Senseless Brutality
And now I curse my apparent inability to have an original thought. At the least, I curse my apparent inability to craft a topic sentence that does not follow a cliched format.
So, I do this, and hope to make it better later.
Year 296 of the Divine Revelation;
A holy war has been sanctioned by Pope Judentius II. 35,000 (pious?) foot- and cavalry-men have marched across the continent of Eura to assault and reclaim the Holiest of lands in a campaign of Justified violence against the Theid. The army gathered and resupplied at the city of Cinerto, swore fealty(temporarily, at least) to the Pope's God, and crossed there the river that forms the border of Holiest Hirol'sem.
The army has split into three sections. Your section's first objective is to take the fortified city of Ylaerus, which is five days' march from Cinerto. One day away from Ylaerus, the section was challenged by a Theidian host; battle commenced three hours past noon. You are in the thick of it, an insignificant infantryman hacking and gouging for your life against a determined force.
This will be a gritty, gory, and dangerous game of mostly roll-play for third level melee-oriented characters. Your character will be an experienced soldier or mercenary involved in the attacking side of a "holy" war, but nothing special; you are not any more skilled than the men which surround you. A story will develop as the game progresses, but will focus more on the particular than the obtuse; that is, the game revolves around the characters' experiences as rank-and-file soldiers, not around their rise through ranks to the point where they have a wider understanding of the war and begin to have some degree of control over it. You start out being treated, essentially, as cannon fodder, and will pretty much stay that way. This isn't to say that you can't be an incredibly strong fighter who dual-wields fullblades to shear his enemies apart, though.
A note that I should make is that this war is not being waged against evil people or creatures or an evil god. It is a war born of intolerance, greed, and egomania. I do NOT condone or agree with any of these things. This world is to be as gruesome and horribly real as I can make it, however.
