The last section had ended with the declaration of war against Korea and the capture of the only town that they had founded on my continent. Since I had used a keshik to win the battle, it also triggered a golden age for my civilization, one that I certainly could make good use of. I had just traded away 25gpt to France in order to get Chivalry, not wanting to use a lump sum payment so I could save the funds for upgrades, and my economy was suffering as a result. The cutting off of Korean furs due to my war declaration also caused unhappiness problems that necessitated raising the luxury tax. As a result, the golden age that I triggered was a welcome boost for my income, sending it from a paltry 25gpt to over 75gpt immediately. That would only grow as I used the golden age production boost to complete neglected infrastructure, and I was never bothered by financial problems again in this game. I also used the GA to speed along the construction of my Forbidden Palace in the city of Yakutsk.
I had taken Kaesong on my continent on the same turn that I declared war, in 570AD. That had only taken two keshiks to capture, so I loaded the remaining ones onto galleys and shipped them over to mainland Korea right away. With three galleys, I could ferry six of them over each turn; unfortunately I would lose a turn each trip since it took four moves to cross the channel and return again. But I still landed six keshiks in 580AD and braced for whatever counterattack Korea would throw at me. I found... nothing. No offensive units appeared to challenge my landing, and the nearest town of Ulsan was defended only by spearmen. This has to be a joke, right? But it was no joke, the Koreans were simply woefully unprepared for war. Ulsan fell easily with no losses in 590AD, and now I had a beachhead city with which to work.
The next few turns were occupied with ferrying over the rest of the keshiks, which totaled almost 15 by this point. Meanwhile, the units already in Korea fended off counterattacks by spears, archers, and swords. They were all left exposed on grassland tiles by Wang Kon and cut to ribbons by the mobile keshik forces. Wonsan fell easily in 630AD, and now I was beginning to push into the interior of Korea. With great effort, I moved the bulk of my forces over the mountains towards Seoul, which would be a great prize if captured. I should mention here that I had been of the opinion that the mountain movement of the keshiks was kind of a novelty ability; not really worth mentioning. Boy was I wrong. The ability to move over mountains as if they were grasslands is a HUGE advantage, and one I used nonstop as long as I had keshiks. Be very wary of the keshiks; they can park themselves on mountain ranges (where their defense is the same as a samurai) and cause all sorts of havoc. Again though I'm getting off track of the story. I sent over a dozen keshiks to capture Seoul and took it with relatively few losses in 660AD. It was guarded by pikes, but that did not pose much of a problem.
From that point, I simply mowed my way across the Korean continent rather methodically, stopping to quell resistance at each town and then moving on to the next. It wasn't a blitz war by any means, but a slow and steady advance that would have little chance of a rebellion in the rear interruption my supply lines. Pyongyang, a city to the south of Seoul surrounded by mountains, was captured in 680AD using the mountainwalk ability of my unique unit. Mountainwalk? Hmmm, that reminds me of the Magic: The Gathering card game... :) Pyongyang flipped back to the Koreans in 710AD though, so when I captured Cheju in the same year I decided it was too great a risk to keep and razed it to the ground. Nampo was captured and Pyongyang recaptured in 720AD. Rather than quell all of Pyongyang's resisters, I rushed a settler to abandon and rebuild the city. Quite dastardly, I know. My Forbidden Palace completed back at home in Yakutsk in 740AD, bringing prosperity to the western half of my continent. Here's a picture of the homeland in 750AD running at full wartime production:
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Didn't I mention that my financial worries were a thing of the past? I was rolling in cash at this point! You can also see that I had refounded the abandoned Vladivostock and expanded settlements on the northern island, while also note the progress against Korea on the minimap in the corner. A number of cities are building keshiks, but several of them are working on pikes as well; I did not have the income to rush defenders in my captured cities, so I had to send a steady stream of them along with the attacking forces. Most of the money I did spend was on rushing temples in the captured cities to reduce the likelihood of a culture flip back to Korea.
The war machine continued to roll on down in the south. Inchon was captured in 760AD, and Pyongyang abandoned and rebuilt on the same site with a Mongol settler. Two turns later, a special keshik distinguished himself in the fighting at Hyangsang and became a great leader!
It was Ogodei, the onetime ambassador to Korea himself! There was never even a doubt in my mind as to how to put him to use: I was going to be doing a lot of fighting in this game, and I wanted cheap upgrades. Leo's was ordered up and rushed right there in the captured city. Of course I had to trade for Invention first, but Elizabeth was more than willing to oblige for some fine Korean furs. Rushing a wonder in an outlying colony seems a little strange, but why bother to cart him all the way back to Karakorum when I could build the wonder right there? At the least, it saved having to rush another temple, heh.
By this point, I had reached the east coast of Korea and the struggle was all but over. Wang's counterattacks had ended ages ago and now it was simply a process of occupying all of his mainland cities. Taejon was taken in 790AD, Pusan in 800AD, and then finally Pyongsong in 810AD. At that point, the Koreans had been completely evicted from their starting continent. Wang Kon was reduced to four widely spaced colonies sitting all over the place on the map, his power utterly broken. Rather than prolong the war by sailing to all those isolated hideouts, I made peace with Korea then for tech concessions: Theology and Gunpowder. Too bad that Wang had never hooked up his saltpeter fast enough to benefit from it. Now the question remained: who to fight next? Here was a snapshot of Korea in 810AD, post-Mongols:
I next considered the map and thought about who I should attack next. There was no question about there being another war; I wasn't going to win this game any way except domination or conquest, and that meant going after other civs now, before the advent of the industrial age when everything would become bogged down and territory much harder to capture. For geographical reasons, Germany seemed like it should clearly be the next target. Unlike the three eastern civs (England, France, Scandanavia) Germany was right in my backyard and easy to reach. Bismarck was also behind in tech due to his late contact with the other civs, and I wouldn't be facing anything worse than pikes with my keshiks. Finally, Germany had a large continent and had the potential to become dangerous down the road if left alone. I also considered attacking the Iroquois, but the conditions favored an attack on Germany and then a sweep north to their island before finally confronting the eastern civs sometime in the Industrial Age. Or at least that was the master plan at this point.
At the moment though, all of my keshiks were down in southeast Korea and I needed to get them to my northwest corner for an invasion fleet. That would take a few turns. While they were moving back during the years 810-900AD, I saw a German galley drop off some units on my mainland. What? Bismarck isn't actually going to sneak attack ME is he?
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I think he's serious, folks! Haha, this was too easy. The AI was playing "go for the undefended city" trick again; Dalandzadgad was momentarily unoccupied after shipping its pike over to Korea, and you can see its musket replacement under construction in Tabriz. But Bismarck didn't care, he was more than ready to initiate a hopeless war due to the presence of one undefended city. Well I was more than ready to go - after all NO ONE touches my continent, big boy! I asked them to leave and they (not surprisingly) declared war. My keshiks in the area turned around and slaughtered the horseman and warrior that had been landed. You asked for it Bismarck: don't say you haven't been warned.
Hermann smiled and took a long drink of the offered aleskin. The raw stuff went down like fire in his belly, causing him to cough and gasp reflexively. It was a pleasant luxury to enjoy on a night like this.
"Good stuff, huh?" said his friend Franz with a grin. Hermann nodded and passed the skin on to the next man around the fire, who immediately kicked it back himself. They were seated around a small campfire, swathed in warm layers of fur against the bitter cold of a winter night. Their small company had chosen to make camp in a copse of evergreens, whose thick branches wove together overhead to make a canopy of sorts from the storm raging around them. A first class blizzard was doing its best at the moment to bury the world under a blanket of white, but here under the protection of the trees they were relatively sheltered, at least as much as anyone could be outside on a night like this. Hermann doubted they could have gotten a fire started at all out on the grasslands that surrounded their camp.
"How do you think things are going to go tomorrow?" he asked his companion as he fingered his spear absently.
"I don't any way that the plan can fail, Captain," replied Franz with a smile. Then again he was a new soldier and had never seen what combat could do the best-laid schemes. "They have no idea that we're here, right? We'll walk down into the city at first light tomorrow morning and carry off anything that we want. Just imagine: gold, jewels, fine women," he added with a leer, "whatever we want to take! And there's no one there to stop us. That's the best part of all, a city with no defenders in it." He punctuated his argument by gesturing towards the city that lay little more than a mile to the south. If it weren't for the storm, they would be able to see its lights at this very moment.
"I suppose that you're right. After all, the Mongols don't know we're here." Franz grinned again and slapped him on the back in agreement. Hermann wondered though, and unlike his excitable younger friend was not quite so optimistic. Unlike most of the other men in his detachment, Hermann was more than just a boy recently called into military service by the chancellor. He had been a soldier for almost a decade now and was still alive to talk about it, a track record that proved he was either very good or very lucky - or, perhaps more accurately, that he was both. The others jokingly refered to him as "Captain" due to his age; it was not a formal military title but the sort of nickname that grew out of spending prolonged periods of time with a small group of people. He wasn't even the commander of this band; that distinction belonged to Friederich, the son of a minor German nobleman. Watching the man on the other side of the fire drink himself into a stupor, Hermann could only sigh and wonder why he had been saddled with such an idiot for an officer. As he scatched at his facial hair, cut in the German fashion that left the chin bare, he thought for a moment about their purpose here in Mongolia in the first place.
The Germans had learned through their embassy that the town of Dalandzadgad was unoccupied by any military forces, and Bismarck, never one famous for restraint, had decided to take it by force in a sneak attack. It was a bold plan, one that was likely to result in either spectacular victory or utter failure. Hermann was betting his life on the former. So he and the rest of Friederich's company of horsemen had landed here under the cover of darkness the night before and made their way towards the city. Bad weather had slowed them more than expected and forced them to make camp here tonight, short of the city's glowing lights. Hermann hoped that the snow would let up soon; horses couldn't travel at anything faster than a walk in these kind of conditions, taking away the element of mobility.
He shook off his thoughts and relaxed, idly watching the conversation between the others around the fire. Franz was on his feet making a series of grand gestures in telling one of the bawdy stories of his fabled past conquests. Everyone knew that he was lying through the skin of his teeth, but no one wanted to miss one of his tall tales either. Franz could spin a tale with the best of them, and he was at it in full form now; his voice changing pitch and inflection to highlight each character, arms flapping from one shape to the next in rapid succession. Hermann had no idea what he was talking about now, but it was certainly something amusing from the smiles he saw painted on the faces of everyone else around the fire.
"So then I told her that I didn't have enough money to buy another silk dress," Franz said in his best storytelling voice, "and I that I had no idea where her beloved pink one had gone. And do you know what she said to me? She said," his voice rising to the high pitch of a woman, "My silk dress? But you're wearing it right now!" With the delivery of that line, the campsite exploded into raucous laughter. Hermann hadn't heard the full story and didn't know what was so funny, but he couldn't help chuckling either. Franz was simply too good at what he did to avoid joining in the moment.
The storyteller himself, flushed with pride at his most recent effort, grinned again and swept an overly elaborate bow to his audience. Then he turned to the other side of the fire and bowed again, this time bowing so low that his body pitched forward to lie flat on the ground. The men roared louder than before with mirth, thinking it all a great joke. Hermann jumped to his feet with an oath, for he had seen something that his inebriated companions had missed: the shaft of an arrow protruding from the back of Franz's body.
"Damn it, we're under attack! To arms, to arms!" he shouted over the din. Already he noticed a second, and then a third form wilting under the assault of arrows. Hermann swirled his head around and regarded the surrounding trees. Through the haze of snow that blurred everything he could make out shadowy figures moving in the distance. Although he couldn't tell for sure, he thought from the size that it must be men on horseback - but men on horses in these conditions should be impossible! An explosion of pain burst in his right shoulder, and he realized an arrow had found its mark in his body. Hermann realized too late that the fire was silhouetting his form and everyone else's to make easy targets for the night riders, and so he dropped immediately to the ground. He knew it had been a mistake to build it in the first place; if only Friederich hadn't insisted that they were so safe there was no need for caution. Well, he saw that the foppish fool was dead now, three arrows protruding cleanly from his chest. Hermann realized with a sudden chill that almost everyone in his company was already dead. Fighting was out of the question with his right side all but paralyzed; escape was the only option now.
He crawled on all fours towards to where the horses were picketed on the edge of their camp. Hermann was one of the best riders in all of Germany; if he could get to his horse he might be able to lose the attackers in the blinding snow and ice. As he reached the picket lines though his heart sank; someone had already cut the lines and led off all of the horses. There was no way he could escape injured as he was on foot, so Hermann leaned back against a tree and waited for his attackers to show themselves. He didn't have long to wait.
Ghostly forms melded into the shape of several dozen Mongols seated upon horses, with bows in their hands and arrows ready to be loosed. They could have shot him dead at any moment, but a man who must have been their commander raised his hand and gestured for two others to go and pick him up. They hauled Hermann roughly to his feet, sending a lash of pain down his right arm, and carried him back towards the campfire. The distance was not far, but his shoulder hurt terribly by the time they reached it. With Mongol guards continuing to stand on both sides, half to keep his hands from reaching some kind of weapon, half just to keep him standing up, the Mongol commander approached him.
He studied Hermann's face for a moment before intiating the conversation. "German, right?" Hermann nodded back in assent. "You probably thought you were pretty clever, trying to strike at us where we least expected it, huh?" Hermann did not take the bait and remained silent. That seemed to irritate the Mongol, whose faced darkened a bit before continuing. "We spotted your group as soon as you landed and shadowed you the whole way. It sounds like you were having a merry old time here when we showed up. Do you realize that fire could be seen from almost a mile away, you fool?"
Hermann refused to reply. He didn't see any way that he could survive this encounter, and was resolved at least to keep his pride intact.
"Not going to talk, I see. Well, we do have order to send one of you back to Berlin as a messenger, and since everyone else seems to be dead or dying I guess you're the lucky one." The Mongol commander was clearly disappointed; Hermann had no doubt that he wanted to kill everyone there.
"So you're going to let me go?" replied Hermann incredulously. That did not fit with what he had heard about the Mongols at all.
"Yes, you're free to go," said the Mongol. The guards let go of his sides, and the lack of support made Hermann stumble and almost fall. "But there's just one more thing."
"Oh? And what would that be?" he asked in puzzlement.
Fire exploded in his belly, and Hermann looked down in shock to see a the point of a blade protruding from just above his belt, its tip oozing with his crimson lifeforce. Dimly he realized that he had been stabbed from the back, and as the sword was pulled free he tumbled slowly to the ground. "You should not have touched our island!" finished the Mongol from somewhere above him, and he heard coarse laughter echo around the hollow in which he lay. Then the voices were gone, receding into the distance.
All that Hermann could see was the fire, which he had ended up facing when he crumpled into a broken heap. It was a mystery to him. He knew that the fire was still burning brightly, but the light seemed to be getting fainter and fainter. The crackling sound never diminished, but the light became progressively dimmer. Soon it was no more than a faint twinkling light, no more than a distant star on a clear night. Then it was gone entirely, and there was only darkness around the fire.
