The Black Order

Since the Dark first emerged to blight the world more than two centuries ago, the manifold nations and kingdoms of the Continent have been wracked by internecine conflict and constant war.

In the face of the supernatural, the old systems of faith, governance and power no longer hold the sway they once did. The True Faith, once the single most powerful religious and political entity on the Continent, has lost its influence upon a world in which the dead no longer rest. Although the heart of the Faith still beats strong behind the walls of the Golden City in the distant south, the pious no longer flock to its mighty gates as they once did, bereft of hope that a better world awaits in the next life. The Faith's legions are no longer the dominant force on the Continent, and grow fewer in number every year as the Dark's undead hordes crash against the walls of the City.

The erosion of the True Faith has spawned over a dozen major wars across the Continent, causing the downfall of several kingdoms and princedoms once thought unassailable. In the chaos, many a petty fiefdom has grown bloated and swollen on the corpse of a once-great kingdom brought low by strife and ruin; many a robber-baron has fattened himself upon the innumerable towns and villages left unprotected by the destruction of a great empire. It is an age for men to become as wolves.

Not least of these are the ironclad warlords of the north-eastern provinces, the survivors of the last crusading armies to bring the True Faith to the North. Most are robber-barons writ large, warrior-kings of their own making who dwell within massive fortresses of rock and stone, dominating the lands for dozens of miles in each direction. Some, however, have grander ambitions than carving out minor enclaves and baronies...

The mightiest of them belong to a confederation their enemies call the Black Order. The Order's name for itself is likely more humble, but its pretensions to military dominion certainly are not. The Order, ruled by a council of lords and captains drawn from half a dozen lesser military Orders and princedoms, is fast becoming the dominant power of the north-east. Its knights, or 'druzhyna' in the native tongues of the indigenous tribes, are descended from the old crusading armies that once campaigned against the pagans of these lands. Now long since settled and intermingled with the multitude of peoples populating the north-east, the Order's armies draw upon the men of the fjords, the forests, the steppes and the mountains, all marching beneath the same black banner. 'A dozen tongues and twice as many gods march with us', goes the saying; and it is no lie.

In less than fifty years, the Black Order has subsumed three lesser military Orders and annihilated half a dozen armies sent by the Golden City to re-establish the Faith's hold over the north-east. In that time, it has managed to provide a barrier - a haven, even - against the endless tides of the Dark. The refugees who have flocked to its cities and fortresses are driven more by the prospect of survival than anything else, and the Order will soon find that it faces foes within as well as without - enemies who will challenge the Order's right to rule a small empire at the very edge of the world, in between the Great Ocean to the west and the endless steppes of the Traverse to the east.

But for now, while the Order endures, the Dark is held back. The Order's barrier is built with stone and blood - the stones of a dozen mighty fortresses, from Ostvangr in the east to the fortress-city of Cimbris in the west, and the blood of a dozen peoples, all united by the desire to survive in a world gone mad.

That barrier will not last forever. But in these times of the world's ending...what does?