Middle Ages: The People of the Millennium

In 476 AD, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, and barbarian kings built kingdoms upon the ruins. A millennium later, in 1453, Constantinople fell to the gunpowder of the Ottomans, marking the end of the Middle Ages. Throughout this millennium, the vast majority of the population—farmers, tenants, artisans, peddlers, wanderers, and beggars—struggled to survive amidst plague, war, famine, faith, and the whip of their lords.

You will play a commoner, born into any era from the 5th-century turmoil, the 7th-century Islamic conquests, the 9th-century Viking raids, the 11th-century Crusades, or the 13th-century Mongol invasions, all the way to the 14th-century Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. Your birth dictates your path.

• 🌾 Live off the land: Spring plowing, summer weeding, autumn harvest, winter storage—a missed sowing means a year of famine.
• ⛪ The Church is everywhere: Baptism, marriage, extreme unction, festivals, tithes, and inquisitions—the Church holds your soul and your livelihood.
• ⚔️ Conflict is constant: Lordly levies, Viking longships, Magyar riders, Mongol hordes, and mercenary bands—no one is a bystander.
• 🦠 Plague, Famine, and Pestilence: The Justinian Plague, the Black Death, the Great Famine—entire villages can vanish overnight.
• 🏘️ Town and Country: From village to town, from guild to market—you may spend your life in one county or travel the world as a pilgrim or soldier.
• 👨‍👩‍👧 Fate and Legacy: Marriage, inheritance, debt, and law—the courts and customs determine the fate of your family.
• ⏱️ The Unyielding Clock: Time moves by years and decades. You will rarely live past forty. The wheel of history does not stop for common men.

Survive—raise your children, endure the hunger, keep your patch of land. Rise—if luck and cunning allow, move from serf to free man, apprentice to guild master, or perhaps climb into the ranks of the minor gentry. Die—to plague, war, famine, cold, the gallows, or simply a bad harvest.