More from my Persia game, just 'cause I feel like sharing it.
It's been a century since Parviz Karen restored the Persian Empire and declared himself the Saoshyant; now his descendant, Ardeshihr VI, rules over the largest and mightiest empire in the world:
Over the past decade's we've been mostly busy continuing the long Persian tradition of fighting Greeks, along with batting away occasional Muslim jihads. Arabia was taken in a great holy war which ultimately led to the destruction of the Arabian Empire and the Sunni Caliphate in the east. The conquests in the northern steppes, the Tarim Basin, and Abyssinia have all been vassal's doings. Egypt and Africa have almost completely switched places, and are the only two Sunni kingdoms in the east. Across the Indus the Hindu Pratiharas have formed a mighty Rajasthan--no match for me, of course, but I'm not too concerned with India... yet.
In Iberia and the Maghreb are the last remnants of the Hispanian Umayyads. After the fall of the Abbasids, Badshah Wannaqo reclaimed the title of Caliph, but with the greatly diminished moral authority of his religion and the strength of the new Germanic faith his empire began to fracture. Then the Shi'a pretender rose and conquered al-Andalus for himself and his followers, and with his mighty armies it looked like this new caliph might sweep the whole peninsula. But he made the mistake of sending those troops against Ardeshihr IV of Persia to reclaim Mecca, and in the long march across the desert and the dreadful battles in Sinai he lost all--and I mean
all, every last one--of his troops.
The past 150 years looked grim for Catholicism as their lands were taken by the newly-reformed northern heathens and their authority dwindled to near-nothing. At one point they were pushed back almost solely into Italy, and might have been destroyed there, but that the Norsemen fell victim to a scourge worse than plague or war--Elective Gavelkind. Once-unified Germanic realms were shattered and devolved into a mess of enclaves, exclaves, and independent counties, all fighting amongst themselves just as much as with their Christian rivals. Most of continental Europe is controlled by the af Munso dynasty, relatives of the Fylkir; the British Isles are entirely under the command of the Ivarings. Meanwhile Christendom took advantage of the Norsemen's distraction to re-take Aquitaine from the Sunni Caliph.
Religion map: mostly Zoros, of course, with Hindu and Germanic being the second biggest. Catholics and Orthodox are a little below that. Suomenusko has also reformed, but hasn't accomplished much of note, yet.