Ottoman Empire

Stalled Offensive

The Ottoman Empire is a large, populous, developed empire, and in recent years has risen to become one of the wealthier states in the known world. With all of this grandeur and might, it is thus somewhat embarrassing that the tiny, weak, barely-relevant city-state of Hattusa has managed to declare war on you and survive for so long. If this war drags on, people – both your subjects and foreign leaders – may come to question how legitimate your empire really is, and whether it really deserves to rule over the territory and people it currently does.

• Option 1. We were just, uh, toying with Hattusa. Yeah, that's it! Now that we've had a chance to play with our food, we're totally gonna smite them this part!

• Option 2. Our military commanders are clearly inept. We shall summarily execute them all and hire competent commanders to replace them.

• Option 3. Don't we have, like, demon summoning and shit? If we summon a bunch of demons to fight for us, this war should be over in no time! Summoning demons is the safe and reasonable solution to every problem.

• Option 4. We have never been at war with Hattusa. There is no war in the Ottoman Empire.

Cossack Hetmanate

Lost Time

For the past couple weeks or so, every city in the Cossack Hetmanate has been abuzz with the same topic of conversation: the fact that every single person seems to have different, conflicting memories of the past month. Some state that the streets were blanketed in snow, people sang strangely joyous pseudo-religious songs outdoors and drank some sort of hot sweet dark beverage indoors, and a heavyset man with a big white beard wearing red robes broke into their homes and left random junk for their children. Others claim that it was a regular warm summer, while others still claim that the last month just never happened and everyone else is clearly hallucinating. Official Hetmanate records seem to not even mention or reference the last month at all, adding further confusion to an already quite muddled situation. In your capital, the leaders of your state come together to discuss the situation.

• Option 1. Firstly, Starshyna Yuri Mefodij Trofimovich Zherebetsky (/u/Lord_Norjam) speaks up, and says that the obvious solution is for everyone to agree on a new system of keeping track of time, dates, and seasons. He opens up a calendar with all of the days seemingly shifted forward by about half a day and the headings for summer and winter switched, and then pulls out an upside-down map of the Black Sea, with Crimea down in the south and Anatolia up north. He claims that adopting these unquestioningly superior systems of temporal and spatial management will prevent any other future disagreements of this nature from occurring.

• Option 2. Pugachev the Pugilist (/u/Andy0132) suddenly interrupts Starshyna while they're in the middle of speaking, and says that the issue here is clearly the fallibility of the human mind. In a loud monotone, he states that a constructed mechanical contraption that automatically keeps track of time without flawed human intervention is the only way to resolve this dilemma. With a beep and a boop, he rests his case.

• Option 3. Igor Melnyk (/u/EmeraldRange), after tripping on his shoes and spilling his vodka all over Pugachev, who seems strangely unphased by this sudden addition of alcohol to his body, sheepishly admits that he may have accidentally knocked a bottle of celestial ink all over the timestream, mucking it up. Nobody else seems to have any idea why Igor thinks that makes any sense.

• Option 4. Finally, after the meeting had been going on for several hours, Hetman Ivan Khmelnytsky (/u/Leris1) groggily saunters in. Seemingly confused by what all the fuss is about, Ivan just says that things have felt kinda slow lately and that slowness is probably why people aren't properly remembering recent events, as their minds are used to events proceeding at a faster pace and are thus filling in perceived gaps in memory that aren't actually there.

Golden Horde

Eternal Youth

With the grand opening of not one, but two Fountains of Youth within the lands of the Golden Horde, your advisors, vassal khans, foreign dignitaries, and the common rabble have done nothing but pester you with "helpful suggestions" for how you should utilize the rejuvenating water of these fountains. While most of these "helpful suggestions" just boiled down to "give me and my friends access to the fountains", some sparse few seemingly held some merit, and now await your consideration.

• Option 1. Many of your vassal khans and warriors – those who aren't just advocating for exclusive access for themselves, at least – have proposed to you that priority access to the fountains be granted to the traditional Mongol warrior aristocracy, as those responsible for defending and expanding the realm are the ones most in need of increased vigour and stamina.

• Option 2. Your humble peasantry, after seeing their fields once again trampled by the horses of the khans entering and then leaving your court, ask that the fountains' water be used primarily to irrigate their fields and quench the thirst of their livestock, so that they may see bountiful harvests. Of course, nobody has actually ever tried to use the fountains' water on plants and animals before, but your peasants are pretty sure it should work.

• Option 3. Many of the bourgeoisie and merchant class of your cities, while scoffing at the poor unwashed peasants preceding them, have suggested some of the water from the fountains be reserved for export, so that foreign gold can flow into the Horde in exchange for some small drips of eternal youth.

• Option 4. Your clerics, many who have been a bit iffy about this "eternal youth" thing in the first place, are outraged at this suggestion that the water be sent to foreign polytheists, atheists, and heretics. Only those who follow the true doctrines of Islam should be allowed access to the water, and for a non-Muslim to even touch the water should be a criminal offence.

Genoa

Floundering Colony

No money no happiness

• Option 1. Our people are clearly just homesick for our motherland of glorious Italy. If we just construct a few pizzerias and pasta bara I'm sure our people will perk right up and start making money!

• Option 2. The problem is exactly that we're too attached to Italy! We live in Crimea, not Italy, and trying to force Italian ways of living in an environment they clearly weren't created for is silly. We should adopt the ways of the locals, and then we will be comfortable and able to generate wealth as the locals do.

• Option 3. Wait, isn't the world's foremost academy of magic literally right on our borders? Can't those lazy mages turn lead into gold and water into wine and shit like that? It's not like intoxication has any negative effects or that increasing the supply of gold lowers its value, or anything – the gold standard people keep telling me that the value of gold is intrinsically high.

• Option 4. Do you know what's a great way to both distract our people from troubles at home and acquire a bunch of money that wasn't ours to begin with? I'm pretty sure you do. Time to smash that Raise All Levies button and dunk on some scrubs! (Choose one faction or city-state.) [WARNING: May lead to WAR!]

Trebizond

Chichen Itza? Is That Something We Eat?

Trebizond has a lot of wonders. Like, a lot of wonders. But, it seems like not all Trapezuntine citizens seem to understand their ruling class's obsession with large marble buildings. They don't seem to serve any actual purpose, they don't make the winters less cold or plagues less deadly, and they don't seem to have any actual tangible benefits, beyond inflating the egos of the Emperor and his nobles and advisors. The confusion and, dare I say, discontentment of your citizenry has finally managed to seep its way into your excessively large palace and reach your ears.

• Option 1. It seems that some of out people are uncultured swine, and don't appreciate the artistic, historical, and architectural merit of our wonders. I'm sure a stronger emphasis on culture and art in our education system will remedy that.

• Option 2. These philistines are too far gone, and more importantly are bordering dangerously on treason. We don't need a new education system, we need a re-education system!

• Option 3. The problem here is that despite our many wonders, we still don't have enough or every man, woman, child, and household pet to have their own personal wonder. We must redouble our efforts until everyone in Trebizond has their own wonder to their name!

• Option 4. I mean, we could just spend our effort and resources on more practical things than building huge marble buildings in random cities.

Bulgaria

Okay Boomer

The youths of Bulgaria are, as youths are wont to be, in a bit of an uproar. They can't afford houses because your massive lawns are taking up too much real estate, they say. Their needs and issues are ignored by the government because the government is run by out-of-touch old people, they say. The old people music you have played at festivals and concerts is slow and bad, and should be replaced by their new hip cool tunes, they say.

• Option 1. Hey, I spent a long life of working hard, saving money, applying myself, and contributing to society to get where I am today! If you punk kids want a nice big lawn like mine, maybe you should stop slacking and start working for a living, and start saving and stop spending all of your money on pumpkin spice lattes and avocado toast. And also your "tunes" are just people saying vulgar words over random loud noises, not real music!

• Option 2. I mean, maybe we could use some new blood in the government. We do want to train up the next generation of leaders and make sure we aren't too out-of-touch with our people, after all.

• Option 3. Maybe we could use some new blood, indeed. All of these hooligans shall be sacrificed to the Great Ones! Long live the boomerocracy, long live the Great Ones!

• Option 4. Vive la révolution! Boomers delenda est! Eat the rich!

Greater Armenia

You Fuck One Horse...

Armenia is one of the oldest, greatest, proudest, and most accomplished civilizations on this planet. Armenia is the birthplace of the first systemized form of magic use, which has continued in an unbroken and growing tradition to this day. Armenia is where the ideals of democracy were first formulated and where the first democratic government was put into practice. Armenia built the Great Zipline and conquered the once-impassable mountains. Armenia has even raised new mountains from the earth, a feat mightier and more marvellous than even the shiniest of Trebizond's wonders. Armenia, also, is home to a woman who had her horse fuck her eldest son.

It seems like the old adage about goat-fuckers also applies to horse-fuckees, as now, despite its grand history and glorious achievements, all anyone thinks about when Armenia is brought up is horses fucking femboys. Is this what the once-proud nation of Armenia has been reduced to – a punchline to a vulgar joke? Will this be the sole lasting legacy of the Armenian people and their civilization on the world?

• Option 1. Yes it will, and if you think there's anything wrong with that, you're just lame. Femboy horse sex and associated shenanigans are a perfectly fine and legitimate legacy for our people.

• Option 2. Yes it might, if we don't put a stop to it! We must immediately cease all of this fuckery, literal and metaphorical, and purge all records of it, and then focus solely on very serious and respectable civilization activities, like massacring civilians and taking their stuff.

• Option 3. No, I think that while this may be what the vulgarians focus their gossip on today, over time people will have the maturity and intelligence to recognize and respect all of our actual achievements while seeing this whole escapade as just a cute little historical quirk, one that can be laughed at without defining us.

• Option 4. You know, if we take this whole thing even further, and make it so grotesque, so horrific, and so debased that nobody even wants to think about it, they'll stop thinking about it and then it won't be our nation's legacy anymore. Q.E.D.