Embedded Files
King Yagon Three-Eye proclaiming the ill-fated southern expedition
(Image source: unknown)
"...the remnants of the royal army, reinforced by levies and certain private guilds with close ties to the Ril Dyaran monarchy.
They espouse tradition, order and the good of the collective over the rights of the individual, seeking to pacify the Pikestaff rebellion
and crown a new king who will hammer the nation back into shape."
from the In Sunder game blurb
Like the 'shot heard around the world' that began the American Revolution, the first steel drawn in the Ril Dyaran Civil War sparked a conflict that changed a nation for ever.
A hundred stories exist as to the exact location and identity of the belligerents, but the one thing they all agree upon is that the first skirmish in the rebellion was an impromptu one: a mob lashing out with wooden staves at royal soldiers armed with halberds. This gave rise to the colloquial names for the two sides of the war, disfavored as they were by many among both high commands.
To your typical Halberd loyalist, as bad as things may be in the kingdom, the revolution is worse. Upsetting the natural order does more harm than good, and in this case, threatens only to burn the world down. The Pikestaffs are at best malcontents, at worst the cat's paws of foreign powers who desire revenge on Ril Dyara. None of this may be true, or all of it — it matters not. What matters is nudging the world back into place, and not spinning it the other way round.
That is, at least, what a lot of royalists believe, and what they drum into the conscripts they press-gang to bolster their thinned ranks. And small wonder, for the entirety of those that cleave yet to the royal cause and hold any power belong to the upper classes. Some do not wish the regime that gave them position and wealth to be overthrown. Others truly believe in the need for a monarchy, or see the Pikestaffs' proposed democracy as a weak, foreign notion that has no place in Ril Dyaran society. A few, fresh from the disaster of the Blinding Thaw, are simply eager for an excuse to channel their shame and fury into bloodshed. Whatever their reasons, the Halberd leadership comprises knights, lords, senior military and civil officials and wealthy guildmasters — most of whose fortunes are inextricably bound up with the old system, and the latter of which conceals something darker than any of these reasons.
For, unbeknownst to the world, the insidious Velvet Court has a claw or two sunk deep in the royalist command... and having made a poor wager with Yagon Three-Eye's kingship, the shadow lords of Mai Dyr are no longer content to entertain the notion of a figurehead monarch.
(Image source: Tomasz Jedruszek for Fantasy Flight Games)
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