I Am Skantarios

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

From the Diary of Diadohos Skantarios, 1450 AD...

—Opening Line

The year is 1450 AD. The Byzantine Empire - henceforth refered to as Basileia ton Romaion, "Kingdom of the Romans" - the last remnant of the glorious Roman Empire of the age past, is on its last legs. Surrounded by hostile neighbors who can crush what little land it has left and put an end to the lingering legacy of Rome for good, it seemed that there is little the the Basileia can do except for surrendering its arms and step down...

Or not.

Because against the hordes of Muslim holy warriors, greedy Catholic rivals, and the heart of Constantinople, stands one man who will soon take history into his own hands and attempt to revive the Roman Empire of ages long past. Will he emerge victorious and revive Rome to its heyday, or will he be crushed beneath the weight of all her foes?

He is Skantarios, and he's not exactly the most chivalrous one out there, but he will do what needs to be done by whatever means necessary, and looking like a great hero while he does it.

Look for this completed work here at TW Center.

Tropes used in I Am Skantarios include:
  • After Action Report: One of the finest examples.
  • Alternate History: This is Medieval II Total War...
  • Anti-Hero: Skantarios is frequently downright cruel to his enemies. His acts of genocide righteous retribution are implied to be mostly forgiven glorified by his people, who more-or-less worship him as a living saint, and since their enemies would do pretty much the same to them should he fail anyway. Skantarios' less virtuous acts include:
    • Combat Pragmatist: Specifically targeting, ambushing, and ruthlessly executing enemy generals, isolating them from their armies and cutting them down, in order to break the enemy's morale.
    • Kill It with Fire: Burning entire units of enemy soldiers to a crisp with his flamethrowers/siege weaponry, and showing no remorse for it, to counterbalance his constant disadvantage in numbers.
    • Leave No Survivors: Executing pretty much all of the prisoners he captures to ensure that he doesn't fight the same units twice. On the rare occasions he doesn't do this, it's usually because he's using them as bait for another enemy force.
    • I Shall Taunt You: Taunting enemy soldiers, particularly Muslims, to get them to sally out and attack. At one point he presents what he claims to be the ashes of the Prophet to a Turkish garrison, and puts it inside a pig's corpse. The Turks go berserk.
    • Kick Them While They Are Down: Killing said prisoners in sight of their comrades, in order to demoralize the remaining enemy armies.
    • Fighting Dirty: Using his spies to infiltrate every city in his path and open the gates to his armies, mercilessly executing the garrisons within, in order to reduce casualties among his forces.
    • Rape, Pillage and Burn: Sacking said captured cities and looting everything of value within to fund his war machine. He does, however, spare a few towns that he needs for future campaigns.
    • Shoot the Dog: Exterminating every Muslim who crosses his path, tearing down the Dome of the Rock, torching the Kaa'ba (and the faithful Muslims still inside with it), and burying the caves where Muhammad received his revelations, in order to make sure that Islam never threatens the Byzantine Restored Roman Empire again.
    • We Have Reserves: Mercenary units are deliberately used to draw out enemy soldiers, take hits from enemy arrows, block cavalry charges, and to wear down enemy numbers prior to elephant assaults.
  • Artificial Stupidity: A few battles were won owing to this, including many of the countersieges of Constantinople. Getting their men fried by Greek Fire? Forgivable. Charging cavalry through a row of stakes? No excuse.
  • Author Avatar: Inverted. It is more likely that the author's user ID is named after the character than vice versa.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: Skantarios gets one when his father is killed by an assassin. A rather inept one at that, for he gets hunted down and murdered by his network of (usually) insanely effective spies almost immediately thereafter.
  • Badass/Determinator: Both meta- and in-universe example - Skantarios the character and Skantarios the author. Look, if half the world hates you, your army is starving and close to desertion, and your only major city is besieged from the get-go, you have to be both of the above to even survive, let alone turn the table. The author gets plus-points for being the one who actually plays in that impossible setting.
  • Badass Army: Skantarios can be proud to say he owns the world's leading Badass Army about ten turns in, and he eventually gets several of these. The Imperial Army is still the best, as they demonstrate repeatedly during his genocidal campaign against Islam, but the campaign against the Ottomans and Rus show that his subordinates have some utterly invincible troopers as well.
  • Can't Stay Normal: Late in the story, Skantarios tries retiring to Constantinople, only to find that he can't handle a peaceful life. He attempts to grow a vegetable garden in the royal palace, to... decidedly mixed results.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Skantarios for the Muslims. He deliberately cultivates his reputation as the bane of Islam in order to provoke acts of blind hatred from his foes, and fear when appropriate.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Playing on Very Hard is asking for this to happen, naturally.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: Several ten star generals including the best the Mongols have to offer, giants of the late medieval world themselves, crumble in the face of the even more formidable Skantarios and his generals.
  • The Dreaded: By the time Skantarios is in his mid-40's, the Dread meter is maxed out. In the epilogue, a historian notes that Skantarios' name remains feared by the Muslims for generations, and that even speaking it aloud or writing it down might summon him. This reaches the point where any Muslim who states his name is lashed, and any Muslim who writes it is stoned to death.
  • The Empire: Everyone surrounding the Byzantines, especially the Turks and Fatimids. By about midway through, Byzantium itself, especially given Skantarios' murky modus operandi.
  • Expy: Skantarios is essentially Lelouch Lamperouge born several centuries early.
  • Famous Last Words: A soldier of the Jihad carved a signpost on the road to Constantinople when the Muslim armies are losing badly. When Skantarios discovered it, he asked a translator what it meant. Turned out that the poor soldier wrote on the signpost: "The place where Muslims go to die". Sniff, sniff...
  • Femme Fatale: Arguably Anna Laskaris. Although she is far, far more patriotic than your average Femme Fatale has any right to be.
  • Freudian Excuse: Skantarios' hatred of Muslims is catalyzed by the murder of his father by an Egyptian assassin.
  • He Who Fights Monsters/ Pyrrhic Villainy: Hundreds of thousands of dead enemies, dozens of massacres and sackings, and years and years of warfare reduce Skantarios to a man filled with nothing but hate, even for himself.
  • Hit and Run Tactics: Some time into the war, Skantarios struck a deal with Hungarian cavalry mercenaries. These mercenaries become the core of his Imperial Army, and repeatedly turn the tide of battle for him.
  • The Horde: The dozens of Muslim armies rushing Constantinople give this kind of impression. Unfortunately for them, all they do is expand the burial pit outside the city.
  • Invincible Hero: Skantarios never loses on the battlefield, despite frequently unfriendly odds. At the end of the first Jihad, Skantarios tallies up the thousands of fallen Jihad warriors in the burial pit outside the city. Recalling the Islamic tradition that every fallen Jihadi receives 72 virgins upon entering heaven, he calculates that Allah will need to find over a million virgins to satisfy that fallen warriors' needs.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: By mid-story, both and we and Skantarios realize that Skantarios never actually got a biological son and had to adopt his lieutenant because of his lack of empathy and his morally questionable decisions.
    • In fact, Skantarios' job as Emperor dooms his chances of a normal, happy marriage. Near the end of the story, he admits to his wife Maria that his constant absence due to his military campaigns made him a terrible husband; she agrees, but recognizes that it was necessary for the survival of the Empire, even if she was upset that she could never have a son.
  • Last Stand: So, so subverted with multiple successful defenses of Constantinople. By the time the Jihad rolls along, the city of Constantinople has survived so many along those lines that it is rather expected.

Skantarios: I ask my interpreter with some curiosity if this is how you write "Constantinople" in Arabic. He looks at the sign for some time and shakes his head.
Skantarios: He says, "No... The rough translation is: 'The land where Muslims go to die.'"

Skantarios: I think that is as fitting an epitaph for the Jihad as any I could write.
—page 8: "Picking up the Pieces and the End of the Jihad" - February, 1492 AD

The emperor strode out before them and spoke in a clear, calm voice:
“You have all been judged and sentenced to death.”
A murmur of incredulity rose up from the ranks. Numerous whispers could be heard from the ranks: “Why?!?” “For what?” Was it a joke? Had they not heard him correctly?
Theodoros continued, thundering now above the murmurs: “You may be asking yourself for what crime you are accused and then sentenced. Your ‘crime’ is being born a man and being conscripted into this army. Your crime is that you belong to a nation at war. There is no judge, procedure, or appeal to this sentence. This sentence is final."
“There is hope, however. You can gain clemency by defeating your foe. Pass your sentence onto the enemy. Buy your life by taking his…for yours is already forfeit. By crushing him and driving him back to the steppes that spawned him. For, if you fail, you are dead. If my own men don’t kill you, the enemy surely will. If you fail, you not only condemn yourself to death, but your wives, your children, and all that you hold dear. Death, enslavement, and ruin are all that await you should you falter or fail today. The enemy will have no mercy and neither will we. Better to die here than to run."
"Make no mistake, there are no other alternatives. Win today, or die today. It’s an easy choice. You are already dead. Today, tomorrow, ten years from now; we all wind up in the same place. Buy your life today and that of your family. "

"Win."
—page 1: "War with the Turks Begins" - June, 1455 AD

From the Report of Troper, 2010 AD...

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