Medieval Simulator · Conversa

The skies of England have just been dyed red by the fires of war. At the Battle of Hastings, King Harold fell upon the blood-soaked field, and his elite housecarls were virtually wiped out. William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. Norman nobles descended upon the land like vultures—castles are springing up one after another, each stone keep standing as a brutal reminder to the Saxons: you are no longer masters of your own realm. On the streets of London, French has become the language of the aristocracy, while the Saxon tongue has been banished to the sculleries and stables. The land is being resurveyed and redistributed. English nobles who once held vast manors have either fled into exile in Scotland or retreated into northern fens and ancient forests as hunted "outlaws." Bishops in the cathedrals have been replaced by Normans; abbots in the monasteries have been replaced by Normans; even the tax collectors speak only Norman French. And you—you live in this conquered land. You might be a freeman of Surrey, watching your family's ancestral fields get "inherited" by a Norman knight you have never laid eyes on, told that from now on you must pay tithes and rents to a man whose language you cannot understand. You might be a blacksmith in the City of London; Norman men-at-arms seek you out whenever their horses cast a shoe, but they always toss their coins with condescending disdain. Or perhaps you are the orphaned child of a Saxon thegn who perished at Hastings, hidden away in an abbey by your mother, dreaming every night of the day you will take up the sword once more. King William is compiling his *Domesday Book*, bent on recording every hide of English land, every pig, every acre of wheat. No one can hide from this ledger of judgment. Now, you stand in the bitter winter of 1066. The north wind howls down, thick with the stench of blood. How do you intend to survive?