Instead he decides to use his royal power to work out his rage. With the Skanian invasion defeated, the traitorous Thord is thrown in jail and the Narke revolt is violently squelched. Mjolnir's impressive ability to kick his own people's ass does not go unnoticed:
At least, not by Mjolnir. Losing his ambition makes Mjolnir quite a bit worse as a king; I'm not actively rooting for him to die yet, but I wouldn't be too crushed if The Crusher got crushed.
Which is awkward, now that I think about it. Our nephew Thord, despite being a traitor, is the best candidate for heir at present. He's currently rotting in the dungeon. Add that to his already poor health after losing his hand last update, and his life expectancy isn't looking great.
I don't want Thord to die, and the peerage of Sweden doesn't exactly leave Mjolnir with the luxury of being able to waste talent. After some soul-searching, he decides a little treason between family is nothing to get huffy about and releases Thord from the dungeon.
Flip-flopping on this actually improves Mjolnir's relations with almost all his vassals, since you incur no general penalty for imprisoning a traitor but gain a bonus with the culture group (in this case, all Swedes) for releasing a prisoner. The one exception is Thord himself:
whose level of consternation has reached the theoretical upper bound of outrage as exemplified by Blobert when confronted by unbroly behavior. We already have a relations penalty with Thord because he's got a claim to the kingdom, plus there's the fact that he's ambitious. There's a pretty good chance he's plotting our death right now.
Mjolnir has a plan to make him stop, though. It seems the heir to the pussy mayor of Uusimaa has somehow become independent of our rule, without a war, no less. I'm not sure how this happened, but Thord has a claim to the county, and he'll like us a lot better if we send men to kill in his name.
Mjolnir gathers up his bros and gets ready to own some nerds.
The Zemigalians have been honoring their alliance in virtually every war Gungnir or Mjolnir has fought in the past decade. This kind of loyalty deserves extremely moral support in return. Anyone who attacks them in the future should expect to receive a VERY stern reprimand. Mjolnir sends the king of Poland a letter saying "watch it," as part of his doctrine of Preemptive Reprimands.
Anyway, the actual war is boring; Mjolnir and da boyz stomp the Finns good and smash their city, too. Thord gets the county and starts to hate us a little less.
The honorable Mjolnir has been feeling guilty about of screwing his nephew out of his inheritance, so he resolves to give him even more land.
Much more land. Giving our largest duchy to the angriest man in the kingdom is a surprisingly not-stupid move. It gives a massive bonus to our relations, to the extent that Thord actually considers us to be his best bro now. Aside from implying odd things about our family tree, this presumably means he'll stop plotting, and the goodwill we've incurred ensures that he'll deliver his full levy as jarl. Since Finland is poor, we aren't losing out on much gold, and if he or his heir ends up inheriting the throne after Mjolnir dies, we'll get all the territory back anyway.
Finally, now that Thord is jarl, he has a de jure ducal claim on the four other provinces in the duchy of Finland, currently held by the Satakuntans (Kunts) and the Kakisalmians (Kaks).
We have a score to settle with the Kunts, since they backstabbed us in our darkest hour, back when Anund was shitting all over our homeland during the Vidar War. We press Thord's claim on Suomi, hoping to win fame and glory by oppressing Finnish people. (Mjolnir suddenly has a strange craving for borscht; I'm not sure what caused that!)
The actual war is extremely one-sided and not interesting, but note that Mjolnir is planning a tournament.
Tournaments tend to have fairly terrible effects on all involved; those who aren't injured or killed become drunks or start liking dudes. This is part of Mjolnir fiendish plot to silence all the jerks who call him gay by
turning them gay, too.
A few months after we win the war, the single-county chief of the land we just took starts plotting against Thord.
Is there anyone in this kingdom who isn't a complete fuckup?
No. No, there is not. Toward the end of the war with the 'Kunts, the Duke of Uppland says, "Odin? More like
bonin'! Dudes! Because you're gay!" We quickly move to shut down this villain and his cumbersome misuse of slant rhyme.
(I'm pretty sure I'd given the duchy of Uppland to a Norseman, but it looks like his son converted to Catholicism and therefore hates us.)
Anyway, Uppland's war against ten times as many Viking warriors goes about as well as you'd expect.
Mjolnir is over this shit. He has had enough of incompetent invaders, asshole vassals, unruly family members, and flip-flopping dukes. When Ingemar brings the leaders of Kol's rebellion before him, he digs out Gungnir's old Bible and begins to read.
May God have mercy upon them, according to His unfailing love.
According to His great compassion, may He blot out their transgressions.
Lord, wash away their iniquity, and cleanse them from their sin.
Because Mjolnir is making a point here, he then gives the seized property to another Catholic lord:
Which makes him very grateful. We leverage that gratitude by telling him to renounce his corpse god and swear fealty to Bloody-Handed Tyr.
He obeys. Mjolnir has destroyed Christian Uppland and remade it in the image of the True Gods.
Unsatisfied by the combination of blasphemy, blood sacrifice, and apostasy, Mjolnir looks for other ways to screw over Christ-Men:
Since the Doux of Paphlagonia is still holding the entire royal family of the ERE hostage, Mjolnir marries his nondynastic half-sister to another imperial prince. This time it's less about getting an alliance and more about being a dick to the Emperor, since he refused to help us in the Skanian war. Fine, you cocks, see if we let you have any other allies.
Mjolnir doesn't even attend the wedding, he just sends a letter to the Emperor saying "eat shit," telling the court scribe to draw stink rays coming off of "shit." Upon receipt, the Emperor's lip quivers, and his courtiers can barely hear him murmuring "good god, do they mean to marry us all?"