Moving this little bitty up...
WARNING: COLLOSSAL TEXT WALL APPROACHING
A Brief History Of The Scotlands
-Conquers rebel regions surrounding the starting location
-Pope calls a crusade to Jerusalem: Scotland can't be bothered to join because it's on the other side of the freaking map.
-The Last Battle Of England: A young Alexander Canmore defeats a large English captain's army, reinforced by a full army led by the second-to-last English king in the forests south of Nottingham.
-3 turns after the battle, the last king of England is assassinated, sending the English lands into anarchy, making Scotland able to create the United Kingdom without angering the Pope.
-The last of the English Remnants are mopped up in Caen. First contact is made with France, who have become significantly weaker than they started. Friendly relations are made, and France becomes Scotland's first ally.
-Discovering that Denmark has been rather aggressive and is in control of the northern coast of Europe, thereby blocking Scotland's best path to the mainland, Scotland invades. At around this time, the Spanish and Milanese show up.
-Spain and Milan begin to attack: It is at this point that Scotland realises it has difficult times ahead, as Spain, Milan and Denmark make up what has been dubbed the Three Great Powers. The rather aptly named Three Greats War begins.
-France fails to help very much, and generally just gets what little arse it has remaining handed to it by Milan, the largest and most powerful of the Great Powers. Scotland still periodically gives France money from their incredibly large coffers, but always finds that France has gone bankrupt again.
-Despite it being Spain and Milan who opened hostilities, the Pope, being a complete imbecile, threatens Scotland not to attack them. This makes fighting off sieges somewhat difficult.
-Scotland takes back a few French cities, and, hoping to increase their usefullness, returns them to France.
-Alexander Canmore and his two sons, Dauid and Broccin, are sent on a very long journey to the south to begin the Moorish Campaign in an attempt to gain more land in easier-to-hold regions. Hungary and Russia are contacted, Russia through a long-travelled princess in France, and are made allies, although they are too far away to really do anything.
-Not much happens for a bit. The Great Powers continue attacking, the Pope continues having broken logic, France continues doing bugger all and just loses their reclaimed land again, etc.
-The first city of the Moorish Campaign, Marrakesh, is taken. It proves extremely difficult to hold, in no part due to the massive amounts of unrest caused by the religion and distance from the rest of the Scottish Empire.
-Marrakesh revolts and pushes the Scottish out. By this time, Alexander is 62, and very close to death. He sees this as an oppurtunity to have one last hurrah before he dies, and reconquers it in the Retaking Of Marrakesh. The battle was fought at sunset. 3 years later, Alexander Canmore, the King Of War,one of the greatest generals the world has ever known, loved by all of Scotland, dies in his sleep in summer. Alexander's death is almost universally agreed to be the end of the Scottish Empire's Golden Age.
-Scotland briefly manages a shaky ceasefire with Spain, even gifting them money from the much-smaller-now treasury. It improves relations slightly, but not enough to stop Spain invading once more shortly after. It does enable Scotland to get map information from Spain, though. This reveals the extent of Spain's power: They control their entire country of origin except for Lisbon, controlled by their vassal, Portugal. They also have a firm hold of spreading territory into the rest of Europe. Similar information for Milan shows them to be horrifyingly large, and it shows in their millitary. It becomes clear now that the Three Great Powers have become two even greater ones.
-Advancing into Denmark in order to finish them off and start a new mainland expedition with their old land, Scotland is threatened by the Pope once more. By this point, they have had enough of taking his crap, so they continue, and are promptly excommunicated. The rest of the empire, even the perfectly stable England, is shaken by this.
-In a last-ditch effort to get off the backs of Spain and Milan and make France useful, Scotland grants all of their mainland territories besides Caen to France to them and sends the armies over to destroy Denmark. France continues being completely useless.
-The two sons of Alexander, both strong commanders themselves, claim Timbuktu. Unfortunately, they are not suited to running cities, and Timbuktu has an even worse hatred of Scotland than Marrakesh, so another family member is sent to help reinforce the Moorish lands. The Moorish Campaign is proving to be somewhat of a disaster, with both cities having to spend almost all of their profit on keeping the citizens satisfied. Sacking the cities for loads of money probably didn't help.
-Scotland is reconciled into the Church, and gets 2 Cardinals in the College. One of them is even a Preferati in the next Papal Election, but the role of Pope is taken by a Hungarian. Which isn't much of a suprise, considering there are 4 Hungarian Cardinals and 3 Danish Cardinals in the College i mean seriously GOD DAMN.
-A Scottish Spy, Lachlan the Balleol, catches the plague in Dijon, the Milanese city he was in. He finds this to be an oppurtunity rather than his impending death, and goes around to other Milanese cities and fortresses, spreading the death wherever he goes. Amazingly, he manages to survive.
-The Battles Of The Frankfurt Roads: The old army from the second crusade which Scotland actually bothered to join is attacked by King Sten The Watcher and his army. King Sten is killed and his army decimated, despite most of the Scottish army being made up of confused Pilgrims. Most of the Scottish army is killed too, promting a second, smaller Danish force to attack the army before they can recover. Utilising the Scottish tactical genius, the general manages to pull together the torn-up army and defeat them anyway. The now-barely surviving army regroups at Frankfurt to recover. With these battles, Denmark has used up the majority of its known millitary, and they are now open to a merciless invasion from the second army the Scots had coming from the west.
-A spanish army is defeated by the devastating arrow power of the Noble Archers, who have begun to earn a reputation for being able to send entire small-sized armies running all on their own, given a good area to shoot from.
-For the first time, the Empire begins to go into debt. Bad debt. -6000+ debt. France continues to be useless.
-A single unit of Noble Pikemen is sent to the recently Spanish-occupied Rennes (Guess what France is doing.) to take a potshot at the single unit in the garrison: A spanish family member. He is killed.
-The two cities taken in the Moorish Campaign begin to cheer up slightly. The fleet that the dispatched general was sent on is caught in a storm, but luckily not destroyed.
-The Battles Of Gille Patrick's Church and Forest's Edge: The unassigned army of Captain Gille Patrick notes a relatively weak force protecting a Milanese family member and give chase. This unfortunately gets them involved in a battle with a much larger force, controlled by a second general. The Scottish units are made up of Pike Millitia, 2 medium-sized units of Dismounted Feudals, the general's Border Horse and Mailed Knights and 2 Ballistae. The Milanese are made up of lots of crossbowmen, the general's bodyguard and 2 units of Italian Millitia. Suffering slight losses, Gille Patrick manages to defeat the Milanese army by sending the cavalry to destroy the crossbows, the millitia somehow not reacting, before sending the Feudals down to pulverise the millitia. The general is killed fleeing. Sadly, before Gille Patrick is able to return to Scottish territory to recover (and surely be adopted into the family for his excellent work), he is attacked by a second, much larger Milanese force, consisting of catapults and multitudes of crossbows, Millitia and Dismounted Feudals. Despite putting up an extremely good effort, Gille Patrick is both facing the Milanese from the bottom of the hill and has an army that is horribly unsuited for these sorts of enemies, and, whilst managing to take down the catapults and plenty of Milanese with them, they fail to kill the general and are utterly destroyed. Despite this, adoption was still considered for his valiant efforts, only to recieve reports that Gille Patrick and the 49 other survivors had fled into the countryside out of shame. Gille Patrick took up a new identity as a monk at the church that the first battle had taken place near to, and he is presumed to still be living there peacefully. (There was actually a random building to the left of the first battlefield.)
-In a change of plans, the general dispatched to Moorish lands is instead assigned to go on an offensive in the heart of Spain, in the hopes of diverting and confusing the Spanish. It is also discovered that through some bizarre circumstances, Portugal have become vassals to the Moors. France gets excommunicated and all together now, continues being useless.
-Scotland gets excommunicated again. In a startling turn of events, riots begin happening in Edinburgh as well as the Moorish cities.
-Faced with huge amounts of unrest as well as a Spanish force approaching from the north, Scotland decides that Marrakesh isn't worth the trouble and retreats to Timbuktu, which is starting to adapt to their new rulers.
-Rory Of Ayrshire, the man sent to invade Spain, finds that it is very undefended; Spain were most likely not expecting to be attacked there. He captures Leon, and begins the Spanish Extermination.
