HOME | DD

Description
Apologies for it being longer than usual between this post and the last. This week has really not been going my way and I've just had to deal with… a lot.

Where last we left the Roman Empire, Justinian had brought his nation into one of the greatest highs it had seen since the fall of the Western empire back in 476. He'd reformed the legal system, Belisarius took Rome back from the Ostrogoths in 536, and Sassanid Iran was totally not scheming behind his back. Everything was going perfectly for the Byzantine Empire… which is a sentence that will never be repeated for the rest of human history. A volcanic winter choked the crops in 536, bubonic plague wiped out a fourth of the population in 542, Belisarius lost his hold on Rome in 546, and Justinian's beloved queen Theodora was taken by cancer in 548. Unable to cope with the loss, Justinian refused to remarry and produce an heir, so when he passed in 565, the throne went to his nephew, Justin. Justin was not his uncle, however, nor were any of the long line of adoptees that came after him. Their careers were bogged down in an endless slog of petty wars with the Sassanids, a chain of conflicts which left both empires decimated and tired. The holy city of Jerusalem was lost to the Sassanids in 614, and Constantinople herself was besieged in 626. The defenders held out, though, and gave Emperor Heraclius (the guy who overthrew the guy who overthrew Justinian's dynasty) the chance to sign a peace treaty in 628. As if to serve as a metaphor for the pointlessness of war itself, the borders were put right back to where they were at the start of the conflict, both kingdoms were broke af, and it left them completely unprepared to deal with the new superpower that had just exploded onto the scene ready to alter the course of human history as we know it.

See, back in 610, an Arab merchant from Mecca had begun to preach the revelations he'd received from his God via the angel Gabriel. This earned him both the nifty moniker of Prophet Muhammad and the ire of the Meccans who had previously made one hell of a killing off of their indigenous polytheism and felt a little threatened by this “one god” stuff. The following conflict is beyond the scope of this blurb, but obviously the people who would become the first Muslims won out, securing a significant portion of Arabia for their faction by 629, just two and a half years before Muhammad's death. His political successor, Abu Bakr (the nitty gritty of that succession is also way beyond the scope of this blurb), pointed his sword northward towards the two empires which used to just use the once disunited Arabic tribes as a convenient buffer to sick on one another. That sword, Khalid ibn al-Walid, ripped the Sassanids a new asshole straight through Mesopotamia in 633, a force so formidable that it united the Byzantines and Sassanids guarding the border town of Firaz. A noble gesture, but that battle ended in Rashidun victory, followed up with the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which ultimately allowed the Caliphate to take Syria and Jerusalem in 637. By 642, a year after Heraclius's death, Egypt had fallen as well, and with the Nile out of their hands, Byzantium’s first major artery was severed. Around the same time, the Arabs had effectively neutered and annexed the dying remnants of the Sassanid Empire, destroying any hope the Byzantines may have had for receiving aid from their former enemies.

In 674, the Muslims (under the Umayyad Caliphate now) had picked their way up Anatolia to Constantinople itself. The city was harassed on and off over the next four years, until the Byzantines kicked down the door and announced that they'd invented the fucking flamethrower. I know I word that like a joke, but no, this is the first recorded use of the infamous “Greek Fire”, a sort of mounted weapon that shits out a stream of what is most likely a primitive concoction of napalm. This, understandably, sent the Umayyads packing, and finally granted the Byzantines the breathing room they'd desperately need to deal with the encroaching Bulgars to the north. This was the high Emperor Justinian II rode on until he overstretched his resources and got spanked by the Umayyads at Sebastopolis in 692. Three years later, his unpopularity got his throne deposed and his nose chopped off (but hey don't worry, he had enough stolen coin to have a fancy new solid gold prosthetic fashioned for him). The empire's following instability is referred to as the Twenty Years’ Anarchy, during which six emperors were consecutively overthrown (including, hilariously, Justinian II back for round two). The chaos was put to rest in 717 by Leo III the Isaurian, who as far as I can tell was not a dinosaur, sadly. He was just sort of a dick, because he broke his promise of alliance with the Umayyads as soon as his ass was sat on that throne. With the help of the subjugated Bulgars, however, Leo was able to deflect the consequences of his actions when they repulsed the Arab Siege of Constantinople in 718.

With that out of the way, Leo could get back to more important matters: like being a dick to people minding their own damn business inside his own borders. The veneration of icons became an extremely heated matter in the Byzantine world, and Leo… liked to take that turn of phrase literally. People generally don't appreciate it when you come in and break all the pretty artwork in their church, which is probably why not many people batted an eye when Leo's grandson (also… named… Leo) kicked the bucket in 780 and was replaced by his wife, the pro-icon Irene of Athens. Well, okay, technically she was only acting as regent for her nine-year-old son Constantine and while she had the popular support, the army and government generally spat on her name, but we all know that Byzantine Empresses are always the baddest bitches on the block. Her son tried to kick her out in 790 but naaaaah that ain't happening kid. You're a pussy and you know it, you need your mommy to run things. Now be a good boy and stab the eyes out of all of your mother's enemies. In fact, ya know what, fuck you too, we'll just make you “disappear” as well for convenience sake. All hail the Empress.

Of course, the primary complaint that all the geriatrics in her court had was not Irene's mafia-level lust for blood (I mean come on they were well accustomed to that by now) but rather “htbgnsjfnrhcjdhdbbbutbutbut she's a woman nfncjdhgdhfjdjf women have cooties!” or something to that effect. Even the king of geriatrics, the Pope, seemed to agree, because in 800, he'd crowned his Frankish buddy Charlemagne as the new “Emperor of Rome”, to which the still very much Roman Byzantines were like “DUDE. What the FUCK?” No but wait wait wait wait, this could work actually, Irene thought, cause if she married Charlemagne, then the Eastern and Western Roman Empires would finally be reunited for the first time in centuries! With their powers combined, they might even be able to take the fight to the Caliphate for once! It was ballsy, it was genius, it was… fucking ruined by some bureaucratic loser who usurped Irene in 802, and Irene's next year in exile was the last of her life. Fans of alternate history have been absolutely infuriated by this cock block ever since. Now-emperor Nikephoros’s karmic punishment for this misdeed was having his skull lobbed off and turned into a goblet by the Khan of Bulgaria, Krum, in 811. Only the lowest scum deserve to be killed by a guy called Krum.

In 867, a Macedonian man named Basil had cut his way to the purple, establishing the Macedonian Dynasty in the process. Not a very creative name, but growing up breathing the same air as Alexander the Great certainly helped Basil bring some much needed strength to the Roman Empire. Strength, but not stability. The Byzantines spent the next couple centuries getting ping-ponged back and forth between their own infighting, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Bulgarians. Indeed, Emperor Basil II had made himself a career out of earning the incredibly amicable nickname “Bulgar Slayer”. I guess you don't need to be tactful at the diplomacy table if you're just gonna slice the table in half anyway. In fairness, he wasn't the only one slaying Bulgars. He was backed up in his campaigns by the Varangian Guard, an elite unit of Rus’ vikings he'd gotten as a dowry from marrying his sister Anna to the freshly Christianized Vladimir of Kiev in 988. The Varangian Guard were not only legendary badasses, but great philosophers as well, leaving behind such mind-altering, immortal words of wisdom on the walls of the Hagia Sophia as “Halfdan was here” and “Arinbáðr carved these runes”.

If only they'd consulted these inspired minds in 1054, when the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches reached the point of no return. Now, the 1054 schism is… complicated, if you want to be polite, and incredibly pedantic if you don't. There's a long history of minor theological and traditional differences that built up to the schism, but the most politically important difference was that whereas the Roman church viewed the Pope as the one supreme authority between God and his flock, the Byzantines viewed the Patriarch of Rome as simply one among equals. Tensions between the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, and Pope Leo IX led to the two excommunicating one another, which is pretty much the religious equivalent of a really messy divorce. That's really not the situation you want to find yourself in when the Seljuk Turks come busting down the door. This new Sunni superpower routed and captured Emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. He wasn't killed, but the mere rumor that he had been was enough for that old Roman usurpation muscle memory to get all hot and bothered again. His dethronement led to yet another period of civil war which eventually ended with general Alexios Komnenos winning the purple in 1081. Alexios found himself balancing at the top of an impossible situation, but he ultimately decided the safest bet for stabilizing the empire would be to get rid of all these leftover Seljuks which his forebears had just kept throwing at one another. Since he couldn't rely on his bickering nobles to help him to that end, he had to send out what must've been an extremely awkward plea for help… to the Catholic Pope.

While I'm sure Pope Urban II was gleefully jerking himself off when the Orthodox Greece came begging him for a rescue, convincing the Frankish and German nobles to be anything more than ambivalent about the dying husk far to the East required a rebrand. No no guys, see, we're not just doing this to assert the authority of the Pope in Constantinople, actually we're taking up the cross to reclaim Jerusalem from all those people who had been minding their own damned business for four hundred years now! He was successful… too successful, in fact, cause when the crux of your argument is a very loud and annoying “Deus vult”, that attracts a lot of psychopaths who're of the persuasion that Deus has vulted it that they slaughter anyone in their path and loot everything not nailed down. The first wave of Crusaders therefore was not a trained troop of elite knights but a bunch of peasants following a homeless dude and a goose all the way to the Holy Land. Since feeding a band of thousands of vigilantes hadn't been on the agenda, the Byzantine garrisons in Hungary had to turn these peasants away. The peasants, hungry and far from home, asked themselves what Jesus would do, then decided that Jesus was a little bitch and that pillaging the countryside was way easier. Hundreds upon hundreds of innocent Christians and Jews were slaughtered on the way to Byzantium, and then once they actually got to Anatolia, the distinction between Orthodox Greeks and Seljuk Muslims was completely lost on them. To make a long and very sad story short: lots of people died, the People's Crusade was obliterated the second they came up against an actual army, then the real Crusaders showed up and took Jerusalem in 1099. Congrats? I guess? Sure the Romans were now actually on fire, sure Alexios had just replaced a bunch of Seljuks who refused to leave with a bunch of Crusaders who refused to leave, but hey if there's one thing Byzantine Emperors are used to, it's going right ahead and fucking themselves.

So that's exactly what Alexios did, or at least what his grandkids did. Emperor Andronikos I was overthrown by his grandnephew Isaac in 1185, which ironically allowed their cousin (also named Isaac) to piss off to Cyprus and just sort of establish his own short-lived independent kingdom of his own. The first Isaac was overthrown and blinded by his brother Alexios III in 1195, thrown in a dark cell with his (Isaac's) son Alexios IV. Alexios IV was freed and smuggled out of Byzantium in 1201, and after a long series of happy coincidences and unpopular decisions, he found an opportunity in the Venetian Crusaders who were selected to lead the Fourth Crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Ayyubids. Alexios promised them big bucks if they'd just do him the teensy favor of detouring into Constantinople, freeing his father, and making him emperor. The Crusaders were strapped for cash so they figured hey, fuck it. The city was besieged and taken in 1203, but it turned out that Alexios IV didn't actually have the full sum he promised to put down. He managed to convince the Crusaders to give him a rain check, but they lost their patience, and kept butting heads with the Byzantine Army. Not even on the throne for a year, Alexios IV and his father were assassinated by the disgruntled populace in 1204. At this point, realizing they weren't getting paid and would probably never make it to the Holy Land at all after so many delays, the Crusaders decided that the Roman Empire had lived too fucking long anyway, and began a massive sack of the city. Neighborhoods were burned, landmarks were destroyed, citizens were defiled, tombs were desecrated, and great artworks were melted into petty coins. The absolute ruin the Crusaders reeked on Justinian's once proud city is almost comparable to Julius Caesar himself getting stabbed 23 times on the floor of the Roman Senate. The Byzantine Empire may have limped along until 1453, but it's the 1204 Sacking that truly killed it. Mehmed cut off the head, but the Crusaders cut off the limbs.

And on that incredibly cheery note, I did it. I summarized like 700 years of Byzantine history in one blurb. It's finished. I'm done. I'm gonna go play Minecraft and cry now.

Design notes, this is one of my favorite aesthetics for the Roman Empire. I don't know what it is, I just really like the way the shapes and layers work with one another. I kinda wish there was more going on with the helmets, but I mean that can't be helped. The Byzantines just had some pretty standard caps. I suppose I kinda compensated for that with the heavy, basing his design more on the Varangian Guard than the rest, so I was able to throw in a lot more viking elements there to spice it up. Always a good cheat when I can base one individual off a technically different faction. Meanwhile, I was a little on the fence about the layering on the elite. I really like the rare mirror plate variant of Byzantine laminar armor. It looks badass in real life, but it's a royal pain in the ass to draw on paper. I like how it came out in the end, or at the very least I like how the broader shapes interact with one another. Definitely need more practice, though.

Description
Apologies for it being longer than usual between this post and the last. This week has really not been going my way and I've just had to deal with… a lot.

Where last we left the Roman Empire, Justinian had brought his nation into one of the greatest highs it had seen since the fall of the Western empire back in 476. He'd reformed the legal system, Belisarius took Rome back from the Ostrogoths in 536, and Sassanid Iran was totally not scheming behind his back. Everything was going perfectly for the Byzantine Empire… which is a sentence that will never be repeated for the rest of human history. A volcanic winter choked the crops in 536, bubonic plague wiped out a fourth of the population in 542, Belisarius lost his hold on Rome in 546, and Justinian's beloved queen Theodora was taken by cancer in 548. Unable to cope with the loss, Justinian refused to remarry and produce an heir, so when he passed in 565, the throne went to his nephew, Justin. Justin was not his uncle, however, nor were any of the long line of adoptees that came after him. Their careers were bogged down in an endless slog of petty wars with the Sassanids, a chain of conflicts which left both empires decimated and tired. The holy city of Jerusalem was lost to the Sassanids in 614, and Constantinople herself was besieged in 626. The defenders held out, though, and gave Emperor Heraclius (the guy who overthrew the guy who overthrew Justinian's dynasty) the chance to sign a peace treaty in 628. As if to serve as a metaphor for the pointlessness of war itself, the borders were put right back to where they were at the start of the conflict, both kingdoms were broke af, and it left them completely unprepared to deal with the new superpower that had just exploded onto the scene ready to alter the course of human history as we know it.

See, back in 610, an Arab merchant from Mecca had begun to preach the revelations he'd received from his God via the angel Gabriel. This earned him both the nifty moniker of Prophet Muhammad and the ire of the Meccans who had previously made one hell of a killing off of their indigenous polytheism and felt a little threatened by this “one god” stuff. The following conflict is beyond the scope of this blurb, but obviously the people who would become the first Muslims won out, securing a significant portion of Arabia for their faction by 629, just two and a half years before Muhammad's death. His political successor, Abu Bakr (the nitty gritty of that succession is also way beyond the scope of this blurb), pointed his sword northward towards the two empires which used to just use the once disunited Arabic tribes as a convenient buffer to sick on one another. That sword, Khalid ibn al-Walid, ripped the Sassanids a new asshole straight through Mesopotamia in 633, a force so formidable that it united the Byzantines and Sassanids guarding the border town of Firaz. A noble gesture, but that battle ended in Rashidun victory, followed up with the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which ultimately allowed the Caliphate to take Syria and Jerusalem in 637. By 642, a year after Heraclius's death, Egypt had fallen as well, and with the Nile out of their hands, Byzantium’s first major artery was severed. Around the same time, the Arabs had effectively neutered and annexed the dying remnants of the Sassanid Empire, destroying any hope the Byzantines may have had for receiving aid from their former enemies.

In 674, the Muslims (under the Umayyad Caliphate now) had picked their way up Anatolia to Constantinople itself. The city was harassed on and off over the next four years, until the Byzantines kicked down the door and announced that they'd invented the fucking flamethrower. I know I word that like a joke, but no, this is the first recorded use of the infamous “Greek Fire”, a sort of mounted weapon that shits out a stream of what is most likely a primitive concoction of napalm. This, understandably, sent the Umayyads packing, and finally granted the Byzantines the breathing room they'd desperately need to deal with the encroaching Bulgars to the north. This was the high Emperor Justinian II rode on until he overstretched his resources and got spanked by the Umayyads at Sebastopolis in 692. Three years later, his unpopularity got his throne deposed and his nose chopped off (but hey don't worry, he had enough stolen coin to have a fancy new solid gold prosthetic fashioned for him). The empire's following instability is referred to as the Twenty Years’ Anarchy, during which six emperors were consecutively overthrown (including, hilariously, Justinian II back for round two). The chaos was put to rest in 717 by Leo III the Isaurian, who as far as I can tell was not a dinosaur, sadly. He was just sort of a dick, because he broke his promise of alliance with the Umayyads as soon as his ass was sat on that throne. With the help of the subjugated Bulgars, however, Leo was able to deflect the consequences of his actions when they repulsed the Arab Siege of Constantinople in 718.

With that out of the way, Leo could get back to more important matters: like being a dick to people minding their own damn business inside his own borders. The veneration of icons became an extremely heated matter in the Byzantine world, and Leo… liked to take that turn of phrase literally. People generally don't appreciate it when you come in and break all the pretty artwork in their church, which is probably why not many people batted an eye when Leo's grandson (also… named… Leo) kicked the bucket in 780 and was replaced by his wife, the pro-icon Irene of Athens. Well, okay, technically she was only acting as regent for her nine-year-old son Constantine and while she had the popular support, the army and government generally spat on her name, but we all know that Byzantine Empresses are always the baddest bitches on the block. Her son tried to kick her out in 790 but naaaaah that ain't happening kid. You're a pussy and you know it, you need your mommy to run things. Now be a good boy and stab the eyes out of all of your mother's enemies. In fact, ya know what, fuck you too, we'll just make you “disappear” as well for convenience sake. All hail the Empress.

Of course, the primary complaint that all the geriatrics in her court had was not Irene's mafia-level lust for blood (I mean come on they were well accustomed to that by now) but rather “htbgnsjfnrhcjdhdbbbutbutbut she's a woman nfncjdhgdhfjdjf women have cooties!” or something to that effect. Even the king of geriatrics, the Pope, seemed to agree, because in 800, he'd crowned his Frankish buddy Charlemagne as the new “Emperor of Rome”, to which the still very much Roman Byzantines were like “DUDE. What the FUCK?” No but wait wait wait wait, this could work actually, Irene thought, cause if she married Charlemagne, then the Eastern and Western Roman Empires would finally be reunited for the first time in centuries! With their powers combined, they might even be able to take the fight to the Caliphate for once! It was ballsy, it was genius, it was… fucking ruined by some bureaucratic loser who usurped Irene in 802, and Irene's next year in exile was the last of her life. Fans of alternate history have been absolutely infuriated by this cock block ever since. Now-emperor Nikephoros’s karmic punishment for this misdeed was having his skull lobbed off and turned into a goblet by the Khan of Bulgaria, Krum, in 811. Only the lowest scum deserve to be killed by a guy called Krum.

In 867, a Macedonian man named Basil had cut his way to the purple, establishing the Macedonian Dynasty in the process. Not a very creative name, but growing up breathing the same air as Alexander the Great certainly helped Basil bring some much needed strength to the Roman Empire. Strength, but not stability. The Byzantines spent the next couple centuries getting ping-ponged back and forth between their own infighting, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Bulgarians. Indeed, Emperor Basil II had made himself a career out of earning the incredibly amicable nickname “Bulgar Slayer”. I guess you don't need to be tactful at the diplomacy table if you're just gonna slice the table in half anyway. In fairness, he wasn't the only one slaying Bulgars. He was backed up in his campaigns by the Varangian Guard, an elite unit of Rus’ vikings he'd gotten as a dowry from marrying his sister Anna to the freshly Christianized Vladimir of Kiev in 988. The Varangian Guard were not only legendary badasses, but great philosophers as well, leaving behind such mind-altering, immortal words of wisdom on the walls of the Hagia Sophia as “Halfdan was here” and “Arinbáðr carved these runes”.

If only they'd consulted these inspired minds in 1054, when the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches reached the point of no return. Now, the 1054 schism is… complicated, if you want to be polite, and incredibly pedantic if you don't. There's a long history of minor theological and traditional differences that built up to the schism, but the most politically important difference was that whereas the Roman church viewed the Pope as the one supreme authority between God and his flock, the Byzantines viewed the Patriarch of Rome as simply one among equals. Tensions between the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, and Pope Leo IX led to the two excommunicating one another, which is pretty much the religious equivalent of a really messy divorce. That's really not the situation you want to find yourself in when the Seljuk Turks come busting down the door. This new Sunni superpower routed and captured Emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. He wasn't killed, but the mere rumor that he had been was enough for that old Roman usurpation muscle memory to get all hot and bothered again. His dethronement led to yet another period of civil war which eventually ended with general Alexios Komnenos winning the purple in 1081. Alexios found himself balancing at the top of an impossible situation, but he ultimately decided the safest bet for stabilizing the empire would be to get rid of all these leftover Seljuks which his forebears had just kept throwing at one another. Since he couldn't rely on his bickering nobles to help him to that end, he had to send out what must've been an extremely awkward plea for help… to the Catholic Pope.

While I'm sure Pope Urban II was gleefully jerking himself off when the Orthodox Greece came begging him for a rescue, convincing the Frankish and German nobles to be anything more than ambivalent about the dying husk far to the East required a rebrand. No no guys, see, we're not just doing this to assert the authority of the Pope in Constantinople, actually we're taking up the cross to reclaim Jerusalem from all those people who had been minding their own damned business for four hundred years now! He was successful… too successful, in fact, cause when the crux of your argument is a very loud and annoying “Deus vult”, that attracts a lot of psychopaths who're of the persuasion that Deus has vulted it that they slaughter anyone in their path and loot everything not nailed down. The first wave of Crusaders therefore was not a trained troop of elite knights but a bunch of peasants following a homeless dude and a goose all the way to the Holy Land. Since feeding a band of thousands of vigilantes hadn't been on the agenda, the Byzantine garrisons in Hungary had to turn these peasants away. The peasants, hungry and far from home, asked themselves what Jesus would do, then decided that Jesus was a little bitch and that pillaging the countryside was way easier. Hundreds upon hundreds of innocent Christians and Jews were slaughtered on the way to Byzantium, and then once they actually got to Anatolia, the distinction between Orthodox Greeks and Seljuk Muslims was completely lost on them. To make a long and very sad story short: lots of people died, the People's Crusade was obliterated the second they came up against an actual army, then the real Crusaders showed up and took Jerusalem in 1099. Congrats? I guess? Sure the Romans were now actually on fire, sure Alexios had just replaced a bunch of Seljuks who refused to leave with a bunch of Crusaders who refused to leave, but hey if there's one thing Byzantine Emperors are used to, it's going right ahead and fucking themselves.

So that's exactly what Alexios did, or at least what his grandkids did. Emperor Andronikos I was overthrown by his grandnephew Isaac in 1185, which ironically allowed their cousin (also named Isaac) to piss off to Cyprus and just sort of establish his own short-lived independent kingdom of his own. The first Isaac was overthrown and blinded by his brother Alexios III in 1195, thrown in a dark cell with his (Isaac's) son Alexios IV. Alexios IV was freed and smuggled out of Byzantium in 1201, and after a long series of happy coincidences and unpopular decisions, he found an opportunity in the Venetian Crusaders who were selected to lead the Fourth Crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Ayyubids. Alexios promised them big bucks if they'd just do him the teensy favor of detouring into Constantinople, freeing his father, and making him emperor. The Crusaders were strapped for cash so they figured hey, fuck it. The city was besieged and taken in 1203, but it turned out that Alexios IV didn't actually have the full sum he promised to put down. He managed to convince the Crusaders to give him a rain check, but they lost their patience, and kept butting heads with the Byzantine Army. Not even on the throne for a year, Alexios IV and his father were assassinated by the disgruntled populace in 1204. At this point, realizing they weren't getting paid and would probably never make it to the Holy Land at all after so many delays, the Crusaders decided that the Roman Empire had lived too fucking long anyway, and began a massive sack of the city. Neighborhoods were burned, landmarks were destroyed, citizens were defiled, tombs were desecrated, and great artworks were melted into petty coins. The absolute ruin the Crusaders reeked on Justinian's once proud city is almost comparable to Julius Caesar himself getting stabbed 23 times on the floor of the Roman Senate. The Byzantine Empire may have limped along until 1453, but it's the 1204 Sacking that truly killed it. Mehmed cut off the head, but the Crusaders cut off the limbs.

And on that incredibly cheery note, I did it. I summarized like 700 years of Byzantine history in one blurb. It's finished. I'm done. I'm gonna go play Minecraft and cry now.

Design notes, this is one of my favorite aesthetics for the Roman Empire. I don't know what it is, I just really like the way the shapes and layers work with one another. I kinda wish there was more going on with the helmets, but I mean that can't be helped. The Byzantines just had some pretty standard caps. I suppose I kinda compensated for that with the heavy, basing his design more on the Varangian Guard than the rest, so I was able to throw in a lot more viking elements there to spice it up. Always a good cheat when I can base one individual off a technically different faction. Meanwhile, I was a little on the fence about the layering on the elite. I really like the rare mirror plate variant of Byzantine laminar armor. It looks badass in real life, but it's a royal pain in the ass to draw on paper. I like how it came out in the end, or at the very least I like how the broader shapes interact with one another. Definitely need more practice, though.