Pitt Slayer-

My most recent Pictish campaign actually saw me off to a good start; allying with the Vikings to keep them off my back, adding the western lowlands to my kingdom, and building up an army for an invasion into Northumbria. It was almost inevitiable though,... the Vikings came around in their fancy (and deadly) ships, sank my pitiful fleet, and laid my entire coast open to invasion. From that point on it was downhill. Although I had fortifications to fall back into, preventing the Vikings from ever actually conquering my provinces, I had to keep 3-4 large armies staioned all across Scotland to react to the Viking raids. That ate up all my money, stopped my investment in farms and abbeys (for add'l income), and I was broke before you knew it. In about fifty years I was tens of thousands of florins in the red and far enough behind militarily and technologically, that I was no match for the now-dominant Mercians. Such is life in the unforgiving north of Britain, eh?