The End and The Beginning

After leaving army, our human-dwarf-elf trio signed to escort trade caravan going to one of the biggest baronies, Ox barony. I have thought that it will be perfect place to sign a contract since it was close to border and had a big city. However nobody wanted to deal with unknown gang of mercs so we had to join one of the mercenary companies operating here.

Merc company was named Giant's Blades, all thanks to their founding leader Michael the Giant and that it mainly consisted of swordsmen. Company had a reasonably good reputation and proven to be reliable sellswords that will not betray each other so we decided to join them.

But before being joining them we had to go through some trials, it included sparring with one of them and ability to march for long hours. Thanks for our previous training and experience we passed though with flying colours. Moreover, after finding out about my expertise in drilling and training I was appointed as Company's Drill Master of fresh recruits. Lukas was my assistant in training with shield while Elf helped with training individual sword fight skills.

I have kept observing stats of mercs and saw that there was nobody with low or mediocre stats. This made me smile since it meant less pain in ass for as drill master. Even complete greenhorn mercs showed better performance progress than boys in my previous platoon. And so days passed with me being busty training and drilling company rookies. In the end they showed such good results that instead of having to train for a year they were able to join company as fully fledged members in nine month.

After this Michael said that company is ready for real work. Within a week he found a really good contract for our company in Puma barony. Puma barony was waging war against Wolf and Falcon baronies. In the beginning they made good progress but rivals hired two merc companies which changed the balance. In fear of losing Puma hired hoping that with our help they can finally win in this prolonged conflict.

But things went down south as rivals raised stakes and hired more mercs. Conflict that expected to last few months lasted for a whole year during which our company had to fight a lot of times. Luckily we have been winning more often than loosing although last battle that would decide the overall outcome of conflict turned into meat grinder. Only due to better combat prowess we were able to win but for out client that victory was pyrrhic. After such difficult contract company had to take a break and recover its numbers.

My proficiency as drill master and use of Eye of Commander allowed company to recover much faster and hire good rookies. Overall performance of company improved dramatically, better training and organisation allowed us to outperform most of other mercenary companies. This resulted in company becoming wide renown which meant more contracts and better conditions.

However, in the end things went down south, Michael started to become overly confident and arrogant. This resulted in some very bad contracts during which company lost almost half of its members. Yeah, we got paid well, almost the triple the standard fair but losses caused massive drop in performance. I advised to take a break and replenish our numbers as well as give time to train rookies. But my words went in vain, he just told me to shut up and bring company back in shape as soon as possible.

Again another shitty contract yet unlike last time only quarter of company made it out. I got pissed by this and left company not without a scandal. In the beginning Michael tried to persuade me to say but I told him that I don't want to work with arrogant prick that will get us killed sooner or later. After that he tried to threaten me saying that he would do so that nobody will hire me. But I have made myself some reputation already so showing him middle finger I left with Lukas and Elf.

Later on I have found out that Michael hired some good drill masters from other companies. Nevertheless this didn't help him much and next contract was last for "Giant's Blades", very few made it out and Michael's head ended up on a pike.

In every end, there is also a beginning. So it was for me since I decided to finally create my own company - Blood Grudge.