The Dark Ages of Britain Part 2: Burning Lands

Listen! We are the Anglo Saxons, called English, the sons of conquerors and the fathers of kings, those who came over the whale-roads to whelm the Wealh and take from them the land they had lost by their weakness. We are a great people, in sin and strength alike, and God has used us for His ends. Once we were His wolves upon the wicked, to wound the faithless and condemn their crimes, and now we are His children in the true faith. But our sins hang heavy on our hearts yet, and a shadow falls upon us from the deeds we have done.   King Aella committed a heinous sin by casting the Dane know as Ragnar Lothbrok into a pit of vipers to sooth his need for vengeance. When Ragnar’s sons learned of their father’s ignoble death, they rallied a great army which fell onto the shores of Northumbira like a great wave. Their vengeance was wrought across the land and King Aella himself was subjected to torture and death at the hands of Ragnar’s kin.   Over the seasons, the Danes fell upon even more towns, putting them to the torch and overcoming the forces of East Anglea. King Edmund was tortured for his faith in God and martyred as his lands fell to the pagan horde.   It was only in the land of Wessex that the horde was turned back, battle after great battle the kin of Ragnar were turned away by the children of the true faith and thus England was saved from the pagans. The great King Alfred of Wessex made a great peace with the Danes and baptized the King Guthrum into the God’s light.   The cost of this peace was the ceding of land, and Guthrum and the other Dane Jarls took great swaths of land from Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria that is now called the Danelaw; a place where only Danelaw rules and the grace of God is rarely found.   It is now the year of our lord, eight hundred and eighty-two, four years since King Alfred’s peace began, England suffers now under harsh troubles, ones earned by our own godless wickedness and enmity of our foes.   These are the woes our people face.   The English war among ourselves as the Wealh Kings and Danes wish to take our lands. We are tormented by heretics and Pagans, who hide in the dark places of the world, creeping forth gather for their foul sacrifices or make bargains with dark forces. These dark forces take the face of creatures of fae who walked this land long before we came; dark furies and creatures who take men’s souls. Finally, the old Artifexes, turned strange and terrible by old Roman magic hide in the Arxes of old cities waiting for a moment to strike down the God fearing.   Each of these troubles requires heroes to rise and dispel them, to smite the forces of Hell and upbraid the intriguers among men. Common ceorls have no hope of overcoming such troubles, but only by brave heroes who fear neither devil nor man.   God be good and deliver us from these evils