Jump 108: Crusader Kings

Jump 108: Crusader Kings

Location: On The Steppe, A.D. 769
Age: 17
Identity: Nomad
Religion: Judaism
Focus: Intrigue
Drawbacks: [+1400] Mauled, Great Defensive War, Hell On Earth

[200/2400]  Striking As Wind
[300/2400]  Ancient Traditions
[350/2400]  A Keen Eye
[550/2400]  Better To Be Feared Than Loved
[850/2400]  Scheme Upon Scheme
[950/2400]  A Sense Of Decorum
[1150/2400] Likable
[1200/2400] Waste Not, Want Not
[1600/2400] A Storm Builds On The Steppes
[2400/2400] The Sun Jumper

You know, in hindsight, it's easy to say that I probably shouldn't have brought thousands of horsemen directly to Jerusalem to sack it and then decide that it was the ideal place to settle down. Doing that sort of thing is after all a fantastic way to get the entirety of your neighbors to go 'hey, those nomads didn't pillage anything at all other than what they conquered, we should shove them into the sea'. And by neighbors I mean the entirety of the Abbasid caliphate.

While they were in the middle of trying to do that (and finding increasing difficulty in so doing), Europe apparently decided that was the time that they should suffer mass panic and heresies, outbreaks of disturbances supposedly caused by witchcraft... and then the son of a minor noble - a demon child who in truth, at least according to the rumors, was actually the spawn of the devil himself - managed to raise an army of cultists and proceeded from there to summon ACTUAL DEMONS to begin a conquest of Europe.

It's probably a fortunate thing that I am myself more than human, and that many of these traits are themselves passed off to my children. None so much as to make them clearly inhuman, but if we have to deal with the level of nonsense that is figuratively demons on one side, and literally demons wanting to sacrifice us on the other... it would be only fitting that they be able to rip and tear until it is done.

Granted, apparently ending up in combat and getting grievous injuries were also traits that ran in the bloodline, but... well, global history derailed with the formal founding of Israel in 790, after all. To say nothing of medieval accounts of demons flinging around fire and being otherwise terrifying.

On the plus side, if you want to get a great reputation internationally, your descendant on the throne having legions of zealots led by your sons and nephews slaughtering armies of demons in Europe is a great way to do it. Enough that it makes European nations tend to ignore the fact that you absorbed about half of the Abbasid caliphate, leading to its dissolution, so that you can hold all five of the major holy sites that the high priest says you have, which incidentally also leads to the nation's coffers growing enough that you can arrange for institutional education across all classes for the nation's youth.