https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJleW4TCQM0&ab_channel=Movieclips – The Battle for the CityThe singing of the pilgrims grows more agitated as the final leg of the Long Walk is underway, closer to agitated chanting than the soothing psalms that have thus far permeated the procession. This is representative of the running battles that took place across the City when the brothers Adam and Cain led the people into uprising. The victory over the massed hoplite formations in the Lesser Quarters, the route of the master’s elite troops at Princes Plaza, the destruction of the sea fort Kalamata and the seizure of the vast majority of the Imperial fleet that lay docked in the bay therein. Old wounds as far as the natives are concerned, and most scarce care to be reminded of the revolution that toppled the regime of the time and saw their great empire humbled. Less still do they with any fondness look upon the repeats of these military disasters centuries later when the rising star of Cantǒn made war upon them after such pilgrim demonstrations such as yours here and now were banned by the viziers some centuries later.
It goes without saying that this aggressive demonstration that is the final and most public step of the pilgrimage is viewed with open scorn by the populace, even by the common Cathagi local with nary a slave of their own to their name. They look upon the Crusades Adamant as an act of madness by barbarians, fought not for trade concessions or material acquisitions but to safeguard an offensive religious practice in front of their mightiest institutions. Gone is the dismissive or bewildered expressions of the locals from earlier in the day, most of those out in force now look upon you and your fellow pilgrims with open hostility.
You pay them no mind, discarding the angry glares and hurled abuse to one side as you lead the procession from the front into the core of the City. The pilgrims in your wake take heart from your dauntless example. If they had not witnessed it, if they could not see with their own eyes the bloody marks of your passage under the whip, none would believe that they were now following the same man who had just minutes before been beaten to the point of tortuous crawling unto the final steps to Cain’s Cross.
The Knights Comitas are spread thin, hands on hilts and eyes wary. You can see why. Now the Stratiokas caste that previously lined the way in scattered formation array themselves before the Crescent Palace steps in full phalanx formation. There are hundreds of them, outnumbering your party by a factor of at least three or four to one. You see furrowed brows tilted under menacing helmets, hands tightly gripping long sharp pikes that are levelled your way. It is a clear enough sign, any pilgrim that oversteps their place and attempts to place a foot on that first chiselled palace step of marble will find a spearpoint waiting for them.
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