When War Ends, Its Echo Remains [Fantasy/Ensemble]

[WhichBard]

One continent, united in hatred and fear for one man. A tyrant that burned seditious villages, hung incompetent nobles, and waged war on neighbors until every standing nation was held tightly in his grasp. His coming was foretold by prophecy as the  "man who built his empire of iron and blood". He proudly declared his identity, his banner was a bloody iron gauntlet, and he marched where he pleased and never tasted a lasting defeat. He ruled for more than thirty years, and in the end was undone by the heroine foretold in the same prophecy, her band of heroes, and an army led by a brilliant and foreign young general. The heroine was made Queen, she established a noble Parliament, and was set to the task of reforming a kingdom.

Every war brings with it consequences, however. Consequences that echo and twist the fate of millions. At its start, the echo began with a broken heart. A confession from a friend to another now that the war was done and they could be honest; the Sorcerer offered his love to the Heroine, and was rejected. She had someone else, a Paladin of the Light. Then the echo grew louder: reports came in from all over the kingdom that the war had ended too late. Farmers could not sow their fields in time to harvest before winter. Villages, towns, and cities had burned or already spent their granaries and reserves surviving sieges. A famine was coming. Louder still: The Parliament could not get along, squabbled, could not pass legislature, and after one particularly heated argument in those chambers, the Sorcerer and the chosen mediator had quit the Court entirely and departed the capitol without another word.

The war had been one, but the Kingdom was spiraling into chaos despite the victory. There was no prophecy that guaranteed she could fix this problem as well.

Hello!

I'm WhichBard! As you can tell, I had a muse I wanted to share and roleplay out with someone for fun. It has a few moving pieces. The basic premise is that I want a war to just have concluded, and a formerly tight-knit group of heroes have split up. Now they have to deal with troubles on their own, and the consequences of the war they had just fought are still playing out - causing new conflicts, new important characters, etc.. We can take this idea and focus on one or two particular characters, but ideally I'd prefer we both play multiple characters each, with maybe the 'Main' characters being picked out, and the others being significant POV characters like in a TV show. (In Game of Thrones, for instance, depending on the season you can see one or two characters being the 'protagonist', but the others get significant screen time as they help to move the story as well and they matter.)

For the romance/erotic/adult portion of it, check out my Ons and Offs. Questions? Ask! I'd like for the erotic scenes to be heterosexual. I'm also not adverse to playing female characters. That being said, while this will be laced into the story because that's fun and I feel like it deserves to be there I want to focus on writing a cool story with someone.

Finally, this premise can be worked on together. If you have an idea to expand or change it in some way, fire away! I have a suggested list of characters and basic motivations/personalities for the cast, but this isn't an exhaustive or even necessary list. We can develop something along similar lines to the core premise I talked about above after the writing prompt. In fact, I think planning portions of the story out and how the characters interact will be a big part of having success with this king of story.

If you're interest, please send me a PM. I'd love to hear back from ya'll.

The Cast

The Sorcerer

Heartbroken over the truth of the Hero's relationship with the Paladin, the Sorcerer has abandoned his friends and the royal court to travel abroad. Having abandoned their formal education to aid their former friend the Hero, the Sorcerer tries to seek out a new purpose in the world for his magical power. He travels East, into the most desolated parts of the Kingdom. After that, barbarian lands and an open ocean await.

The Heroine

The war is over - She's won. The Heroine wears the crown, the kingdom is at peace, and all it cost were a hundred thousand lives and her childhood friend the Sorcerer. There are still matters of state to settle. The spectre of famine looms over her kingdom, her lover is no longer her lover and has recommitted himself to his deity, her army is more loyal to its general than it is to her, and her predecessor's eldest son still sits in court casting his vote in the Lord's Parliament she had created. The most trustworthy person in her court is the sniveling traitor who had stabbed her predecessor in the back in exchange for his life and position.

In politics the Heroine is no slouch, but she had always been better with a weapon in hand than trying to manage the petty squabbles of a kingdom. She had been volunteered by opportunity and prophecy. With no more prophecy, what came next was anyone's guess.

The Paladin

No warrior could claim to be as accomplished, nor as pious, as the Paladin. Born an orphan, he joined the church as a way out of poverty. His escape became his way of life - instilling justice and light into foul monsters and evil men. Before the Heroine had announced herself as prophecy demanded - a prophecy he himself had cried out to the followers from a pulpit when it had been discovered - he had been fighting the tyrant. No one taught him how to stand, how to fight, how to hold his sword. No one except the Light. He fought whether or not anyone was beside him, preaching the correct path to anyone that would listen.

That was how it was for years, until he met her. Just like the moment the Light had inspired him to fight, he became inspired by her. The mistake that followed - that could happen still - would inevitably occur. Hiding from the enemy, alone in the dark. He was imperfect. Only after the fact did he realize that this was something he needed to resist. When she fulfilled her destiny and became Queen, he would be a burden. The kingdom came first for her, and the Light came first for him. Obscuring the Light's clarity would only make things more difficult.

Still. She did not have many friends left, now that the Sorcerer was gone. The Paladin would remain just long enough to ensure no assassin could kill her.

The Turncoat

Fifteen years ago, right in front of his very eyes, the tyrant had had all of his older siblings and his father hung on suspicion of treason. His family fortune fell apart, his mother humiliated herself and lost her station. He carried on his family's name - serving the man who had caused it all. Eventually he became trusted as if the past were forgotten, regaining his status and fortune. He repaired his family's home, committed his mother to care, and marched off to fight in a war he silently wished the tyrant would lose.

When the Heroine's army came to the city, and the Sorcerer rained fire on the towers and flooded the keep from the waters of the river, he saw his opportunity. A three-day siege ended in one calamitous night where all he needed to do was to open the gates to the inevitable.

The tyrant had trusted him - or, he trusted him as much as he trusted anyone, which wasn't very much. But he didn't hate him. The Heroine and her subjects, the Tyrant's son and his loyalists, everyone that had even heard of that night blamed him for the dirty deed and not the Heroine for taking the opportunity. He didn't regret it. Fighting alone was something that he had done all his life, and this time the monarch he had to answer to might not be so quick to hang him if he looked at her the wrong way.

The Prince

There is more than one prophecy. The Prince would be the first to admit that his father was a bastard, but not so deeply evil as many thought. His father was a bastard because ultimately this world needed a villain. With hatred and fear, his father united a continent. Petty squabbles of other nations, even the tribes in the barbarian lands all focused in on his father and his lackeys. Because when the time came, the continent would need to be ready. An enemy would return from across the sea - this year, or next year, or some year when their great grand children were gray. If they were not, this enemy would snuff out what light there was. The draconian rulership of his father would be a gentle caress next to what this enemy would do if the prophecy was true.

So the Prince did what he was told to do: he survived. He renounced his father publicly, formed his faction privately, and plotted his return to the throne should the Heroine prove too weak to keep the continent united. With the fractious Parliament she had assembled, it seemed only a matter of time until the vassal kingdoms decided they could take their chances and secede entirely.

The General

The Heroine's Army was the General's Army. The "Elegant Strategist", practically a princess from beyond the mountains, had brought the core of her army over when she had lost her duel of wits against the Heroine and her Sorcerer friend. She had been a thorn in the tyrant's side since she was a little girl, escaping with her family's Palace Guard. For a few years they had pretended to be mercenaries. Eventually, she fought the tyrant openly, and the rest was history.

The Heroine and her merry band crossed the mountains into the General's territory, and asked for her help in a war they were bound to lose - prophecy or not. She challenged them to a duel of wits, and considering her vast intellect she would let the Heroine bring along her curious, scruffy friend to help. If she won, they would serve her. If they won, she would march for them until the tyrant was dead. After the general had lost, she stayed true to her word and crossed the mountains. The war proper began, and her army was twice the size as when it began. The core was the same, but now there were untrained levies and rabble. Without a any other standing force on the continent, she held all the cards so long as it remained loyal to her.

Did the General want to be a Queen in her own right?