Bay 12 Games Forum

The age of darkness was retreating before the ever-growing strength of civilized Christianity. While the Christian world was still sharply divided, as a whole Europe was healthy, fertile, and thriving. The first hints of a greater conflict between the Christian world and the followers of the false god Allah were turning from a slow simmer to a boil, and there were murmurs among the higher echelons of Catholicism of a crusade for the holy lands. Within mere decades, Christianity would retake its holiest cities and drive back the hordes of evil.

But a darkness far more sinister than the threats to the east and south was about to descend on mankind. The first hints came as rumors of a terrible plague trickled in from far-flung African villages. Soon the 'singing sickness', so named because of the strange comatose sounds its victims would produce in their last few agonized days, had spread across all of Europe. The Muslims and pagans were no luckier than the Christian world. In the face of a disease that wiped out ninety percent of the population of every civilized settlement from Iberia to Ethiopia, no kingdom could keep order. The nobility fared far better than the peasantry, sealing themselves tight in their castles and waiting out the months of danger. But when they emerged, they found that their armies were as decimated as the empty villages and city streets, and many of those that had not died had deserted and fled in the face of certain death. While most of the kings - and even the Holy Roman Emperor - claimed to retain authority over their prior demesnes, in reality their de facto power was reduced to a shadow of its pre-plague status. Dukes - and even many counts - proclaimed independence, or didn't even bother; there were no troops coming to stop them from instituting their own rule now.

For the nobility of the 11th century, a veritable 'restart' button had been hit on the past thousand years of struggling and succession. It was now every-lord-for-himself in a destitute and impoverished Europe.

And that is where our story begins...