Monte Territory, mid-autumn.
Among the farmhouses outside New Wood Town, the grim aftermath of a passing army was visible everywhere.
Fences were toppled, vegetable gardens destroyed, and the roofs of several farmhouses bore the scorched-black marks of war.
Old Allen, leaning on an elmwood cane, trembled as he fumbled through his own vegetable garden, which had been trampled flat by warhorses. His calloused fingers sifted through the soil, searching for any surviving potatoes.
His nearly seventy-year-old frame looked especially stooped in the autumn wind.
"Uncle Allen, be careful!" his neighbor Jack called out, dropping the fence he was mending and hurrying over to help him.
The farmer, himself an old man in his fifties, held Old Allen in high regard.
Just then, a commotion arose from a fork in the road between the farmhouses. Several farmers had gathered around a notice nailed to the wall of a granary.
