Two weeks without a cigarette. Barely contained rage lidded only by incessantly pacing the apartment and punching the air. Fury elevated because of the smallness of this town. I long to go back to the light-polluted metropolis to the south. Why did I ever leave it in the first place? Because I thought my frayed nerves could use the rest, the healing. Shut everything out and just convalesce. Good idea in theory, and the novelty of the silence had an initial therapeutic effect, but the improvement proved ephemeral, and not at all a fantasia.
At least The Old Gods finally released, offering a temporary respite from rage. In fact, it's been out a few days, but the thought of beginning again has been an exhausting one. Every time I contemplate starting, goosebumps of revulsion pop up my acne-scarred skin and I do something like play and sing along to Jason Derulo videos. ("Whatcha Say" is the loveliest cheaters' anthem ever). It's the same sensation I had in those distant days when I swam for my high school - In order to get into the water, I had to hurl myself into it, or, more often, be thrown in by my teammates. On the other hand, once in the water, it felt natural, and I practiced just fine, although my mind tended to wander and result in such things as hallucinating Kappa from Final Fantasy 6 on the pool bottom.
So here we go with the forcing myself to launch Crusader Kings II and of course go pagan. I predict I will die within five years.
Bjorn isn't a pink Viking dinosaur, but he does have awesome facial hair and is quite the diplomatic and learned fellow. Not like me. Well, I'm learned enough, but I have all the charisma of a hostile drunk skunk.
What? You don't know who Bjorn the pink Viking dinosaur is? Allow me to educate you, young 'un.
...Bjorne. Close enough.
Much to my annoyance, interfaith marriages now appear to be nerfed. Every comely lass I try to marry comes back with "Hot Chick Must Not Marry Your Infidel Pagan Ass".
Even other pagans.
As a result, I'm forced to choose between a few noblewomen who are uglier than me and a collection of varying levels of attractiveness and skills lowborn women. What to do?
The hot blonde 16 year old who doubles as an awesomesauce Spymistress upgrade of course. Always choose the hot blonde 16 year old.
So I should go raiding, but I'm landlocked. Fortunately, Medelpad to our southeast is a coastal county and we should have more troops than them when all is said and done. I have no patience so I'm of course going to attack now.
They fire up their 292 troops and I wait until we're at 345 before attacking. It's a good thing too, because we need every last troop advantage to eke out a win that magically shoots our warscore up to 40%. I have no idea what that's all about; maybe decisive battles are given higher warscore now? In any case, we pingpong them a bit to get warscore up to 49% and then this happens:
Losing an awesome commander isn't going to help things for Medelpad. Unfortunately, we don't have enough troops to actually seize the county, so time to go back and rest up.
It's a long and protracted war, but finally we manage to win out:
Her fate will be decided for later, but for now, I'll bask in this hard-won initial success. Although my objective is to become King of Norway, a Swedish foothold is a good thing for expanding territory and power.