OOC: We'll just pretend all of this happened in the morning. Otherwise, I'll have to add "time warping" to the Grandmaster's powers under the Charter.

Makedonios turns to Armatos and replies.

I'm afraid Jerusalem might be a long ways off. We simply do not have the forces or infrastructure set up to take and hold the city yet. We need to take this in steps. I am going to ask the Baselius to set us down by Tortosa or Adana this "term". Once we take a third settlement, we'll have a legal army. With that we will take the 4th. Which will give us a second army. By then we'll probably have Adana, Tortosa, Antioch, and Aleppo. Acre is the obvious next province. Then we can split and go for Damascus and Jerusalem. After that, we consolidate, evaluate threats to the area, and dig in. By that time I hope we'll have up to 5 legal armies to watch the borders.

Tortosa and Adana are the first targets simply because they will be the easiest. Each are small castles that have only half a dozen military regiments at best and we can take them with what we have. Which is good because it makes what we are asking for to be "cheap" which will mean it will be more likely for the Baselius to grant. The less we impact the Empire's finances, the better. I prefer to take Tortosa first only because the Templars need to be stopped now or they will spread. If they spread, they will be even harder to dislodge.