Past History, (Tyran Pov) part1

*A decade of time, in which direction you chose to view it

When had I first began playing this game? About a decade ago? It certainly felt longer. I waved my hand over the forum to make it disappear. God damn.

I gazed over the field that split the two warring camps. This had too be the largest scale war outside of the historical battles the game had seen. I mean it may not be true. Some servers were rumored to be near battle royal of kingdoms style of wars.

We had a fairly average one, that was until a three years ago. There was one record our server held, and no one seemed willing to contest it. The longest war between the most powerful states on the server.

The Hadrain Empire was truly a behemoth. With its heartland secured by the Haldi and Drean mountains, as well as a fair portion of its lands on the far side of its vast lands, it made destroying their ability to wage war rather difficult.

It was a slow affair at first, a few minor skirmishes between Hadran and the expansionist kingdoms along its borders. At the time Hadran had suffered from a severe reversal of fortune during its trade wars with the Lombard league. Why not take away a few of the better developed border villages? it's not as if the Empire will miss them.

If I had known back then the consequences of this god-forsaken war. I would not have followed with the rest of the Kal-Draka block in its declaration of war on the Empire. I mean, we'd fielded some three hundred thousand men between the major members of our alliance. An easy victory, as the Empire was only suspected to be able to mobilize one to two hundred thousand to fight us off. especially as we were not aiming to draw out the war.

Wars, in the game at least are heavily skewed, they tend to last from a few days to a few weeks. they may be expensive to wage, but in the end as long as you have someone with a decent head for economics at the head, the expenses will be little more than a bump in the road. the lesser territories, barely more than baronies or semi-independent towns or cites would have a much harder time waging war.

With all this in mind, we had declared war. I had taken part in the first offensive, as we now called it. The Hadrians put up stiff resistance, not surrendering the border garrisons. Fighting to the last man. But then the Hadrians retaliated, their armies began to march to their southwestern border to do battle with our armies.

I stopped reminiscing about the god times. At hand was yet another battle, most likely my last as a lord. I'd painstaking grown Telmor into a fine city and a decent kingdom. But with the reversal of the war last year... it wasn't time to dwell on that.

System notification! Falling Skies has been razed, as a kingdom ranked territory the victor receives 10,000 merit points.

I gritted my teeth as the armies of the empire finished their encirclement of Temlor. I had some three thousand combat capable men defending the walls. At least thrice that number were now setting up siege camps around Telmor.

"Lord?" One of my generals asked from my side, "might it be best if you retired from the battlements?"

I shook my head. "No, I'ts my responsibility to defend my people. Therefore I must be part of this last defence against the inevitable onslaught."

Food had been stocked in the granaries for just this occasion, the army already knew what orders I'd give. The people that had wanted to leave had left already. Those that remained were mostly the npc's of my city, I'd never payed them that much attention but in the end even my closet friends had abandoned me when my darkest hour had come.

What could I have done differently? I mused as the dreaded Hadrian trebeucets were being erected. I walked along the battlements, speaking words of encouragement to those who seemed to needed it. I received from looks in return. Hadran had a reputation of razing the lands of enemies it viewed as traitors or treaty breakers.

The game had different versions, but I was playing on the earth medieval version. A realistic recreation of the medieval times in full dive tech? Of course there were the renaissance, pre world war, world war, and the pre-space versions as well. The real shame was that the versions of the times before the medieval hadn't drawn enough players, and they'd been shut down. That had been five years ago, and the devs had allowed for a one time increase in territory tokens, meaning there was a chance I could join the other versions as a lord player, instead of an adventure player.

With the shut down of the dark ages servers I took to the medieval as it was the closest to what I had been doing. Now, there was some differences between the planet the server was on and old Earth. So the maps were simply the planet the server was on at five times the size.

I smacked myself, those around me looked at me with concern. "I just need to focus." I said quietly.

They just nodded, it wasn't worth their time to inquire about it when death was preparing to greet them. It was about then that the Hadrians sent their archers and crossbow men forward to cover their soldiers as they dug trenches to protect their siege equipment that didn't have the range to hit the wall from outside of bowshot.

Soldiers along the wall took cover against the merlons. I stood a bit taller, daring them to hit me. I felt a terrible wrenching sensation and suddenly I was slinging around. Hot sticky liquid spilled down my chest. The ground rushed up to meet means I caught the slightest glimpse of the fletching of a crossbow bolt before my vision went black.

YOU DIED.