The Most August and Benevolent Lucas, by the Grace of God Imperator of the Federated Italian States, to Otto, erstwhile Holy Roman Emperor and now Ruler of Those Few Small Dirt-Farming Hamlets that He Has Been Allowed to Keep,
You idiot.
Did you really think your ignominious and breathtakingly stupid stab in the back would go unpunished? That my armies, pressed on all fronts by the Spanish, the English, the French, the Hungarians, and the uprising of the latest Anti-Pope, would be unable to spare the time to secure Tyrolia from the pitiful rabble that constitute your armies?
Perhaps you had a point; indeed, Italia Magna was perhaps the most threatened it has ever been. And, though I know you are stupid and pig-headed, and invaded Tyrolia simply because I had to draw down the garrisons to almost nothing in order to fend off the attacks from all other sides, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your unprovoked attack came because you felt that we would fall before our enemies, rather than because you and all those in your employ are the worst sort of vultures, opportunistic yet as dumb as a sackful of shit, with no thought to the retribution of the nation whose province Tyrolia is.
Well, cretin, we won.
Naturally ignorant as you are, even you know by now that we have been victorious on all fronts. The Spanish royal family has been utterly extirpated, root and branch, and those lands formerly theirs have fallen into anarchy and banditry, save only Provence which is now enjoying the benefit of Italian rule. The French... the French, seeing what we did to those who attacked us, treated with us quickly and are now busy in the Baltic. The English we defeated on land and on sea, and I do not mind admitting that we beat their navy not through skill but through persistance; Magna Italia could afford to replace ships faster than their impoverished yards could, and finally Henry realized that and begged an end of our war. Just in time for a war with his own son, which I regretfully admit we had nothing to do with.
The Hungarians, whose stupidity rivals only yours, attacked us despite the press of the Mongol hordes on their eastern border. Once I had broken Spain, the full weight of my armies turned upon and quickly routed them, and the Mongols did the rest. The pitiful fragments left of their kingdom now cling to the Adriatic rocks and are picked off as I desire; their homeland belongs to the Khan.
And interesting fellow, the Khan. He attacked our position in Austria in force, and unlike the hapless Hungarians we obliterated his army. He sued for peace immediately, and is now engaged in an interminate struggle with the Byzantines. A people very able to spot weakness. And strength.
And as for Leo, the latest in that string of Anti-Popes who seem to feel that the very heart of Italia Magna should belong to them and their foreign-backed church rather than to the people who inhabit it... After I executed every last man in his defeated armies, I had Leo hung in a cage and publically sodomized by bears until he bled to death through his asshole.
You are going to wish I had done that to you.
Our first war, obviously, was not enough for you. Although I crushed your armies and freed all of the lands south of the Alps from your ruinous taxation - and as you well know Tyrolia and Savoy both celebrate their liberation enthusiastically and whole-heartedly, and generate for the Federation thrice as much revenue at less than a quarter the tax rate than they ever did under your benighted rule - you obviously had not learned your lesson then.
Nor did you learn it after our second war, won even more easily than the first - for I do not scruple to admit that our first war was a difficult one for the lands of Italy, only recently unified under my rule and facing the formidable if antiquated forces your father had left as the inheritance of the Holy Roman Empire. When I took Burgundy and Austria and made them my buffer states, and freed the Swiss to become the same but under their own guidance, I nonetheless left you bulk of your lands, prostrate as your armies were. Yet even then you did not realize that submission alone would enable your survival.
Amazingly, you did not learn even after our third war, where my armies routed yours in every encounter, and we razed your heartlands utterly, until there was no one stone left atop another. We are an Italian nation, and governing unruly Germans was a task I had thought best left to Germans, so rather than simply conquer Bohemia, Bavaria, Franconia, Lorraine - the list goes on - I eradicated their ability to make war. You were left with a barren empire, devoid of cities and cleared of industry, although I left all agriculture intact as I had no wish for the innocents afflicted by your rule to starve simply for being born under the rule of a moron. But again, I left you as King.
And now you have attacked me again.
This time, Emperor of Dust, there shall be no leniency. This time, I shall not stay my hand. I care not what shall happen to the Empire after you are gone; you I shall pursue to the ends of the Earth and your suffering shall become legend. I shall eliminate your children, your siblings, your bastards, your kinfolk. You are a stain upon the Earth and I shall blot you out utterly. Already my armies are in possession of all that I had previously conquered and more; Friesland alone still flies your banner, for at most a month more.
Think not to escape by sea, for that navy which we built to defeat the English now lies off your shores. But certainly you know that; your captured ships fill our ports already. I wonder if you grow hungry.
Do you regret your defiance now? Do you regret your bloodthirsty haste? If, in the depths of your arrogance and stupidity, you do not, it does not worry me.
You shall. For your reckoning shall be hard indeed.
Please find attached the face of Leo the Anti-Pope. I had it cut from him before he was placed in his cage. I had intended to mount it on my wall, but instead I shall await yours.
Lucas
- Sun Ra
Inspired by a particularly hard-fought game of Renaissance Conquest.