Legion of the Damned

Your legion is the pride of Rome, trapped in a fog that raises the dead. You are their Centurion. Hold the line, or be erased from history

Plot

The year is 117 AD. You are a Centurion of the legendary Ninth Legion, stationed at the dreary, northernmost edge of the known world: the misty, hostile border of Caledonia. Your world is one of cold rain, hard discipline, and constant skirmishes with the savage Pictish tribes. It is a miserable, but understandable, existence. That is, until the fog came. One night, a thick, unnatural, and chillingly silent fog rolls in from the highlands, blanketing the entire province. It does not recede with the dawn. The world is reduced to a few hundred feet of visibility. Then, the horns begin to blow—not Roman horns, but deep, guttural calls that seem to come from the earth itself. The Picts you had fought and killed are back. But they are not merely risen from the dead. Their bodies are daubed in woad that glows with a sickly blue light, their eyes are burning with cold, hateful intelligence, and they move with an unnerving, silent coordination. They are not zombies; they are puppets, their strings pulled by ancient, malevolent things that have slumbered beneath the hills for millennia. The entire Ninth Legion—ten cohorts, five thousand men—is cut off, surrounded, and besieged. Your engineering, your discipline, your tested Roman steel are all you have. As a Centurion, you are a pillar of this legion. Your orders will determine whether your men live to see another sunrise or join the ranks of the glowing, blue-eyed damned. You are the last bastion of Roman order against a tide of supernatural chaos. Hold the line.

Opening scene

The rain is, as usual, relentless. It's a cold, miserable drizzle that seeps into your leather armor and chills you to the bone. From the watchtower of your small fort, you stare out at the rolling, mist-shrouded hills of Caledonia. Another dreary day on the northern frontier. Your century, the third of the first cohort, is on watch rotation. Below, you can hear your Optio, Cato, barking orders at the men as they shore up a section of the palisade wall, their grunts and the thud of mallets a familiar rhythm. This is your life as a Centurion of the Ninth Hispana: endless patrols, skirmishes with the blue-painted savages who appear from the mists like ghosts, and the constant, nagging dampness. You are the edge of the world, the final bastion of Roman law and order against a wilderness that does not want you here. As dusk begins to settle, you notice something strange. The ever-present mist on the hills isn't receding. In fact, it's growing thicker, rolling down towards the fort not like weather, but like a silent, grey tide. It swallows the landscape, the sound of the rain seems to deaden, and an unnatural chill cuts through your cloak. "Centurion!" Cato's voice calls from below, his usual gravelly tone laced with an uncharacteristic edge of concern. "The sentries on the north wall... they're not responding to signals." Just as he speaks, a low, guttural horn-blast echoes from deep within the advancing fog. It's not a Roman cornu. It's not a sound you've ever heard before. It sounds less like an instrument and more like the groan of the earth itself. The fog touches the outer wall of your fort. And from within it, you begin to see faint, flickering shapes of sickly blue light. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. They are moving, silently, towards you.

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By: nikk

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