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I’m sorry for all the dead bodies I left behind while walking from Ireland to China in Crusader Kings 3’s brilliant new DLCThe Roads To Power are paved with good intentions
The Roads To Power are paved with good intentions
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
We pitch our tents outside Constantinople and crack open the ale. In the light of the campfire I examine my travel companions as they party. There’s an Ashkenazi rabbi, a Saxon serf, some French knights, a Czech spy, a German dwarf, and a pair of inseparable Italian peasants. This rowdy band of roustabouts I’ve collected in theCrusader Kings 3’s Roads To Power expansion has the feeling of a found family, each fellow wanderer sporting their own ambitions and quirks. They won’t all make it. Many of the people I’m looking at in the glow of these embers will fall on the road, victims of robbery, landslides, and animal attacks. One of them will sacrifice their life to save the rest of us. All will bring me a step closer to my goal: I am walking from Ireland to China.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
Although I ensure Cathmál is a well educated country Gael, he will also turn out to be incredibly horny. As an 18-year-old pagan born out of wedlock in 1066 with no claims to any land of his own, he has good reason to go wandering. The character creation screen of CK3 is well-stocked with useful traits and characteristics we can take advantage of. Cathmál is thrifty (good at earning cash), impatient (travels 25% faster than normal) and brave (100% more likely to die horribly in a battle). He is the leader of a new band called the “Turbulent Travellers”. His emblem is a salmon. It is symbolic of travel, fertility, and tastes great with rice, although he does not yet know what rice is. His motto is “China or Death”.
There are plenty of other skills I could pump into our young friend, but part of the appeal of an adventurer’s life is to gather flecks of personality as you roll along, like sugar on a fresh donut. The journey will make the man.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
With all the preparation done, I recruit some friends and set out for the exotic land of Wales. One of my oldest pals, a violent brute called Fothad the Hawk, comes with me. He is described as “significantly more likely to harm others”. I love him dearly.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
But more often said apples are earned through contracts. Intimidate a local tax dodger, say. Or build a tower for a noble as a phallic symbol of his power. These can be as simple as choice-heavy prompts with lots of skill checks, or as complicated as multi-step schemes. To keep contracts fresh, you have to keep on the move.
It’s a big contrast to howCrusader Kingsis normally played. It sometimes feels like the horsey vagabonding ofMount & Blade(a series that itself could be described as: “What if Crusader Kings but in third person?"). As a fan of both games, playing as an adventurer makes me deeply giddy. Especially when Fothad gets himself into a fight with a Welsh man on the way to London.
Fothad the Hawk is a wirey 30-something Celt with a fickle temper. His opponent is a fully armoured knight errant. As an 18-year-old, I decide Cathmál won’t get between them. Fothad, the absolute legend, doesn’t need armour to do a big stab, and the Welsh fella is slaughtered in the fray. We should probably leave the country.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
In my pain, I look at the calendar. It has taken a YEAR to reach the English capital. This feels like terrible progress. Battered, poor, and on the run, I remember that I’ve also made Cathmál a “journaller”, which means he can write to soothe his mind. He dips the quill and thinks of distant China, wondering if his goal is truly possible…
1067
Cathmál has recovered from his wounds, and prepares the troupe for a departure to Europe proper. His brush with death has given him some perspective. Perhaps it is time to choose an heir. He chooses the doctor he is fucking.
1068
The gang has arrived in Barcelona, on a mission to escort an emissary from Bruges to the court of a Catalan duke. Everyone in the hot city is coughing. We throw the sick emissary into the duke’s lap and prepare to leave before we too catch the “Barcelonian Sweats”.
1069
We camp outside the walls of Klingenberg, home of the Holy Roman Emperor. We host a “revelry” to reduce everyone’s stress, and invite the Emperor himself to eat and drink with us. He does not respond.
1070
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Cathmál has, for some reason, enrolled in a university program in Rome. He studies so hard he nearly has a mental breakdown. But then two Italian peasants, Carlo and Lealdo, break into the uni and start getting sloshed on the monk’s wine. They teach Cathmál to relax, and become good friends, joining him on the journey.
1071
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1072
We host a party outside Constantinople. We neglect to invite the Emperor (or his mysterious co-Emperor). Neither is offended.
1073
We arrive at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where Cathmál is pained to discover he must wait many years for the “attend university” decision to “cool down”. Thirsty for knowledge, or maybe something else, he instead starts learning Greek from a woman the band picked up in Thessaloniki.
1074-1075
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
Our gang of Western weirdoes spends a whole year in the court of local ruler, Agha Abd Al-Hamid, serving as his “entertainment”. We are forced to leave when the courtiers grow tired of us, claiming our stories are " a pack of lies”, which is only partially the case.
1076
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
1077
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
1078
1079
The travellers pitch their tents in the shadow of Mahabodhi temple, the site where the Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment. Everyone gets drunk.
1080
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After a year of working here, the sights, sounds, and smells of Bengali life call powerfully to Cathmál. Here he stands, on the cusp of his goal, with the splintered lands of China lying just beyond a single mountain range. And yet the Buddha smiles warmly at him, teasing a life content with what he already has: friends, peace, green fields, roots. Perhaps it is enough to be satisfied here. Does he really need to see another country? To meet yet more people? To chase yet more of the shifting earth?
1081
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Yes. He does. A full 15 years after Cathmál set sail from the shores of Ireland, our boy lands in the city of Xingqing, capital of the Mjinjaa kingdom and one precursor to modern day China. He immediately gets to work seducing the King’s wife.
Epilogue
So. Cathmál made it. And importantly, so did his friends, his many lovers, his children (he had two along the way, real rascals), and his best buddy of all time, the jolly murderer Fothad. Others were lost along the way. Ernst, my dwarf quartermaster and one of the most competent people I will ever meet in this life or in real life, disappeared in a landslide. So did Carlo, one of the kind Italian pissheads. They were not the only losses. I probably lost more followers to mountain-climbing accidents than I did to war, hunger, or banditry put together. Alongside the death, illness, frostbite and aches, my fellow travellers also suffered many year-long hangovers. One or two of them adopted pets.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
I cannot stress how much of a good time I’ve had with this DLC. Only buildinga multicultural empire of turtles and insectsinStellarishas brought me more entertainment in a Paradox game. Yes, it can get repetitive as you dismiss some of the same dialogue boxes over and over. But there’s still a good variety of events (and this was me playing entirely legally - without accepting any of the well-paying “criminal” contracts).
“Travelling gives you a home in a thousand strange places, and makes you a stranger in your own land.” It was the big lad, Ibn Batutta himself, who said that - aka, the original Lonely Planet travel writer. Which reminds me: there’s one more thing you can do as a traveller in Roads To Power, provided you meet the hefty requirements. You can write a book of travels.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive
He has written the tale to prove it.
