The Troubles of Poland and Birth of Rus

In 1460, Poland and Lithuania joined together in one great union which threatened to sweep aside the Tatar order in the east and rival the Empire in the west. Meanwhile the Duke of Muscowy, Vasily II, was crushing the other Russian princes on his drive to liberate his people from the Tatar terror. Unfortunately for the Poles, their nation soon erupted into the chaos of a civil war.

After incorporating Novgorod into his state, Vasily fought against the Khan of Kazan, crushing the steppe cavalry and touching off a civil war which birthed the Qasim Khanate. At this time civil unrest in Poland was growing and numerous Polish territories defected wholesale to Muscowy. Sensing the weakness on his western border, the newly crowned Andrei IV declared war on Poland. It was a brief affair in which Poland was forced to cede the region around Smolensk to Muscowy.

The humiliating defeat intensified Poland's woes, with Anti-Judaist forces rising up in old Lithuania, Prussian rebels in the former Teuton lands, and peasants throughout the south and east. The King's forces were stretched thin, and they soon were beginning to turn the tide, until the Polish crown came to the assistance of the Livonian Sword Brothers in their defense of the merchants of Pskov, the last remaining independent Russian principality.

Muscovite forces moved into Estonia, Pskov, and Poland, sweeping all resistance before them. This war was long and brutal, dragging on through the 1470s into 1481. Pskov was annexed in the first year, and gave the Muscovite duke the last prestige he needed to declare himself by the grace of God, Tsar, and his realm Rus. Polish fortifications held out for years, but the Russian invaders held on by tooth and nail until the defenders inevitably collapsed.

Crimea tried to take advantage of the situation, invading Moldavia and then southern Poland, but the forces of the pretender king in Poland crushed the invaders, driving them back into Crimea. Weakened thus, the Russian armies soon chased the rebel army out of the Ukraine.

Things in the north were just as bad for the Brotherhood of the Sword. The battle of Wenden, pitting eleven thousand (ten thousand infantry and one thousand knights) of the Brotherhood's men against the six thousand men of the Russian Tsar Guard was an unmitigated disaster for Livonia. Their entire force was routed, the knights captured, and the peasants vanished into the fields. With no army and little money the Livonians raised a few more regiments of infantry over the next several years, but they were hunted down and wiped out before they could consolidate.

In the end, Poland was forced by treaty to cede a large swath of territory to Russia, liberate a rump Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and release the Teutonic Knights from vassaldom. The disastrous treaty tipped the country past the breaking point, letting the pretender seize the throne while the local princes in Polotsk and the Polish Ukraine claimed independence for themselves. The Livonian Sword Brothers were forced to swear fealty to Russia, drawing the ire of the Holy Roman Emperor upon the newly formed Russian state, as well as cede the region of Novgorod that Livonia seized while Muscowy and Novgorod warred with each other.

Russia found itself in the enviable position of being surrounded by weak nations. Its western frontier was either shattered from the last war or in the case of Sweden embroiled in a civil war. Its eastern frontier was governed by the increasingly fragmented and fratricidal Tatar and Mongol Khans.



The striped area bounded by white is the former extent of the Polish state, circa 1460, which was lost to rebellions and war.

Sons of Metal: A Setting

Across the wasteland roam Bands, scouring the desolate countryside of the Old Country, they look for anything to help them survive. Competition between Bands is fierce for the ever scarcer resources needed to keep the Iron Horses alive and moving.

The wasteland is bounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth. No one's found a road out, and there are no boats left afloat. Not that anyone wants to leave, for somewhere in the wasteland is the Secret of Steel, and so the legends passed down from the old riders who saw the old world to the new riders born since then claim that the Secret of Steel will make any man a King. The northern waste is ruled by the Blind Guardians, the east by the Menowar, and the rugged southern lands by the Nightwish Clan. Between them is a sort of No Man's Land that the free Bands roam in, fighting and dying.

Every rider needs three things: an Iron Horse, a Sword, and Leather. If you have that, you can be a singer. If you have an Axe, you can be guitar. And if you're one of those crazies with the three-wheeler Iron Horses, you can be the drummer. No Band can survive without someone from each skill.

When two Bands meet they will proceed into a Rock Off or a Righteous Battle or a Boozehound. Different bands have different strengths, and a proper Rock Off can defeat a Righteous Battle, a Righteous Battle can stop a Boozehound in its tracks, and a Boozehound will through even the best guitarist out of whack.

The waste is full of what's left of the Old World. Booze, food, fuel, and food. Go out there and collect it, and maybe you can build a better Band. Get a big enough Band and you can go West, young man, and into Metalopolis where the Gods of War reign supreme over the mere mortals. The lucky few Bands that win their favor make it into Valhalla, beyond the endless desert ocean.