For this first post, I won't be doing it incharacter, mostly because I don't really have a good way to explain the 400 year time skip ICly (if we even plan to). SO ON WITH THE GAMEPLAY AAR (from which I crib a bunch of ideas off KoM's newest post cause I actually liked its structure a fair bit.)
First the big change, namely the conversion of
Saarland to a Peasant Republic. I actually do have an explanation for this, but I don't have the mental spirit to write it at the moment. It will likely come in the next sessions AAR which will hopefully be a story one. The general gist is that the Saars are still around, indeed, a Saar is leading at the moment, but they are more stepping back from government as I never really had an intricate court in CK2. As it was by the end I had a republic and a single count in my empire with everything else absorbed by the King. Retiring to a symbolic position while mayors and other peasantry step up to do the ruling (being the big difference compared to say, an English Monarchy in that the governors are not of noble or rich blood)
Now, onto the map of the world.

The situation at the start of EU4,
Consul Mielitty Saar takes up the position of the first consul of the new Peasants Republic, working to transfer power for after his death. Saarlands 152 development to start is not the best...indeed, its actually the worst of the human nations, outside of
Poitou. This is more because I never built wide in CK2, as the Saarish capital of Abo is actually one of the most developed places in the Old World (I believe, third, behind Mordor's Capital and I think KoMs by a single point.) Unfortunately, it does
not count as part of Europe (somehow), which unfortunately came back to bite me in the ass when the Renaissance hit and I had no natural growth in Abo. Regardless though the map is looking a mix of good and bad for Saarland.
The good is that I am in a long time alliance with KoM's
Ynglinga Rike which secures much of my borders. Between us we have more or less total hegemony over Scandinavia, as Norway is not exactly in a position to say otherwise at the moment. To my immediate east is Golle's
Great Novgorod. The only other nation sharing a direct land border with me, Golle and I have worked together in CK2 (more specifically, he spun off Karelia to help me) and while neither of us have ever been formally allied, we've never actually had a hostile border and even during this session when due to KoM triggering a coalition against himself by the central Europe AIs that pulled Golle in on the other side, we just sat there and did nothing. As such, for the moment I think I can consider my land borders more or less safe. Much of the rest of Continental Europe is of little interest to Saarland, as similar to Mordor, due to my position geographically and politically I can more or less play isolated from much of the world. The only real aims I had in Europe was the reclamation of
Borneholme (island off the south coast of Sweden), which was achieved as part of the
Second Baltic Crusade. Outside of that, during the conversion I somehow gained control of Oland, the island between Lithuania and Great Novgorod. So far it's proven of little use and is Catholic but well, it helps make the Saarish Island Empire look a bit more interesting.
Still a general run down.
Hadogai's
Leon has quite a fair bit of scattered territory, and has the potential to PU England and a few other places due to shared Dynasties. As it is the only points he has that might be of tangential interest are the Leonese Netherlands, but as its part of Continental Europe I could really care less. I fear we may come into eventual conflict over colonization. Though I think he's been delayed along these lines by a disastrous war with Aquitaine that spiraled into something worse when Andalusia joined in in a different war, heavily cutting down Leon's territory and potential to unite Spain.
Dragoon's
Varingia is admittedly a state I'm wary about if only again, tangentially. I more fear an eventual Novgorod-Varingia 'Russian Brothers' War that drastically shifts the political situation in the east. It seems that Dragoon is heading more into the South/South East then North so I hope that war on that front can be avoided.
Mark's
HRE in the screen above looks like it's in alot of trouble. It has rebels out the wazzo at the game start, but it's also massive. Easily many times larger then any other nations in terms of development. He's rather far out of my zone of any interaction, but I worry that part of Portugal may be leveraged into colonial states eventually which would be bad news, as I highly doubt unless Mark gets into some serious trouble that I'll ever be able to really match him in combat.
Outside of those three, I really don't have much to say on the continental players. Moravia is way out of the way, same with the African and Asian players. The other big swinger in my ballpark though is James'
Eire. His eventually advanced Infantry along with being nearly double my size in development if not more means that direct conflict is more or less a no go. Tensions that were very heavily inflamed toward the end of CK2 have cooled quite a fair bit with the transition to EU4 and a bit of conversation, so I'm no longer fearing imminent invasion and indeed depending on how things go, I'm hoping the North Sea powers can eventually come to some sort of Treaty of Tordesillas esq agreement over colonization instead of the three of us brawling over the Eastern Seaboard but as colonization has till at least 1490 or the third session before we can engage in it, the situation could, but hopefully won't, change drastically.
Now, onto Saarland itself.
Saarland+SessionAs anyone who has read KoM's most recent AAR post, or was at the auction, or read the auction thread, knows, I took the
Pirate idea set. I actually traded KoM for this set, giving him the
Viking set he is currently using, in exchange for some extra mana for myself that helped me get a tech lead.

Now many are probably wondering what sort of insanity I'm involved in giving away what is to many a stronger idea set. The reason is quite simple, it was very much against my gameplay style. I will be the first to admit I am not an aggressive player. Anyone who watched me in CK2 would know that, I prefer to focus on crafting a narrative and having fun over winning. The Viking set at its core felt like one meant for conquest, which is something I'm hoping to not do much of in this game. I quite like European Saarland as it is and I'm hoping I can realize my later game ambitions without serious conflict. Instead I selected the Pirate set because it is a much more defensive playstyle. It comes with bonuses to defenses, including an attrition bonus and hostile core creation cost, two big things to make myself as unappealing a target as possible. It also comes with traditions that give a bonus to light ships and allow raiding one of which is quite useful as it makes my trade stronger by proxy, and one which would be useful if I wasn't neighbouring a much less inhibited Viking state. So far I've only managed to launch a very short raid against Lithuania and other then that I don't have much use of it. Later on the infantry combat power boost and eventually, privateer efficiency, are ones I'm hoping to make use of once naval range extends and I can go screw over some more AI with pirate swarm.
As for my leader, Meilitty is not bad

Not
great but I could do with alot worse. That terrible mil tech definitely isn't helpful, but he's got fairly respectable Admin and Diplomacy.
Unfortunately due to a bug, I started with 0 republican tradition, so he immediatly turned into a dictator. This had the unfortunate side effect of robbing me of a bunch of Mana, but in the end I kinda made up for it by taking some republican tradition loss in exchange for mana to set it on even ground when the bug got fixed. Either way, I should be back to normal next session, odds are Meilitty probably won't live through it but ehh, a new guy could be useful.
As for the session itself, not much major happened. The Second Balkan Crusade ended easily enough after the players backed out, and I've been building up my trade and the economic strength of Saarland, so far I'm happy with the results. I could have done without KoM dragging me into the Coalition war, which is still ongoing as of the end of the session. It unfortunately cost me most of my standing army, my fleet is in good health though, and my budgets doing okay so it's not really an issue. My hope is that we can bring the war to an end sooner then later so I can make focuses in other departments. Technologically I've got a pretty solid start. I'm behind what I'm guessing is probably Korea or some other far east nations, but I'm one of the most teched nations in Europe.

I'm hoping to also have Renaissance by next session, as its slowly spreading out of Stockholme through Aland and into Abo. From there it should catch on fairly quick.
Thats all for now, NEXT TIME, SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING.