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Rule and Decree"
It’s 1097, two years after Pope Urban II called upon the Christian faith to join a war against the Turks. The Siege of Antioch has begun and isn’t predicted to end anytime soon. Despite this, members of the Church are confident of victory. The Crusade has progressed slowly but surely and Jerusalem, the holy city, is predicted to fall in the next few years.
Due to the Crusade, new wealth has flooded into the European nations. New lands have fostered great material wealth and agriculture has exploded in an effort to feed the warring armies. New families have been founded; castles abandoned by their previous Lords, who have died in the Crusade or just never returned, have been “acquisitioned” by nobles newly risen to power as well as questing knights returning from war.
It is a time of great change, where the middle-classes and noble-classes have blended together and anyone, at any moment, can rise to the top.
You are one such newly established noble. Whether you are a knight, a caretaker, a rival noble, or even a simple merchant, risen to new heights by the trade brought in from the middle east, you have recently acquired a new castle from a Lord who has been forgotten with time. Your subjects are unruly, the peasantry lacking direction since their Lord has been away. Military strength is at an all-time low, as most of the armies have been called away to the Crusades. The nobles who inhabit your recently acquired land plot your demise and seek to supplant you. Will you rule through military might, creating an order of ruthless knights who follow your every command without question? Will you choose a diplomatic path, negotiation your way into the political fray to acquire newfound riches? Or will you make your own path, something no one has ever seen before?
As you sit in your newly acquired throne, you know it will not be easy. Whatever your choices, you must act quickly for there are whispers of something dark brewing in the east, that the sins of man have opened the gates of hell. Despite what you may or may not think of these tales of fancy, only a fool chooses to ignore a possible threat completely.
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Rule and Decree"