Ice and Snow - 769 Finland

[alenalenalen3]

In September, the monument to my ancestors is finished. It is glorious, so glorious in fact that I use the prestige gained from building it to immediately put those prisoners back to work on a building spree for the betterment of Finnish society. I’m sure they’ll get to go home eventually.

Tähtaman continues to be my most effective council member. His spy ring brings back enough knowledge of Roman construction practices that we are able to reorganize how construction in Finland is done. My new buildings are both quicker and cheaper to construct. Tähtaman also has a lovely daughter named Ilkay at roughly the same time. I must watch my back if he becomes too successful. Luckily, I am able to turn this success back around on him and use it to improve my own majesty, taking the credit for these new building practices myself. After all, who has been ordering this construction spree?

Just when I begin contemplating the best way to inform the band of warriors my steward collected that there would be no fighting, a wonderous event occurs:

Sure, the bribes needed to support my claim on the county have basically emptied the warchest, but if Chief Ahma of Sortavala can put more than 700 men in the field I’ll eat my hat. Chief Ahma is also depressed, so I am honestly doing him a favor by removing this responsibility from him. I pat my chancellor on the back and tell him to begin fabricating claims elsewhere.

Unfortunately, all the pressure of my hasty war preparations start to stress me out. I had grown used to the light workload of the past few months, and I send a prayer of thanks to Tapio and Mielikki that the hunter’s physique they gave me is offsetting the strain on my health. Truly, where would I be without the gods?

I declare war on Chief Ahma in early June of 774. The entire army is not mobilized, that would be too costly. Instead, about 700 troops join the band of soldiers my steward recruited and together they march on Käkisalmi. Our enemies retreat before us and yield the battlefield without a fight, and my men settle into a siege.

Then word comes that Chief Sampo of Savo has taken advantage of my attack to press for his own subjugation of Sortavala!

I urge my men to hurry up the siege, so that we may take what is ours and then let our enemies bash their heads against themselves. My men soon take the tribe, but the doors to the temple of Raivola remain barred to us. This state of affairs does not last for long, and I celebrate the new year by praying to the gods at my newly-conquered holy site. I pray that they do not mind the blood, my troops were a bit over-zealous in their handling of prisoners.

More wonderful news comes when I learn that Chief Sampo has made a bit of an ass of himself. His attempt to subjugate Chief Ahma has turned around and bit him in the ass, Ahma might have yielded Käkisalmi to me without much of a fight, but he has driven back Chief Sampo’s army and is successfully sieging his territory.

Not wanting to interrupt a good thing, I have my men dig in and sit back until Chief Ahma acknowledges his loss. Unfortunately for me, Chief Ahma’s good fortune eventually turns around and his army is beaten back, briefly tangling with my own. The stress of wondering whether Chief Ahma would surrender to me or Chief Sampo is immense, and one night I –

---

My name is High Chief Jalo of Suomi, and I am not ready to rule.

With the sudden and unexpected death of my father on January 18, 776, my mother has stepped in to run things. I am only 10 after all. My brother Kaleva has been crowned Chief of Uusimaa, and my father’s duchy has been internally fragmented. Thankfully I retain the larger fragment!

I know that my father had intended to give my brother land outside of his duchy, but upon his death he did not yet own any. I do now, as an envoy has ridden into Häme to announce the surrender of Käkisalmi to my rule. Once I become of age, I will have to begin the troublesome process of revoking my brother’s title and giving him land elsewhere. Likely Käkisalmi, land my zealous father would probably have never let slip through his greedy fingers. Of course, that is in the future, my mother would never agree to let me strip her other son of land.

Although I am not of age, there are several things I do need to put in order. I ask my mother to retain the same council members as my father, ask to train under marshal Pyera, and ask my mother to intervene on Chief Ahma’s behalf against Chief Sampo.

This bears some explaining. In the last days of his life, my father became increasingly worried that Sampo would become too powerful if he gained domain over Ahma. My lands would only be slightly larger than his, which is a much smaller edge than I would like in matters of war.

Imagine the look that must have come over Chief Ahma’s face when his envoy of surrender returned with an alliance! Word reaches Häme on March 1, 776 that Chief Ahma has accepted our help!

The armies of both Chief Ahma and Chief Sampo have been depleted by this war. Mine, however, have not. The conquest of Käkisalmi cost ourselves less than a hundred men from all causes (mostly by disease and feral animals). We smash Chief Sampo’s army at the battle of Kitee, then leave half the men in Sortavala to undo the siege while the rest march on Sampo’s territory.

Unfortunately, while we successfully give Ahma victory over Savo, our fighting has other consequences. High Chief Päiviö of Pohjanmaa (no relation to the Päiviö still rotting in my dungeons!) took advantage of Chief Sampo’s depleted armies to declare a war of subjugation against him.

Ah well, it is best to make these mistakes while young. Or so my mother tells me. We do not come to Sampo's defense.

I almost have a heart attack and join my father in the afterlife when one of Tähtaman’s men melts out of a shadow and informs me that my spymaster (technically my mother's spymaster, but we all know how good she is with intrigue) has discovered a new plot:

Taimi the duelist is trying to have Into (who has gained the ironic epithet ‘the Gentle’ for his actions in taking the temple in Raivola) killed! To my surprise the man asks me how we should proceed, advising that while success in arresting Taimi is not assured, it is quite probable.

I say that Taimi, as the deadliest combatant known in Finland, scares me more than anyone else in the realm. I tell him to ask her nicely to drop the plot, but am fully prepared to let Into die to appease Taimi’s anger. Thankfully it does not come to that, and Taimi drops her plot.

---

To my delight, as my regency enters its ninth month my chancellor succeeds in fabricating a claim on Pohjanmaa to the north. This allows us to go to war against High Chief Päiviö while he is still attempting to subjugate Chief Sampo. My approval of the decision to attack immediately is a mere formality, the troops are already being marshalled when I am asked. We are unfortunately not quick enough to prevent Chief Sampo’s surrender, but we do manage to easily take our objective. In a turn of events that I find amusing, the only battle of the entire war (which we were loosing due to unexpectedly heavy resistance) is ended by Päiviö’s surrender to me.

I grant Pohjanmaa to General Into for his service. That he has no living relatives might also factor into the decision.

For roughly a year, nothing happens. Then to my great delight, Chief Ihala dies and his remaining two counties are split between his two sons. I immediately declare war to subjugate one. It is swift, and the boy chief quickly falls in line. The next year, one of my courtiers inherits a weak claim on a duchy off in Siberia. I pass on pressing that claim.

On January 1, 782, I finally become of age and my mother’s regency ends.

I immediately set myself to work. I devote myself as a follower of Akka, praying that she will help me with my poor diplomatic skills. I instruct my council to pass low centralization law, which they do promptly. I also arrange a marriage with a young Romuva woman skilled in diplomacy.

I revoke my brother’s title to Uusimaa. Although he is angry over the fact, he’s known this was coming for years now. I plan on handing him the next county I take in war, which hopefully will be soon. Kaleva Hämäläinen might be only 11, but he my heir and (rightfully) angry with me.

Then one day in court, I catch the eye of a girl named Aslaug.

She’s a good conversationalist and very learned. She’s also a lowborn Norse pagan, so I‘m not quite sure how she wound up in my court. We got to talking, and the next morning I woke up in her chambers.

Oh my father must be spinning in his grave! That zealot would never continence his son sleeping with a follower of the Germanic pagan ways. I make a note to ask the guards to keep an eye out for his ghost, just in case.

Soon enough, Aslaug informs me that she is pregnant, pointedly raising her eyebrows when I ask her who the father is. Ah, um, uh… I stammer out a congratulations to her before I flee to my chambers. I had not intended my firstborn to be a bastard, and now I must wrestle with what course of action to take from here. My only condolence is that I still have a few months to decide what to do, and that my wife Balba does not know.

Yet.

As Aslaug’s pregnancy runs its course, I am wracked with guilt. She is forced to lie about who the father is, and what little company I can give her is done mostly in secret. I finally resolve to tell Balba about the whole thing so that I can then inform the whole world, but she preempts me by telling me that she is also pregnant.

I head out and immediately make a small offering to Akka, praying that both women deliver safely. Then I head back to work. I revoke the boy chief Ukko’s title on Sortavala (if he died right now, his independent brother would inherit) and hand the province off to my brother, who is now mostly placated.

Then comes the time for the women to give birth. I thank my lucky stars that Aslaug gives birth to a girl, named Rögnhildr. I acknowledge that the child is mine, but do not legitimize her. This of course turns my wife’s opinion of me sour, but I believe I can easily repair that relationship.

Then when my diviner tells me that the stars my wife’s child is expected to be born under are extremely auspicious, I fall to the ground and writhe in pain. My court now believes that I am possessed.

My son Taisto is born on May 7, 783. As we all celebrate, Steward Kettu walks in and informs me that he has raised yet another group of warriors to fight in my name.

What is with this man and raising unneeded troops? I just emptied the treasury to build another market village for crying out loud! I am unable to start a war in that timeframe, and the warriors leave dejected and angry.

Vergava, the daughter of my marshal and his duelist wife becomes of age. She is a skilled tactician, following in the footsteps of her parents. My brother Kaleva also becomes of age, but he is much less skilled in… pretty much all areas. It does not take long to convince the notables of the realm to switch their votes for my successor to my infant son, in the hopes that he proves more capable.

I set Vergava up with Kaleva, seeing as there was a decided lack of good options to marry Vergava to and Kaleva’s children will need a good influence in their life. This turns out to be a very good decision, as Vergava soon reports back to me through Tähtaman’s spy network that my brother was plotting to kill me!

I have a fit in my private quarters that ends with several of my belongings smashed. That bastard, he’s only angry with me because I revoked his title! It’s not like I didn’t give him one as a replacement! The only thing that calms me was Vergava’s assurance that she has managed to talk Kaleva out of his foolish plan, so I take no action.

Disaster strikes when news arrives in January of 787 that Olavi Virtanen, an unlanded man in High Chief Päiviö’s court, is out hiring adventurers to conquer my realm. There is only one possible response I can make: I change my ambition from improving my diplomacy to become king of Finland, and wait for my truce to expire with Päiviö so that I can invade using the subjugation causus belli.

Then another man, Hannu of something or other to the east, plans to invade me! I shell out my entire treasury in bribes to arrange his death, but nothing results.

I enter into war against my northern neighbor in late 788. I am too late to prevent the first invasion though, Päiviö surrenders a few days after Olavi's hired thugs arrive, meaning that my attempts to prevent both of these invasions have been thwarted. I also invaded my northern neighbor for essentially no gain, as I have destroyed all the troops they could levy in battle even if my newest vassal didn't hate my guts and was willing to come to my aid. I prepare a desperate attack to fight off my opponent.

Not all turns out to be lost though! The gods shine down their favor upon me and strike Olavi Virtanen down with pneumonia. His entire army disintegrates without anyone to bankroll them, and for a brief moment I can sigh in relief. Unfortunately, that is when Hannu arrives with his much larger army.

I am in a terrible position. My opponent outnumbers me 3,500 to 2,500. Between my bribes to (fail) to have Hannu assassinated and the cost of my northern invasion, none of my soldiers have been fully paid in almost six months. My new vassals to the north hate me and refuse to send me any troops, and my current vassals, ex-general Into and my brother, also refuse to send any troops. Morale is at an all-time low in the camps.

I take drastic measures to squeeze out as many men as I possibly can. While I cannot revoke my newest vassal's titles because of my truce with them (not that they have many in the first place...), I can and do revoke Into and my brother's titles to forcibly raise their troops. I thank the gods again when they both yield their titles, and am able to squeeze about 400 more men into my army at Häme. Of course, doing this puts me well over the limit of demesne I can properly administrate and further exacerbates my lack of finances. I have heard some of the men joke that they will only get paid if the enemy bribes my troops to disperse rather than fight.

As I am writing this down, I receive news that Hannu’s men have sacked the temple of Loviisa and have turned to march on us. The final battle of the war will be upon us in a matter of days. They are expected to arrive in late December. I take command of the army myself and begin making preparations for battle.

What have I done to anger the gods so? Is this all a punishment for bedding Aslaug? Perhaps if I had been as zealous as my father, this fate would not have befallen me. Ah, it is too late for me now. If anyone finds this diary, know that I went into battle fully ready to die defending my home, my honor, and my people.

---

A/N: Wow, this game really doesn't want me to have nice things. I haven't given up yet though, and can promise at least one more update (even if that update is "I died and got a game over"). Hopefully I'll get a pagan Christmas miracle.

 

[alenalenalen3]

Like many others, my feelings about my brother in the aftermath of the Triple Invasions of 789 are conflicted. The measures he took to meet the threats of Olavi Virtanen and Hannu angered many people, myself included. However, his actions at the first and second battles of Häme will ensure his name lives on in legend.

What I think won him that first battle was the actions of his steward, Kettu. Although he had irritated my brother immensely with his habit of collecting eager warriors at inconvenient times, Kettu for once arrived at just the right time, showing up in Häme on the eve of battle with several hundred eager men. If anything, his resourcefulness at pulling a small army out of thin air was much more impressive than my brother's theft of my land to forcibly conscript my people.

The first Battle of Häme broke out on December 24, 789. While it was clear to me from the beginning that my brother was having the better of the exchange, most men credit December 27 as the crucial day that saw the tide of the battle change when my brother developed a surprising proficiency for winter fighting. The First Battle of Häme ended in a great victory for my brother, with Hannu retreating to lick his wounds.

This was where my brother made a fatal mistake. He believed that now that his forces outnumbered Hannu, he could retire back from leading the troops. He sent his army on without him to free the county of Uusimaa, which they did. However, while his army was high off of victory, Hannu’s men were furious with the rage of defeat. They recovered and attacked my brother’s army just after it freed Uusimaa, at a time when my brother was expecting a single minor victory to be enough for him to force Hannu into a peace settlement.

My brother’s men were slaughtered. Nobody is really sure what went wrong, the stories from the survivors were far too diverse. In the end my brother’s men retreated several hundred miles north, leaving Hannu free to move forward to lay siege to Häme.

My brother left his capital just before the siege began, and met up with and rallied his fleeing troops. They then marched south for a desperate assault to try and defeat Hannu before he could capture Häme. If morale had been low at the eve of the First Battle of Häme, it was now at rock bottom. My brother was outnumbered once more, his troops now hadn’t been paid in over a year, Hannu would have the advantage of being on the defense this time, and my brother’s newfound skill at winter warfare wouldn’t matter too much in the middle of August. Our record keeping from this time lapsed heavily, as everyone felt the end was already set in stone.

Records of what happened in that second fateful battle at Häme are as contradictory as those from Uusimaa. The one I was told in the immediate aftermath was that my brother's army again had the advantage from the very beginning. Then Jalo took offense of the carnage surrounding him and made a point of seeking out and dueling the enemy commander, Hannu. This duel ended with my brother’s death, but his army came away victorious.

I don’t believe it. Oh sure, I believe my brother once more had victory gifted to him by the gods for some reason, but my brother was very competent in personal combat. He wasn’t on par with my wife’s mother, but I’d say he was about half the swordsman she is. His opponent was an infirm 57 year-old man who honestly had no place on the battlefield. My brother couldn’t have possibly lost to this man, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Men now tell stories of how my brother was set upon by three dozen men of Hannu’s retinue during the duel, and of how he slayed all of them but Hannu before dying of his wounds. Others say he did not duel Hannu at all, and instead died leading a charge into the enemy's center. A few even claim he did not die at all but has instead retreated into seclusion, haunted by all the deaths he saw and inflicted in those two great battles.

I know the last one is false, I spoke with the men who identified my brother's body in the aftermath of the fighting.

In any case, Hannu’s army was shattered and the war was over. Of course, now that the fighting was over the many people that my brother had angered had their revenge. Rather than the throne passing on to Jalo’s son as he had intended, I was elected to be the next leader. Taking advantage of our succession laws, the northern counties that were subjugated by my brother in 788-9 took the opportunity to prop up my brother's son as a figurehead and break away.

I now also understand my brother’s issues with vassals. Some idiot has placed my brother’s second son, a boy named Mielus in charge of two counties. Mielus was born the day before his father died and is in no way fit to rule anything. I plan on rectifying this issue soon, along with Chief Sampo’s control over two too many counties. But recent fighting has eroded away our forces, if war were to break out right now I wouldn’t even be able to field a thousand men. Once my army is built back up, I have several titles to revoke and a breakaway kingdom to bring back into the fold.

I also come to understand my brother’s issues with Priestess Loviisa of Loviisa. The old hag has taken to sending me hate mail ever since my brother’s death. I swear if I hear one more word about Ukko striking me down with lightning…

I order my diviner to assure her that I am a follower of Ukko, and have been ever since I became a man!

I moved into the capital at Häme in March of 791. I took the opportunity to take a tour of the dungeons, and quickly decided we have way too many prisoners. I have no idea how one of them, Susi of Olonets, even got there, so I simply banish him from the realm. Most of the rest of the prisoners were women who had been captured by my brother’s sieges in the north, I proceeded to ransom them one by one. Terho Virtanen is suspected by virtue of his name in participating in the recent invasions against us, but as gold is precious and my jailors surprisingly tight-lipped about where he came from, his ransom is assured. Then there is old man Päiviö, who has outlived both the man who put him in jail as well as his successor, somehow surviving for 20 years in prison. I take pity on him and ransom him. The last prisoner remaining in jail is a woman who for some reason cannot be ransomed. I take pity on her as well and release her free of charge.

I make over a hundred gold from clearing out the dungeons, and invest it in two market towns.

In July of 791 my father’s spymaster finally passes away from the stress that has been upon him these past thirty-odd years. I replace him with another pagan, this time a man named Dovyat gada Zagare.

My sister Tehri soon goes into hiding, leaving me to wonder why this is. The question is answered when she gives birth to a bastard. She is not married, and the father is betrothed to another. How scandalous! All the talk that follows about who is sleeping with who and who everyone thinks should sleep with who causes me to take up my father’s hobby of matchmaking. There are currently four unwed women at court (no men I notice), five if you include my mother. I set them up with the best men I can lure into Finland. One of them even has a nearby claim!

My wife gives birth to a son named Arvo. I gain much excitement from that, but even more from the fabrication of a claim on Olonets. As we are still recovering from war and are broke, I cannot press it now, but I plan to soon!

To take up some of my spare time, I pick up gardening. I glance at my gardener distrustfully though. There’s been a few peasants who’ve supposedly gone missing near the hedge maze…

The next summer, I declare war on High Chief Ihala of Karelia over Olonets… Hmm, I wonder if he is in any way related to High Chief Ihala that my father faced back in his first conflict? The man can barely bring 700 troops to muster, so it is a quick campaign. I then turn north to take back Pohjanmaa from my baby nephew. During this campaign my long-time marshal and father-in-law Pyera dies, and I bring in a man from Africa to replace him.

I hope he likes snow.

When that war ends, I discover that there was a mistake in the peace process. I have taken the entire duchy of Phojanmaa rather than just the province. I honestly wasn’t expecting to get this far this fast, but I will take it. I think it’s time for me to do some reorganization, several of my vassals are a bit large. First I revoke the county of Savo, then I revoke Käkisalmi –

Ah well, my nephew will come to see reason soon enough. The revolt has only a few hundred men, my near two thousand is more than enough. This is further compounded when steward Kettu brings in a few hundred bloodthirsty men. In the aftermath of the conflict I revoke two counties, then turn on the one man who didn’t revolt and revoke one of his. He doesn’t object. I now have four vassals who hate me very much, but I can easily knock them out. I reward steward Kettu for his service by giving him land, and then hand out counties to random courtiers.

Now all that is left on my list is to rack up the funds and piety I need to declare myself King of Finland.

---

It has been a long time since I wrote down anything. Not much of import happened for almost ten years. Between 795 and 803, only a handful of events happened while I built up what was needed to form the kingdom of Finland. The first was in 797, when a Danish army marched through the land on its journey east to parts unknown. Two years later my wife invited me to a plot to help kill my nephew. I agreed of course, the little shit hates my guts. Nothing has come of it so far though. In August of 802 steward Kettu, the most reliable man in Finland, came through with some more warriors. I used them and a few of my own troops to subjugate Joensuu. Then came the fateful year of 804. On August 26, 804, I declared the creation of the Kingdom of Finland Suomi.

I then took the opportunity to clean house. I attempt to imprison one of my counts who hates me and is conveniently running a plot, but it fails. His 200 men are crushed by a fraction of my full army. Now that he is imprisoned, I revoke his title. I also revoke the title of the more troublesome nephew of mine. This leaves me as the only man in the kingdom with more than a single county to his name, though two of my counts in the Duchy of Oulu hate my guts. I hand the duchy title off to the one who doesn't hate me up there, and thus make the angry counts someone else's problem.

I thus now have direct control of basically all southern Finland, of my vassals only a single count has a (somewhat) negative opinion of me, and of my five children only one is a boy. I begin to turn my eyes east, towards the remaining two provinces of Finland beyond my control, and to the west, where I stare at Sigurdr's Swedish kingdom and hope it fragments with his eventual death. I also examine the coast of Suomi and debate moving my capital there so that I might build shipyards and raid.

But first, there is the matter of the rebellious ex-count rotting in my dungeon. I do have a few ideas of what to do with him though...

A/N: I honestly wasn't expecting to survive, and then a pagan Christmas miracle occurred. Then it backfired on me, and I stopped taking screenshots because it was the end and why bother but then it became pagan Christmas in July at the cost of my character. Between my character gaining a massive combat boost at the start of a desperate battle for the kingdom and then dying ignobly in a duel against an infirm 57 year-old man, I have learned that the game giveth, and the game taketh away.

I am also a bit lost as to where to go once I take the last two provinces in Finland. I'm hoping moving my capital to a coastal province will allow me to start raiding England (I have the tech, but my capital doesn't border the sea and the technology hasn't spread), which as I've learned in a few test games as Denmark is extremely profitable (the boats don't seem to be as expensive for the Norse as they were for the Irish, hopefully the Finns get them on the cheap too, or at least cheap enough). I need to get my main duchy upgraded so that I can field a larger army to face Sweden, something that will have to happen when I eventually make a go at becoming emperor of Scandinavia. Of course, to do that I'll need more troops than I can field right now, which means I need cash for buildings and retinue. I'm currently fabricating to my south, I'm aiming to swallow half of Estonia to gain the religious site there (the possibility of an heir breaking away with all of four counties doesn't seem too dangerous).

 

[alenalenalen3]

As the year 804 comes to a close, I, King Kalevo of Suomi, decide that there are a host of plans to put into motion.

First of all is the matter of my kingdom. It seems that my personal hoarding of land from my vassals has caused some jokes to be made at my expense by the people. One of these jokes is that there is no kingdom of Finland, rather just an extremely large High Chiefdom of Suomi. I do not find it very funny myself, but it has spread so far and wide that nobody bothers to call my realm Finland, and instead they call it Suomi.

Secondly is the matter of our faith. It has become increasingly obvious that the Suomenusko faith needs to be reformed if it is to compete with other faiths beyond its homeland. While I am not a zealous or especially pious man, I cannot deny that the gods gifted my brother victory twice when he should have by all measures lost badly. I decide to do them a favor in return, and while I have other plans on how to thank them in the immediate future, in the long term it would do our faith well if it were reformed, which will require Finland to expand south.

There are two holy sites that we must acquire. One is on the islands off Estonia in the Baltic sea, but the more immediate concern is Novgorod, where the Temple of Soltsy is in the hands of Slavic pagans. Because they are Slavic and not Suomenusko pagans, two quick wars of conquest are all that I will need to take Novgorod. I have my chancellor fabricating on my fellow Suomenusko believers in Ladoga, as taking land from them requires a little extra... justification.

Sigurdr and his realm is the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. They outnumber and border me. To face them I need to boost my military capability, and I have come to the conclusion that the prestige and gold needed to pay for it will have to come from outside the kingdom – I do not want to simply hope that the Finnish economy grows faster than that of our western neighbor! That means that I must raid rescue the wealth of others from danger and deposit it safely in my coffers. While fantasies of sailing down the Dnieper and into the filthy rich territories of the Mediterranean are nice, they are exactly that, fantasies. My marshal has informed me that our boats cannot sail down rivers like those of the Norse, and that even if we could the only place we could expect to successfully raid would be the Byzantine holdings in the Crimean Peninsula.

Ah well, it seems that the English must bear the burden of Finnish hospitality. Of course to reach them we will need ships. We do have access to the technology to build ships here in Häme, but that is also the problem. Häme does not border the sea. When I get my hands on the man who decided to set up the infrastructure for making boats this far inland… The only solution is to move the capital to Karjaa and use stolen Byzantine technology to set up shipbuilding there. As soon as the next batch of economic advances from our spymaster comes in, our capital will be moved and shipyards constructed.

Then there is the matter of my heir. It was my son Arvo up until recently. While only twelve years old, the boy knows more about matters of diplomacy, war, and intrigue than I do myself! If he did not think the world of me, I would fear him putting a dagger in my back.

However, our way is to use elective gavelkind succession, and as I am a king that allows my dukes and counts to have a vote. Just prior to their titles being revoked, my nephew Mielus (born the day before his father died… an ill omen if ever there was one!) and the traitorous ex-count Skuli have thrown their support for my nephew Taisto, turning the tide. If I were to die today, rule would pass to Taisto and my son would only gain the counties I hold beyond the duchy of Suomi. If the votes changed to favor Arvo, then he would inherit the realm exactly as I have it now.

While many would attribute their change in votes to the fact that I have stolen their lands, I believe there is another reason. If I am right, it is the work of my brother’s ex-wife, Balba gada Zagare.

She is the current wife of Skuli and is the mother of Taisto. While those who have met her claim she is not a cruel woman, the tales I heard during my recent tour of the dungeons have convinced me otherwise. She is also envious of my throne, and as women cannot inherit it (my brother never did get around to changing that law) she has decided to give the crown to her own son. While I understand her wish to put her son on the throne, she needs to be realistic. Mielus and Skuli only have votes as long as they hold land, and neither of them do so anymore. The next time votes are counted Arvo will receive his status as heir back.

While I intend to be lenient to Mielus, I will not be the same towards Skuli. That idiot caused about a hundred people to be killed in his revolt, a revolt that everyone knew had no chance of success. Their blood is on his hands, and he knows it. My jailors tell me he has become depressed, which combined with his imprisonment does not bode well for his life expectancy.

Thus I decide to get a final use out of the man before he dies. I travel to a nearby shrine and ask the gods to bring prosperity and growth for my realm. Specifically, I ask them to ensure the English prosper well so that my men may relieve them of their financial burdens. Of course, to ask something of the ancestors, something must be given in return. Skuli is brought out and, well, you get the picture.

Before the end of December, Arvo is once again my heir.

In February I again go to war. I press High Chief Ihala to give up Viena, and as men march towards the staging area in Joensuu my new steward Talivaldis Gada Selija comes running into my room (poor Kettu departed this life near the end of last year). He claims that in a flash of inspiration he has come up with all the plans we need to build a new shipbuilding industry when the capital is moved.

My ancestors have made it clear: As soon as we have boats and the gold to afford putting them in the water (Talivaldis guesses that we should keep a reserve of 50 gold to supply a raiding party of 14 galleys), we shall set sail for England!

While at war my wife gave birth to our fifth daughter, proving once more that the ancestors are looking out for the prosperity and stability of the kingdom. The war soon ends and the capital is moved to Karjaa.

---

My firstborn daughter, Marja, has become of age. This is a wonderful moment, not because it means she can start her life as an adult, but because it means I can put her to work.

She’s a cruel, deceitful homosexual who is more skilled at intrigue than anyone else in the kingdom, so I appoint her as my spymaster immediately. Within days she proves her worth when she uncovers a plot by my brother’s possessed bastard daughter to try and kill me, and a second plot to kill said bastard daughter. Children are a blessing. I marry the bastard off to someone in a tribe far to the south near the Magyars, both for her safety as well as my own.

Between invasions in 806 and politely (but firmly) asking for vassalizations two years later, I managed to expand my realm to the north, east, and south:

Then, while I was awaiting news of the ongoing war with Estonia over the holy site of Saaremaa, disaster strikes when I receive word that a man named Irter is raising a group of adventurers to attack me. I now finally know what it feels like to be in my brother’s shoes.

The disaster of Irter’s declaration is further compounded when my amazing spymaster daughter died from Typhus. I grieved heavily, and then threw myself into plotting Irter’s death. My first attempt, a lone bowman, failed. Faced with the same impending apocalypse my brother was, I settled my war with Estonia in a white peace to preserve my army.

Thankfully, wine succeeds where man has failed. To my even greater fortune, the Estonian who I signed the white peace with dies almost immediately, allowing me to restart my war for the holy islands. A poorly timed peasant revolt worries me for a few days, but then Sweden and Livonia conveniently declare war on Estonia for their own reasons, allowing me to grab my holy islands and finish off the revolt easily.

During this time I fall ill. While I lay in bed, wracked with sickness, my quartermaster reports that the boats are finished, and my marshal that the army is ready to begin raiding humanitarian missions to the British Isles.

On September 15, 812, the fleet leaves for Middlesex. The petty king of Essex is currently working as part of an alliance to defend against some Danes, meaning that his troops are gone and his valuables are not properly defended. Anything could happen to those poor chests of gold, so I order my troops to make sure that they stay safe. As I finally begin to recover from my illness, the troops land in Middlesex to find that my judgement of the situation was quite sound.

While the king is away, it seems that the peasants will play. Or in this case, revolt. With all the troops north fighting the Danes, none are at home to put down this uprising. Thankfully, there is an army of Finns nearby ready to render aid. History will remember 812 as the year when Finnish men selflessly fought and died to rescue the treasury of the castle of Westminster and the city of London from the hands of rebel scum.

As the months wore on and the summer of 813 came about, a large Irish army from Meath approached from the north to put down the revolt. This worried my men greatly. They were a group of heavily armed Scandinavians in a foreign country after all, it would be easy to mistake them for Vikings on a raid!

Thankfully tales of the nobility and bravery of our troops in saving the treasures of London had spread throughout the British Isles, and the Irish happily assist my men in not only putting down the rebellion, but also in sacking saving the treasures at the Bishopric of St. Paul's and the castle of Tottenham.

On December 25, 813, my fleet returns home to widespread celebration. The riches of Middlesex are safely stored away in my treasury, and if the Irish are any indication the people of Britain are very grateful. I tell my marshal to begin planning more missions like this for the future, but for the moment we have concerns closer to home. As the army marches south to capture Novgorod, I prepare to meet with my steward.

Riding on the high of my goodwill from his work in getting the shipbuilding industry in Finland up and running, Talivaldis had taken up gambling. Unfortunately for him, he was not as good at managing his own money as he is at managing mine. To cover his debts, he began skimming off of the kingdom's books, thinking that I wouldn't notice the slight dip with all the influx of British gold.

He was wrong. I might not be as greedy as my father, but he did manage to impress upon me that gold was a precious resource that was not to be wasted. With documents in hand detailing what my revenue should have been and what my revenue actually was, I confronted Talivaldis. He immediately broke down and confessed, begging me to be just in my dealings with him. I have him work without pay for a year in recompense, which seems to anger him, but that is his own fault.

Novgorod is soon taken, and I turn my eye east and quickly conquer the last county in my de jure kingdom. On June 28, 815, Finland is fully unified. I celebrate by bribing a man so that I might pass agnatic-cognatic law, just in case my only son dies.

I then began a series of Finnish raiding humanitarian missions to Britain. In 816, my army saved the treasury of the city of Lewes in Sussex after a suspicious fire broke out that ravaged the city. In 818, Finnish men rescued the treasure of castle Tintagel in Cornwall after siege engines an earthquake caused the castle to collapse. In 820, my men rescued the treasure of another castle, this time in Wessex, after it fell prey to siege engines a flaw in its foundation that brought the structure down. These selfless acts endeared me to the people of Britain, who partially repaid the debt they owed in 822 when the army of Somerset helped me rescue the treasure of the Bishopric of Sherborne in Dorset after all the church's staff died of mysterious stab wounds.

While I would have loved to build another shipyard so that I could send two humanitarian missions to Britain at the same time, the knowledge of how to build galleys had not spread enough to allow me to do so. This meant that while half of my army was rescuing gold in Britain, the other half had to be stood down.

In any case, rescuing all this gold did wonders for the Finnish economy. I invested some of it in retinues to form a standing army, to hopefully intimidate my subjects into realizing that resistance revolt is futile. Composed largely of heavy infantry (with some light infantry, archers, and light cavalry to help round them out), this force soon proved its worth. In between humanitarian missions, I expanded a bit to the south.​

It was during this war against Illmenia over the county of Gdov that my retinue proved its usefulness. Despite being heavily outnumbered, my 700 man retinue managed to route over 2000 enemy troops at the Battle of the Inkeri tribe, where the Chief of Russa was captured. As my men sieged Gdov and the war seemed to be well in hand, a revolt broke out in Olonets. This seemed minor at the time, and I merely sent a small portion of my army north to deal with it while I focused on Gdov. I proved to be mistaken, but this revolt would set into motion the weirdest series of events of my reign. My troops were able to put down the peasant army that had risen to oppose me and quickly reoccupied Olonets, but not before the rebellion managed to somehow finagle an alliance with the Yugra, a fellow Suomenusko believing tribal state east of the Ural mountains, just south of the Siberian Wastes.

The Yugra chief joined in the war before I could siege Olonets into submission, and at some point took ownership of the county. At first I thought it was meaningless, as the Yugra were certainly in no position to stop me from finishing my siege of Olonets. I figured that with Olonets in my hands I would eventually win the war by default of having the contested territory and the other side being unable to do anything about it.

This turned out to be incorrect, and the Yugra refused to acknowledge that I had won the fight for Olonets. As I was not eager to try and cross the Ural mountains to officially finish a fight that had already been won, I ordered my levies to return home and simply accepted that I would be in a perpetual cold war with some Siberians. I then concentrated on my humanitarian mission in Dorset and promptly rid my mind of worry over Olonets and the Yugra. This proved to be a mistake when the Yugra army showed up in Olonets on April 12, 823.

The Yugra army was a shell of its former self after marching all the way to Olonets. Figuring that I had an opportunity to win the war, I gathered my troops together and smashed the half-starved Yugra troops into bits. The Yugra still refused to surrender though, so I gathered up my army and called my vassals into war and began my march east. After only a few hundred miles though, I saw the terrible losses that attrition was going to wreak on my army and turned back for home, deciding that I'd be in an on-off hot war with the Yugra for the foreseeable future.

I forgot, however, about my vassals.

I was 53 years old, and as several bouts of illness had made clear to me, I would not live forever. I began to contemplate which English county would make the best location for a permanent home for me to retire to, and settled on Kent. I sent my chancellor off to begin preparations for my move there, and then realized that my vassals were still marching east towards the Yugra.

In late 823, my vassals began to siege the Yugra homeland. My vassals were just as devastated by the march to and across the Urals as the Yugra had been, but as the Yugra had raised a second army to take back Olonets and had set off to the west, the garrisons in the Yugra homeland were not enough to resist the half-starved troops of my vassals, and for a moment victory seemed to be in sight.

Then the 1000+ man strong Yugra army that had set off for Olonets turned around and marched on the 700 remaining troops of my vassals. Faced with the imminent slaughter of my vassals' troops, which would be followed by the reconquest of the occupied Yugra homeland, I decided to request a white peace to end the conflict as honorably as I could while I was as ahead as I was going to get. The Yugra accepted.

However, the treaty did not resolve the conflict in the way I had expected.

Somehow, by some strange, arcane clause of our agreement to a white peace, the high chief of the Yugra has determined himself to be my vassal. I am now the proud overlord of four counties east of the Urals, separated by what must be at least a thousand miles from the nearest friendly territory. I now have to worry how to govern land that I cannot protect or put down an uprising from.

I decide to spend the rest of my days saving up for my move to England, the reformation of my faith, and the creation of a few duchy titles to help reduce the number of direct vassals I have.

I pass away on February 11, 827, still waiting on that home in Britain.