New Actium: Intro
From Create Your Own Story
A forest of battle-standards flutter in the wind above the Grasslands Highway; flags of a hundred hues bringing a riotous burst of colour to the otherwise uniform green of the rolling plain. The breeze whips round gold-trimmed royal ensigns and baronial pennants, tattered mercenary bannerettes and spotless Order vexilla; before spiraling out from the clothy multitude, blowing the vast grassy blades of the Actinic Prairie like waves on the sea. It billows away to the north, carrying with it the numberless sounds of men making camp. Of armies making camp.
“Positions, soldiers! The formation isn’t going to make itself!”
You huff and puff as your unit hurries into the camp’s muster yard, men and women and you struggling under the weight of boiled leather armour and rather more swordbelts than seems entirely necessary. The dripping sword insignia of Red Blades band stands brightly on each stencilled shield, splashing crimson on the back of every other trooper. Coupled with the general picture of exhaustion and discomfort, it’s almost enough to make you look like you’ve already seen combat... rather than just one full-armour training drill too many today.
“Atten-hut!” yells the commanding officer, raising her mailed fist in the air as the last stragglers fall into line. You straighten your back as best you can, trying not to flag under the weight of all your equipment. In front of you, Captain Jalisco hasn’t even broken a sweat, despite being altogether better – and heavier - outfitted than the motley squad of thirty-some troops arrayed before her. Silver plate-mail glints in the evening sun, stark contrast to the dirt-coloured (and covered) jerkins provided to you and the rest of the new recruits. Above a bowl of short blonde hair, the captain wears a crimson beret capped by a large ostrich feather – some strange insignia of rank from one of the disparate earldoms signed up to the coalition force, you guess. But standing near up to her boots in the churned mud of the muster field, the thing makes her look like a mired merrow. You suspect she wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.
Horses whinny and officers holler, as harried squires and message-runners race back and forth across the outskirts of camp like hunted cockatrice. The narrow streets of New Actium were barely wide enough to drive a wagon through even before the Army of the Holy League started entrenching; now, stacked crates and barrel-piles stand on every street-corner and thoroughfare, making the overcrowded village all but impossible to navigate. Crossing the bustling camp to this square of trampled mud and dirt was a grueling obstacle course in and of itself.
“Not good enough! The last drill took you two minutes; this one still took you one and a half!” Jalisco announces to you and the other soldiers. “An arachne could be over the palisade and into this camp in thirty seconds, and that’s if the spidery slut is taking her time! Do you want to get raped? We’ve only been in this town a day, and it seems like you’ve already forgotten who you are and what you’re here for!”
A mixture of dour grumbles and exhausted wheezes rise up from the men and women around you. It’d be hard enough to get here from the Red Blades’ tents in under thirty seconds if you were sprinting over flat ground. Managing it while dodging horses, supply crates, and two thousand other Holy League soldiers crammed into a town built for 100, would be impossible. “Gods, she’s such a ball-breaker,” you hear one of the other troops whisper, articulating what everyone else is certainly thinking.
“You! Bladesman!” the Captain demands, pointing abruptly at one of the troopers in formation. “Tell me, who are you? Why are you here?”
Taken aback at being suddenly and randomly singled out, the soldier blinks stupidly for three whole seconds. Eventually gathering his wits, he stammers “I’m R-Rorik of Hrolmis, ma’am. And I’m... here because you ordered an assembly drill to the muster field?“
The Captain growls in frustration. Spinning her ornate silver boots in the mud, she confronts the next soldier in line. “And you! What are you doing here?”
“Sir? I’m standing in formation, Sir!”
“No!” Jalisco reprimands. “Why are you here? You didn’t march down the Grasslands Highway for six days just to stand there, did you?” Not even giving him a chance to try again, she steps along to the next trooper in line.
Oh wait. It’s you.
“What’s your name, Bladesman?” she asks, flint-grey eyes regarding you with ferocious intensity.
“Sir, my name is –“
“Wrong answer!” she yells, interrupting you with enough force to make the soldiers either side of you flinch. Pivoting on her heel, she stalks away, striding purposefully along the line of standing troops. “Whoever you were, whatever your profession, whichever names or titles your mommy and your daddy gave you; they mean precisely shit here today!” The captain’s voice resonates throughout the yard, loud and clear in the summer air.
“I don’t care what your name is! I don’t care who you were before today. Lord or milkmaid; freedman or fisherwoman; that’s in the past! Today, you are a soldier of the Red Blade mercenary band! And you are here to fight monsters! That is your name and that is your profession; that is your title and this is your family!” Jalisco spreads her arms as she paces back down the line, indicating all the assembled troops. As she draws level with you again, she turns, and fixes you with that same stare as before. “And so,” she shouts, feather shaking atop her beret, “Let’s try that again! Bladesman! What is your name?”
