The History of the Kings Of Britain

Introduction

The Age of Arthur – The Celtic Twilight – the Dark Ages – the Birth of England. These are some of the powerful and romantic names given to this most confused and yet most vital period of British history. It is an era upon which rival Celtic and English nationalisms still occasionally focus: how far, for example, were the populations of Britannia obliterated by the invading barbarians of the Angles and the Saxons, or are we still essentially Celtic, even though the larger part of Britain speaks a Germanic tongue? Recent genetic evidence has given us some startliing ideas.

Historians will no doubt be debating these and other related issues until time travel is invented, or for many generations to come anyway. But these are not our concerns, for certain things will be made clear for the purposes of our story You live in an age of settlement, an age of fire, and an age of the sword, which in itself was only a small part of a far larger picture. These are the things we will be focusing on in our ‘historia’, since as far as we're concerened this Green and Pleasant land was both won and held by force of arms.

There is a reason why the Birth of England was a dark age. One theory suggests that it was literally dark - the explosion of a volcano causing dust clouds which did much to obscure the sun – but this is not the only reason. Almost no written records exist from that period, and so we are left with unintelligible sources, or sources which were themselves written hundreds of years after the event. Aside from these we have only the archaeological record, and the faint, haunting echoes of folk memory and place names which merely hint at the bloody struggle that took place in these very hills where we live.

Welcome to the History of the Kings of Britain, itself an ancient quasi-historical fantasy, but in this context a pseudo-historical Pendragon game with possible elements of fantasy. Pendragon is no monster-bashing dungeon crawl but a socio-political game of real depth in a dark and bloody world where your survival depends upon the strength of your sword arm, and that of your sworn comrades who stand with you. In it you, the players, will have the opportunity to earn yourselves the rank and privileges of Kings.

But, and this is a BIG but, mark the phrase ‘you will have the opportunity to earn’. You will not begin as kings and the sons of kings. Opportunities will be there but you will have to make the most of them. Expect adversaries who will react to your actions, whose military strategies will change, evolve and develop as yours do and who will counter your political overtures. Expect people who will serve you and betray you, loyally defend you or stab you in the back. Who knows what the future will hold?

Who after all, are the good guys? Are they men who seek a new life and a place for their children away from the lands from which they’ve been themselves have been driven by the sword; or are they the men who defend a land as the invaders come? I personally will make no judgement on this, but I do know that history tells us that the good guys are the guys who win.