LEADING A PEASANT REVOLT IN BATTLE BROTHERS PART I

Can low borns forge their own path in a grim fantasy world?

- Jon Bolding

The Darklands. A war-scarred waste where everything preys upon the people: Orcs, goblins, bandits, corpse-eaters, barbarians, giants, great beasts from direwolf to lindwurm, hell, even the dead come back for us. But the worst monster? The predator that kills more of the peasants than any other? It’s a vast parasite, a swollen tick growing fatter off the backsweat of the common man: The nobility.

They raised us up for one of their wars, their endless wars, and they said it was to protect our town. Thirty of us volunteered, but they fed us into the maw of battle, and only twelve came out alive. The worst part? There were just as many scared, unhappy peasants on the other side. The only people who wanted to be there were the nobles.

Me and these 12 men aren’t living by their rules anymore. We’re northerners, people of the town of Bokenberg. A speck on the rolling tundra. Our forefathers labored in the salt pits before the nobles were here, and we’ll be here long after the entire House of Rumholt is moldering in their, admittedly expensive, tombs.

We’re a peasant militia now, but we’ll soon be mercenaries. Eventually the Darklands Peoples’ Front will put terror in the hearts of the nobility. Common people fighting for the common people. We’ll have no more trade with the nobles, and no nobles among us. And if we get strong enough to take from the nobles, hell, we’ll do that too. We may be uneducated, we might not have tomes of lore about the world and how it works, but that won’t hinder us. Actually, that probably will hinder us a lot.