Tell me your mysteries!​

I guess anything is possible at this point, though I’d be astonished if the Swedes were that thorough in simulating complex gender dynamics. What a fascinating thing it would be to have that in the game though…oh well, little John-Paul is going to have to work this out for herself (?) I guess. Maybe this will come up again later on. For now, let’s leave her in the apparently capable hands of Ged’s wife and run away.

Oh dear, this is becoming a thing, isn't it?​

Ah. This is more like it. Here we are, manly men, laying siege and burning through a precious year of our lives to do so. The enemy, defeated, marching glumly into the sea. Random third army sitting in the next barony over from us…just…watching. Nothing unusual-

Up to the task? You can't speak Irish and have never met Ged. How are you doing this?​

Dear God, that woman is everywhere. Okay, she wants to teach my idiot councillors a thing or two about counselling. Funnily enough, the Chancellor is enough of a weak sap to actually enjoy being shouted at for being useless by a formidable Spanish witch. The other two councillors strangely seem quite put out by the idea. Of course, she says, Ged and her could just have a private session between themselves instead…

Yeah, my chancellor is taking this one for the team.

Ireland looks like a baby goat or rabbit with a bib on. Bless.
Great Britain on the other hand looks like a mess and a mistake.​

By the way, this is the cultural map for Ireland. Mostly Irish as per usual, but there is the Norse partying it up in their city of Dublin. Scotland is gratifyingly close to the northern coast which makes geographical sense. Across the waters we’ve got Scots and Gaels in Scotland, the Cumbrian and Welsh taking up the coastline and a big red stain I’m assuming is the Saxons. Speaking of which, it’s been two years. Who’s ruling England now?

Maybe if he stopped having children and started ruling the country, they wouldn't be in such a mess!
Then again, one of his siblings seems to be the Bunnyman Murderer and another a pirate so...​

Very little has changed in England since game-start. I must admit, given that 1066 is the default start date and the devs knew most players would have their first games as well as many first AARs and videos focused on the Norman Conquest, it is ballsy to have everyone be fairly apathetic about being King of England. Even Harold doesn’t seem too fussed, since he’s beaten both the Normans and the Norwegians in battle but has since lost the initiative and all of his money.

It’s hidden behind the thick fog of distance, but what I suspect happened was that the Saxons caught both invading armies as they disembarked, destroying a lot of their forces in the process, but also gutting the Saxon army and treasury. So now the invading forces are both present on the island (assuming they have not walked into the sea in shame) but weak enough that sieging is very slow. The Saxons however are too weak and poor to do anything about it, so the whole invasion breaks down into a very boring and drawn out game of ‘who can siege their way to victory the slowest?’ The Normans should eventually win the crown, but who knows how much money and manpower they’ll have wasted to do it.

For me and Ged though, this is all good news. England is essentially out of the game for the foreseeable future. Good riddance.

Yeah, we were really punching down with this war. We even brought allies to make sure we killed
as many people as possible before they escaped into the sea.​

Unfortunately for Ged, his own war is going swimmingly, unlike the enemy combatants in the ocean. Now we’re going to have to figure out what to do with a single war-torn county completely cut off from our realm by hundreds of miles of hostile Irish forest.

I didn't really think this through, did I?​

Even worse, we’re going to have to go home and spend time with Urrika. If only the game were to provide an out for us both…

So, what have we learnt today?

Well:

• Ged is a wannabe dictator who lives in fear of his wife.
• John-Paul is a good Catholic name.
• Selling children for fun and profit is encouraged by Paradox.
• The English are awful and deserve what they get.
• The Irish need to learn how to swim, or how to read a map.

Next Time, the game gives Ged an out, of sorts. And I bankrupt him, and butcher wave after wave of my own men to see what happens when we lose. Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Whoopsie at Oriel​

Ged! Ged, my friend. My confidant. My slave. You might feel a little…weird after this. Don’t panic, it’s just that after this update the writing will have caught up with the game and I’ll have to get some more content. Now, you may be stuck in limbo for a while being tortured by partial nonexistence but don’t worry.

I’ll be back for more, Ged. I’ll keep killing. You will have more children. Together, we shall shape the world…or at least an increasingly large part of Ireland, into our image. It will be, if not beautiful, at least aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Anyway, Ged, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, we don’t have to go home to your obsessive and domineering witch of a wife or your confusingly name daughter! Isn’t that great? You can continue avoiding all your responsibilities and I can keep running your realm into the ground and enabling…whatever it is that Urrika does.

The bad news is that this is because we’re still at war.

The death stare is a little intimidating yes, but the silly hat and annoyed woman...nah​

See this guy? Don’t let the silly helmet and exasperated expression on his wife’s face fool you. He’s a cold-blooded killer and up until five minutes ago, he was fighting a war with that idiot we just watched walk into the ocean. Now he’s fighting us for this useless land you only got because I wanted slightly more legally acceptable ways to fuck with people.

Look, I realise you might think this is all my fault but from my perspective, all this was a horrible mistake that got way out of hand. What? How many men does he have? Well…

Doesn't this look straightforward?​

Oh…we outnumber him slightly. Hmm. Alright, that seems a little better. Don’t get cocky though. Let’s just rush his army and hopefully he’ll give up or go jump in the sea or something.

Yes, off you go. Good luck! Bye!

Right, my dear readers, welcome back. Wasn’t being entirely truthful to Ged there. We’re actually in a really bad situation, but he doesn’t know that yet. Indeed, I didn’t know that yet, but thanks to the magic of spacetime, future me is here to tell you this does not in fact end well. Past me on the other hand is too busy scrounging for money to pay attention to the war effort. Which looking back was probably a big factor in where things went tits up.

I wonder if he gives money to pagans and Muslims that ask...anyone know?
He's probably going down in history as a memetic nice-guy, unless he did something unspeakable to get that money​

Apparently, Alexander II has far too much money and is overly generous for some reason, because everyone who’s played the game so far has gotten money off this guy. Since some of it is technically from my realm’s churches, I don’t view this as stealing. More like tax rebates. Or literal Christian Charity.

If the killing ever ends, we should make quite a bit of gold from these taxes. If​

I’m also using more weak hooks to get more tax from the earl I just ennobled with the help of Ged’s army. Why not, last time I did that it seemed to work out fine…

How can we both charge the enemy head on and let the enemy come to us? Ged knows. Ged is a strategist​

Ged meanwhile is very busy watching his commanders bicker like infants. Thankfully, he’s such a military genius at fighting in woods that he knows exactly how to implement both their strategic ideas perfectly together! Somehow. I do find it hilarious that letting them both do what they like is also an option whilst Ged watches, presumably in amusement. He’s learning the ways of the Dark Side at last.

Ah bollocks. I mean...whoopsie​

Unfortunately, I am so distracted by stealing money from the poor, the pope and everyone else, and Ged so distracted by laughing at his shitty commanders, that the enemy manages to land a giant army right on top of us.

Jesus Christ, the other guy cares less about the sack and stick men than I do. How impressive​

Now then, we really should have seen this coming and I accept at least partial responsibility for Ged’s incompetence here. But then again, the enemy AI just gave itself numerous hilariously bad de-buffs for launching an army from a ship immediately into battle. Our damage was increased by 60% and thus our knights slaughter wave after wave of levies even as our own stick and sack men get cut down. Despite being hilariously outnumbered and out of position, taken by surprise and losing one of our knights after they completely surrounded him, we took a lot of them with us.

This is all somehow Paradox's fault​

Our army is utterly shattered however and we did lose a knight, which is sad. But where did these men come from? Well, as the game did not mention on the battle screen…

A dishonourable absolver. How...whatever, I'm just going to treat that like the gibberish names all over this profile​

Count Oriel is allied to the most powerful man in Wales, the Prince of Gwynedd. You may remember them as the guys that formed a cult around a pack of lost polar bears in CK2. They’re allied, but hadn’t called into war yet. And so, Ged had no idea this guy even existed, till he was throwing bodies around. He even looks a little like Brian Blessed, so you know he can pack a punch. So can his humongous (comparatively) army, and they all stomp off to go burn down that county we just took.

Guess I’m not getting those higher taxes after all.

We work hard and we play hard in Ireland​

Ged and his soldiers are so depressed that they decide that the only way to recover from the horrific battle is to fight each other. The 40-year-old man who’s fought three battles in his life vs some young, strong and supple farm boys with sticks. I mean…we all know what’s going to happen.

Where do YOU think he got infected?​

This was a seriously bad time to find out we have no court physician. I bet we could go home and have Ged’s wife sort it out but…well, let’s try literally everything else first. Especially because of how we got that infection. It’s only Ged after all. She’s probably busy with little John-Paul.

Ah, random peasants. The very best in medieval medicare​

My servants have found two random homeless people I can hire. One is ‘apparently experienced’, the other ‘seems enthusiastic’. Since women in this universe seem to be magic, I’m going to see if this one can do anything for Ged.

At least he's stopped sucking his thumb. I'm sure he's feeling comforted by her presence​

Well, she at least has the demeanour of having seen it all, given that there is a choking man right next to her face and she seems almost bored. Or perhaps mildly disgusted. God, this seemed like such a good idea a few minutes ago. Thankfully, it seems her various random mutterings and brown paste has healed Ged. Or at least masked the outside appearance of infection, leaving it to fester within for a few years before painfully killing him.

Now let us never speak of this again. Especially to the wife​

But hey, Ged’s alive! That’s great. Great news for us. Now then, what trickery have the enemy been up to in the month it took to resolve all that?

Oh man, they are going to regret hiring those Irish tour guides​

Of fucking course…

So, what have we learnt today?

Well:

• The old and annoying multi-war dogpile from CK2 can still happen. This is no doubt going to make every European war involving the German minor states an absolute train wreck.
• I can avoid making jokes about Oriel, Oxford or the scripting language being bloody messes like this war.
• That many women in CK2 seem remarkable put out with the men in their lives, even when paid to stand next to them.
• The Welsh made a grave mistake in hiring those Irish tour guides.
• All of the hats and helmets in CK3 are incredibly goofy.

Next Time…I have no idea. Presumably I get Ged out of this fiasco that I may have put him in but who knows? The only way to find out is by returning obsessively to this AAR every waking moment of your day from now on. Tune in next time, same Ged time. Same Ged channel.

And…you can pray for him if you want. Thank you and goodnight.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

`Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,’
Said then the lost archangel, `this the seat
That we must change for heav’n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: furthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
​

Above his equals. Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder bath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
​

To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

- John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book One
​

The Twisted Man, he most enjoys
The suffering of little boys.
Beware the tricks he oft employs

Lest you become his latest toys.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Dress-Up Ged​

Alright Ged, I’m going to teach you an important series of lessons about how to come back from defeats. Excuse me? What do you mean why? Ged, are you actually feeling responsible for those hundreds of deaths? Oh Ged. Sweet Ged.

Ged, dear boy, you don’t need responsibility when you’re rich.

Sure, okay, we lost an army. Here’s how we buy another one. A better one even. Better at killing, and won’t have to come home with us. More murder, and fewer consequences! Isn’t it amazing?

Ged…Ged…look mate, clearly this has got to you in a big way so here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to go buy the army and send them off to burn down Oriel and then we’ll strip you naked and give you a makeover.

…

Stunned silence is better than the sobbing, I suppose.

What do you do with a spare army?​

Dear readers, as you can see, we are a little weakened by prior mistakes but thankfully, CK3 has improved mercenaries to the point that they are able to be used slightly more tactically than before. Time was that you put a starter lump sum down on a band, and then they slowly drained your accounts of money as time passed. If anything made you lose all your money, the mercenaries would either disband or join the enemy. Whilst this is indeed what happened historically, especially in the Italian Peninsula, CK3 has I think a better concept. You put your lump sum down and then you have the mercs for three years, no questions asked. And no, they still don’t count as levies so you can go straight from war to war with ease. Indeed, it’s value for money to do several short wars in quick succession now with this deal.

He has so many looks. He's a man for all seasons. Although nothing at all like Thomas Moore​

Time to go shopping! There are quite a few garments to choose from since any character can wear anything from any culture’s dress. Turbans, woolly hats and pointy crowns are very ‘in’ in Ireland right now apparently. As are shiny gold tunics. There is however a fierce gender divide, so no wearing dresses. Emperors in prisoner rags are fine, Satanists dressed like Hospitaller Knights are fine, but wearing a dress is just incomprehensible to Ged.

Very much a HBO mini-series look going on here​

We can also magically tear out and grow his hair, and change its colour using radioactive magic (he is indeed a natural ginger so why would I change it?). This current look is a bit more stereotypically ‘tribal’ and ‘Celtic’ but it just doesn’t scream madness like-

Why...would anyone NOT pick this one?​

I think we have a winner. Beautiful locks indeed. Now…let’s do his wife.

...well, it matches her personality​

Well, that dress is an improvement. The hair on the other hand could use some work. Not quite sure why she or her servants decided to shave her head as we threw away her old clothes.

God Save Ged from the Queen​

Hmm. Very much the High Queen. That does remind me however that we didn’t give Ged a crown worthy of his image.

Finally, a true symbol befitting of his status in this world​

Much better. Now, onto Oriel!

Burning this Irish county down will teach the Welsh to stay outta our business!​

The problem with this war is that though the army the enemy brought is bigger and better than ours, and though they defeated us in battle, we still have gigantic advantages over them. They have four castles to siege. We have one. Whilst they sit outside my capital wasting time, I can win the whole war. It’s not exactly fair, but then again in real life, this tended to happen. Defeat doesn’t mean shit to people who can retreat back into an entire country whilst there’s only one invading army, and one point of failure for them.

I need to bear this in mind if for some reason I ever want Ged to invade England.

I wonder if there is anything to be gained from Learning this time? There really wasn't in CK2 unless you were trying to become a Saint...​

Ged’s experience has reached a point where he is very good at shouting and waving his arms around. This makes him good at giving orders, which naturally means everyone obeys him more. It’s an interesting lifestyle system really, since there’s a lot of scope for variation and roleplay, and at the end of a set tree you get a permanent character trait. That’s not counting all the little bonuses you get for commanding men, march and siege speed etc. Martial focuses seem robust and valuable. I can only imagine what the intrigue options open up for characters. Presumably it turns your character into Sean Connery at his peak where he can seduce lesbians and get everyone to spill their darkest secrets to him by getting captured.

So...Ged has learnt nothing regarding the consequences of his actions and Paradox was watching us the whole time. Hooray?​

War is over yet of course we still have the mercenaries for three years…hmm. In the meantime, it turns out PTM actually had a pretty good idea on how to tutorial the rest of the game. Instead of more railroading as before, every so often a trigger or a time limit passes and a new bout of messages appear from them telling us how to use a specific section of the game. This is rather useful and organic as a learning system. I am unsure whether this is a dirty Paradox trick or genuinely good game design.

Nah...​

We could invade another county at this point to get more land for a vassal, but I don’t see the point. I need to expand Ged’s personal power base first. Which means I need to create some family lands for the game to tear apart with the horror of medieval inheritance rituals. Speaking of which…

Why is Brittany such a horrible colour? And why are the default Welsh ones always shades of brown?​

Ah, we have a new King of England. And he’s still fighting the Norwegians, who are still in northern England after three years of war. I wonder how long that will last? Maybe I’ll try to sway him just to see what happens. He’s far too busy and important so probably nothing, but this is a testing ground after all.

You may be wondering; didn’t you and Ged go home and meet the family for the first time? What insanity beheld you when you arrived? Well, for a good two weeks, nothing. And then, inevitably:

The fuck is wrong with you, woman? Why are you telling Ged this in the gardens?
When did we get a palace gardens? WHO PAID FOR THOSE BLOODY FOUNTAINS?​

I suppose this is final confirmation that Urraka is not entirely sane. She is at the very least, unhealthy obsessed with Ged. And unfortunately, Ged still retains enough basic humanity to not order her to starve herself for his amusement. So instead, he’s signed himself up for sleeping whilst she stands at the foot of his bed, staring at him all night.

I’m beginning to have doubts about Ged’s mental health as well.

Well, at least she apparently can design and build a nice courtyard. Which, considering Irish tech right now, is pretty impressive​

Apparently, the witch is still mortal enough that her body can drop in exhaustion, and apparently very susceptible, since this occurred an hour after she promised to forego rest. Ged’s response is to snark over her collapsed form, whilst I and now you dear reader look on in mild horror. And apparently, he does this every night for five years.

Clearly, it is better to keep these reprobates busy with war and politics. Asking them to act like people is so beyond them that one dead faints away while the other drives himself to exhaustion celebrating.

'My Winsome Stallion!' Good grief, apparently he is lightening under the bedsheets after all​

Two days later, she’s rebounded from her great sleep (much like many AAR writers) and is back at it, promising the moon and stars for Ged’s heart. Hopefully not literally. It does amuse me that if I ask for rare flowers or fine jewellery, she has the option to ‘refuse’, implying that she already has these items stashed on her person. If I ask for a wolf’s heart however, she can either get it or ‘fail’. Well…the choice is obvious.

My dear Urraka, in the depths of the darkest Dark Forest, there exists a White Wolf of great size and ferocity. It has slain and eaten many maidens and all the men sent to kill it. I want you to travel alone at night into its hunting grounds and kill it, skin it and bring me the pelt and heart of the Man-Eater. Do this, and I will be moderately impressed, and Ged will be very disappointed. Though not enough that I won’t force him to sleep with you.

And so, off this small, unarmed woman goes. The percentage odds are not in her favour. Sure enough, three days later…

How...did you do that?​

Well. That potentially confirms her magic and at the very least her prowess. So, Ged, you have yourself an obsessive wife who can kill wolves with ease and wants to have your babies. Try not to scream too loud next time, ok?

Good…

What a timely excuse-I mean, wonderful next step in our aim for global domination. Of Ireland​

Unbelievable. Ged, you lucky bastard. Alright, cancel the sex! We’re off to war again. No need to look so relieved, my minion.

A little dog picks on an even smaller mouse. This isn't animal cruelty, it's historically important sport​

This is a seriously inferior and friendless foe, so this both serves as a simple way to expand the realm and more importantly, quickly get Ged back into his wife’s entertainingly strong clutches. Then again, we are going to have to take a penalty for some reason. If you do not possess the prestige to declare war, you may still go for it, it just costs a large fame penalty.

I don’t know what fame is. I can’t even find it in the UI yet, so I doubt it is important. If it turns out to be extremely important, I’m sure PTM will show up to scream at me as soon as I’ve spent some. That being said, prestige gain has been nerfed considerably, since I will eventually end up with negative 400, despite having won every war I get into.

And so, for (dubiously) no penalty, we go to war to murder my good Christian neighbour and his friends for selfish personal gain! The battle will not be legendary, but perhaps I can land Ged in an even worse Hell than this one by the time his life comes to an end…

So, what have we learnt today?

• There is something seriously wrong with Urraka.
• Ged has snazzy golden pyjamas.
• Consequences are for the poor and weak.
• Paradox really screwed up the Norman Conquest, but-
• PTM apparently knew what they were doing all along?

Next Time, I find more delicious, delicious tabs. Ged plots his conquest of Ireland, and begins his side project of capturing most of its nobility. And we all go on a summer holiday, to make our dreams come true and keep the fuck away from Urraka (#ThisYearinJerusalemOMG).

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The Irish must be Crazy…​

We return to our intrepid hero…just as he’s cleaning out his jailhouse of worthless hostages. He just randomly picks one to behead and one to let go. Okay then…

Nothing like a nice murder to start the day​

This must have been a rush job however because a few days later Ged has already smashed the enemy army and sent them running to the briny depths.

So the enemy decided to send seven knights against hundreds of armoured footmen,
whilst we sent our knights after a few dozen peasants in sacks.
Somehow we keep winning despite losing the same amount of men​

Our marshal decides that now is the time to build military presences in various counties, instead of sending soldiers to the army. Guess someone he likes got press-ganged into service or something… Far more importantly, I find the House customisation options waaaay down at the bottom of the screen hidden behind a tiny button.

Yeah, shut up PTM. I'm forging a dynasty here. Try not to think about it​

Now we finally match that catchy number I put at the beginning to trap readers. Apparently PTM is back and wants to talk about Jesus but frankly this is, again, much more important.

Bit bold to say everyone believes, considering Ged's wife is an open atheist​

Our beautiful new dynasty is born, and also religion is a thing in CK3.

Mmm...witches are criminals and killing family members is very naughty. I wonder which one get's broken more often in CK3?​

So, here’s the full rundown of our faith, and our religion. We cannot really customise Catholicism all that much, but hey, we can always drive one of Ged’s descendants crazy later on and build one of those nude sex cults we are (as per current forum rules) technically allowed to show pictures of.

Very handily, we also get a list of all the holy sites very clearly laid out, labelled with who owns them and what they do. This hands down beats the mess of tab CK2 has going for it. I’ve owned Santiago, Canterbury and Rome before, and Jerusalem is a classic of course. Not sure if Cologne is a new edition or has always been present, but the individual province powers seem specific to the place’s history. Canterbury gets positive religious vassal opinion and a boost to sway power. Essentially what Thomas Burke was supposed to be before he fucked up and started believing in God. PTM also helpfully reminds us that if your head of religion is a pervert or loads of holy wars get lost or Satan rises out of the Pit, people lose faith (Fervour) and start believing in all kinds of random things. Such as everything the Catholics believe, just that baptism should be a choice.

Heretics.

Look at all of these cool things the Irish culture cannot do. How annoying.
I am not turning Scottish just to give my son my lands, a coat and a canon​

I also found the tech tab, which is locked to time period and culture. Which for the Irish obviously means high explosives and ermine capes for…looking fancy. I’m not sure the dev team ever went to Ireland…

Ged has a cunning plan...and it will probably work, since he stole it from CK2. Like everything else...​

Ged has developed his master plan for us to see. He wants to own Dublin, Connacht and Lenister duchies himself, and all their land. That leaves him with six counties directly, and a duchy of three counties to the north and south. Very neat, very organised. There’s no bloody way we’ll manage to get that to last 50 years.

Everyone adopts the Irish pose of Failure. Paradox introduced 3D characters only to give them less expression than a muppet​

Well, he’s won another war and thus his first county that he actually intends to keep. Ged is beginning to grow as a ruler and as a force of nature within the game. Unfortunately, he’s in charge of a bunch of incompetent idiots.

Give me strength...'We have no idea' is such a great thing to hear in government​

It is rather astonishing that they openly state this to our faces, but I suppose at least we know how stupid they are now. Tell you what Ged, I’ll sort this with my mind powers. You pick our holiday trip for this year. Make sure it’s somewhere warm.

I wonder where else I can send him? Surprisingly cheap to go abroad, isn't it?​

Perfect, we can explore the pilgrimage mechanic too. What’s the bet that we’re gone less than 3 months? I like how many choices we have for locations. But let’s be honest, the Pope is a stick in the mud and who goes on pilgrimage to anywhere but Rome or Jerusalem?

Cheapskates, that’s who. And the Pope just gave us some more money so…

If you do nothing, it might be a problem. Maybe. Why...exactly is this a thing?​

Believe it or not, despite county control being apparently a really big thing in this game, it does…pretty much nothing. A small debuff to manpower and tax rates is only going to hurt small realms just beginning to expand. But you don’t get county control issues until you start expanding too fast. So, essentially, if you’ve set your realm up properly enough to go to war and consistently win, you get punished. But then again, you’ve set up your realm properly…so the debuffs don’t hurt you much.

I think the dev team needs to have a rethink here. Unless it escalates very quickly. In which case Ged is in for a nasty surprise when we come back from holiday.

Foreshadowing, thy name is GED NED OF NED!​

That’s right Ged. We travel under the protection of the Divine Father Himself. Surely Heaven smiles down at us for taking our first steps to the Holy Land, pilgrimage, and salvation.

Ged got wet. Everyone else went to the pub. This is England​

Ah.

Well, I suppose we had to stop in England at some point, didn’t we? Oh well. The guys we met in that pub in Canterbury had some belter stories they heard on the road. We’ll dry off here, and set off for the continent tomorrow. Not like anything else is going to happen, eh?

I do hope these people never get into power. Who knows what could happen?​

Unfortunately, we got stuck sat next to that woman on the boat.

I don’t know why racist grannies are more annoying than your standard bigot, but this one really went the full nine yards, round the back of the shed and set the cross on fire. The woman went on and on about the bleedin’ ‘ethens for hours without stopping. It was like being in church.

Anyway, Ged and the rest of the fellas in the barge were getting a bit angsty and fed up (and we were all still wasted from the night before) so they were going to tie her up and drown her. But I noticed that agreeing with her netted us a better bonus with the Christians than killing her would with Muslims. Not that I have anything against in-game Islam (yet. CK2 Islam though is a buggy mess) but there aren’t any Muslims in Medieval Ireland (citation needed) and a lot of Christians.

And the Christians don’t like Ged very much. So instead, I forced Ged to kill all the other pilgrims on the ship and agree wholeheartedly with the idiot. Thus, the Catholic opinion of us rises. Slightly.

Not sure what's going on here but I don't think WE did anything wrong?​

Bathed in the blood of Christian men, we arrive in Jerusalem. I’m still not entirely sure who owned it at that time. The locals didn’t seem to sure either. The Romans and the Egyptians were fighting pretty fiercely over it, but they let us past their siege. Which was very…well, Christian of them I suppose.

I have undergone the journey of a holy man, and they insist it has changed something. Hmm...probably the smell of booze​

That’s right priests, Ged is a Holy Man now. Kneel and kiss his robe hems. He has walked the pilgrim’s path…and lived. Also, any tales you hear from England are filthy lies. Ged is a bastion of Piety. Of morality. He would never-

Overwhelmed by attentions is a good way of putting it. Remember kids, just pester them until they break down!​

Oh. Okay. Um…so now Ged and Urraka are a thing. Don’t think about it too much.

I do wish they didn’t have that conversation and…other thing…in front of those priests though. The archbishop is going a funny colour.

Alright readers, this next bit is incredibly confusing but we’ll try to get through it together.

W-w-w-what? What just happened?​

Right…so, what I think happened here is that Ged was asleep or hallucinating and sleep-stabbed an imaginary woman, possibly his wife, to death. He then wakes up, Urraka screaming and holding a knife for self-defence, and somehow decides this means she was defending him.

Then they have sex.

Alternatively, there actually was an intruder. And she was a woman. Who she was or what she was doing is anyone’s guess. A medieval Irish cat-burglar doesn’t seem vey likely, but then again, a female assassin climbing up and through the bedroom window of a king seems a bit outlandish. Did Ged actually kill someone? Did he then, covered in blood, leave the body to cool as he repeatedly rutted with his murderously inclined wife?

What on earth just happened?

Don't think about it too much​

Oh, and Urraka is pregnant now. Nothing like shanking someone to get the bedroom juices flowing, I guess.

Ged’s still a devout Christian though.

My new best friend​

Oh, thank Jesus, I can split these two maniacs up again. Right Ged, we’re off to war again, for the good of Ireland and Christendom. Those Irish Christians are going to pay for getting in our way!

So, what have we learnt today?

• There is something seriously wrong with Urraka and Ged.
• Jerusalem may be ash but the teleporters work fine.
• We are never mentioning Canterbury ever again.
• Irish tech continues to make no sense.
• Everyone in my realm is either stupid and honest, or homicidal and evil.

Next Time, well…we have a bit of a military montage. Ged gets the whole family involved in governance and army life, since everyone else hates his guts and/or is stupid. I appoint Urraka in charge of the realm, Ged beats up his nephews and both of them can’t stop breeding with each other. I am beginning to think I may have gone too far.

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Ged’s Family Issues​

It all seems to be coming together for our Ged. He is the strongest Irish lord in Ireland. The richest man in Britannia. And, since that little incident with the mysterious assassin last time, enjoying a ferocious sex life with a woman who redefines obsession.

Ged is happy. This is not good at all.

The readership demands pain, Ged. They want you to suffer, Ged. You don’t want to disappoint the readership, do you Ged? Some of them are fully functioning members of society. The rest are regulars.

We need to kick things up a bit, my minion. Buddy. Honey. Love-muffin.

Hang on, Urraka is on the council permanently. What can she do?

Finally, you can order your wife to do stuff! This is the progress we needed...​

Giving her the keys to the kingdom and the treasure chest seems like the best thing to do. I mean, she was doing it anyway, so we might as well make it official. I like the courtyard she built. Might as well see if she can get the Irish to build something else.

Like a house. That would be nice. At the moment Ged has to sleep in a shack. And the peacocks from the courtyard guarded keep him awake.

Right, so we have given the witch unchecked power on a council of incompetents, aside from the bishop, who is never here because I have him busy committing fraud. I wonder what he’s going to do once we’ve conquered Ireland?

I can’t see him preaching, to be honest.

Watch this space​

Anyway, the married couple are soulmates now. They are in love, and staying that way. Nothing can change that. It’s like Disney romance songs are constantly playing in their heads.

Bit dull and hellish if you ask me, but it grants me another slave, and a competent one at that, so I’m happy.

[My PC ate this image of PTM being a prick about Debt. Just imagine it,
or, if you prefer, a happy kitten. In fact, let's have that instead!]

Aww. They're coming to get ya, PTM! They're gunna get ya!​

Oh. I think I may have spent all Ged’s money. And the Pope is busy today, probably on Capri pretending not to notice what his Cardinals are doing with the pool boys.

As PTM very solemnly says, this is very bad. Very bad indeed. I can’t quite take it seriously though, given how happy the bastard seems to be about it.

This is extremely OP, btw​

Fortunately, mercenaries are now on a contract and thus, essentially, my minions until the term runs out. Seriously, no joke, before governments checked this sort of thing, contracts were utterly evil.

Now they are only mostly tools of Satan.

Either Mercia just got independence for five minutes or that duke owns a shit-ton of England.
Either way, it's not good news for Normandy​

Dublin is my only rival on the island now. Well, them and the effing Welsh. I think they’ve read my CK2 stories and know what I usually do to Wales given half the chance. Arseholes. They will rue the day they attempted to prevent a god burning their country down for sport.

Anyway, Dublin is in my way. I want their capital for my capital. I want their other county as well-

Wait, what the heck happened to England? Never mind, that’s a Paradox problem.

As if there could be any other choice...​

My minion has given birth to a son. And PTM named him after his father. Long may he carry the noble name of Ged Ned, of Ned. Long may he serve my every whim and desire.

To Ged Junior, my readers! I can’t possibly see any problems with him living to his adulthood.

Dear God, WHY WON'T YOU BREED!!!​

Oh bollocks.

And the game is ahead of me for once. We still can’t murder our own kids on purpose. This was something I hoped they were going to fix in CK3. Stupid swedes.

Mind you, I’m not sure if I mind Ged taking over instead of Brian. He’s a moron, and he still hasn’t had any kids with his very sexyfull wife. He doesn’t even have the balls to be out and out homosexual. At least give some excuse mate. Your mother is a witch and an atheist, for God’s sake. Have some balls. Then put them…never mind.

The real mystery is where the Irish got the cider from.
Maybe some industrious farmer stole some pear or apple trees from the English?
I support this.
This is good.​

Ged is too busy to celebrate or despair over his pair of boys. The mercenary band are being a bit rowdy. Or rather, they’ve burnt down three of the four bars in my entire realm.

I am naturally furious. These are the biggest taxpayers in the country. Ged must do something. Naturally, they pale before his arm waving and shouting, so much so that they not only leave but Ged levels up!

Bar brawls, making conquering cheaper! Since 1060-whatever...​

He’s so good for a shout and wave that people won’t argue too much when he says that land over there is totally his and always was. This makes it cheaper for our bishop friend to fake the documents. Which is nice because we’re still in debt. I do hope nobody else disturbs Ged’s drinking. That would-

I recognise him from the silly walk! Must...resist...obvious...reference...​

It is deeply embarrassing when your own nephew is not only cowardly enough to flee from his post that he asked you for but also to flee in front of you, and all your men. Ged is thus very embarrassed. The rest of us try not to snicker.

There is a chance of them fighting us off but let’s be real here, Ged is a big lad. His lads are big lads. These deserters are so pussy-footed they are scared to fight the Irish, a people so determined to kill themselves that they slowly walk into the sea over a period of several days.

Who are these children he speaks of? We're a tribal warband, we don't forcibly conscript anyone to fight for us...​

We can just kill them all. We can also bore them to death with stories about honour and duty. Ged is pretty good with speeches and shouting so that might work.

But I am in charge, and this is Ged’s Existential Nightmare. To the poop pit with them!

Ged grows strong with their disgust and hatred. It fills him. He feasts upon the cries of the damned​

And they shovelled shit till the end of time. Or for a few weeks. Then the poo was gone, and they were very smelly.

A lesson was learned, over that time, I think. A lesson on humility, and justice, and honour. And digestion.

Umm...okay?​

Ged also learnt how to get people to march people…from this? Did they have to march through the poo? Does marching through poo help? Did the poo help, Ged?

Do you…do you want some poo, Ged? Will it make you happy?

Yes...I can see why we need to know this​

I have no idea why, but the people of whatistname have renounced the pope and Catholicism. Whatever.

And now it's cheaper, thanks to heavy drinking and some poo!​

Oh, thank God, someone is doing their job properly. Well, let’s get on with our conquest of Ireland. Thank goodness everything is at least being managed well at home. There’s no way Urraka can-

Everything we just did was pointless!​

Shit.

For God’s sake, we’ve just sat through pages and pages of you lusting after Ged. Who did you shack up with now? I must send my legion of trained spider monkey agents to find out the Truth!

Shit. The spider monkeys have escaped. I knew I should have broken their legs. Now we’ll have to rely on the Irish. And they’re…shit.

My useless spymaster at work. At least he'll NEVER cock up again...​

Well, this is awkward.

Umm…ok. Right. So, it turns out the woman who has sex with Ged every night…is carrying Ged’s child. You people are a bunch of idiots. Right…how do we resolve this?

Ah, the way we usually do.

Here we go down to Dublin town, Dublin town, Dublin town.
Here we go down to Dublin town
to burn the fucker down​

Let’s burn down Dublin. We need to make some space for the wife’s garden. Ged needs to buy her a lot of flowers.

Battle commences and the results continue to make no sense, but we won regardless. Apparently, Ged is related to this Dublin chap, which might make it awkward if we ever have to kill him. However, I reassure him that he is now an award-winning character on the CK forums, which means he can literally get away with murder. He can also fuck his sister, if he wants.

I don’t know whether he has a sister. I’m not a very good friend to him, to be honest.

See? Apparently, I missed him sleeping with his wife in the middle of battle again. Those two…honestly, the kids are going to end up with serious issues being conceived and raised in such conditions.

Death becomes him​

We win. We take his wife hostage. We take his daughter hostage. We lock both of them in prison and threaten them with various nasty implements and prospects of no bail. Or charges for that matter.

I own Dublin now. This is my new empire and I’m building a wall around it. I’ll get Urraka to make us a nice courtyard and gardens to have all the outdoor events shot in, and a nice hall for interior shots. Everywhere else is a shack.

Paint the map green​

Not bad going if I do say so myself. The kingdom is coming together, Ged is very happily married, Urraka is constantly pregnant…life is good. Hard to believe I’ve been running this glee club for just under eight years. I feel like celebrating, with someone else’s money.

I'll actually miss this Pope when he's gone. Wonder who'll replace him?​

Perfect! Drinks are on the Pope, guys!

Thus, began the Church’s tumultuous and oftentimes frightening relationship with Dublin’s nightlife. Sadly however, one cannot drink forever. And Ged and I have been ignoring the outside world for too long.

Everyone left in Ireland has noticed that a long-haired maniac wants to eat their land, and so have taken the cowards route and shacked up with much stronger allies to protect them. Now, we must take them all down anyway.

So, what have we learnt today?

• Paradox don’t do math. Or maths. But they like writing numbers.
• How to move a capital county. After several dozen google searches…
• Urraka is NOT a cheating hussy. She loves the G. So much she’s naming all her kids that.
• You can learn a lot by shovelling shit.
• Ged Junior is damned, just as much as Ged is. Probably more so.

Next Time, I sell off Ged’s children for fun and profit. Ged gets his balls handed to him by a four-year-old (but not like that). We take a brief and unfocused look at a few random bits of the world. And we all begin to realise how fucked up this inevitable succession crisis is going to be.

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged (both of them).

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Too Many Children…​

You find me, dear readers, overlooking my expanded realm as the sun rises. Many things have changed since we began. Ged has a family, and a kingdom. A few of the people in both are even somewhat bearable and competent. A potent mixture, to be sure. I have built, crashed and built once more the Irish economy into a rich Celtic tiger, so long as you don’t ask where the money came from. The world outside our little bubble is harsh, and scary, and confusing, but here all seems to be well. Or at least, a little better.

What is this mixture of nostalgia for things that were not, and fondness for a potential future? Oh no…I am experiencing joyful melancholy, the worst of all British afflictions. We must take immediate action to save Ireland from this blight.

Someone cocking up something simple should do it.

I'm amicable, eh? What did you break?​

What do you mean the child outsmarted you? You blithering idiot! No, sorry, that’s too strong.

You fucking moron!

You ‘accidentally’ promised a toddler tax-breaks in his vassal contract? How does one accidentally do that? God damn it, what else have you done?

You ransomed Ex-Dublin’s wife? Now who will I use as a hostage? Ged’s going to have to wait for the peace deal to expire…though at least this nephew can actually fight and spell, even if grammar is not their strong suite.

Alright lads, here's what we do. We go in, we hit them till they fall over, then we run away!​

All this rage and idiocy gives Ged power. It feeds him until once more he bursts with XP and develops a new talent. This time, he has learnt how to hit people and then run away. In heavy armour.

Not sure how he figured all that from watching me deal with this stuff but to each his own.

What a name. Vowels and consonants mixed together like a drunk Sunday School​

My next target has to be Connacht. Infamously hard to spell and pronounce, this will not save them from fellow Irishmen invading them. We need to clean up our border a bit and this county remains freakishly large. Like everyone else throughout history, Paradox didn’t give a toss about Western Ireland.

Connacht however is at least smart enough to try the one thing that nearly defeated Ged last time. Getting a foreign power to destroy us for him. Unfortunately, he’s picked Denmark.

Denmark. Punchline of AARland. Believe it or not, they actually do things in this playthrough​

On paper, Denmark is strong. Stable. Powerful.

But this is Crusader Kings, and we all know Denmark is a joke country, only used for comedy AARs and memes. You may wonder why a Swedish developer would choose to consistently present Denmark like this, but I’m sure someone in the comments will explain it for you.

Pleasure Through the Lance. Oh, I bet. What filth​

Still, I don’t really need an excuse to sell Ged’s children off like chattel to make the war slightly easier. Especially if it allows us to marry into Brian Blessed’s Gwynedd kingdom!

Who can argue with that beard and those snazzy pyjamas?​

Both Houses accept my valuable bargaining chips (I sure hope they know John-Paul is a girl and not the spare male heir to the throne).

Away we go off to war again. The battle this time is sure to be legendary, with Irish, Danish and Welsh troops duking it out in the wild reaches of untamed nature.

One day, Paradox is going to make it so the ships appear as the men start walking. One sad day, far from now​

Hmm. I didn’t even get the chance to touch them this time. Ged is surely becoming a most fearsome commander indeed. Well, if they’re going to be like that, then I don’t need to watch this war that I’m in charge of. Ged can handle it I’m sure.

I’m off to look at the map for no reason!

The game highlights who is fighting in your war, so Upper Lorraine is part of the Empire, just fighting for me right now.
Bavaria and Bohemia however are independent. And Tuscany is currently in a massive independence war, aided by our Popey friend​

The HRE is a bit of a mess. Unified, mostly, but with all the interesting realms at least semi-independent. France seems ok, but England and Brittany on their northern border, and huge German kingdoms to their east probably aren’t making them feel very relaxed. Still, could be worse…

Could be Poland. Could always be Poland​

You could be Poland. Prussia has already come into being to start kicking the shit out of you. Not that they’ll get the chance, as that southern invasion from Hungary ends up gobbling up all of Poland and Pomerania too. Ruthenia by the way is absolutely massive. That’s only their eastern European colony pictured on the right. They own most of the map east of that too.

The Romans end up slowly eating away at Croatia, but seem to be taking it slow when it comes to empire-building.
The Islamic sultanates on the other hand, aren't doing anything at all​

Having read other CK3 AARs, I now know I was right about my fears of the Byzantine Romans being completely overpowered. They have a tendency to eat everything and blob out all over Italy and north Africa. Can’t wait to see them do literally anything but that, now I’ve said it. Maybe Hungary being powerful will stop them expanding into Europe and instead they’ll try to reclaim the Eastern Roman Empire first? Still, good for them. I hope we do as well-

He died as he lived. In that golden coat​

Brian Blessed just died and carved up Wales for his horrible sons.

Bugger. This is a not-so subtle prophetic vision of what will end up happening to Ireland too, when Ged dies. I’m sure knowing neither he nor I can do anything about this makes him feel much better.

Damned kids!​

My four-year-old earl is now blackmailing me into giving him a tax return because my tax official is a moron and a cheat. And got caught being a moron and cheat. By said four-year-old.

Jesus Christ…thank goodness I don’t rely on taxes to fund anything. All my money comes from…um…anyway, Celtic tiger!

Ged Ned the Abhorrent. No...no...we need to do some rebranding for the inevitable book deal, I think​

Ged is thankfully unaware of any of these issues and was busy killing people, as is his way. He even managed to captured the petty king, which means the war is over before we had to siege anywhere!

Our country...doesn't really look much like anything. Anyone got suggestions?​

Five counties to go. I expect I can even get one or two to just bow down to me when I make the Kingdom of Ireland up, so it may end up being less effort than that. There are no real dangers to me or Ged left, either in Ireland or in Britannia. And no one else cares about us. Still, I know full well England is going to invade and probably conquer most of Wales in the near-future, so we have breathing room, not unlimited time to build am island fortress.

God-Damn Commies! I want to assemble a monopoly, you fucks! Why won't you let me assemble a monopoly...sobs...​

Unfortunately, due to the terrible inheritance laws, I basically cannot gift any of my lands off to Brian before Ged pops it, just so cheats (like me) don’t game the system and give away all the father’s land to one son before it can be divvied out. This is Paradox-enforced communism, and I shall be writing to my local loonie society to complain about it.

Don’t worry though, Ged. Don’t worry, dear readers. All we have to do is stop breeding sons for-

Ged...I never thought I'd say this on the internet. But...you have heard of other sex acts, right?​

Aw, shit. At least she’s still on a ‘G’ kick. Who knows how long that’ll last?

Still, I’m now three sons down in the land split, and that’s pretty bad. Thank goodness Ged is going to stop shagging his wife for the next few decades and never have any more male heirs.

Certainly not two more …

Strengthen bloodline is going to see a lot of use, isn't it? Eugenics is fun!​

This is nice. There are a few big boy decisions for players to aim for in a given region. I imagine there’s a ‘reclaim Charlemagne’s empire’, ‘reclaim Rome’ etc. For us lot in the British Isles, it’s ‘claim Britannia’, and form a true Celtic Empire of dubious historical veracity.

The best kind of veracity, of course.

Goodbye Normans...I'm getting over you...No more Normans...except in Normandy (naturally!)​

And it turns out looking at that was well-timed, as William the Bastard has suddenly decided he’s English! No idea how he figures that, or what the language is, or…well, none of this makes sense really, but still! No Irish game would be complete without the English (one way or another).

Oh boy...someone is going to fight me on this one​

Here is the lay of the land in culture. And straight away, we can see that the Paradox team have tried to do some historical research. Oh dear.

Right, well how bad can it be? Look, Ireland is pretty good. For the 1066 start (which is the tutorial, and the default setting), Ireland is Irish (good), with some residual Norwegian presence from their raiding and settling. In this case, it means every court has a few landed Norsemen wandering around (as we saw earlier, most will convert to the one true culture soon enough), and a big blue blob of Norse over Dublin, their big city. Fair enough, nothing a councillor can’t resolve later on (how they turn the population over is probably best left to the imagination).

Wales is also surprisingly good. Someone has finally given the Cornish and Cumbrians some love, which means, alas, the days of the good old ‘Super Breton Empire’ of uniting Galloway, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany in CK2 are over. It’s a shame in a way, because it makes playing any of these places less interesting.

However, for those wondering if Paradox actually bothered to do the work this time, you will be reassured to know that Scotland and England make little sense. First of all, remember that Paradox just took the time to add in Cornish and Cumbrian to the map. Now…what is this ‘Gaelic’ crap? Anglo-Saxon is fair enough as a generalisation by this period, though there is still a clear divide in language between the North and South, but Scotland was nowhere near that simple for several hundred years. The Orkneys are Norwegian, but apparently all the Viking and Irish settlers on the mainland have been amalgamated with various native tribes of the Western Isles and Highlands, as well as bits of the lowlands, into ‘Gaelic’. I think they may have been trying to show how Scotland was made up of two major tribes, Scots and Picts, and in the earlier start date this may well be the case. But in 1066, the set-up of Scotland’s culture looks more like the 17th century than the 11th.

To cap everything off, the northern coastline of Europe is thoroughly wrong. Normans in Normandy, ok. And though you can’t see them on this image, Bretons in Brittany. Again, fine. But for some reason, the rest of France is French, which is hilariously wrong, especially along the northern coast. Flemish doesn’t exist. Dutch does.

Awful, awful stuff.

But I’m leading Ged away from this, and the discussion below in the comments over how wrong this is (and how wrong I am, and how Paradox got it wrong differently) to look at something a little nicer.

My name is the biggest name! That means I'm RIGHT​

Ah, see that Noble House expand and triumphant! Ned, may the name linger like a bad smell!

He may only grudgingly like Ged, but this Bishop is integral to Irish history.
We would never have gotten this far without his willingness to sin on demand​

And it shall expand further it seems. The archbish is truly on the ball this time, and eager to get his finder’s fee for things he has ‘found’.

We may be ruining his reputation, but in a way, we are building it as well.
That means what I'm doing is okay. Right?​

I adore fighting against people vastly inferior to me, so Ged should have no trouble messing them up so badly that the game cannot count the dead.

And then all the bad guys died, and the hero won. Move along now, pilgrim​

Once again, we defeat an unknown cousin (our family sure had gotten round this island like a pig in heat), and expand the realm. Once more, we crush a small foe and treat it like a victory. Once more, we get to enrich ourselves off the yolk of the conquered peoples.

In other news, we’re close to achieving peace in Ireland forever.

Uh oh...the English are coming...​

As England puts its first filthy finger into Wales, Ireland steps one step closer to reality. Ged and I make quite the team, though perhaps not as shamefully productive as he and his wife. Still, the islands are being tamed by the Powers that Be, and whilst we are currently one of those Powers, it is right and proper to be afraid of the other two. Scotland, I suspect, is roughly equal to us in strength, and probably has its own internal issues from tech and culture. Same as us. England though? I don’t trust the Normans, especially when they dress up as Englishmen. Will they stop at Wales? Will they have to break off to defend Normandy and expand their French holdings? Will the sea peoples of Scandinavia return to destroy them as foretold?

In any case, we need more allies, more power, and some medieval condoms. Swiftly.

So, what have we learnt today?
• Paradox don’t do culture. Or rather they do, but in the strangest ways.
• That Ged needs to stop sleeping with his wife. Just…no…STOP!
• Urraka is NOT a cheating hussy. Unfortunately. I could have her and her children killed if she was.
• Ireland is pretty rich, for no discernible reason whatsoever.
• We are all screwed when Ged dies. Especially Ged.

Next Time, we get involved with a war against France, and do very little. Ged does not stop sleeping with Urraka. I finally connect all my land up on the map, and then snap and murder my spymaster for being even more incompetent (seriously, you will not believe what he missed this time). PTM shows up to laugh at our expense, and the Pope secures Italian independence!

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged (and vote in the Q3 ACAs!).

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Some pros and cons to CK3 compared to CK2 after 50 hours of play:

• Getting a land claim is much, much less frustrating than in ck2. No guesswork, no random chancing. You get the claim after a set amount of time (often years but can be less) and pay a bribe. Easy peasy. Very useful for smoothing out borders and getting started.
• Claims in general are much better laid out. You have your land, your claims, and people who claim them laid out clearly. If you want to revoke a vassals land, you can just do it (if you have the law) and take the tyranny penalty, or fabricate a claim with your bishop as usual. This allows for meticulous poltcial games for both vassals and rulers.
• Religion is better implemented here than it ever really was in CK2. Lots more depth, lots of room for custom evolution and AI manipulation. The Bishops of your realm actually serve a purpose now and are feounely powerful people you want to keep on the right side of, and recruit the best people for the job.
• Saying that, the CK2 Catholic collapse of recent updates (where unless you are very proactive, Catholicism is doomed in europe to hersey and other regions) has carried over to here. This may be because they copied the code, or simply made the same mistakes again. In any case, heresy is far too powerful and Latin chridtendom is ridiculously vulnerable to literally everyone ceasing to believe in it.
• Money has been nerfed slightly, but has unfortunately been completely disconnected from the vassal system as a consequence. You will not get as much money as you would have done in CK2 for doing the same things...which basically means your vassals have become even more worthless as their tax is miniscule and your own holding will easily outpace a large kingdom's tax base very quickly.
• This means that the lauded and interesting new vassal contracts are absolutely worthless. You might as well negotiate them down so the vassal pays and provides very little, in exchange for worshipping you like a god. I'm sure this wasn't intended.
• The Pope will not stop giving you free money every so often. This is usually several hundred gold and again makes vassals utterly worthless.
• There is a surprising lack of things for your character to do except waiting around for death, having sex or fighting wars. Way of Life and other DLCs are sorely, and noticeably, missing from this game. I absolutely guarantee they will be back, but its a shame they bothered to make the characters more interesting and engaging, only to do little with them in the base game.
• As just mentioned, every named character IS more interesting and engaging. You WILL care about your knights now (aside from the ones you forced into service hoping they'll die), as will you care about your main vassals (whether you love them or hate them). I was dubious of the new 3D modeling and character genetics/pages but it has worked as intended at making me care more about my inner circle, my enemies and my war leaders. It even made me care about the church for the first time in CK history.
• Culture is bullshit and needs to be changed.
• Dynasty options and customisation are hilarious and need to be expanded.
• The tutorial, despite this whole AAR...is genuinely quite good. I actually have quite a bit of respect for whoever designed it, because they seemed to know what they were doing and for the most part pulled it off well. I was rarely truly bewildered or confused with the UI (despite the horrible colouring) and the actual PTM messages were useful, if worryingly maniacal. Whoever you are, you did better than I give you credit for.
• The game is beautiful for maps, characters and looking at, with the exception of the text boxes (which you get used to, much like getting used to gout). It however, runs like a dead elephant and crashes every so often. Random pauses, at any speed, are common, and pressing a button always buts me in mind of a straining steam engine that I might have just pushed too far. If you have a lower end PC, don't get this game yet. It is not optimised at all.
• Overall...this is a good game. Certainly if you buy it and play it, you get your money's worth now. I had fun playing it, so far, most of the time. The problems I have with it extend to most paradox games: obvious holes that will be filled in and fixed with later (often much later) DLC and patches. This is going to be a huge earner for PD, and I'm therefore very worried about how much the DLC is going to cost and how often it'll come out.

Any other thoughts, positive or negative, on CK3 or comments thus far? We're getting to to point (1 month in) where we can genuinely start to judge this game beyond first impressions.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

A short list of my favourites (the patch notes are huge):

Spoiler: A brief list of my favourite bits

Courtiers you have a kid with are now slightly more likely to stick around

Greedy gift-receivers now no longer demand insane amounts of additional gold

- It is now harder to murder someone you're at war with, or murder their vassals/courtiers
- The maximum success chance/secrecy of Abduct Schemes are now 85% (down from 95%).
- It is now practically impossible to abduct someone you're at war with, with a lesser penalty to their vassals/courtiers
- It's now much harder to scheme to abduct Rulers (especially Foreign Rulers) and subjects of a foreign court.

Reclusive characters will no longer host feasts.

The AI is now reluctant to betroth boys to old women

wandering characters with absurd amounts of gold will now tend to spend it all on improving themselves (no more inviting wanderers with 7000 gold and banishing them!)

Reduced the chance of children reincarnating

Gave the AI dancing lessons

Gave the AI some self-confidence lessons.

Informed the AI that if it has nothing else to do in a war, it might as well defend the wargoal

Sternly told the AI that when it's trying to support the player, it shouldn't try to retreat just because the enemy is coming right at it (except if it hasn't yet arrived at the player's location)

Taught the AI how to count.

Told the AI it might as well support the player if there's no enemies around as long as there's enemies *somewhere*, rather than running off on its own to go siege something

Told the AI that considering the threat of enemies when you're at sea makes some sense even if they can't get to you while you remain at sea

- Told the AI that counting the player's enemies twice if they're movement locked and trying to decide if the player needs help or not might lead to some silly decisions
- Told the AI that hunting down enemy armies in enemy territory is a good idea if it is safe to do so, even if it is currently in a defensive mode
- Told the AI that it is a good idea to raise more troops when it already has troops raised
- Told the AI that it might actually be a good idea to try to avoid running into enemy units while raiding
- Told the AI that it really doesn't make any sense to try to retreat from a dangerous enemy while at sea
- Told the AI that it shouldn't bother sending support to the player while the player is just moving around at sea. Only once the player is standing still or making landfall does support make much sense
- Told the AI that it's fine to hunt down enemy armies that aren't in either the attacker or defender's territory
- Told the AI that just because it thinks a battle's about equal, that doesn't mean it should refrain from piling more troops into it to be 100% sure
- Told the AI that maybe it shouldn't pretend it can't see your units when it actually can due to you being in or on the border of its liege's territory
- Told the AI that when deciding where to raid, it might make sense to measure the distance by sea, not as the crow flies
- Told the AI that when it has decided to either retreat or stand on fight, there's no point doing other things like hunting nearby enemy units, or trying to merge with a friendly stack
- Told the AI that when supporting the player while the player is at sea, it makes sense for it to go to the same province, rather than stay on land
- Told the AI to not bother pushing the claims of vassals of vassals. Its own, its direct vassals, and its courtiers should be plenty

Fixed the game pretending you could swap councillors (and then doing nothing when you clicked the button)

Made it clear in the Knight game concept that Knights represent both the character *and* their retinue of troops; a Knight isn't single-handedly causing 30 casualties

You no longer get the Dangerous Faction alert for a faction that's at war with you. The ongoing war is presumably enough of a tell

Lowered some headgears to better rest on a character heads rather than floating.

- Improved teenager animations to not be neutral but also show more personality like adults.

War Overview now looks cooler
- Culture Window looks cooler too
- Great Holy War is actually great

A more flavourful description added for when murder by hunting "accident"

Children who reincarnate as an ancestor with sinful traits now acknowledge that isn't actually a good thing

The greeting in the secret documents letter is now more mysterious

Updated Tutorial text

Oh really???

Changed a few Prussian dynasty names to sound less German.

Ekundayo of the Benin dynasty no longer lives to be more than 200 years old (causing her to still be alive in 1066!)

Rhodri the Great's dad, Merfyn, is now suitably oppressive.

Fixed the game in some cases blocking interactions saying "You is already considering a proposal from you" after interacting with yourself

When your spouse is also your heir in your latest save, we don't clone them to show them twice in the main menu

A Head of Faith will no longer forsake their religion if your spouse is charming enough

- A faction will no longer courteously greet you before calling you a tyrant

A zealous character will now sweat a bit about committing adultery

Added a 10 year cooldown to childhood events if the child decides to kill the animal instead of adopting it. You monsters.

Updated conditions for rival in seduction events so they don't bonk you in the head while imprisoned

- Barons married to other landed characters will no longer be naked

Blocked the seduction of characters who are imbeciles

Characters that should be naked no longer wear cloaks

Child preacher in event must be of age 4 or older
- Children are no longer allowed to partake in an Intrigue challenge event
- Children are no longer encouraged to pick up more spouses
- Children can no longer be educated by hardened criminals
- Children can no longer be granted a bishopric as they are too young to handle both managerial tasks and religious duties
- Children can no longer start a literalist debate
- Children, imprisoned, and incapable vassals can no longer demand that you host a feast

Devouring people will now have a clearer impact on your stress level

Head of Faith looks at incest as a divorce reason based on faith's doctrines

Historical characters will no longer be their own parent

If people start to murder your courtiers the experience will now be much smoother

- If you instantly regret romancing someone the game will now accept that you've moved on

- If you promise a vassal to educate their child they will now be miffed if you try to return the child

Infertile spouses will now no longer wish each other 'a long life and many children'

- It's now possible to negotiate an alliance even if your family is very inbred

Landless nuns now wear habits

Married couples will no longer be exposed as if they have an affair if they're also lovers

Naughty children go straight to jail with no education

People are now less eager to marry people they are terrified off
- People that are terrified of you are now more likely to agree to marriage, as long as they don't have to marry you

People will no longer judge you harshly for breaking a betrothal to an Eunuch

Rebuffing the advances of a romantic interest now correctly ends their scheme instead of forcing you to become soulmates anyway

Sneaky people will now wear sneaky clothes

Spymasters will no longer try to dig up dirt on themselves

The Catholic Pope now wears the correct clothes

The Head of Faith can no longer Excommunicate themselves

The Pope can no longer publicly accept cannibalism
- The Pope will now always wear the correct clothes

The game will no longer tell you to take more concubines when you've had enough

You can no longer remove your vassal's guardians all nilly willy

You no longer is the real father, you ARE the real father!

You will now be told why you can't debate people 24/7

Blind characters can no longer become knights

...words fail me paradox.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The Lost Art of Stag Wrestling​

It has been a while, hasn’t it, readers? For Ged it hasn’t been too long. He’s been considering how and when to create a new duchy to cover his conquests. It has not changed much from CK2. Do you have at least some of the land? Do you have money? Normally I wouldn’t bother too much about the nitty-gritty of duchy creation but this is fairly significant. It’s the first one Ged’s made himself, and it’s going to be the main duchy for the House of Ned going forward. Meath contains the de jure capital of Ireland, is itself the capital Duchy, and maintains a strong central position in the British Isles. Much of the rest of Ged and co.’s reigns will be spent here.

They do not keep the name ‘Meath’ for very long.

Ged plans to hold Connacht, Leinster and Meath himself as King, and fork out the north and south duchies to mooks.
His heirs then have a wonderful time fighting over these huge tracts of land​

Ireland, rather neatly, embodies three sets of two-county duchies, which we shall be keeping for ourselves, and two three-county duchies, which hopefully we can find good stooges and comic relief characters to take on for us. I suspect that I’ll be keeping the Duchies of Meath and Connaught as my main titles, when I have the money for the bloody things that is. And by suspect, I know, for I have played many decades hence. But Ged does not know that yet. Pay attention to these two duchies though. They’ll be the source of the Great Political Mess-Up of the next few decades.

Maybe I was too harsh with Brian. Maybe. Maybe.
You can also see my own private holdings, and my three terrible vassals on the right.​

Brian is growing into a pretty good fighter for our army, if untalented in all other aspects of rulership. He remains steadfast in refusing to touch his wife. I know from future knowledge that he is no homosexual. He just doesn’t like her all that much. Hilariously, the game can and will note this when a character’s spouse dies. I am unsure what the screen for couples that hated each other looks like but I am looking forward to it.

Next to Ged’s idiotic firstborn, we have a map of our current holdings within the realm. Munster (that’s me!) holds most of the land of course. Desmond and Ormond are my…well, rather awful vassal Earls, whom I one day have to choose between to pick the new Duke of Munster whenever I make Ged King. There’s Ailech as well, the cut off earldom in Ulster that has pretty much no bearing on this story whatsoever. I’m fairly sure that family does end up ruling the Duchy at some point, but not for a long time yet. For now, they are small, useless and angry about being the North to Ged’s glorious South.

This can only end wonderfully.

My ginger horde. They are trouble with a capital ASBO​

My two other sons, Ged and George, remain on the small and young side, but with much potential. Again, my super future knowledge tells me exactly what these two brats will end up doing in the future, which makes it hard to talk about them now with a straight face. One will end up being a dastardly little villain of the next reign. One of them will be a pantomime baddie who just will not stop showing up and screwing things over for no reason.

Have fun guessing which is which.

Mmm...potential​

Ah, ye olde Munster, before I turned her into the premier power in Britannia. Ged has come a long way since that young tribal chief arguing over the price of fish in his local village and pretending to be a petty king of a single county. We’ve built quite the establishment, and dynasty, in such a short amount of time. Coming back now, having played the next two rulers of Ireland, it gives me pause. Makes me misty eyed for simpler times, when the world was utterly broken and anything seemed possible.

Speaking of which…

Urraka is pregnant again. Those two…as soon as I resolved their differences, they managed to become quite the team. Who would have thought marriage for random (and at the time, unknown DNA traits) reasons would be so happy and fruitful? The magic doesn’t hurt either.

Oh, and something I did not discover until much later, after Ged’s heroic death in fact, was that his witchy wife…had some witchy students.

Unbelievably, this turns out to be foreshadowing for their future adult lives. I know, I'm astonished​

For some reason, Ged the Younger has become something of an annoying evangelist. This rubs the other kids, and most other people, up the wrong way. However, he has an ally in John-Paul (I am delighted to say she has quite the adult life in this game), and together the pair make a dynamic duo of annoyance throughout court.

Ged gives them a bit of friendly advice about not aggravating people unnecessarily, but when you do, to back it up with a lot of violence. Got to make sure the children of the future grow up properly, after all.

The Arbiter of Nations: Logistics!​

Ged has also come up with a genius idea for his army. Previously, when his army was hungry, or thirsty, or horny, or bored, they went to the local residence and, y’know, took it. Ged has decided that this may not be the most efficient way of gathering supplies, or establishing a stable realm. Pillaging from foreign Welsh muck is one thing, but ruining your own tax base is just stupid.

To that end, he established a whole host of merchants that would supply the army wherever they went on home soil, and even abroad within reason. He also bought a crapload of barley from a very reputable supplier who promised to have it delivered with all due haste.

Naturally, the Steward paid in advance before Ged and I could stop him.

We are distracted from this potential fiasco by another one; apparently the Earl of Aed mag Art has eyes and noticed that the bishop that we’ve used for all our reputable legitimate claims in the past was in his court taking notes. I am unsure what to do about this sudden ejaculation of awareness but luckily, Ged does. He just responds that there is a claim, they will find it, they will press it, and then there shall be a war.

Which he will win.

Closest I’ve come so far to seeing a character in the game tell someone to go fuck themselves.

Bugger​

It turns out that totally reputable and honest retailer is as reputable and honest as my bishop. He’s legged it with all my money.

We never do find out where he went with that fortune. Probably Canterbury.

He hates me. He loves me. He's a Catholic, through and through​

I don’t even remember asking for money this time…though it is nice to know that even the incredibly nice Pope Alexander now really rather dislikes Ged of Ned. Hopefully, no one tells the Pope that Ireland is already full of Christians.

I'd be interested to know how far back the ancestor option goes.
Especially for families that switched cultures, religions, or continents!​

In a double whammy of celebration, Ged’s next daughter is born the day I finally splash my cash and get him a shiny new duchy. Now we are the Petty Princes of Meath! And, also, the proud owners of another small human.

Europe is fairly peaceful, provided that you aren't in Iberia or Italy...which is pretty much par the course.
The HRE remain very powerful externally though internally have quite a few very large grand duchies and kingdoms​

Ged is now 50 years old. His great mane of hair has silvered, his back is sore, but he’s still a master of killing and mayhem. In his decades of ruling, he’s brought Ireland, somehow, into the fold of the richest and most prosperous nations on the map. And speaking of maps, enjoy the sight of England owning northern France. It does not last much longer. Surely everything now is smooth sailing for our-

DON'T PANIC!​

PTM is back, with a vengeance. They’ve brought a peasant army with them. They do give some rather questionable advice here though. Machiavellian it ‘aint. Either you try to be nicer to the people in the faction, or act even worse and build up your dread, so they’re too afraid of you to do anything.

Actually, that is rather in line with The Prince. Never mind then. We now at least know someone at the Paradox offices can read.

Me and Ged decide to give a bit of bread and circus to liven things up. A stag hunt should do the trick, since Ireland is almost entirely hunting forest anyway…

You know it's a good choice, it has a skull next to it!​

A gigantic stag bursts from the undergrowth, and charges straight at one of my loyal stooges. Ged stands in its path, declaring boldly that its path ‘ends here, with me.’ I think you can imagine what happens next…

I very nearly missed this, because he's going home injured and disappointed.
But he did in fact catch the stag...somehow​

And you would be wrong. The stag rams into Ged, knocking him down and shattering his bones upon the ground. Ged rallies however, grappling and pinning the hind leg of the beast, slamming it into the dirt. The two fight for many minutes, punching and kicking like creatures possessed. Finally, the stag drops, exhausted, onto the mat and Ged raises his arms in victory, before falling over.

So…yeah, Ged caught the stag, somehow. Got minor injuries doing it, but that’s all the game gives us. All we know is his rather stoic ‘everything went wrong, but ok’ summary. What a man.

It is a wonderful thing to fight vastly inferior enemies in war. Makes things so much simpler​

Even the RNG is impressed, as it grants us a boon and finishes the claim task early. We duly go to war against the laughably inferior, yet surprisingly clear-sighted Aed, and move one step closer to the kingdom of Ireland.

He's becoming a proper green giant, is Ged​

All that wrestling has given Ged power. He utilises the experience gained in order to teach all his knights a thing or two about stag fighting. This will no doubt make them incredibly effective in future combat. About 25% better, in fact.

The children do look a little...strange, in this game​

George has come under the thumb of his big brother Ged (story of his life, btw), and has also begun the annoying ways of an evangelist. John-Paul duly defends her younger idiot against retribution, but she won’t be around forever, and the two boys are becoming major nuisances in court.

Italy is a bit of a mess but Tuscany and the Papacy rule over most of it.
Over the next few decades, they'll consolidate most of the rest under them.
They then become huge annoying thorns in the sides of the HRE and the Roman Empire,
as is tradition...and also for some reason Tunis as well​

The HRE exploded, but only once, and only in Italy. It never manages to get Tuscany back, but otherwise seems very stable, especially compared to neighbours. Tuscany and the Papacy meanwhile, become a dynamic duo of the Mediterranean, fighting and expanding against all comers. In sixty years, they’ll both have African colonies.

I suppose it is no spoiler to say that Ged's years will not be short and miserable. He is too amusing a toy​

We beat the pathetic earl and finally link up all of our land together.

Meath. A rather silly name once you say it a few times.
Fortunately, a future King of Ireland does some PR work and fixes the names​

Now Meath looks like a bloated cross, or a ghostly bishop. Three counties left to go, and then Ged will be a true king. But we already know him to be a legend. He has unified a people. Built an economy. Defeated armies in battle, and stags in personal combat. Europe shakes in fear of him, and the Pope pays him protection money.

What next for our intrepid hero? Does PTM have any last trick in store? Will Ged ever stop sexing his wife like crazy? What do you think?

So, what have we learnt today?

• Paradox doesn’t know what stags are. Or they think Ged is superman.
• That Ged needs to stop sleeping with his wife. For real this time.
• Ireland continues to grow and take on multiple different shapes.
• The Pope is both a genuinely nice fellow, and a scheming military mastermind.
• This Irish have always been that annoyingly Christian…

Next Time, Ged becomes King of Ireland.

Oh shit, SPOILERS!

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The King of Ireland​

I would advise readers to pay attention to this one. Not only are we now Q3 winners for 2020 (and thus the greatest and most wonderful AAR that has ever and will ever exist, etcetera, etcetera), but this is the chapter where Ged basically fucks everything up. Not for himself mind! because he ends up King of Ireland. And not for me. I’m a disembodied demonic deity damning this dismal world to destruction. No, Ged is, like so many parents before him, pretty much screwing everything up for his kids.

Not deliberately, or at least I don’t think he is. Was. Whatever.

But it remains the case, that after many days of constant success, this is where things start to go ever so slightly wrong for the Irish. And of course, this ignores all of the thousands of Irish we’ve already slaughtered on our way to the top. And the ones who’ve starved and frozen to death when we torched their homes down. And the ones we imprisoned and then murdered because we were getting sick of the prisoner alert notifications.

Anyway…this is where things begin to go wrong.

Yet another army trying to burn Dublin down. Bastards, only I get to do that!​

Well, maybe not right now. Right now, we’re battering yet another Irish count (don’t say it out loud) into submission. Ged is much mightier and stronger than this person, whomever they may be. I doubt they’ve ever wrestled a cow, let alone a charging stag.

Kids these days...I blame them videogames​

It is however at this time that I notice how almost all of my-er, Ged’s children, are addicted to gambling. This is somewhat unexpected, considering what a bunch of puritanical try-hards they are, but for some reason, young and old, compassionate and covetous, they all would sell their non-existent grandmother for a pack of cards.

Naturally, I am a little disturbed, but then again, considering these little pricks are some of the richest people in Europe, I suppose it is not too problematic. I suppose we must be thankful their alleged puritanical piety safeguards them against gluttony and drunkards…but they are probably a bit too young for that yet.

Good grief. You people are dumb​

And thankfully, at least they aren’t idiots. My vassals on the other hand, continue to argue pointlessly about their terrible strategies. Of course, at this point in our venture, battle strategy is almost irrelevant. Two armies of barely armed peasants don’t really do strategy. Only numbers.

In any case, Ged is once again able to trick them into thinking he is taking both strategies into account at the same time. I am fairly sure at this point that what he is actually doing is smiling and nodding, before doing his own thing, because he certainly knows better than these clowns.

You can stay...if you have a minute to talk about the love of Jesus?​

My guards are not much better. Apparently, they left this foreigner hang around the castle gates for over a week, and then brought him before me. This indicates they thought he was both too untrustworthy to be allowed into Dublin, but also significant enough to put in the same room as Ged and myself.

I shall of course have these idiots executed at once.

The stranger himself shall live, on account of his punny name (Yahaff, really?). He’ll probably work in the accounting office and cause no end of humorous confusion.

Let me tell you how to make a child disappear...​

Ged’s second son, who is rapidly coming to be something of an irritating disappointment, has been hiding all over Dublin because of some common muck who works in the kitchens. I have no idea what his mother has been teaching him, but Ged, tired and worn from campaigning, very quickly makes it clear what the snivelling little shit should do to dirt-people who get uppity. Though I do find it amusing that one of the options was to just tell Ged to hide in his room and shut up.

May Ged's entrails rot inside his fat carcass. What a delightful man​

We see off a small attack against Dublin itself, and win the latest war. Now a mere two counties stand in our way of dominion over all Ireland.

Mmmappppps. The true heart of Crusader Kings​

Let’s pause and take in the British Isles, shall we?

Ireland of course, is dominated by me…Ged. Meath. Whatever. We are probably the richest not-quite kingdom in the game at the moment.

Across the waters, the once-mighty Welsh princedom is recovering from Brian Blessed’s death, but remains split from what it once was. Sweden is sensing more and more weakness here, and they will continue to hack this place to bits. As will…

England, the strongest and largest by far of our neighbours. The Normans continue to struggle ruling over England and bits of France. This is a struggle they will, eventually, lose on both accounts. As I keep subtly hinting at, the new ruler after William is awful. However, at the moment, they are still behaving somewhat competently and will become something of a problem for Wales, and us.

Scotland remains a little strange. There are a few bits here and there owned by other people. But no one is really interested in them to be honest. Indeed, the locals will end up reclaiming their country through lack of interest. They get a bit more interesting after that, but we’re talking decades here so lets move on.

It. Is. Time.

Oh shit, making a kingdom is expensive. Um…hang on a minute.

Banking is still immoral. Begging is not.​

Ok, great. As I was saying.

It. Is. Time. The great and the good (and…well, the Irish), gather in the finest of shacks. The period accurate instruments sound. The flags unfurl. The chariots ignite and the doves released.

Ged now stands proud as King of the Irish, and of Ireland.

Chivalrous...Brave...Heroic...
Hired thugs that do whatever I tell them to.​

Ok, so first things first, let’s expand my knights a bit. As we all know, bigger-army diplomacy (as the Americans callously put it) is most effective, and I need the nastiest bunch of cut-throats and axe murderers around in my new regime. Unfortunately, most of my men have grown old with Ged. Age has not stopped them killing however, but I think death might. But really, who knows with Paradox these days?

I would rather have competent nobodies leading the charge into battle than the entirety of my upper nobility, but needs must. When I get to a larger realm, I’ll game the fuck out of this system and ensure nobody but the most disloyal and treacherous cretins end up on the frontlines. There’s quite a bit of scope to arrange quite tragic and heroic deaths for people you don’t like in this game.

Tax refund? We were paying tax to him? What the hell do I pay my steward for?​

Anyway, the Pope grants my request for more cash, and Ged puts on a magnificent red and green cape to celebrate. Which you don't get to see yet. It's too magnificent. So magnificent it clips through reality itself!

He refuses to take it off. It really clashes, and looks a bit silly, paired with his plain and simple Irish armour and modest crown…but I suppose we must let him have his way. He is rather grand sounding now. High King indeed. And, given he is cultural leader of the Irish, it’s a fair enough title.

In the brief lull between them killing something or banging​

Oh wait, here it is, alongside his lovely wife. Her Wicked Majesty looks every inch the High Queen also. She’s still content, still atheist and still weirdly magical.

I own most of Ireland personally, and have claimed/fought for Ailech most of the time in Ulster, meaning that Earl has a lot more land than my other two vassals. He’ll probably be my first Duke, and then I have the unenviable task of choosing which southern twit gets to rule Munster.

Joy.

Huh? Competence? Who the hell are you?​

The remain rebel count in Ulster has the good sense to kiss Ged’s foot before we stomp on him, and the North is now complete. I’ll make this duchy and hand it over fairly quickly, I think. Not much up there right now except a bit of religious difficulty and partisanship (no, I’m not joking. This isn’t going to get uncomfortable at all!).

The single most stupid thing I've done so far...​

Sensing perhaps that Ged is in the process of growing beyond their power, PTM dashes back right that second to mess with us again.
Seriously, fuck this guy. I was so worried about the horrible, terrible inheritance system Ireland has. And then this clown comes and waves a new one in front of our faces. And it turns out to be even worse than the original option.

Ah, old and ancient traditions long abandoned. Obviously, the best kind of thing to choose!​

Ged starts getting real morbid, in between banging his wife and choking things to death. Much like I, he worries that his realm will be torn apart and handed to idiots upon his death. Like politicians throughout the ages, he is desperate, and demands that we should do something.

Oh. I have made a terrible mistake​

Realm partition, with vassal elections for the top title. Holy shit, is this an awful idea!

I have Ged nominate Ged, the least rubbish of our current offspring, though as it turns out, this does fuck all to change the partition system. This is just to decide who will be King of Ireland. No matter what, Brian and Ged Junior are getting the duchies, and the rest one or two counties.

God, the nightmare is real.

I'm just going to throw this one down the pecking order and see what happens.
Or completely forget about it. One of those.​

I make myself feel better by messing with my vassals to the same extent. That new sensible chap with the magnificent locks and beard? He’s my new Duke of Ulster. Let him deal with the much stronger and much shitter Earl I’ve been dragging along for so long.

What a lovely shade of red-brown​

He’s also a little bit better at counting than my current steward, so we’ll be replacing him.

We shall complete our conquest now. It is time for our distant relation (or close relation, whatever) to be imprisoned one last time.

Leinster is absolutely certain to fall and there is nothing they can do. They are alone, friendless, and Ged is a memetic badass with deer-killing arms.

...ok, guys? How did you miss this? Where is my steward, my marshal and my spymaster?
What the fuck have you people been doing?​

Apparently, nobody felt the need to tell me that the peasants were angry.

This is all PTM’s fault.

Peasant rebellions are a bit different in this game. Before, you may recall from CK2, these things could run through you like rancid bananas. CK3 peasant revolts in comparison are pathetic. No knights, no horsemen, no siege equipment. They’re annoying for tax reasons when your army is away (very true to life) but no threat to castles or fortified cities.

The Church can get fucked up, but who gives a toss?

Any-who, until Paradox fixes this, revolts are a bit of a joke. I imagine that if you were a newbie, they might worry you. Or if you were ‘losing’ the game somehow. But it is almost impossible for you to lose CK3 militarily.

As we shall see soon, in fact…

She's the only one of the children that I had anything to do with that ended up making something of her life​

Apparently, John-Paul decides now is the time to start pestering me about knitting.

She may be the smartest and best of my puppet’s children, but she’s still a whiney brat sometimes.

However, she’s Ged’s favourite as well, so of course she gets the sewing kit. Aw. Bless.

We win. They run into the ocean.

I’m not going over these stupid wars anymore unless something interesting happens.

It does not happen often.

Sorry.

NSFW. TOO SEXY. OH YEAH LOVE YOU LONG TIME​

Now look at that…

Ireland is whole. Ireland is mighty.

Ireland is green.

Ireland…is mine.

*evil laughter intensifies* Everything is proceeding just as I have foreseen.

…​

And now, to ignore all our domestic problems and get involved with an incredibly expensive and overly ambitious foreign war!

Come on Ged, we’re going to London town to burn it down! We’ll probably stop for a drink in Canterbury too, why not?

The only way is up, baby. Nothing’s gunna stop us now!

Hey wait...Ged? Why are you grabbing that shovel and the list of undesirables we made that one time when drunk?

Ged?

Ged?

...um...what have we learnt today, my adoring readers? Well…

• Ireland is now the best place to be, forever.
• Anyone who disagrees will be asked to leave.
• Ged is perhaps not the best person to be the foundations of a legal system.
• Or…anything, really.
• The kids are messed up. Probably because their father doesn’t love them.
• PTM is back, and still trying to kill us all.

Next time, we find everyone who disagrees with us. It does not end well for them. Ged settles down from his martial lifestyle and takes up stewardship. A lot of people die. We clean up the mess that we made in our race to the Crown, and bewilder the game when we try to build this mysterious contraption known as ‘boat’.

Till then, venerable readers, goodnight, and pray for Ireland.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Iron Fist in Iron Glove​

We have fun here on Ged’s Existential Nightmare, but every so often, I like to make everyone feel miserable by pointing out the sheer horror of the CK system. Like how the ideal ruler in CK2 is a clever, charming and attractive psychopath who loves killing things (see Lancaster: The King in the North for details).

In CK3, there are a number of elements that make the game less frustrating to play, but also make the world itself just that little bit more grimdark if you think about it.
Consider the cultural conversion button. Now…there are forum rules about this sort of thing, but bear with me here. We click this little button, and our Steward goes off with a crack time of ‘stewarding assistants’ and within a few years, the culture of a county is now identical to your own. No lingering malcontents. No penalties. No percentages or odds of flipping back. Everyone alive in that county is Irish now, no questions asked.

You may of course be furiously typing a response to this: ‘Well naturally the conversion takes liberties with actual fact. It could well be that, like with historical situations of cultural conversion, the local population remains the same but are now forced to write in the official language of the realm, children are encouraged and taught to speak only in Irish, and perhaps some local figures of society have been subverted, imprisoned or executed to ensure compliance.’

And you would be right…if you were talking about how CK3 models religion and conversion, because that is pretty much exactly what happens. Both individual characters and provinces don’t just ‘flip’ when asked by the liege lord. They can resist, they can convert publicly but maintain their own private religious beliefs, and they can whole-heartedly accept the one true version of Jesus into their lives. This is shown via subterfuge investigations, percentage chances of flipping back to old practices, latent resistance to rule etc.

But for culture itself? We must face that, at least for the current version of CK3, every time Ged and his descendants order for a county to be converted to Irish (which they do to every county they control without fail), something very nasty happens. It actually makes me want to do a history book summary at the end of every ruler where a modern historian points out that the Irish, having securely unified themselves, then went on to aggressively colonise the island of Great Britain and unleashed all many of horrors upon the people there to get them to submit.
Anyway, on with the show!

Ten quid? Even Ged loves his children more than that​

When we last left Ged, we had just established dominion over Ireland. We now return in the aftermath, as the now King Ged and his trusty demonic puppet master must turn the new state into a realm capable of power projection, profit and pain.

As you might expect, a lot of people die in this chapter. But they are all baddies, so don’t think about it too much.

Another beautiful map. Brittany and Normandy are not part of France, but most of the Low Country is except the Upper Netherlands.
France has a pretty good game for the next century or so, from what I remember. Better than England anyway​

Lest ye forget, these are the Irish Isles in all their glory. Ireland to the west stands tall, proud and fairly bloodied, having just come into existence. The realm is young, pure, unsteady like a new-born foal. It is soft, tender and nubile meat, that needs to be tendered firmly by a steady hand.

England across the way is fairly strong, fairly well-respected and fairly powerful. They are about to enter their Age of Suffering and Loss, on both sides of the Channel. I didn’t even go about picking a fight with them. They were just jerks.

Wales meanwhile is a mess, and everyone now knows it. And everyone, naturally, is sniffing around for easy scraps. Especially England and Sweden, because they’re the baddies. A lot of Welsh people end up dead for the next few…decades. I still haven’t really sorted it out but I remain hopeful.

Scotland remains a little kingdom, with bits nibbled off by foreign powers. It’s going to spend much of the next few decades taking them back, and being nice to Ireland. This won’t save them in the end, but its pleasant while it lasts.

My vassals are weak and pathetic. But they still possess the power to be annoying if it suits them​

The Earl of Leinster accepts our deal to get his children back in exchange for money. He remains the last proper enemy of the regime (well, the only one with the balls to do anything anyway). The south in general has been in our pocket longer, and thus the lords there are more comfortable in their rule and more likely to moan at Ged for being a badass king who tells them what to do. Ulster meanwhile is full of loyalists, and I intend to keep it that way because aside from my lands, they own the largest and best duchy in Ireland.

CK2 challenge rewards grant a wizard beard. As long as this, but straightened (presumably with that dubious Irish future tech).
Think Richard Harris' Dumbledore for an idea. It looks good enough to tempt me to try for it, at least​

I celebrate the calm before the storm by turning Ged’s hair pure white, to better match his seniority and senility. He’s still incredibly strong and nasty for his age, but at fifty-four is a little tired of his realm’s bullshit. Anyone who gets in his way now is liable to get curb stomped.

Slaughtering rebels is God's work​

Remember those rebel scum? Well, we wiped them out, in true Empire fashion, in a slaughter that is sure to have no effect on future ragtag bands of idiots trying to fight the Power/Man for dubiously vague reasons.

Time to put down the sword...​

Ged institutes a new policy after the ‘battle’. Never Back Down, no surrender, not one step back, etcetera, etcetera.

...and pick up the whip​

I remind him that he might want to start focusing on keeping his people alive and working than killing the bad people who get in his way. He switches slightly too cheerfully to Domain Stewardship focus, and coincidentally all of our political enemies begin to mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night. Fortunately, authorities do find these unfortunate souls, but alas, alack, they have so far all been found to have committed suicide in the throes of madness.

In the middle of the woods.

Using a variety of creative and painful methods. Apparently, we have something of a cultural blight on our hands. Never thought I would miss walking into the sea.

Abhorrent and rotting. Ged sure is a popular chap​

The rebellion is crushed in the midst of this chaos, and all the ring leaders are rounded up. Sadly, perhaps because of the guilt of their treasonous treachery, they all also take their own lives in their cells.

I reassign all the prison guards to slightly nicer duties to make up for such unpleasant incidents.

Boats! Paradox look! It floats! It floats!​

Whilst I and Urraka focus on building a new and apparently hither-to unheard of trade ‘port’ for Dublin, Ged takes a walk down to Leinster and politely asks the local earl for his land and all his property, pretty please?

Oh bother.​

He said no.

Where did he get siege equipment from? One of my vassals had WMDs and I didn't sodding know?
I'm gonna fire that bloody spymaster...​

My army duly sallies forth and murders a stack of Leinster Loyalists, and burn down their homes and farms. We really need to get rid of any dissidents now, before they have time to take root.

Ireland will be one nation under Ged, and Ireland will be happy about it.

Athlone. I don't believe I've mentioned it before, and I'll never mention it again...​

I build some proper walls and towers around Ged’s second holding, Athlone. Surprised we didn’t think to do this before actually, but pretty much everyone, including us, has tunnel vision when it comes to Dublin, and only attacks that place.

In some ways, it’s rather useful. In other ways, highly annoying. The House of Ned begins plans for a new castle and set of fortifications just outside Dublin that will discourage people attacking our lovely and valuable city before going through them first.

There's a time and place, junior. What a pillock​

Ged Junior once again decides that the middle of the war is the time for a heart to heart with King Ged. Apparently, all he took from us butchering a common thief was ‘don’t get caught’. I am starting to wonder what kind of puritanical Christian this psychopathic gambler child is…

Make sure you don't trip on the stairs. Would hate for something to happen to you by mistake​

As you might expect, Ged easily sees off this pathetic challenger to royal authority and he is deservedly punished by our wise and merciful monarch. We wisely and mercifully take all his stuff away and shut him in a hole until he dies.

He probably killed himself. It’s rife at the moment.

The Family Ned.
Somewhat promising.
Unfortunately​

Let’s see our latest family updates. George is now seven, and apparently devastatingly handsome and charming. Brian mac Brian, Brian’s son, is doing well as a promising and pleasant intellectual at aged four. And John-Paul does us all proud at fifteen; a pleasant, charming and wise young lady that everyone admires very much.

Sadly, all of these children are threats to our power base, and the problem is only getting worse.

Yes, Ged and his wife may be old, but they still get it on as much as they ever did. Perhaps more so, since she seems to be pregnant more often than not these days. So much so that she’s gotten sick of naming babies after the letter ‘G’, and instead calls this one the super traditional and Catholic ‘Luke’.

No jokes on this one. It’s actually quite sweet.

Not three months into the post and already doing a much better job than my last Steward.
Not bad Ulster. It's a shame you die in the next update...​

Some of the local mayors are finally beginning to show some initiative and forward-thinking. Land clearance, drainage of peat bogs (of which there are many in Ireland) and other such projects should be enthusiastically supported by the state. Ged ends up insisting the whole of Connacht should be developed in such a way, sending out the levy to deal with it.

With the end of the peasant revolt and the Leinster rebellion, there is no one left to challenge us. We can spare a few soldiers to promote economic growth.

Shy and sadistic. Good at fighting too. A potent mix​

We install a new Earl in our original holding of Thomond. This isn’t a very important area, but it holds symbolic value, and who we appoint sends a message. He will represent the regime as a whole.

Not sure why Ged decided to pick a sadist for the post, but as he pointed out afterwards, at least he’s shy. He’s probably too cowardly to stand up to us then, just takes out his frustrations of underlings.

I can work with such a man.

For some reason, Ged has demonic eyes in this image. Don't think about it too much​

On another hunt, Ged starts to get annoyed with local peasants. Apparently, the little shits are startling the game whilst foraging for tasty berries. Bastards. It makes me want to start land enclosure, just to show them how a real economic system shafts the poor and downtrodden.

I’m not quite sure what Ged did about it. He told me afterwards he gave presents to the peasants to get them to go away. However, he used guards with pointy sticks to deliver them…so I’m not quite sure whether he’s popular or hated in Connaught right now.

Ah, back to normal again. Exorcism is good for the soul​

He didn’t suffer for lack of meats though. A few baby deer, some rabbits and a few duckies. How lovely.

All I want is to be noteworthy, before notes become a thing. Is that too much to ask?​

Time for some realm checking. The House of Ned remains woefully insignificant, and honestly this doesn’t improve until the third ruler of Ireland forces the rest of the world to pay attention to us.

We still can’t design our own crest, which is annoying, and the next patch isn’t going to change that. However, I don’t mind the three leopards. Our motto is as good as ever, and the family line is secure (at least we can get one positive from Ged’s fecund nature) and plentiful.

The culture system. It is better than I said it was.
Highest praise indeed.​

I, that is, Ged, is the cultural head of the Irish, being their king and all. This gives me a lot of power to work with. I can focus the finest…er…well, the finest minds we have, on modernising our culture and figuring out such essential facts as hereditary rule instead of this democratic election bullshit.

After that, I’ll work on Royal Prerogative to allow me to take more control over the kingdom and actually rule it like an enlightened despot (that is, I can move my law slider further up the centralised tab). It will take a few decades (again, up to the third ruler), but when all this is over, we’ll actually be ready to move into the High Medieval Era pretty much bang on time, with all the perks that come with, like actual fucking primogeniture and most of the proper despotic options everyone really cares about.

Speaking personally, the culture system is actually pretty good. Almost everyone has access to everything (with regional and cultural exceptions blocked off or added on, like elephants etc.) but you get to choose your specialisation. If you so desire, you can be one of the most advanced martial cultures on the planet and still have no concept of centralised leadership or rule of law. I appreciate the nuance the system allows players here.

Oh, and Dublin is still full of retired Vikings and registers as Norse. Guess I was lying when I said we were never going to culturally ‘convert’ our own people, was I?

They grow up so fast...​

As I am doing unspeakable things in the nation’s capital, John-Paul comes of age and the family goes ballistic with celebrations. She’s the first baby to be grown to full adulthood and what a fine figure of a woman she is. Excellent stats and traits all round. Can even fight better than some of my knights. Ged taught her well, and she is truly a silver-tongued diplomat through and through.

Time will tell if she ever finds a use for her voice and presence beyond being someone’s wife.

Oh...this is going to end well. I can tell​

I get her a nice new dress, lighten her hair to Neddish ginger so she won’t forget her roots, and pack her off to Scotland. Malcom Canmore wants closer relations, and he’ll get it with his second son married to my prized student. Prince Donald stands to inherit a fair chunk of land when his dad passes on, and maybe more if he can convince the Irish to do something about his rather incompetent and unpopular brother.

It really does seem like the beginning of a new era well and truly has begun. Ireland is now pacified, to say the least, underneath the iron hands of Ged Ned. The King and I watch as John-Paul begins our first foray into foreign affairs. Whilst our own politics and realm may be settled, at least for now, the rest of our neighbours are not quite so peaceful. England looms large across the sea, and Wales seems an increasingly small and pitiful buffer state between us.

So, what have we learnt this time? Well…

• We're going to have to do some serious white-washing of our nation's early history.
• Ged is actually a fairly good peace time ruler, so long as you don’t count the revolts.
• John-Paul turned out alright in the end. So hey, one out of however many ain’t bad.
• The dynasty remains insignificant and ignored. This is a grave mistake on behalf of the world.
• And cultural conversion is destined to become an Irish speciality.

Next time, we get dragged into a truly horrible and pointless war. Ged rethinks his life’s work. And somebody at court gets accused of…witchcraft?

The lights are dimming on the life of High King Ged. But the candle is not yet burnt out, and before it is all over, he has several moments of greatness left to come. So please, venerable readers, pray for Ged.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

I hate England!​

Things have been going pretty well for Ged recently. Quite unlike the Nightmare promised by the premise and the title, Ged’s Doze While He Bats Around the AI has been, whilst perhaps educational for newcomers to CK3, a little dull for those looking to see Ged suffer as required.

Well that stops now.

You see, all this comfort and malaise applies only to Ireland. We may seem strong and wealthy, but in comparison to the rest of the world, Ged is a tiny little man with a big head and bigger beard. He’s not even an annoyance to the Powers that Be. Even the Pope just gives him pity cash and otherwise ignores him.

As we saw last time, Ireland is unified and properly under control, but that don’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things. Our army is tiny, and made almost wholly of unarmed and unarmoured peasants. The Family Ned is insignificant and unnoteworthy.

Basically, we have no business going to war with a proper country. We have our island, and that is where we should stay, a tin-pot little dictatorship that exists at the discretion of outsider disinterest. We aren’t even Italy.

We are Luxemburg.

Of course, riding high off of the tutorial, I thought I and Ged were the shit and could take on the planet with nothing more than what we used to take down the easy bots designed to be defeated by first time players…

Oh...this is a bad idea​

The war against England opened our eyes a bit.

Gosh, we were so proud. We had established a proper if dubiously named Celtic Alliance. Us, against the perennial baddies of England. Victory was certain. We deserved it.
And, well…yeah, the English did not need PTM to bury us.

Look at how large the Scottish army is! They'll all be dead within the year...​

The plan was simple. We would join up our armies at the Scottish-English border and move down to siege the north of England. Not like the Normans care about the North, right? And Scotland always has ‘invade the north’ as their game plan, and so far, (in this universe) it has not yet failed!

Now we have a lovely Irish ghost country, with a lovely green jumper to keep it warm​

I’m so sure of myself that I stop paying attention and go back to Ireland. There, I sort out of bit of housekeeping for Ged. Munster needs a Duke and I need a stooge. So, I give this rather droopy pensioner the reins and tell him to not cock it up.

Ireland is now, as you can see, very neatly and nicely divvied up into three sectors, and henceforth so it shall remain to ensure peace, stability and aesthetically pleasing map design.

For three years.

Hartlepool, which actually exists​

Ged meanwhile is busy sieging Hartlepool (which actually exists) as the Scots swarm over the North East like a pack of sniffing terriers, the most fearsome of breeds. No sign of the English army yet, which means they are never coming, and I can safely let the time run on as I take my eyes off the war and start looking at the map.

Like all of my Crusader Kings games, Prussia already exists and is independent. They don't do anything, but they are there. Watching. Waiting. Presumably for Vicky 3​

The world of Ged’s Existential Nightmare is a fairly standard one for CK3 games that I have observed so far. Norway, following an unsuccessful invasion of England, has been consumed by Denmark, and thus now the Danes own all the small bitty islands that no one really knows the names of above Scotland.

Sweden, despite owning a county in Wales for some reason, is otherwise fairly small and surrounded by this mega-Denmark. It is they however that shall be our unlikely adversaries in Wales for many years to come. For no reason that I can see, they have an obsession with the place that borders on the sexual. Finland and the rest of the Baltic are messy and mostly non-existent, which is for the best because I really don’t care about them. No one does much with the area for the first hundred years of my game.

Iberia is disgusting​

In Europe itself, France looks a little strange, as it usually does in the 11th century. England, Brittany and for some reason Lyon have carved chunks out of the Frankish lands. Still, they are relatively stable and strong, which is more than can be said for England, or indeed the HRE.

The Empire is reeling a little from being soundly trounced in Italy by Tuscany and the Pope (so much for Holy and Roman, Voltaire, Voltaire, Voltaire etc.). Bavaria and Bohemia have uneasy relations with the Emperor, and with each other. And with everyone else, come to think. Hungary remains huge and impressive, but not for much longer. As seems the case in every CK3 start, Hungary booms and busts fairly quickly.

As for Italy, the Papal States are very strong for the time period, as is Tuscany. There are awkward parts where the HRE and Tuscany overlap way too much, especially in Corsica and Sardinia, which are also infested with small separatist movements constantly rebelling against anyone in charge. Both Italian powers do get their act together and start colonising Tunisia fairly promptly in the near-future.

Africa is very interesting. I have no idea if it will be relevant to this AAR at any point though...​

And as we can see, the Romans (the actual Greek-Romans) remain the big fuck off empire on the map. They’ll be expanding into Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East soon enough too. The Seljuk are awful and almost always collapse into Persia fairly quickly. Egypt is not much better, though Almoravid is surprisingly strong, having cornered the market in western Africa and established a base in Iberia as well. Sub-Saharan Africa is as messy as you might expect, as is Iberia, though the incompetence of the Islamic factions there are mitigated by the Christian disinterest in Iberia altogether, including the ones based there. Castille in particular seems far more interested in our neck of the woods…

It's so easy to fight a war when no one tries to stop you!​

Ah, back to the action, and we’ve rolled up Northumbria wonderfully. Several thousand Scottish troops walk into the sea in celebration. Presumably they plan on swimming to the South at some point.

But where oh where is the English army?

Target fucking acquired​

There they are! And look, I outnumber them and can reach the coast before they land. They’ll get an attacking penalty plus the recently disembarked malus.

I could slaughter them all without much of a fight! This war could be just about won here.

Ged, ran like the wind and get me those English yolk.

Oh​

Oh.

They landed already.

And they have reinforcements coming in hot.

And…they’re coming after me.

And…I’m outnumbered and have movement locked in.

Oh fu-

Thank Christ that this wasn't a slaughter...​

This was a disaster.

The only reason it wasn’t a slaughter of epic proportions was due to the recently disembarked effect. Essentially, my guys fought up to thirty times better than theirs. Unfortunately, that only applies to levies and men-at-arms.

My knights were slaughtered or captured. Quite a few of my mayors are now dead or in prison. The core of my army is gutted, shattered and wildly out of position.

And it turns out England has another army aside from this one.

I’m fairly certain that had the Scots not rocked up to Winchester at that moment and started besieging it, the English would have followed Ged back to Ireland and ploughed us raw. It takes years for my army and knights to recover from this defeat.

I’m actually quite impressed that Ged and Brian, who were both in the battle, fought their way out. That must have been quite the performance considering what happened to the rest of the knights.

What a smarty!​

Ged makes it back safely to Dublin and we start emergency measures to try and build some form of defence should the Normans come knocking. Ged figures out how taxes work, which is great, and immediately institutes war-time taxation on everyone.

Especially the vassals who are recently deceased and thus can’t fight back.

Hey, he can’t get more hated by the minor nobility. Might as well enrich himself in the process.

This does turn out to ruin England. Eventually​

The AI beat us badly enough that I’m pretty sure they got a little stuck trying to decide whether to finish us off or go south to clobber the Scots. In the meanwhile, our allies actually manage to torch the English capital. I get really nervous when they start to edge further inland. They don’t have the numbers or the quality to stand up against the Normans by themselves.

We may hold the technical winning war score right now, but England has effectively removed both of us as effective fighting forces with one battle.

The Defeat at Appleby will linger long in the memory of the Irish. Never again must we be caught that wanting by the English, or anyone else.

I also hate Ged Junior. What a mis-conception​

As is tradition, Ged Junior opens his trap and starts whining in the middle of a war.

Me and Ged had just got back to Dublin and were not much in the mood.

After he picked up his teeth, the lad told us that the future Duchess of Ulster won’t give him the time of day. Presumably because he’s a repulsive little creep who preaches sermon upon the wicked sin of Man on the one hand whilst also being a compulsive gambler and repressed sexual predator.

God, this kid is the future Duke of Connaught and currently destined for kingship. I need to find someone else.

Anyone.

The English continue to slowly trek south, once again keeping their army in bits. I think this is actually because the development level of many English counties is too low to support their whole army walking together, but it’s still a good tactic for encirclement and entrapment.

The Scots have managed to further loot the South of England and properly terrorise the natives, but of course, that isn’t enough to save them. Thinking about it with hindsight however, maybe this helped kickstart the decline in Royal authority in the realm? Who knows for sure?

Oh.​

The Battle of Salisbury Plain is everything that I managed to avoid through luck. The whole Scottish army was suckered into fighting the tiny English scouting force before the main Norman army came up from behind and gave them what for.

The Scots run back up to Scotland, never to return.

My God. He truly is a Holy Roman Emperor​

And just to make this even worse, the HRE suddenly joins in. Now the enemy have more than enough men to completely wreck both our kingdoms easily.

I am very glad it is impossible to change victory conditions once at war, because otherwise Ireland would be torn apart by the result of this one.

Also, Jesus Christ, Emperor Heinrich is terrifying. A gigantic, heavily armoured psychopath who loves torturing his enemies and is utterly devoted to his wife. As demonstrated by his trusting nature and thousands of children. Apparently he takes after his dad because he also has millions of siblings.

The only man he takes order from is GAWWWD!​

As if my day cannot get worse, King Old Uncle Moneybags Pope is dead. Probably got into Ultra-Heaven, going by his actions and how much devotion he saved up.

The new guy is a young, virile man of a priest. With his mighty beard alone, he commands legions of the finest troops in Europe, and holds the keys to the biggest money bin in the world.

We begin our working relationship with him giving me money for no reason, which is nice, but he is already firmly neutral towards Ged. Which means he’s probably a few months away from true hatred.

Seriously? Guys...really?​

Oh, and someone in my court is accused of witchcraft.

And it isn’t Urraka.

…okay then. After the shock wore off, we quickly determined that she was a harmless old woman, and could thus be safely burnt alive without the realm getting even more bad luck on our backs.

At least something is going right today-

What a mess...​

Oh, for God’s sake, now my most powerful vassal is dead and a teenage girl is running Ulster. The place most likely to be fronting an invasion defence.

And the guy was my taxman, the first good one I’ve had in decades. So now my income has dropped through the floor and people are whining about not being on the council.

For some inane reason, CK3 informs you in a huge screen like this each and every time Heresy arises in a place. Which…not only can I do nothing about religion in another realm; I’m literally fighting these bastards already and losing. What’s the point of this, PTM?

Why should the Irish have any interest in Essex?

Huh. We actually did just build shacks...​

Ged nopes out of all this insanity and plants a few crops in a field. Then he builds a few shacks around the field and suddenly has a lot more money coming in.

Yeah, the peasants clearly picked the wrong witch at court.

Enjoy your last look at the Scottish army. Soon neither Scotland nor that army will exist!​

The Scots have made it back to the border, with the English hot on their heels and already tearing through all of our early war gains.

I am going to adopt a policy of masterful inaction and see if the problem goes away.

He is quite large, yes. Grows a nice beard later on too. At the very least, he's definitely a son of Ged​

One last time, Ged Junior butts his head in. He’s of age now, and looks remarkably similar to his nine-year-old self. Just a bit taller and with weirder hands.

His stats aren’t that bad but he’s a rotten steward and anyway, rather content to be a blackguard. He’s an alright spare to the heir, but I certainly don’t want him inheriting everything that he’s due to inherit. Ged Junior is just about competent enough to do some damage but not good enough for me to obviously side with him over his siblings.

What a pickle.

His dad on the other hand is learning even more of the engineer’s handbook. Namely, cut as many corners as you can and hope you don’t get sued. This may seem unfair to builders and engineers, but then again, Ged is only concerned with public projects, so I’ll let it slide.

Not sure how he managed to catch Typhus but I guess these things happen​

In other news, my only grandchild looks like death. My utter waste of a firstborn apparently has not noticed his only child starving himself into an early grave.

The vile fuck. I shudder to think what’ll happen if he ever becomes King of Ireland.

Oh, and now Brian Junior has typhus. Wonderful. My heir is a neglectful doofus of a father, and his heir is dying of wasting disease. And we’re all still getting our asses handed to us backwards by this hell of a year.

Major yolk on face all round, I think​

Scotland lets us out of our misery and William the Bastard lets us off with some fines and a stern warning.

I hate England. And Scotland. Fuck ‘em both.

I need a holiday. Hey Ged? Want to leave the wife to clean this mess up and go on another religious booze cruise in the name of Christ Our Lord?

Woo! Next stop, Canterbur-oh fuck.

So, what did we-

• The only thing we learnt today is that I am shit, Ged is shit, and Ireland is shit.
• And, that at some point, I’m going to take ludicrously over-the-top revenge on every single English person in the game.

Next time, we go on several drinking holidays that the history books will mistakenly label as a pilgrimage, and some foreign ‘wars’ that mysteriously only have Ged and his mates wandering around southern France getting sloshed. And…alas, the journey comes to an end for our glorious leader.

Tune in next time, for the last time, as me and Ged go on one last belter of an adventure.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Ok, time to look properly at the next patch list, now they've had time to properly fix various aspects of the game. I'm sure it works fine now.

# Free Features

...seriously?

Added a Ruler Designer where you can customize the ruler you’ll start with before the game starts. This works with achievements - but under certain restrictions.

I most certainly will make a special update on what you can do here.

Added the functionality to attach your armies to another allied army located in the same province in order to follow the other army

Actually helpful.

Mercenary companies of cultures that have Camel Riders unlocked will no longer include tons of camels for no reason

Apparently this was an issue with elephants too. The middle east was awash with camels and elephants. I don't think this is a problem so much as a feature but apparently...

Cats and dogs now live a bit longer, appear slightly less often, and trigger events less frequently

Still have not seen any evidence of either mammal. Now looks like I never will.

Economically-inclined AI's now somewhat prefer upgrading Economic buildings

Good?

Halved the impact of Fervor on the speed of the Convert Faith of County councilor task, converting a high-fervor faith as a low-fervor one should no longer be impossible (but still hard, of course!)

Now this one will have a definite impact on our game. Scotland especially is full of heresy.

It's now easier to divorce openly incestuous spouses

But what if you're both doing it? And what if the marriage itself is incestuous?

Landless religious heads not of your religion can no longer be invited to court and married.

I'd be more worried about them being targeted for torture and horrible murder things.

Only the holder of a holding can cancel construction now. No more canceling your vassals' constructions to get money

You could do that???

Wandering characters no longer get absurd stats should they have immense amounts of gold to spend

Wandering characters of the player's dynasty no longer spend money on self-improvement, to prevent an exploit where you would

Lol

Children can become more inclined to drink later in life if their guardians are a poor influence

Children get beat up a lot in these patch notes.

Significantly slowed down Fabricate Claim task when targeting vassals

Shit. I liked that option.

To make a holy order it is now enough for the Pope to not simply dislike the AI, rather than needing 60+ opinion. The 60+ opinion requirement still persists for the player since we like to see the player grovel

We may have found where PTM moved to.

Toggling nudity is now a setting rather than a game rule.

Woo!

No Beard' is now the top option in the barbershop

Pfft. Everyone knows you go to a barber to get more hair.

Ugly characters now have significantly more varied looks, and look more believably ugly

Ugly characters now look more ugly, to a reasonable extent, by distorting specific facial features more than before

Why was this a priority???

Moved the Norfolk holding to a more accurate position

Misplacing Norfolk is a little embarising. Especially as it ends up as England's capital.

Fixed so that the hunt event theme SFX only plays during hunts and not during pilgrimages

We hunt for GAWD

Fixed a mix-up in the event "Information Brokering" which could claim that a woman was fathered by her own son, instead of correctly saying that her son was fathered by another man

Nice.

Fixed assorted localization-issues reported by Betas

YOU HAVE BETA TESTERS? AND YOU'RE ONLY NOW RESPONDING TO THEIR FEEDBACK???

Added four new murder outcomes

Of course.

Added 2 more child-murder outcomes, you monsters!

See what I mean?

Added two additional game concepts for Hostages and Prisoners of War.

I don't know what this is.

Karen is now a vassal to the Tahirid in 867.

Memes!

The Cucumber King is no longer unintentionally a kinslayer, due to a wrongly assigned father.

...what?

Added age trigger for becoming a drunkard event

Too late for the current Ned kids but good to know!

Characters are no longer angry at their new friends

Unrealistic.

Charlemagne is now lustful - the dude sure got around

He spilt the blood of the saxon men.

Excommunicated characters can no longer become Pope

Good...

Executing an independent ruler will no longer give them an opinion penalty towards you since, you know, they'll be dead.

Also good.

Fixed a bug that caused Irish characters to be able to Revoke False Conversion when starting a game with the tutorial enabled

Interesting.

Fixed a child's favorite toy crashing the entire game

Fixed the game in rare cases completely erasing members of your family from existence after their death. Look, we all hated uncle

We do all hate Uncle.

Former Heads of Faith now keep their clothes on, presuming they held the HoF title at the time of their death

Still got issues with that, huh? (See last patch notes)

Good things now happen to good chancellors

In this economy?

Intelligent women no longer confront their pregnant lesbian lover to ask if they are the father of that child. Stupid women however, still have a chance to ask that question.

Lol

Physicians can now treat themselves, and they're also more likely to "mess up" your treatment if they're trying to murder you

Rather sinister.

Spouses and lovers will only act as your wingman if they're ok with you bedding someone else

Urraka will not be helping us then.

The Earl of Desmond will now slip your net and avoid capture in combat during the tutorial

Why? It was a good tutorial feature about imprisonment???

You can

You can!

You cannot confide in friends you do not have

You now have to actively scheme to convert someone to witchcraft to discover that they're already a witch

Awkward...

Your friend will no longer support your scheme to claim their throne

What are friends for, if not that?

...

As you can see, the game is now perfect.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Ged’s Existential Nightmare​

I can’t quite believe it. The end, such as it is, has come already to our dear little escapade. CK3 has now been out for a few months, and has changed a little bit since launch. All this is long after Ged’s time however. Sadly, his time is quickly running out.

After the calamity of that war (a thorough embarrassment for Ged, Ireland and me, a ‘veteran’ of CK2, to be so bollocked by England), Ged and I needed a brief respite…or five. I had an inkling that his life was nearly measured out, and wanted to give him a break.

He’s earnt it, a thousand times over.

Who would have known that a savage tribal chief from the backwaters of Munster would in a few short years unify his countrymen like never before? Establish a kingdom out of nothing? Bring wizard beards back into fashion?

But Ged Ned has done it. His vassals are happy, his people are secure and well-fed. Even in the darkest moments of the past year, Ireland itself was never threatened. Things are going well, if you are an Irish peasant. Your lord is, whilst mad, not a bad lad.

And Ged, despite what PTM said, did manage to find love and family in this sick world. Say what you will of her, but Urraka and he are blissfully happy with each other, and have a large and healthy family. Yes, the children are all nuts, but they’re also clever and pretty good at whatever they focused on. Even Brian, whom I have had the least interaction with, the one who has been with Ged longer than any of us, isn’t a bad sort.

Rotten father, I guess, but at least he has a son now.

One last time, put your hands together for the incredibly magic of Urraka Ned!
Infant levitation has never looked so effortless​

And, lest we forget, Ged may be Ged to us and to Ireland always, but he was once Murchad of Munster. And Urraka wishes to honour that man by naming her last child after him. It’s rather sweet, if agonising because now I-that is, Ged, has a son for every county we own.

Which of course means it will be divided to one each.

Shit.

May as well do Rome. By the way, the cost of pilgrimage rapidly inflates to nearly a thousand pounds by the next century.
Bastard travel agents are corning the market...​

But now is not the time to be worrying about the future. I can sort it all out with whoever comes next. Now is a time for Ged and I to go on one last adventure.
And, as luck would have it, we’ve just crossed over the time limit for another ‘pilgrimage’. I think you all know what that means…

Um...everyone act natural. I'm sure the fourth wall will be up again momentarily​

It is in this quite time, when the taverns shut and we all rest on a hill outside Canterbury, that Ged looks to the stars and sees eternity. And for a brief moment, he seems to see me as well.

I shall be sad to let the old man go, I think. He’s had a good run, and I’ve done my best by him, but the initial pity for his eternal fate, to be used by noobs and sadists in a never-ending tutorial game, comes back now with a vengeance.

In the end, we are all doomed, and adrift in a night that never ends.

The religious situation is much the same as it always has been, with added Paulism giving the map some groovy purple with white stripes to spice things up. Europe will remain mostly Catholic for the next century and a half, with some flair-ups of heresy every now and again. Ireland ends up having to put out a lot of these fires by itself in the Irish Isles.

Bit of a mess. Cumbria's existence as a unique culture still bewilders me​

As for culture, English is spreading like syphilis through England. In a century, the Anglo-Saxon peoples will have entirely been eaten by the Normans. Never a more deserved fate to those who themselves destroyed so much native culture upon their arrival in this land. The scots and gaels fight constantly with each other, neither knowing that soon a third party will end up dominating them both. Welsh and Cornish are both threatened by English and Swedish expansion, and eventually the Irish come to effectively wipe out the Welsh (although I suppose you can head-canon it so the Welsh just become a lot more Irish-Celtic rather than Breton-Celtic. If you want. You’re wrong though. They’re all dead).

Ireland is Irish, except for that pesky little Norse enclave in Dublin. But don’t worry readers, we’ll soon burn them out. In a manner of speaking.

We walk the Holy Path. Straight to the pub, as God intended​

Rome beckons and we come right on through. It’s a lovely place. The Papacy is rich with all its plundering-I mean, holy reclamation of-Italy. They’ll get even richer over time, and even outlast Tuscany, something that surprised me.

Ged seems to be enjoying himself. Hard to grasp but he isn’t actually that old. Late fifties to early sixties for a man who’s lived his life however, is practically ancient. Can’t help that he never takes the armour off.

We come home, and the priests once again start favouring Ged for a miniscule amount of time before going back to being rather stand-offish. At least the Archbish likes us now.

And now, the end is near...​

Ged is now sixty-one years old. He’s been High King of Ireland for years, and undisputed master of the island for a lot longer. Hard to remember life before him, for many people. Most of his army are veterans, and the new blood knows nothing but loyalty and love for a monarchy that has, to their eyes, always existed. Such is the way of things.

Still, he should rest more now. No need for more great feats of strength and-wait, where’s that boss music coming from?

Apparently, the plebs are being beaten up by their betters. Oh dear. Can't have that​

Oh great, now Brian has decided to grow a personality. And he’s chosen to be a brawler. Lovely.

Let’s see. We can be diplomatic about this. We’re all friends and family in Ireland now. I’ll just get Brian to stop fighting and…

Ah. Ged just wants to knock him black and blue. Well, what’s the worst that can happen? Yeah, so anyway, Ged kicks the shit out of his errant heir, and Brian slinks off to lick his wounds, and try to live down being smacked around by a pensioner. The Ned men are tough, no doubt.

Smart?

Debatable.

Do we sell 'em? Eat 'em? Or keep 'em in a pen and watch 'em fuck? Guess which one Ged picks...​

For some reason, Ged takes this as a call to agriculture. Yes, really. Someone gives him a herd of many cows and he decides to take personal charge, tend to the herd and breed the balls of the bulls until he is the largest rancher in these parts.

And of course, he succeeds beyond wildest expectation. Dublin gets a colossal boost to trade and farming for decades, the Ned family become astonishingly rich in the process, and Ged celebrates by starting to build a new castle holding right next to his old castle holding in Dublin.

It’s…good to be king, I guess?

I see my census men have maintained their level of competence, after all these years​

Even better, all those Irish cows apparently count as Irish citizens, ticking the percentile over 50% and making the former Norse rulers a minority in the city. Mission accomplished!

Sort of!

Let’s not think too much about how the steward got those retired Vikings to embrace the Irish so readily, shall we?

Look at all those relations! No mystery how they keep warm in the frozen north​

It seems Wales has collapsed. Bits of native petty kingdoms remain but the hearty chunky heartlands have been made into the most disgusting of English soups.

With a bit of swede thrown in, for added unpleasantness.

To test the waters, and to try and get something out of that fricking Scottish alliance, we make war upon this little outcrop of Sweden just across from our waters. The game says our strength is similar, which is probably a lie. But hopefully apathy and distance will make the Swedish just not bother too hard with this one.

Right?

Eager beavers!​

Scotland, despite just having its army turned to jam by Norman blades, is all ready to go do it again with Sweden this time. I find their enthusiasm endearing, if nothing else.

And I actually feel a bit guilty now in hindsight, bleeding their kingdom dry like that. It cannot have helped the issues they had coming up.

Europe is...eventful. It sort of doesn't change much over the next few centuries, despite concerted effort from everyone involved​

Ged has a lot of allies to play with this time, not just the perky but pathetic Scots. Toulouse, the largest French duchy, rides with us. As does Bavaria, Carinthia and a few other smaller bits of the HRE.

Don’t be fooled by this map however. All these places are still under the thumb of France and the HRE. These two nations don’t get any weaker as time goes on, either. A problem for future me.

This whole war is a bit absurd really. A tiny bit of Welsh coast, for some reason picked up by Sweden, is now being fought over by several large and far-flung nations. The furthest of which is several thousand miles away on the edges of the Black Sea.

Also, yes, that is French and Swedish land in Iberia. It only gets worse with one incredibly loopy inheritance.

Come to think of it, France keeps getting inherited by incredibly strange and unlikely heirs. I guess this is true to life, but still strange to see in-game.

Let's hope ALL our future endeavours in Wales are this easy!​

As we are so close by, we rather un-climatically rock up and lay siege. A much larger fight is happening slightly to the east, as Chester, Mercia and a few other English lords duke it out over something or other.

It doesn’t bear much relevance to us, but it is notable how powerful these duchies are. Mercia and Northumbria own about 80% of England between them. The House of Normandy may be in charge, but it must be a constant struggle to get anything done.

Rather makes our defeat sting even harder.

What the heck are you wearing? For some reason the Irish culture has Northern European clothing by default, even though we are clearly in Western Europe.​

Ged’s children are all growing up. Princess Garb is the next, and she’s another master stewardess.

The Pope has heard of our extremely convoluted war with Sweden and decided it is a holy war of great importance. I don’t really get his reasoning but any excuse for a few crates of gold I suppose…

How dare these peasants demand liberty and rights? I'll soon sort this out, don't worry!​

The problem Ged has with so many alliances is that they all want him to do things for them.

A small war is brewing in southern France and after this siege is over, we’ll have to go down there and try the wine. And maybe do a little bit of fighting.

That was a bit boring...​

And lo and behold, the county has fallen with not an enemy in sight! Off to France we go then.

Never let it be said I never take Ged anywhere nice.

Hmm. Nothing for it but to sit on the beach and relax I suppose. What a way to win a war...​

As our allies go the extra mile and decide to invade Sweden itself (out of boredom I suppose), Ged and co arrive in the French Riviera. It is calm, peaceful and warm. Spring has been and now summer peaks through the blossoming trees.

Ged and his veterans, having sent the rest of the army home, stay a while, wandering through well-kept vineyards and beautiful countryside.

It’s very Last of the Summer Wine, if you know what I mean. Just a bunch of old fogeys doing nothing very much in particular, and certainly nothing important. I think it’s rather nice. Don’t you, Ged?

Ged?

…

…Ged?

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Goodnight​

Ged was happy.

His men lazed about in the meadow by the windmill, occasionally drinking or speaking, but mostly just enjoying the feeling of being alive in the springtime. Winter in Ireland was always a harsh thing, yet France, or at least the south of the kingdom, seemed blessed with kinder winds and gentler seasons.

The fighting was over. It had been over, truth be told, almost before they had arrived in the area. Toulouse welcomed them with open arms regardless, and they had spent a pleasurable week wandering the land, ecstatically idle in the way only old men and young children can be.

They had done much together, these fellows. Many of them had been with Ged since the beginning, or shortly thereafter. But many were northerners, of Ulster, of Dublin. A few even kept to the old pagan ways, which their king and commander abided with humour.

They were good men. They had borne him on their backs a thousand times, and he them. In truth he was well pleased with the world, and all that was in it, and all that had come to pass in his life. In the beginning, he was a man amongst many. A petty king to be sure, but petty. Uncommonly strong, and possessing a spark of genius that many called madness, he had worked his way through guile and luck to the top.

And now here he was. His brothers in arms basking in the French sun. A loving wife, and most beloved Queen, awaiting his return. Oh…when he was young, he had not ever suspected the joy that was coming his way when he spied and signed her name for a compact. It was no romantic affair, but she seemed determined to make it such.

And, as in much that she tried, she succeeded. She was no warlock, he knew. She had no magic, other than love, and a keen mind. Mind! They both shared a love of the body that had caused no shortage of outrage amongst the clergy, and bountiful seedlings to grow.

He had no complaints. His children were beautiful. All of them. Ged loved them all, dearly. Even Brian, who waved at him from the other side of the field. Brian had been there since the beginning too. Before Urraka. Before Ireland. Before…even the spark of madness arose within. Despite his rough edges, and his failings, and his flaws, and their somewhat combative history, he was proud of his firstborn. Of all his children, except perhaps John-Paul, he was the most well-rounded, and he had done that himself.

Ged smiled down at Brian as he ambled past, following a butterfly out of the meadow and up the hill. Yes, he thought suddenly. Yes, he was satisfied Brian would be alright.

He would be king hereafter, and Ireland would be better for it. No other had a chance of resolving the issues of the day. Standing up to England. Corralling the family in his absence.

Ged sighed, at the climb that made his joints ache ever so slightly more than they had yesterday, and at the future. It was true, he knew, that trouble might lie ahead for the kingdom. His love might be boundless, but his lands were not. One son per county was a recipe for calamity. He knew it. Brian knew it. But Brian was clever. And strong, judging by his impressive left-hook. Ged tapped the side of his head.

The little shit remembered how to throw a punch. All well and good.

He reached the top of the hill, and the butterfly, impressed by his efforts, fluttered down next to him on some unknown flower sprouting from the virgin earth. From his seat, he surveyed the majesty of the world. It was beautiful. The breeze carried a hint of bread, blossom, fire and water. The sun was warm, but not overly so. The grass was as green as any Irishman could wish.

Ged was happy.

From within his light doze, he heard a whisper on the wind. He flicked his ear, and breathed out slowly. The birds chirped in the tree just behind him.

The wind spoke again, and Ged opened his eyes, for he heard his own name.

“Ged…Murchad, do you know me?”

He looked around and saw nothing, so he answered no. And yet…

“Yes, my lord. I know you.”

How could he not? It was he, that had trod by him for far too many years. He who had nudged him into that marriage contract. He whom had shown him the way.

…he whom had said all those drinking holidays were a great idea.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The ghost chuckled and the sound slowly centred on Ged’s right, as if someone or something had sat down next to him.

“That’s gratitude for you.”

“Oh fuck off. Even if you were a pretty damn good guardian angel, I guess.” Ged stroked his beard and frowned. “How much of…everything, how much of that was me?”

“Mostly you,” the voice said. “I’m not so enamoured with you that I puppet-mastered your whole life. Point of fact, I only showed up-”

“Just before it all started to go right. Yeah, that’s why I asked.”

“What do you want to hear? Yes, I manipulated a shit ton of stuff behind the scenes. I even dressed you once or twice, though the green colour was your choice. Honestly though, you mostly did stuff, and I played with it.”

“How comforting.” Ged shifted. “It occurs to me that I wasn’t the best Christian.”

“Like I care? And you weren’t dreadful. Only one ethnic cleansing to your name and you only implied you wanted the problem dealt with. Your bagmen are sadistic buggers.”

“Shit…you aren’t an angel are you.”

“Nope.”

“The other side then?”

“Nope. Although speak of the devil-” the voice paused and suddenly a loud squeal and screech broke the peaceful afternoon air. A bulky metal cage plopped down in front of Ged. Inside was a large and very angry looking white rabbit with red eyes. Ged looked around in confusion but snapped back to the rabbit when it began swearing almost incomprehensible filth out of its tiny mouth.

“Quiet you,” the voice said smugly. “That little bastard is PTM. And it has been the devil incarnate on your whole life. Set you up to be a twisted little toy in the hands of evil and nasty monsters such as I.”

Ged recoiled mentally at the implicit and existential horror, nay, nightmare, this creature was suggesting. Was his whole life merely a game to be played by such beings of bizarre and unworldly…he didn’t even know how to describe them. Spirits? Demons? They seemed to speak as if they were beyond the world itself, beyond Ged and even Ged’s God.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, it was a thundering nuisance, I’m sure. Horrible nuisance for you. So, when I found out what they’d cooked up, I decided to…intervene. You were always supposed to break out of Munster, defeat the other Irish lords. Become king. The helping you out part? Was my idea.”

“So…why? What happens now?”

“Well, you lived your life, didn’t you? PTM here played their tricks. You got out of them, mostly unscathed. You were happy. So was everyone else we collectively could reach. Not too shabby at all, my friend. You’re still dammed, of course. I can’t stop others picking you up and throwing you away. PTM did their work well, and you service their needs. But I hope I made this life as pleasant as possible.”

“The…nightmare, it never ends, right?”

“It might, one day. When my kind gets bored and discards you for something else. But there’s always the chance of resurrection, and the whole thing starting again. You lead a doomed existence, Ged. Nothing to do about it but confront that. Own it. Go back to the rock and push it up the hill, with a smile.”

“Sounds like gobshite to me.”

“Well, you have a long time to learn to accept it.”

“And why are you here now? Couldn’t you have waited till I was on my deathbed?”

The voice was silent, but soft hands caught Ged’s body as the king realised.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I’m dying very soon then?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the precise time. I would have brought you back to Dublin.”

Ged sighed. “I would have liked one last talk with Urraka and the rest.”

“You left nothing unsaid. I know that, at least.”

“True.”

Ged stared up at the clouds pass him them by. If he were honest, this was not a terrible place to die. He had seen far worse places. Boys put down in the mud. Criminals hung at the stock. Lost at sea, that was probably the worst.

“You still there?”

“Of course.”

“So…right, so Brian is going to be king after me?”

“That is what you indicated. Eventually. Trust me, I debated it as much as you did.”

“I just can’t see Ged Junior doing a good job. And, he’d hate it anyway. Still, I hope he doesn’t do anything foolish.”

The voice was silent.

“What do you know?”

“Many things. It will not be easy for Brian. But you knew that.”

“I do not regret my children. Any of them.”

“Just so. But your lands will be a mess for a while afterwards.”

“But you can help him, right?”

“…excuse me?”

“I said, Brian’ll have you to help him. So, he’ll be fine, eventually.”

“I…if that is your wish, I’m sure I could pop in on him from time to time.”

“You can’t just…do the same thing you did for me?”

“One time only. He’d have to open himself up to it. And I’m not sure he knows how.”

“Ah.” Shit. That was a shame, Ged thought. And yet, he could be his own man far better than Ged ever was allowed to.

“And what happens to me now?”

“When you die?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t quite know. I suppose you go back and do it all again with some other sap telling you what to do. May or may not be better at it than me. Maybe they’ll force you to be naked all the time. Maybe they’ll kill you quickly to get at your son. There’s all sorts of things that could happen.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It does. I don’t suppose…well, I may have a solution to that, for a while at least.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. If I’m going to be sticking around helping out your family, I could use your spirit as a go-between.”

“What, so I’d haunt my own family?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Not sure who would be able to see you, or when you’d be able to manifest a presence. But it would be an extra layer of insurance, I suppose. They might be more likely to listen to you than me.”

“My choices aren’t amazing. Disembodied spirit, or constantly reborn plaything.”

“You’ll make do. How about it?”

Ged drew a deep shuddering breath. His last, he realised.

“Sure, why not?”

He watched, horrified, when later that evening Brian found his corpse. His heart broke for the poor boy, who sobbed and clutched at his body like a child anew.

“Promise me he’ll be alright. That they’ll all be alright.”

He whispered to the winds; his own voice now quieter than a human could ever hear.

“I promise, always and forever, to do my best.”

The spirit’s voice was now much louder and all-encompassing, deeper than the sea and wider than the night sky.

“I do as well. They shall always have help, for those that ask.” Ged promised, as his-Brian’s men, wept openly and shouldered his body on their shields.

“Come then. Life goes on.” The voice chuckled again.

“No rest for the wicked.”

The END​