Axis & Allies - damowords

Rise of Moscow
From squabbling fractions of the Mongol zone
Noblity clings to the Golden Horde,
Keeping the Russian prince firm on his throne
Beneath the cushionʹd presses of a sword;
Cunning masters
Of realpolitik,
Centralising taxes thro royal rhetoric.
As slavic leaders unified
To secure their native soil,
One drifted to the other side,
Determinʹd to stay loyal,
Asian might aiding Ivan’s ride,
This folly fierce to foil ‐
For in the ruins of Novogorod
He dedicates his victory to god.
Respectful of this loyalty
The Duke of Vladamir
Made royalty, thro Muscovy
His palaces appear,
Ordain’d to rule a wilderness stretching to Korea.
Russia
1392
Teutonica
As when a lover lusts with wanton arms,
Or when the pilgrim years for sainted bone,
& thinkers first hear of the desertʹs charms,
Or when in Arthurʹs chest the Grailquest grown;
Bright knights advance,
Their destiny releasʹd
Into the vast expanse that is the slavic East.
The swordbrothers did first remove
Baltic tribesmen from Prussia,
Then caught in an annual groove
Fortify the Vistula,
Better in mettle did they prove
Oer Lithuania ‐
But by battleʹs bouncebackability
Pagans ally with Polandʹs proud army,
Whom on a day amid the lakes,
Administer defeat ‐
The white wave breaks, what anguish aches,
Too proud to call retreat,
Charges the doomʹd Grandmaster, ʹDrang nach Ostenʹ
incomplete.
Tannenburg
1403