The Battle of the Basileis


Background:

The War of the Four Basileis is officially heating up. Mere weeks after the opening salvos were fired between Andronikos Komnenos and Ioannis Tagaris in the Battle of the Iron Bridge, the scale of the conflict escalated exponentially. On the same day, all four claimants to the Byzantine throne would see themselves put to the test as three separate, simultaneous engagements would play out.

The northern shore of Anatolia plays host to two of the three engagements, mostly thanks to the massive forces of Ioannis Komnenos III finally entering play. Unconsciously, the forces of Ioannis Tagaris and Kousinos Sophianos have both realized that "Augustus" Komnenos is far too powerful to be left unchecked for much longer. As a result, all three of his commanders find themselves under attack.

At the lead of his column, the Komnenian commander Arintheos Voutoumatis, realizing that the Tagarian general Helarionas Anargiros would catch up in his pursuit, turned around his army at the instruction of Ioannis and prepared to intercept Helarionas. The would-be Augustus quickly followed suit, although he would not arrive in time to initially deploy along with Arintheos. Finding himself heavily outnumbered, Helarionas will have to buy some time along the Coastal Road before he can safely withdraw and fight another day.

The third army in the Komnenian U-Turn belonged to Isaakos Komnenos, who quickly found himself cursing the turn in luck. He was trying to keep up with Ioannis's and Arintheos's counter-march, but found it to be a losing battle. Desperately focused on trying to catch up with the other two armies, he failed to cover all of his basics, reasoning that his forward scouts had seen no sign of any enemy anywhere near ahead.

However, this did not account for the entirely mounted contingent of Ioannis Erotikos, crossing the mountains of Anatolia in record time, hell-bent on throwing a wrench into the situation. With only minutes to prepare, Isaakos would now have to fight off a sizeable amount of cavalry while quickly letting the other two generals know that he would not be able to assist in their own effort.

Ioannis Erotikos's ambush was not the only sign that Kousinos Sophianos and his forces had officially entered the fray. Kousinos himself arrived at the great city of Antioch with his own men... just as Andronikos Komnenos and Nikitas Moschos, victors at the Iron Bridge, were preparing to assault the remnants of Ioannis Tagaris's and Vartholomaios Ksiros's armies.

With three separate forces meeting head-on at Antioch, none of them allied with the others, an interesting drama is sure to play out, as all three of them jockey for position and wait to see how the other two react before making any moves. Combine the situation at Antioch with the two separate engagements on the south coast of the Black Sea, and the War of the Four Basileis is about to take an extremely bloody turn.