Byzantium

The Byzantine Empire is a shadow of the once great Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantium controls most of Thrace and southern Greece as well as Smyrna, with the last Byzantine land in Asia Minor holding out and a vassal in the state of Epirus. The empire has all but died but in Konstantinoupolis there are calls for the reconquest to truly begin. Perhaps it is time for the double-headed eagle to rise again? For we are the successors to the glorious Roman Empire. Rome has nearly fallen before, yet just like Aurelian before us, we will restore its legacy! ROMA INVICTA!

## **Lore**

In AD 1204, when the Varangian Guard cast the Venetian mongrels into the sea, and the Imperial Navy set their fleet ablaze, many had hoped that the dawn of a new Resurgent Era was nigh. Alas, such optimism was rapidly dashed against the rocks of the Golden Horn. Despite facing a crisis which may have seen them hanged from the Theodosian Walls, the Angelid dynasty nonetheless proved themselves utterly incapable of anything short of malicious negligence and gross mismanagement of the Eastern Roman Empire. With nothing but the most opulent degeneracy on full display and never a care in the world, the House of Angelos was quickly taken advantage of by the aristocracy.

Having maintained their useless emperors as figureheads, the Constantinopolitan clique would further advance the Byzantine nosedive, filling their coffers while the people starved and fled eastwards. Even against the threat of Bulgarian invasion in the 13th century, the imperial regime did nothing in response. Yet, when Leon Gabras took up arms and saved the empire, he was hastily banished to a governorship in Anatolia. With an impending Turkish invasion, it was expected that he would perish, no longer posing a threat to the machinations of the political elite. This assumption proved false, and the Saviour of Thrace declared unilateral independence from Constantinople and from the Empire, having concluded that the Roman dream was long dead.

The Imperial court was utterly livid at the secession of the Anatolian provinces, but even if they wanted to launch a war of reclamation, this was impossible; in order to skim more money off the budget, the chancellor had disbanded the Imperial Army in AD 1294. In its place, a truly unreliable mercenary force was instituted. This warband preferred plundering Byzantine lands to protecting them, however, greatly reducing imperial rule in the countryside. Left with no army of its own and a plummeting economic situation, the Byzantine Empire would then be forced to mothball its fleet, culminating in Venice seeping into the Aegean in the 1300s with the help of an Epirote rebellion under the disgruntled Palaiologos family.

The complete failure of the government in Constantinople to maintain even a shred of legitimacy and influence would end in one of the worst military blunders in Roman history. At the dawn of the 15th Century, the empire would attempt to assert its hegemony over the Bulgar Empire, despite lacking a proper military, resulting in the rapid loss of Macedonia and Western Thrace to a miniscule Bulgarian detachment. Mere decades have passed since the Humiliation of Thessalonica, and Constantinople is in shambles; the city's population numbers at a meagre 18,000 and is in total disrepair. The severed the land connection from Attica to the capital has crippled domestic commerce, and foreign powers now prepare to swoop in and carve up what little remains. In the face of total annihilation, can the Empire pull off a miracle, and ascend once more as a Phoenix from the ashes?