Chapter Text
Prologue
It had been twenty years since the people had risen up and been smashed back into the ground.
The tales of the revolt were kept alive in whispers, in hushed voices fearful to be overheard. The king’s order of no quarter had never been rescinded, and anyone with firsthand knowledge - anyone who had been there - stood to be marked for death as a traitor. As far as the Crown was concerned, the memory of those days were better off fading away entirely, lest the rabble get ideas above their station once more.
Still, inevitably, the tales made their way around the Kingdom of Mindolach. The revolt, everyone knew, began with a famine which had lasted for five years. Thousands died, skin and bones, with no food to eat, while the king and his court sat in Varmal, feasting themselves fat.
For half a decade this went on. Mothers wept as their children were buried by the dozens in mass graves that pockmarked the countryside. Relief was sought from the bearmen of Callin Hollow, from the elves of the marshes, from the few sorcerers who remained at Great Rock. No respite could be found from any of them for the blight that murdered crops, nor the sweltering heat which finished off what little survived.
Into this mass of misery walked the man known to tales as the Green Bard. The Green Bard roamed Mindolach, armed only with his maplewood banjo and his silver tongue. With both, the Bard drew crowds and charmed them. With story and song he inspired the people. Rise up, he told them, and seize the day. Better things were possible, but only if they stood together. The power was in their hands. Rise up!
And so they did.
At long last, the peasants, the serfs, even some of the nobility - they had stomached as much as they were able of the king’s abandonment of the starving while he remained plump and proud. Against the famine and the Crown they rebelled, taking in hand what weapons they could and beginning their march across Mindolach, towards Varmal. They sang songs, shared what food they had, and vowed that they would tear down the gates of the capital, seize the king, and feed his bones to the wolves. All the while, the banjo of the Green Bard rang out amidst the din.
Halfway through their journey, in the shade of Mount Blainagh, they were met by the king’s army. Nearly one hundred thousand fresh, rested, and well-fed men, led by some hundred knights, and all under the command of High General Mackery Filligon, the Bonebreaker.
It was a slaughter. From the first charge, it was clear that the half-starved peasants were doomed, and even the few knights and men-at-arms who had joined in the cause stood no chance against the royal forces. The bluegrass was painted red with the blood of thousands. Those few who survived were clamped in irons and shunted into the mines, never again to see the daylight, or else fled into the hills, abandoning their lives and their names.
The revolution, that single, bright, shining hope for a better world, was over before it had begun.
The famine passed soon after, and the people returned to their lives, the story of the revolt mere words in the wind.
There were those who kept hope in their hearts, however. The body of the Green Bard had never been found, they said. He had never been captured. In the middle of battle, his music had simply, suddenly, stopped. It had been as if he had vanished into thin air.
The Green Bard was still out there, it was whispered in the days after the revolt was crushed. One day, he would return and rally the people, lead them once again to build a better world.
But that was long ago.
Few in the Kingdom of Mindolach still held onto that hope.
It was the 1347th year since the collapse of the great Amacon Empire; the twenty-sixth year of the reign of King Josiah Thibeaux.
The Green Bard, if he ever existed, was long dead.
All was as the One Below intended it to be.