Crusaders of the Amber Coast
Okay, we have hijacked the "Third party license" thread a little bit by talking about the Northern Crusades. If someone wishes to talk about the subject, let us do this here and not there.
Here is the official announcement: Crusaders of the Amber Coast. Another beautiful piece of artwork by Tiziano Baracchi.
"the Mongol raiders of Gengis Khan's Golden Horde" Oooooh! I can already imagine a Crusaders/Tian Xia crossover!
「天下」， 很有意思！
Wow! Very cool looking! I must say everything you release seems to step it up one more notch. :thumb:
294/420
Indeed. Congratulations, and I really hope that it will have the success thatOriginally Posted by Puck
it doubtless deserves. :thumb:
Hmmmm, not exact. The Livonian Knights were not from Livonia, but from Germany, like the Teutons. Balts took part in the battle, but as auxiliaries. There is much more in that battle than the movie tells.
And watching Eisenstein's movie (as well as Tarkovskij's Andrei Roublev) is highly recommended, indeed!
As always when Germans were involved, it is even more complicated.
The Livonian Knights had both German and Danish members. When their order
suffered a devastating defeat in 1236 against the Lithuanians, the remnants
of the order became a part of the Teutonic Order by Papal order in 1237, but
both branches of the Teutonic Order continued their different traditions after
the unification.
Exactly. As you can see, the knight on the cover has the peculiar coat of arms of the Livonian Order (red cross over a red sword). Even after the incorporation, the Livonian Branch of the Teutonic Knights continued to wear the red insignia.As always when Germans were involved, it is even more complicated.
The Livonian Knights had both German and Danish members. When their order
suffered a devastating defeat in 1236 against the Lithuanians, the remnants
of the order became a part of the Teutonic Order by Papal order in 1237, but
both branches of the Teutonic Order continued their different traditions after
the unification.
Needless to say, the game includes all of the above details as playable scenarios.
There is a stone relief in one of the churches on Gotland (Lye?) featuring Herod's slaughter of the innocents (the killing of all boys under the age of 2). The knights portrayed have been interpreted as modelled on Teutonic Knights.
As an example of how people sometimes may have felt about the Teutonic Knights at the time, who held the island for a time until Denmark bought it back.
You assume that the knights are the heroes in the game. This is not necessarily true (and it is certainly not true in the Baltic epic that inspired the game). When I make a historical setting, I usually choose one where Good and Evil are equally distributed on both sides of the conflict.
The knights of the Teutonic Order ruled doubtless quite heavy handed in the
Baltic, as almost always when a smaller group attempts to subjugate a much
bigger local population.
However, their Crusade was more or less an invasion, occupation and finally
conquest, it did not really have the genocidal streak of crusades against
Christian heretics, as for example the often incredibly brutal Albigensian Cru-
sade.
I have no doubt that there were a number of rather "evil" and only very few
"saintly" knights of the Teutonic Order, and far more land-hungry adventu-
rers than knights with a truly religious motivation, but I think that all in all
they behaved just like any other conquering military force of their time.
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