Your name is Harold Eadric, and you’ve just signed up for war.You don’t quite know what it is about, but at this point, you will take anything to get out of your village. Years you have been longing to become a man of the world, yet your circumstances have never allowed you to venture much farther than your local village with a name you cannot pronounce. At least you have been able to read stories about the world, and they only made you want to get out of this town more.Sucks then, that your existence up to this point has mostly been concerned with growing wheat. There isn’t much else you can do in this village, really – if you didn’t plough the fields, you’d have a hard time finding anything to eat during winter. So you wasted your childhood away in the drudgery of this eternal routine, just like your father, grandfather and those before him had. All the while, you hoped you’d find a chance to get out. And just as you had recently turned into your eighteenth year, fortune struck."The King is looking for brave men to join the Fight against the treacherous Laumey de Galamad! His men have attacked and slaughtered our people! Answer the King's call and join his armies!"Your family had protested, your mother had cried when you packed your stuff and left the home and fields which had formed the entirety of your existence up until now – it was all in vain. There you were, speaking to the man in his tent; having mentioned your literacy and fitness brought on you by your years in the fields, he now requested… something else? Something else you could do? You already mentioned literacy, didn’t you?
Slightly frustrated, you iterated again that you could really read and write. Did the man need proof of it? Did he take you for a liar?…surprisingly, the man agreed to let you demonstrate your literacy. Handing you the forms he supposedly wrote about the man who came in before you, he crassly demanded you to read.“If you insist you can read, read you will. If you fail, I’ll assign you to stable duty.”Shuddering at the prospect of spending the rest of your days shovelling horse dung, you began reading.“Name: Robert LewisAge: 23Former occupation: PeasantNotable Skills: Cookery, claims to be a toolsmith.Assignment: Infantry SupportFormer place of residence:”This is where you began to struggle – you’d never been able to pronounce the name of your town well; you had read that it was founded by a lord who came from lands across the sea many generations ago, and that he had named it in honour of his family’s dynasty.The man behind the desk still looked at you expectantly, asking what was causing the holdup on what he supposed to be the easiest part of the document.Struggling to bend your vocal cords into a feasible arrangement, you managed to wrestle something out.“Former place of residence: Warmonceux, Carucate VI, Bowland, Cravenshire”Finally, the face of the tired man behind the desk lit up in pleasant surprise, complimenting you on your reading ability and scratching one of his writings before scribbling something down on the similar sheet of paper he had in front of him.Being just as surprised and a bit confused, you asked for clarification. The man explained that far from the only one who claimed that they could read, without actually being literate: it was apparently known far and wide that being literate provided a cushier job within the King’s army. It had gotten to the point where he’d write someone who said they could read up for trench-digging and other gruesome work, as their dishonourableness needed to be punished. You however, he assured, would not be headed for such employment; the man had written you up for something a bit more befitting of your abilities.With that, he gestured for you to hand the piece of paper back and get out of his tent, letting you know that he hoped to hear more of you in the future.
Confident after receiving such praise, you decided to go to the camp the recruiters had set up next to the village. Arriving there, you saw a group of recruits from your village standing next to a few soldiers. You definitely knew some of these people – you saw the miller's son, one of your neighbours and surprisingly, the man you had recognized as Robert Lewis. You had restrained yourself from laughing a bit when the man had given you his file – this “Robert Lewis” was actually called Robin Llewellyn. You wondered what name he had made up for your file.The soldiers were telling the new recruits stories from their time in service, clearly having seen much of the world that laid beyond the hills surrounding your village. You wondered how big it was in its entirety. How far could one go, how many different places were there to see? Was all of it inhabited by people like you? You had read stories of men who lived on a large singular large foot, men whose eyes rested within their shoulders and men whose skin was completely black to cope with the high amount of sun in their part of the world. You wondered if it was all real – you’d heard a lot of stories before which sounded almost ludicrous, like an old man in the village telling you there existed a land whose inhabitants herded sheep while resting upon three long wooden poles to avoid sinking into the marshy mud below.Quitting your bubble of thought, you decided to join the group of new recruits. It was time to become more familiar with the army you just joined, one way or the other.>Ask the soldiers about the war you will be fighting in.>Ask the soldiers about the places they have been to in their campaigns.>Socialize a bit with the other recruits about what they think their role in the army will be.
This will be a medium-sized one-shot based on an abandoned quest (>>6341880). That's all for me today, the next update will come tomorrow or when enough votes have accrued in this thread. Whichever comes first.
>>6349250>Ask the soldiers about the war you will be fighting in.
>>6349250>>Ask the soldiers about the war you will be fighting in.Time for some lore. And I am a lore nut, to be certain. Ya dig?
