Saladin consolidates power throughout Syria and northern Iraq, becoming the greatest power in the Muslim world and strangling Outremer.  After a crusader provocation, he assembles a great army and marches it into the Levant, ultimately crushing the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin.  Jerusalem itself soon falls to the Ayyubid Sultan.  And the shocking news of the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem causes fear and guilt to spread across Europe, leading the Third Crusade.  Soon, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, is leading a great crusading army to the Holy Land by way of Anatolia...