Character Creation

You are a member of the Royal Family, the future leaders of the realm. From the moment you were born, you were trained to fight, think, and plan ahead. Your earliest memory is from four or five years old, it is unclear; but you distinctly remember the weight of the wooden sword as you wacked the other kid with it.

It was a tough life cut out for you, and you have no idea who your real family is - or was. All you remember is just fighting, learning, and having to beat the other kids in everything.

Likely now, on reflection, you might have been from the army - after all, anyone who joins the army becomes property of the realm, in addition to their children.
It wasn't unusual for captains to have an arranged marriage to another notable soldier of some sort with talent. Maybe the realm indeed has some hidden agenda to producing the best breed of humans it can, and you are the result.
You perceived the relationship when your turned five and learned this particular information from a drunk royal guard. He never did tell you what happened to the children of such unions. From then on you suspected that your father and mother might have been famous military generals and war heroes.

There were other children before you of course, technically royal blood isn't what made you a prince/ss (as you found out when you were six). Which meant you could have just been a kid from some random soldiers who were clever and strong enough to be filtered out for it.

You qualified for it - in every sense of the word. And you survived to gain this title, amongst at least forty others, being the most clever of the bunch. You lied, you cheated, forged alliances, broke promises, even threw dust in the eyes of the world in order to win.
Victory, at any cost. Because you had no idea what happened if you lost.

There were others stronger, smarter, and better rounded to be royalty.
But you beat them all. Because out of all of them, you were the most ruthless.
At the age of twelve, the fighting stopped, and you were proclaimed the victor.
By then, only twenty-three of the kids had survived to the end of it. You never heard from them again until at age fifteen you looked into it.

All tacticians, strategists, and army men.
None of them Commanders or Captains of course - that title was reserved for noble blood, of which you had no idea if you were or not. It mattered little to you then, and least of all now.

You had eight years to prepare for the next war.
You laid down your alliances, and got to know your newest opponents.
Plans within plans, you predicted and fought in a terrible information war with them, all leading to this moment.


Now, at the age of twenty, it's time to once more enter the fight.
The last honest fight you'll ever know.
This time, you won't be up against the weak-minded kids you beat way back when.
You're up against each country's best and brightest, people who went just as far as you did.

And unlike with the kids, this time, the game is deadly.
With the other forty, death was usually accidental, incurred by wounds festering, or permanent damage to bones in training.
In this fight, the realm's message is clear: "We have enough super soldiers from the twenty-two others we obtained from your group. To lose four in this fight is a worthwhile investment."

Because, of course, there was a different atmosphere among the kids.
Death was always a shadow, a possibility. It could be dismissed quickly enough.
In this fight, it's ever present. And fear of death speeds up your thoughts greatly, tenses your body, and keeps yourself sane - failure to do so will result in meeting that shadow.

Only one may become the ruler of the realm.
And to be on this throne, you need to walk through a pool of your brothers' and sisters' blood.
And you intend to sit on that throne.

At all costs.