Black Banner Company

A company, not a hero.

You are not the chosen one. You keep the books for a band of sellswords in a kingdom coming apart, and every week asks you the same questions: who goes out, with what, and what to do with the ones who come back broken.

You prepare the battle. You don't fight it.

Battles resolve themselves, on the dice, turn by turn, and you watch. Everything you decide, you decide beforehand: who is in the group, what they carry, which consumables go with them. Once it starts, all you have left are orders — a word of encouragement, a defensive formation, a second wind. Each can be used once a week, so the only real question is when.

They have names. Given time, they have stories.

A man who serves long enough starts to live. He grows close to some of the others and falls out with the rest. He earns titles, a reputation, a past. And one day he may ask you for three weeks' leave without saying why — the opening of a story in three acts that belongs to him alone, and that ends well or badly depending on what you answer.

When a man falls, he falls.

One death roll, and it is over. The ones still standing must hold their morale, and one of them may bolt. The memorial keeps the names, the weeks of service and the kills — and the titles they take with them.

Something is coming down from the north.

You will not know it at once. First it is a tavern rumour that contradicts itself, then a red shard in the chest of a man you know. From that day a countdown runs in the corner of the screen — and it had been running long before you saw it.

What you will find

• A weekly loop: recruit, equip, band together, send out, take the losses.

• A d20 system legible end to end: every roll shows its modifiers, its threshold, and why it landed the way it did.

• Dozens of generated mercenaries, ten classes, talents, stats that matter on every roll.

• Items that do more than add a number — armour, defence against a type of attack, damage against a type of enemy.

• Seventy-eight chance events, a dozen personal stories, and a tavern that talks.

• Bonds that cost you something: quarrels that end in a duel before the whole camp, and oaths you cannot break without paying for it.

• A campaign with an ending, and a clock that does not stop.