Two magnificent armies face off against each other. Their front lines stacked with the finest warriors their respective generals could offer. They are each positioned at the top of a hillside with only a small valley separating them. The generals lead their troops atop horses complete with regalia. On the Eastern side there are the Tomissians, clad from head to toe in lustrous shining armour. The Tomissians are the largest of the five kingdoms that rule over Arkana. They controlled vast swathes of land including the mountains containing the most profitable mines in all of Arkana and their weaponry and armour reflected such wealth. Their knights sport full plate armour which has been polished to the point where it is blinding to the enemy. Their mirror-like armour is adorned with golden embellishments demonstrating the skill of the kingdom's craftsmen and the faith that their men will return intact. The army outnumbers the opposing forces and stands restlessly atop the hilltop as a brilliant exhibit of Tomissian might. Even in civilian life the Tomissian elite value displays of obscene power and wealth, much to the chagrin of those who do not share in the fortunes of the kingdom. For Tomissian society is founded on the idea that a man is only worth what that man can make himself worth. However, this has resulted in greed dominating every aspect of their economic and social environment. Employers will pay their workers as little as possible while working them as hard as possible in an endless pursuit of greater profits. Then when they discuss life with other wealthy employers they wonder why their men never put in the time and energy to move up in the world. There are no handouts or even compassion for the poor in Tomissia, charity is seen as enabling the weak and lazy to deny themselves self-improvement. The most naively idealistic of Tomissians believe that if everybody works equally hard then everybody will be equally wealthy but this is not the case. For those who are born poor almost without exception die poor and those born into wealth might as well live in a completely different world from the work force whose slums encircle the elite inner core of Tomissian City. The only institution deemed worthy of handouts in Tomissian society is the military, the largest and most well supplied fighting force in all of Arkana. The Tomissians take great pride and comfort in their army because between their exorbitant wealth and their past military operations the kingdom has made many enemies. Meanwhile on the Western side there are the Rolgans, a nomadic band of mercenaries and bandits decked out in whatever armour and fineries they could loot from past fallen. Under the leadership of the Rolgan Family Clan, the elites among their society, the Rolgans had never claimed land and instead operated as a mobile force of mayhem and destruction. This provided many advantages to a military and society built upon the smash-and-grab ethos. Without permanent settlements the Rolgans have nothing to defend and as such can adopt aggressive tactics which their opponents could not replicate without endangering cities full of innocents. For, of course, there were no innocents within the ranks of the Rolgans. Most joined through connections in the underworld or prisons and those born within the society have been trained from birth to be the perfect career criminals. The Rolgans attract all of Arkana's most desperate and full of hate and if it were not for their tremendously short life expectancies living as they do then they would likely overrun the entire world. For there is a lot of hate in this world of Arkana. Infighting, famines, pestilence and disease run rife throughout the major population centres of the five kingdoms and the smaller ones may as well not exist for all of the attention they receive from the kings who preside over their lands. To the five kingdoms the Rolgans represent everything that is wrong with Arkana concentrated into a single easily-hated and blamed entity. The kings use the existence of the Rolgans to invoke fear in their people and justify the need for military might protecting their leadership. Of course they often fail to mention that the Rolgans primarily consist of their own outcasts driven there by the conditions that the leaders have failed to address. The kings use the Rolgans as something that they can point to and justify overstepping their mark. Kingdoms all across Arkana have seen an increased security presence in their daily lives and the removal of rights and liberties which they had previously assumed untouchable. The kings feared their people for they knew what the Rolgans were and how they become what they are. If the kingdoms weren't feeding a steady stream of resentful dissidents to the war chiefs of the Rolgans then they would likely perish unable to sustain themselves. But in order to stop supplying the Rolgans with the angry young men that fuel their hateful campaigns then the kings would have to face something they fear more than anything. For what the kings fear more than the Rolgans or the poisonous hate eating away at their people is change. One doesn't become king effortlessly after all, it takes a certain mindset to even want to be king and at all times there are those who seek to usurp. To risk losing such immense power is an unapproachable concept for most. This means that instead of looking for ways to make the people feel like their voices have been heard and that they matter, the kings sought to suppress all opposing ideas, movements and the freedoms that facilitate them. For if the people believed that their voices didn't matter then they didn't and if the people believed that they themselves didn't matter then they didn't either. So it came to be that with every act of aggression perpetrated by the Rolgans the kings' grip on their people became tighter and with every act of oppression perpetrated by the kings the Rolgans' ranks grew stronger with the disillusioned. By the time the Tomissians faced off against the Rolgans in the hillsides east of Tomissia and west of Nura this was a system which was reaching its breaking point. The Rolgans have grown to the point where they threaten to overtake and destroy all of Arkana like a raging fire. When the blaze is over there will be nothing left, not even enough to fuel the fire that ensured its own self-destruction. Despite mutual annihilation looming over them neither the kings nor the Rolgan Family Clan were willing to change their ways and the fate of the world was sealed. Or so it seemed.









