Good evening, you're listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Fraser Brown, but you can think of me as a short Scottish Rob Zakeney. And Rob, if you're listening, I hope you appreciate that I didn't start this episode with my trademark, Hello! Because I know it would upset you, and I'm sacrificing my brand for you. Anyway, I'm joined this week by our wee Viking pal, Lorse War and Orders, T.J. Heifer.

Hello, TJ.

Hello, hello.

So, the strategy universe is a little bit busy at the moment. We've got the recent launch of both

Stelaris Utopia and Europa Universalist's Mandate of Heaven, as well as betas for Donowar 3 and Steel Division, Normandy, 44.

But let's forget all of that and get some magic into our lives, because we're going to be

talking about Crusader Kings to monks and mystics. In some ways, the latest expansion is

sort of typical for CK2. There are lots of new event chains and new ways to interact with characters.

But it's also a little bit strange, a little bit as the title suggests, fantastical.

There's historical grounding, but this is probably one of the more overt departures from history,

though maybe not quite as big a departure as sunset invasion.

TJ, let's go over the highlights.

What are the big new editions Monks and Mystics summoned into CK2?

Yeah, so the major, major new feature is that they've added societies, which are these

factions you can join. They're almost a little bit like

factions in an MMO a little bit, where your character becomes a member of it, and then you have to do

things for them to rise through the ranks, and they give you new abilities. So there are some that

are sort of modeled off of historical ones.

Like there's the Benedictine Order if you want to be, you know,

you can't actually become a proper monk because that tended to exclude people from feudal

landholding and would kind of have to be either its own expansion or its own game.

But they've added the,

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