The Saxon Wind Blows

Your Britain

 

The land has seen no Roman rule for generations. The legions, their craftsmen and their vital skills all left to fight in the futile defence of a dying Empire. Once fertile land has been given over to wilderness and forest, and thriving towns are now ruined, their buildings cannibalised to maintain those very few that remain. 

With the collapse of Rome, people have starved. Many have died , and left the towns to live off the land once more , desperate to feed themselves and their children. Many sold themselves to indentured servitude, virtual slavery, to unscrupulous landowners, who used their labour to augment their own power.

You have been fortunate indeed to have been chosen for the warband of Lord Marcus of Caer Ambros for at least as you train in the boy's house you are well fed, for the Saxon wind blows often through your beleaguered home. You have all witnessed the most terrible acts of barbarism as those savage Saxon raiders swoop down on isolated homes and farmsteads, killing burning and raping, carrying off those they consider young enough to be their slaves. It is truly a Dark Age. Christians say the Saxons are the scourge of God, a punishment for the sins of your rulers but they say it quietly lest they be left to the Saxon Wind by the very rulers  they blame.

Your Lord, Marcus is responsible for the lands around Caer Ambros nd struggles to maintain Roman Law and Order in the face of the ever bolder raids by the Saxons, who focus much of their attention on this area for the powerful magics Contained by the Henge, the Abbey and the Stones. His warband is small, yet said to be one of the most skilled in the country, rivalling in quality of not in numbers that of The High King's.

Lacking numbers and the menas to increase those numbers in desperation he has turned to innovation for the salvation of his house. He has imported heavy horses from the continent, having heard how cavalry defeated the legions in the fall of Rome, and has also found a new device which seems to allow you to use your spears from horseback with much greater effect. The long spears you favour from horseback are designed to help you pierce the mail armour which you seen from tim to time on the best warriors, and that the Saxons are said to have in abundance. They are yet untried in battle.

You have all been training since the age of six to be the new Equites, and you six are the first to come out of the boys house, and made up to the Rank of household warriors. A lot of hope is pinned on you, for while many of the older warriors have been trained to use horses, they are not comfortable on horseback, preferring to ride to battle, and fight on foot once there, much like the Saxons themselves. Whatever the next few years will hold, much will depend on you, your achievements and your deeds….