The Year is 125 AD

and Stokes is Going on an Adventure

And so by the request of Stokes, a post summarising what he got up to today in an RPG we've been playing!

With helpful pictures.

BUT FIRST SOME CONTEXT. (Skip this if you don't like a quick bit of history, or if you're familiar with the legend of the ninth legion)

The year is 117 AD, and Briton/Provinca Britannia (modern England) is under Roman occupation. But that isn't enough, no no. Rome hungers for Caledonia (modern Scotland) and so dispatched the veteran Legio IX Hispania, the Ninth Legion, who were garrisoned in Briton, to seize the north lands (it was at this point that the IX Legion disappeared from all historical records. The rest (apart from the bit about Hadrian) is legend, not history), but once they crossed the border, the whole 5,000 elite soldiers mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

What happened to them? Nobody knows, but the general assumption is

Unfortunately for the Romans, this also meant that the legion's eagle standard, the symbol of their honour, was lost.

Which led to the myth of the curse of the legion, meaning Rome could never reform the legion unless the eagle was found.

Worse still, if the Caledoni were to get their hands on it, it might be enough motivation to lead to the unification of their tribes in a great and terrible war against the occupying Romans.

Things were in fact so bad that Hadrian, the recently appointed Emperor who was on his "world" tour, decided that the VI Legion ought to be shipped in to Britannia and the Great Wall of Briton ought to be built, spanning the breadth of the border with Caledonia. The purpose of this was to keep the northerners out because they were ginger. That or because they had battleaxes, I'm not sure which.

ANYWAY

Enough context. Where does Stokes come in?

Well, the year is now 125 AD and Stokes was given the choice to be pretty much anyone. So he chose to be a native, from the Brigantes tribe, serving as an auxiliary soldier in the VI Legion, in order to earn Roman citizenship. Which is odd, because when I asked him if he'd like to find the lost eagle in order to bring it back and restore the lost legion's honour, or to unite the Caledoni and lead a revolution against all Romans, he chose the latter. And you know what's also odd? His name, Derek Kneetaker. Lovely.

So anyway, after we determined all the important stats he'd have to keep track of, like beard length and personal hygiene, we got on with the story, which started with Derek/Stokes being given four weeks leave from service, in order to go and do his own thing.

His own thing turned out to be signing up for gladiator matches.

In which he did quite well, despite at one point basically having half his chest mashed up into soup.

When he was done with all that (and had a shave), he used his funds to buy a doctor slave and then headed southwest in search of a new town, to raise money for mercenaries to take north with him, past the wall, to find the eagle standard.

On his first night out, just as he was about to pop off to sleep, he was awoken by the sound of drumming and chanting in the woods nearby.

Which turned out to be a cult of about 15 druids and one other dude who was chatting to their leader.

The next day he reached the nearby town, and was having a look around when he found the home of the other dude who had been chatting to the druid leader. Stokes decided to stalk him for a bit and then pop into his house for a chat.

You see, Stokes had managed to work out, with a bit of help, that the guy was leading and uprising against the Romans, and decided to ask to join, as this fitted nicely with his overall goal for the RPG. Turns out you should never let Stokes ask you something though, as his idea of asking was stabbing the guy in the chest and knocking him to the floor, almost killing him.

[Sensitive readers should skip this next paragraph]
This woke his wife up, who tried to take Stokes out with a frying pan, but Stokes dodged, causing her to unintentionally smack her husband in the head, finishing him off. After failing to disarm her about five times, and concluding things had gone a bit too far (and got perhaps a bit too dark), Stokes decided to flee the town and head back to the legion fort to get back to service early.

So back at the fort of Eboracum (which eventually was to turn into the city of York), Stokes had a peaceful few months before a native uprising did indeed take place. Very quickly these rebels laid siege to the fort. Sallying forth to meet their foe, Stokes ran into five chariots. With some impressive javelin shots he and a couple of others managed to take them out, and hold their own against the dismounted riders while reinforcements came to lend a hand.

And the story so far ends with Stokes back in the gladiator arena trying to raise funds for his holiday expedition to the north, past the wall into the cold dread lands. He's just won a match against an extremely small person armed with a dagger and a shield twice his size.

And that's all for now folks... it should get a lot more interesting pretty quick, as Stokes can pretty much do whatever he likes, so we'll keep you updated.

Leggett