Let's discuss the options Byzantium offers as a campaign setting, or an inspiration for one

>all that blinding and castration

Dont forget nose cutting.

Cliffnotes:

Forms late 4th century early 5th century with the split of Western and Eastern Roman empire. However it retains a strong Latin streak (Latin terminology, Latin in military speak, Latin in literature, whatever) until about the 7th century with Heraclius.

-Fervently, incredible, extensively religious. So much of their socio-political problems stem from issues of faith. Iconoclasm periods, the conflicts regarding the nature of Christ (monophysite, Miaphysite, Diophysite, whatever the hell the orthodox/catholic position is called). You cannot underestimate the presence and role of faith in their empire.

-Byzantaboos present a false image of the empire maintaining the kind of grinding war of attrition fighting of the Roman empire. Even an avowed and rather unprofessional byzantaboo ( author of hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062078&content=reviews ) explicitly pursues this point as a major thesis of his book. The byzantines (Prior to Manzikert) possessed a highly trained, experienced, capable army but one which knew it could not and should not pursue war like the Romans of old. Their frontiers were an ever-revolving door of opponents, and if they were to exhaust themselves fighting the latest Muslim or Steppe or Germanic threat all that would do is leave them exhausted when the next latest threat from those corners arrived. Warfare emphasized ambushes, raids, maneuvering to force the enemy to the diplomatic table rather than to annihilate them wholesale. Enemies today would be allies tomorrow, allies today are enemies tomorrow.

Further, outside of a brief renaissance for infantry of the line in the resurgence of the 700s-900s infantry were far and away subordinate to cavalry in importance, value, and utility.

Thank you user, that's lovely. I appreciate that.

Take the religious wars to Veeky Forums or /pol/.

>Veeky Forums
>/pol/
Same thing. Veeky Forums was a mistake.

It wasn't all that common. Basically they weren't much more likely to go Game of Thrones on their political enemies, they were just a bit more refined about it.

Most interesting period - I would say it depends on the feel you want to put in the game.Justinian and Belizarius are about restoring Rome, the wars with the Caliphate and the Sassanids before that are total wars between superpowers, the rise of the Turks and the subsequent Crusades are about restoring a nearly disintegrated empire, and the late 14 and 15th century are about gradually losing ground and delaying the seemingly unavoidable.

Murderhoboing does not work that well except when the Empire is on the ropes or nearly destroyed (late 11th, early 15th century) or in the very early years, where all matter of barbarians are around on the borders. Intrigue works great,military campaigns work as well.

Unique options - post-Roman architectural style with a lot of Hellenistic elements. As essentially a part of the Roman empire the Byzantines retained quite a few elements, especially early on - i.e. aquaducts, chariot races, etc.

Religion - except early on it is about orthodox Christianity, but there are various interpretations. There was no Pope to fully dictate dogma and in its spread, Christianity had absorbed a lot of pagan elements. Zeus doesn't do lightnings! Okay, but St. Elijah sort of does.

Actually Veeky Forums veers closer to /int/ than /pol/; it has the same nationalistic dickwaving and "my empire is better than your empire" retardation. It certainly was a mistake; Moot was dead right in never allowing it.

There's a quote I wish I could track down that I hope is not apocryphal about someone visiting the Byzantines in the 400s-500s and bitching about how you couldn't get a piece of bread or rent a room without someone trying to engage you in masturbatory religious discussion.

Another point with regards to courtly life is not to think of the Byzantines in a sanitized, quaint and familiar "Western" view of Kingship prior to the absolutism of the early modern era. This was not the tempered kingship inherited from the German successor states to Rome but the despotism of the Dominate Emperors of Rome, not the Principate lipservice to "First among equals".

Eunuchs, blindness and facial dis-figuration being as common as the most stereotypical notion of an oriental court, the kowtowing and arduous, convoluted and ostentatious displays of courtroom ritual and slavish pageantry all illustrate how exceedingly oriental the Byzantine court and aristocracy were. Outside of their religious kinship with Western Europe the Byzantine court was closer to that of the Achaemenids, the Sassanids, the Caliphs, Ottomans, Tamerlane or Babur than to the Richards, Louises, Henries, or Fredericks of the west.

I'm not sure if the Russian practice of married female seclusion a'la the harem which took hold after the Mongol dominion derived from the Romans or from some other source, but I've heard it said the Byzantines did at some points have some level of seclusion of the women. Never to the extremes of the Muslims, admittedly.

>It wasn't all that common.

I don't like just linking to a Wiki but before I go and find some specific accounts from some of my books: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzantine_culture

I'm starting to think I should compile a list of how game of thrones type brutality in the court is far from unrealistic depending on the era. Right now the most vivid example of the Saffavids and Nader Shah can be dismissed because "They aren't Europeans" but I seem to recall the early Franks having an obscene level of political infighting and murder and torture.

Murder hobo works well if you play a warlord/commander and retinue during the 11th century. Norman, Venetian, Greek(Roman). Any sort of leader in the area working to try and get land from the resurgent Komenians or trying to carve out your own thing in the style of Guiscard.

I wouldn't even say they were incredibly religious, but their religion was mixed with their state, and they took matters of state seriously.

In the west, there was no strong state in Italy for a while, so the Pope was essentially independent and could influence policy over Europe. The Patriarch of Constantinople was in a very different position. Instead,Christianity was tied to the state, presenting the Emperor as sort of God's viceroy on Earth. This gave him a lot of authority kings did not have, BUT it also meant that a schism in religion was also a state matter and a danger to the Emperor's authority.

To be honest, Byzantium did not have massive witch hunts or burnings as far as I am aware, but a lot of church schisms spilled over and became social issues, especially early on in the eastern provinces.

Veeky Forums isn't /pol/ but it is certainly retarted. It is more like the circlejerk on /tv/ or consolewar on /v/. More or less the same shit gets posted again and again leading to an endless flow of
> muh superior orthodox/katholic/islamic religion
> H R E
> muh masterrace
and endless quotes from philosophers that get ripped out of context to bait people.

Don't forget the constant "Marx is da ebuls!" threads.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzantine_culture

Alright. I objected to the idea that it was practiced wholesale and people would gets bits cut off on a whim, but I do not disagree that it did happen.

I am a bit opposed to the idea that the Byzantines were some unknowably oriental model that was completely different from Western Europe. Yes, there were differences, and often pretty big ones, but they sometimes get way overstated. The Byzantines interacted with the West just as did with the East.

Yeah, it works better when the central authority is weak. I would put a Guiscard-like campaign as a military one, though - I see murder hobos as a small band not working with any authority or having goals to set up a fief.

Working for a deposed emperor trying to get back on the throne like Justinian II might b kewl.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_mutilation_in_Byzantine_culture
What the fuck man? What is it about Greek/Byzantine culture that made them so much more fond of political mutilation than other civilizations in their vicinity?

The mutilated werent allowed to rule, so before you exile somebody you cut off some face parts.
Although, the above mentioned Justi 2 broke that tradition with his fancy golden nose.

Well, with the 11th century's you can fuck with the usual idea of the Byzantines being perpetually crumbling by focusing on a resurgent time.

>The mutilated werent allowed to rule
Other than Justinian II, were there exceptions to this or was this applied consistently? So if for example an emperor leads his troops into battle, takes an arrow to the hand and needs to get that hand amputated to prevent a deadly infection, he has to abdicate?

I actually prefer the arians view.

So did the Germans

Hes the only one I know of. It had something to do with "the emperor is god's authority on earth and god is perfect so he has to be perfect too" rationale.

aaaand just realized this sounds like a nazi joke, but I'm actually serious. The Germanic tribes were converted through arianist christians

I might be over-emphasizing it because I have a bit of a vindictive streak towards the byzantaboo worship which treats them in the same sort of ridiculous light as samurai era Japan. Acting as if the Byzantines were the kingdom of heaven on earth, this romanticized idyllic urbane and enlightened realm of supreme warriors - which ends up making you wonder "if these guys were so OP with cataphracts and neo-legionaries and all that shit why the hell is their history after Heraclius 50% getting their ass ripped apart and 50% hard-scrabble victories?"

If you cast the story of the Byzantines as one of a people constantly struggling from within and without, having to make due with outnumbered armies on a pursestring income with the corruption and infighting endemic to their society then their story becomes one of hard-wrought success and wonder that they survived as long as they did and thrived even in certain epochs.

If you cast their story as one of the greatest empire ever to grace the world since the fall of Rome, with unconquerable neo-legions fighting like Caesar and Belisarius time-traveled together with their armies, then the story becomes one of "Wow so they had all that potential and they did fuck all with it, GG no RE real impressive".

Any other Western civilization. I use the Safavids and Nader Shah as I just finished reading a great book about his life but the level of mutiliation and game of thrones type bullshit in the Persian-Turkic-Afghan society will make your head spin. And given what I can remember reading about Tamerlane, the almost concurrent going ons on the similarly intrigue ridden wasteland of the Tzarist court, it's not likely this behavior just appeared out of nowhere but seems to have been endemic to the large decadent empires that developed in the region since history began.

This happens after Nader Shah is entering his demented final year(s), but is all the more remarkable because Taqi Khan was one of his best friends (but in this case ended up revolting, possibly because of hearing that Nader was about to arrest him or was demanding a ridiculous sum of money from Taqi, who was governing Shirvan for Nader):

>"Nader had apparently taken an oath never to kill Taqi Khan. Now he sent orders for a punishment that were as extreme as an unhinged mind could devise, save that proviso. Taqi Khan was castrated and one of his eyes was torn out: NAder had given strict orders that every care should be taken that he should not die of it. Taqi Khan was left the other eye in order that he should see what was to follow. Several of his relatives and firends were executed, including his brother and his three sons; then the most beloved of his wives was given over to the soldiers and raped in front of him 'contrary to Nader's usual regard for women'. (Which is rather remarkable, as the author mentions numerous incidents where he, for instance, had 80 of his men vivisected alive for observing the rape of a woman and failing to stop it, demanding all the women seized by his men after the siege of Delhi be allowed to return safe and unharmed).

Few more examples as I find them. Nader is extreme in his brutality as he modeled himself after Tamerlane, but the Safavids he replaced (who were decadent, lazy and given over to the pursuits of pleasure and luxury) did similar mutiliations.

>nobody has posted this

After a failed attempt on his life by a marksman, Nader Shah eventually suspected his son Reza Qoli (who was an asshole but it doesn't seem likely he orchestrated it. He may have known his hanger-ons were planning it and looked the other way as he was increasingly behaving in a pomp and circumstance ostentatious way of heir-apparent that the rustic and soldier's soldier Nader Shah did not like).

He declares the bravery and courage of the man who attempted to kill him will not lead to his death if said assassin was caught. He was, brought forth to Nader Shah and told he will not be killed if he does not say a single lie when answering all that he knows about who hired him. He didn't tell a single lie. Nader "told Nik Qadam (assassin) that he would spare his life as he had promised. But Nik's aim was too good - he would have to lose his eyes".

Nader loved his son Reza, and for a long while tried to get him to show some ounce of humility, of shame and seek forgiveness. Had he done so he would have likely let him go without any punishment. But Reza failed to do so and professed innocence until at last Nader ordered his son's eyes cut out. One version says that Reza said "Cut them out and put them in your wife's cunt".

The entourage around Nader try to dissuade him because Reza, for all his arrogance, was primed to be a perfect successor and was thought to be a great king if he had succeeded his father. And the minute Nader ordered his son's eyes cut out and brought to him he wept, later berating his courtiers for not interceding to save the prince, crying "What is a father? And what is a son?"

Later on (next post)

I ran a short campaign based on this. Sort of.

The players were a group of private citizens who had boughtswindled the rights to some part of the military supply for the reconquest of Italy and Northern Africa. I figured that would work after reading about the publicani. It's not quite Byzantine empire yet since it was still the early days but it worked.

So they'd offered to do it for 20% less than their competitors, which was great - except that their urgent need to ensure shipment of 200 tons of grain and 3000 boots was hampered a little by the fact that they were just a bunch of landless con artists. A retired legionaire, a down on his luck chariot racer (Green), the daugher of a landowner who was exploiting her fathers dementia to do business in his name and a priest who changed his stance on religious matters on a daily basis.

They eventually got this *amazing* offer on large shipments from a grain merchant cartel in Aegyptus, led by a man with a hood and an ineffable accent. They only had to escape the attention of their competitors, a gang of germanic killers and the agentes in rebus who were asking a lot of pointed questions along the lines of "where's all the grain you promised to get" and "which fingernail do you want us to tear off for not getting our grain?"

10.000 gold solidus for each, and cheers were had right up until everyone who had any of their grain started dying.

Turns out the grain cartel were carthegian descendents out for vengeance who smuggled plagued rats into the barges, but by the time anyone found out about a thousand people were dying daily because they'd singlehandedly started the Plague.

They blew their total payment on a galley to Spain.

I always wonder about the Persians. It seems like everyone who wants to have an empire or be the hegemonic power in Anatolia or the Levant for the last 2 and a half millennia has wound up fighting the Persians, but I know next to nothing about their history. Not even a broad strokes kind of understanding.

I would like to offer up the civil war of 1341-1347 as another possible "most interesting period". I mean, this is the era that officially ended any long term chances of byzantine survival. Before the, the empire is still on resurgence, and is just about to recover latin greece, whose lords offered to become vassals. After it, the byzantine empire is basicly a city state. And during the war, you have Serbs, bulgars, turks and greece involved in the ever changing dynamics of the civil war. It's way more depressing, which might be why it's so unpopular, but it's damn interesting too.

Cliffnotes:

Mid 600 BCE: Alliance of Scythians, Medians, Babylonians and something else I forget took down the then hegemon of the Near-East the Assyrians. Medes have an amorphously defined empire of the Iranian Plateau to some of the Caucasus. Tried to fight the Lydians and had the famous battle where an eclipse showed up and both decided to call it quits and leave it at a draw because that was spooky (but a Greek guy predicted it).

Late 500s BCE: Rise of the Achaemenids, who dwelt in Pars province (modern day Pars) as some kind of vassal of the Medes. Establish Medo-Achaemenid (somewhat Medo-Achaemenid-Elamite, the Elamites being neighbors in modern day Khuzestan) empire. You know the whole bruhahah with the Greeks. Expand to hold, sometimes tenuously on the peripheries of Central Asia or "India" (not actual India proper but just to Pakistan) or Egypt, the massive empire.

Hold Ionian cities of Western Anatolia, a revolt happens where Athens and some other state in Greece (Euboea or one of the big islands next to the Peloponneese or Attica) support the rebels and help burn down the city and temples of Sardis. This angers the Darius I. He attempts invasion, fails with Marathon. Successor Xerxes attempts new invasion. Much more successful and goes overland through Thrace (He or Darius tried to conquer Scythians but faced the typical Nomadic troubles of conquering the nomads of the Eurasian steppe and left).

Great Greco-Persian wars of infamy occur. Thermopylae, Plataea, ect. Despite propaganda and the usual desire to avoid inconvienient truths Medized Greeks (Boeotians, Macedonians, Ionians and others) play a large part in the Persian army and navy. To the point that after the war when faced with the question of how to defend the Ionian Greeks from the Persians the Spartans propose forcibly ejecting all the Medized Greeks of Boeotia, Thessaly, Macedonia and have the Ionians come and settle in their emptied cities. Status quo goes back to Greece with the Athenians alone busying themselves kicking the Persian's shins now and then with naval raids and pillaging.

Come the Peloponnesian War and the Persians are able to laff as the Greeks are busy killing eachother. They end up pulling the usual superpower proxy shenanigans by bankrolling whomever they want to keep one power from being ascendant - singlehandedly funding the navies the Spartans keep throwing at the Athenians and eventually win with by virtue of attrition. Then Sparta gets muddled in intervening with the Ionian question against one of the Persian's Satraps (circa the Peloponnesian War two main satrapies are the dominant "Persian" power in Western and Central Anatolia - the Satrapy of Phrygia and the Satrapy of Caria). You eventually get Cyrus the Younger hiring the 10,000 Greek mercenaries to help him take the Persian throne which leads to Xenophon's Anabasis after Cyrus is kill in Mesopotamian battle, the leading Greek mercs are invited to a banquet with the victorious rival to Cyrus, are killed, then the middling officers like Xenophon lead them on a great voyage back to the Black Sea and then Greek home.

Persia continues winning with talents (the money kind en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement) ) what they didn't with martial power - the Corinthian war between Sparta and those rejecting Sparta's hegemony culminates in the "King (of Persia)'s Peace" which stipulates the Persians hold Ionia, the Spartans are recognized as the big hegemon of the Greeks. Later Thebes says fuck you and wins Leuctra and holds the hegemony until Macedonia says fuck you.

Stuff happens of not real consequence beyond the continued cultural Mediziation of much of the Near East (at least Iran/Caucasus/Eastern Anatolia/Syria/ect.) which lays the foundation for later Iranianized elements of say Armenian or Caucasus culture or that of Medo-Greek culture like that of Mithridates of Pontus "BUT I DONT WANNA PLAY AS PONTUS"

330s BC and Alexander arrives. Conquers Persian Empire by the 329-328 or so after a hard fight in Central Asia against various Persian loyalists/satrapal successors to Darius III who call upon help of the Scythian/Saka nomads. Despite clucking about "Graveyard of empires" Alex has no real trouble from the proto-"Afghans" who don't even exist at this point but rather trouble from those dwelling further afield in modern day Turkmenistan or Kazakstan or Uzbekistan, around the Amu Darya or Syr Darya not Afghanistan territory.

Alexander dies later, having had trouble conciling the more egalitarian 'first among equals' kingship known to the Macedonians and Greeks with the more "Shadow of god on earth" kingship of the Persians which they inherited from the Babylonians (rustic and nomadic Iranians not really having the traditions of absolute monarchism).

Diadochi/Hellenized period through Iranian territory from 320BCE down to, with varying exceptions, 200s AD. There isn't a universal rule to how much a part of the Iranian cultural sphere of the Iranian Plateau/Armenia/Azerbaijan/Afghanistan/Transoxania) adopted or rejected Hellenizing influences. You had the curious Greco-Bactrian kingdom for a few centuries which eventually spread/shifted/migrated over to Pakistan and even produced a 'saint' in Buddhism, but you also had Iranian nomads (Kushans/Saka/ect.) invading and taking over Central Asian or Greco-Bactrian territory.

The very loose generalization I'd make is that Greek influence was most strongly felt in Bactria, Mesopotamia, but the Iranian plateau and Khorasan/Transoxania quickly went back to the norm. However the greek influence can be felt as late as the 1st century BC when after Crassus was killed at Carrahe, the Parthian king was watching a performance of a Greek tragedy when the courier threw Crassus' head onto the stage for the performer to use as a prop.

Going back in time to the 200s BC you had the slow emergence of the Parthians re-asserting Iranian dominion over the Iranians. They were a nomadic Scythian/Saka tribe who migrated into the Parthava province of Iran in the 3rd century and gradually took over territory from the crumbling Seleucid Greeks.

These fellows establish a very decentralized kingdom over the Iranian Plateau, Khorasan (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Khorasan Eastern Iranian-ized territory) and some of the Caucasus. Outside of beating Crassus at Carrahe and smashing that male bimbo Marc Antony's abortive expedition into Persia they are Rome's punching bag. One of their capitals is Ctesiphon near Babylon. They appear to have been divided into a loose empire of various "Houses" or royal clans tenuously paying homage to one anointed as the king of kings.

200s AD and you have the Sassanids arriving as a native Persian dynasty from around the Pars/Fars province rebeling against the House of Arsacids. The Arsacids are defeated but linger on as the rulers of Armenia (different family, just same pedigree) for a few more centuries. The Sassanids become the rulers of Iran with the various Parthian houses paying homage to them and cooperating with them as Viziers and generals and so on.

Culturally it can be argued the Sassanids are to the Middle-East what the Romans were to the West - the model of state, governance, military and culture, the golden age all succeeding powers sought to emulate, the foundation for religious (in rome's case), political/courtly power (in both's case), language and art in the centuries to come. Arabic may dominate in religious matters for Middle-East history after the arrival of Islam but Persian remained until the 20th century the language of high culture and governance.

The Sassanids are far more virile, organized and aggressive than the Parthians. They seek predominance in the Middle-East and at certain times even display the ambition to reclaim the old Achaemenid territories of Egypt, Syria, Anatolia. They engage in tit for tat wars with Rome until the 7th century and the final climatic Romano-Persian war of Heraclius vs Khusrow II.

Then cometh the lizard-eating half-naked Arab who humbles Caesar and Shahenshah alike. The Arabs conquer the Persians but in the time honored tradition of high cultured people conquered by savages, they end up culturally conquering their conquerors. The court of the Abbasids and every succeeding dynasty in the Middle-East are highly influenced by Sassanian traditions, norms and ideals. Persians dominate the bureaucracies, courtiers of the palace and government or culture. Much much later in Iran and Central Asia of the middle ages to early modern era will be the characterization of the Persians as being the effete, cultured and intelligent men of the pen/turban and the Turks being the men of the sword and men of the helmet.

As Abbasid influence wanes the Iranian plateau is home to a dizzying array of powers. Before the arrival of the Seljuks in the 11th century and the Ghaznavids of the later 10th you have a brief hurrah of native Iranian dynasties re-asserting and re-invigorating Iranian/Persian culture/language so as to allow (continued)

(continuing) Persian culture and civilization to endure, survive and thrive and not simply be subsumed by their Arab conquerors the way the Coptic Egyptians, Assyrians, Mesopotamians and other non-Arab Semites were. Saffarids, Samanids, Buyids.

Then cometh the terrible Turk, hired first as slave-warriors and then migrating over as tribes wholesale. However the Turks are rapidly Iranianized culturally and exist almost purely as the military and military-ruling elite. The religious, cultural, agricultural and artisan/merchant world is dominated by Persians.

This continues until the dawn of the 16th century and the Saffavids arriving under Shah Ismail I. A red haired lad treated as almost a messiah or living god by his Sufi order Qizilbashi. Complicatingly although the Safavids are treated as a resurgence of Iranian/Persian autonomy the Qizilbashi are a mix of Turks and Kurds and some Iranians. Like always ethnicity is a very tenuously defined thing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_dynasty#Turks_and_Tajiks Can describe it better than I would but you can take the Safavids to be a case of a Turkic/Kurdic but thoroughly Iranified people emphasizing their culturally Persian/Iranian credentials rather than emphasizing their Turkic credentials. Saffavids are also the ones to make Iran Shi'ite. Prior to that Shiism was not the dominant faith in the region.

Keeping with Ibn Khaldun's theory of dynastic change (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asabiyyah) the Saffavids will be overthrown by a messy 18th century cauldron of Turks (nadir Shah) and Afghans, with civil war following Nadir Shah's death until the Qajar dynasty takes hold in the 19th century and are overthrown by revolutionaries in the early 20th, who in turn are overthrown by a a brigadier general of the Persian-Cossack Regiment who established the Pahlavi dynasty, overthrown in 1979 by the Islamic revolution.

>Venice: Sometimes your bro

If there are consistent 'meta' themes to Persian history much like elsewhere (British Island isolationism, the French desire to assert control over the geographic boundaries of mountains or rivers for national defense, Spanish insularity by virtue of their mountainous terrain, Greece looking always to the sea) they would be:

-"Persia has always been at war with Turan". The dominant political conflict in the Shahnameh is not war with the Arabs or Romans but with the Turanians, the nomadic inhabitants of Central Asia. Prior to the Turks and Mongols this threat was from fellow Iranian speaking nomads like the Saka, Kushan or Parthians. But with exception to Alexander the Great, the Arab conquest, and the unique circumstances of the British Empire Iran's existential threat has always come from Central Asia and the steppe. Only in the 19th century did this really end and that is only because the Russians took over the Khanates of Central Asia.

-Nomadism. A significant part of the population of the Iranian heartlands were nomadic. I want to say 1/3rd, but I am not sure where I got that number from. That was the case until really the 20th century and Reza Shah Pahlavi's efforts to get them under control. These nomads provided a great reservoir of martial talent prior the 19th century's making them horribly antiquated, but they also provided an incredibly unreliable, unpredictable, and worst of all Un-Taxable population that you barely had any control over. Coupled with this I would contend is a similarly large part of the population dwelling in rugged highland villages and towns. Never quite to the level of difficulty Afghanistan has had with its Eastern populations, but Iran is not a place of easy sedentary control the way Mesopotamia was.

>BCE

Well, untill the 10th century Venice and Constantinople were were fairly tight. After that it becomes a much more transactional relationship with Venice being the parasite that kills the host. Even then you get on and off alliances. More accurate would have been
>Venice, sometimes your ally or vassal, sometimes the guy who burns down everything you ever loved and dragging the remains home to put in a museum.

That one letter does not refute his whole post, which, if I may add, is otherwise quite true.

>What is comical exaggeration

I enjoyed the read, user.

>I was just pretending to be retarded: the post

>Calling others retarded when using the common era notation

And lastly just a random thought: If someone (usually the media or some 'abloobloobloo' apologist) tells you Sunni-Shia conflict and hostility is a modern phenomenon or the fault of some foreign boogeyman stoking it they are 100% full of shit. It was present in the 18th century between Nadir Shah's Persia and the Ottomans, it was present in the 16th and 17th century between the Ottomans and Saffavids, it was present in the 11th century with the persecution of the Nizari leading to the very use of the Assassins as a means of striking back against the persecutions of the Seljuks, it was present in the 12th century when Saladin and his predecessor Nur Al-Din were more interested in dispatching the heretical Fatimids than fighting the Crusaders. At least the Safavids, and I think other Shiite sects, indulge in denouncing and shit-talking the first three caliphs who 'stole' the caliphate away from Ali. Which is basically like expecting Protestants and Catholics to get along swimmingly if Protestants in their sunday prayers talked about how Mary and Peter were pieces of shit.

I just slipped up there by muscle memory or some shit. I don't mind calling it anno domini and before christ or whatever it is in latin.

>I just slipped up there by muscle memory or some shit. I don't mind calling it anno domini and before christ or whatever it is in latin.

I was just shitposting, don't take it too personally

No worries. And speaking of historical shitposting anyone who hasn't seen the dank pompeii graffiti memes go ahead and look that up

On like, the /way/ backburner, whenever I want to compulsively worldbuild/doodle, I have a project inspired by this pic and the general concept of "Rome... in WWI!"

It's since moved way past that to become a weird amalgamation of a bunch of random bullshit but whenever I want inspo now I look at Byzantium. Their soldiers IMO are cooler, and also easier to take inspiration from for something modern, just since medieval troops in mail and leather are /a bit/ closer to trench fighters than your archtypal centurion.

The Alexiad start in CK2 creates the coolest setting I've ever seen, if you focus on the Balkans/Near East.

You get a Militant Order (damn pope always calls for a Greek Crusade) sandwiched between a resurgent ancient empire and the disorganized usurpers from a few decades earlier.

Meanwhile that ancient empire focuses their efforts on conquering the western coastal kingdoms, numerous but squabbling among themselves.

>60 replies
>noone mentions based Bulgarslayer.

I actually prefer the Makedon start it's more comfy.

Makedon start is comfy but West Europe is a mess.

Besides, I'm going by the original scope of the thread, which called for cool setting's featuring Byzantium, and in that regard an Alexiad start in CK2 ran for a couple decades is perfect for that.

Why does the pope think giving the Anatolian coast to Knights Hospitaller was ever a good idea?

to fuck with you of course

I was gonna post a bunch of art I had used for inspiration but then I realized I hadn't saved anything that was actually from this period.

So I guess I'm gonna lurk in this thread and steal all of ur stuff

Because of Veeky Forums I completely despise Voltaire and that stupid HRE quote of his. If you love Voltaire so god dam much, than at least use different quotes from him.

>Christfag

Man, fuck the pope, he's a useful sugar daddy for good little Catholics but he's a pain in the ass for Orthodox.

STOP DECLARING CRUSADE ON JERUSALEM, I NEED THAT TO MEND THE SCHISM.

I wish the HRE got more attention than it does, which is none at all.

>Because of Veeky Forums I completely despise Voltaire and that stupid HRE quote of his.
I think it's funny

It was for the first couple of times, but after having to see that quote every fucking time a discussion about the HRE comes up, makes me a grumpier than a hobo living in a trash can.

Next thing you're going to claim that sola scriptura is the only true way to understand the word of god.

I remember a few years back Veeky Forums brainstormed a setting that was basically India + Byzantium. A lot of it was just smashing together caste systems and theologies, but I recall that a drawfag contributed a few sketches that did a neat job of blending the two cultures visually. The Indian saris and Byzantine robes kinda worked well together.

Probably because there's no evidence for him blinding all those people untill centuries later. Bulgarslayer is a meme, although a very well rooted one.

It's just a prank, bro

I want to learn about the fall of Rome and the impact on their former territories. What happens to a society that goes from "part of the Empire" to "what Empire?"

As far as I know, in the West at least, barbarian ursurpers take over but leave most of the administration intact. Because the Romans already did it better than anyone else could, so why bother coming up with something new when you've just conquered a perfectly functional territory?

>>Most interesting period: Justinian, rise of Islam, Alexiad, Fourth Crusade or the fall of Constantinople?

7th century. This is where things were starting to go tits-up. There are also a bunch of good books on the period (J.F. Haldon's Byzantium in the Seventh Century is a personal favorite of mine)

>>What kind of campaign, military or just a bunch of murderhobos wandering around?

Set the campaign during either, A: the fall of Carthage in 698 (which basically marked the final transition from 'the Late Roman Empire' -> 'the Byzantine empire'), or B: Justinian's reconquests in Italy. C): would be Lazica shortly prior. Military should be expected for a Byzantine campaign. Unless you want to plop them in the Clergy or the Fisc for some reason.

>>Unique options/buildings that a Western medieval setting does not offer?
Medieval Europe is highly decentralized at the point of Byzantium's apex. You will have clear infrastructure in Byzantium, a smaller amount of overland trade (note how crippled the Byzantine economy was following the loss of Egypt with their reliance on Anatolian crops), and authorities to which the PC will be ought to answer. In regards to physical buildings? Churches would be the most striking thing, especially in major cities.
Here is a quote from the primary chronicle on the Hagia Sophia.
>"We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth," they reported, "nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it."

>>Orthodox, Monophysite, Miaphysite, Coptic... what's up with this shit and why does it matter?
The Orthodox Church follows the Chalcedonian Christological Formula, i.e: Jesus Christ is both fully Man and Fully God (that is not speaking to the second person of the godhead, but to the incarnation). The 'coptic' formula at this time would be that Christ has one (as opposed to the Orthodox) nature (which is both divine and human).

>>Lamellar vs chainmail

Lamellar.

>>Venice: Why?
No need to go to Venice.

>Probably because there's no evidence for him blinding all those people untill centuries later. Bulgarslayer is a meme, although a very well rooted one.

What about the complete collapse of the bulgarian empire shortly thereafter.

How did such a large and prestigious government that lasted a good thousand years just putter out without anyone really caring? Of course, I say that in the same thread as the Byzantine Empire, which is equally "you tried so hard and came so far, but in the end it didn't even matter."

The Byzantines loved blinding people and slicing off their noses.

You forgot the castration, they sure loved there eunuchs.

Now that makes me chuckle, because at least the prank meme (to me mind you) isn't stale.

*their

I'm currently developing setting that puts focus on "successors for great empire" concept. Although more succesful one is more like Venice.

Losers I plan to more heavily base on Byzantium in its worst traits. Even though geographically they are where Ireland counterpart should be.

An interesting question:

What system would work best for a Byzantine-inspired campaign?

I was thinking making a setting based on my latest CK2 save where I'm at war with Caroligian empire in order to reconquer Gaul, andthe idea of a legitimate roman empire fighting the urserper I think it's quite interesting.

>Alexiad, because there's still a chance of things improving and the players could be that chance.
>military+murderhobos=irregulars
>Links for 3d byzantine archictecture:
byzantium1200.com/index.html
byzantium1200.com/contents.html
Best murderhobos get triunphal columns.
>Fuck if I know, but I did it that within each god of the pantheon there is sects and views.
>Lamellar over chainmail
>City-estate all out for profit and more profit. Combine with Carthage for maximum profit.

> Reconquer Gaul
Gaul can go fuck itself as long as Aegyptus, the Levant, Italy proper and Iberia remain out of your hands, but once you've got them I'd say jump for it.

I already git all of those, it's time to teach those uppity franks a lesson Viceroyalty mechanic is so good

Motherfuckers thinks they wuz romanz and shieet.

> I got all of it
Hmng, yes, restore Roma.

Viceroyalty feels like cheating. I will try to play again without it.

Venice was one of the few countries that sent troops to defend Constantinople when it fell to the Turks
although it's really their fault that it came to that point anyway

That's my plan strategos

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