“It is rare for those who are used to being situated at the top, where they could abuse their power over those less fortunate, to be able to accept and adapt to a situation where they were placed at the bottom instead, to be downtrodden upon by those greater than themselves.” - Lenneth Aurigan, Philosopher and economist from Jötunberg, circa 420 FP.

Molina de Anduilaz had once been a noble’s daughter, though that was long in the past. Her family lost their nobility title and all the benefits that entailed decades before the civil war, when she was still a young child, due to political reasons her parents had refused to elaborate on even until the day they died in poverty. That had left her, who was but a young child at the time, and her older brother little option but to try to eke out a living some other way.

They were well-learned compared to the peasant rabble, but even so, they were also spoiled noble children, unaccustomed to hard, honest work and used to being served by others. That poor aptitude for honest work, combined with the bad harvest that plagued the land that used to be their family’s, leading to a famine outbreak, eventually made them start to look at less virtuous ways of staying alive.

The two siblings had hid their identity, and worked together with a group of peasant rabble who were similarly situated, people at the end of their ropes, who had no above the board options for staying alive. Her brother then made use of those people’s grievances towards the government and directed it, in the form of raids towards the grain warehouses of the new noble who took over their ancestral lands.

Since they knew the land like the back of their hands, they had not only succeeded in the raid, but also escaped mostly unscathed from the noble’s retaliation and hunt. Their little band soon grew from an influx of other peasants in similar situations, and before long they went from barely a dozen men to nearly fifty strong. That extra manpower allowed them to hit harder targets in their acts of banditry, all while remaining out of the guards’ reach.

Over the years they grew into a bandit gang over a hundred people strong, the scourge of the region, that the lord and his successor had no success against, a shame which often saw the lord in question disparaged in noble assemblies. Once the civil war broke out, their gang made the most out of the chaos to run rampant, though they started to tone down their activities when the land they operated from fell under one of the large faction’s influence.

Even then, they found new employment as a messenger from the opposing faction had paid them a small fortune to continue their activities. They did as asked, ramping up their banditry to harry both the nobles and populace of the region, at least until the patrols were increased so much they had no choice to lay low for the time being.

That was five years ago, at which point the same messenger who had hired them in the first place gave them another offer. Namely to do the same on the neighboring Duchy of Jonkver - which had just repelled an invasion from said faction - over the next few years or so. The siblings, by then long accepted as the bosses of the bandits, had conferred, and after some deliberation had taken the deal.

At first things were easy. The locals were still reeling from the battle that had taken place not too long ago, and the guards lacked manpower. It was ripe ground for bandits to prowl on, and it turned out their gang was not the only one who thought that way as they encountered multiple other bandit gangs in the region. The bandits had quickly reached an understanding to leave each other alone with so many easy prey to target instead, though.

They ran roughshod over the many outlying villages in Jonkver for a good few years after that, the undermanned local guards and soldiers unable to keep up with their activity. Sure, a few of the dumber gangs got caught and hung, but that was their own fault, so none of the other gangs cared much. At most they took more care in planning out their escapes should the guard be at hand.

But then the mercenaries came.

Unlike the guards, who generally avoided the forests when they could, or even if they went in, performed poorly in such terrain, a fact that the bandits had abused to escape them again and again, the mercenaries took to the forests like fish to water. Within a month of their arrival, three of the gangs that were daring enough to operate deeper in Jonkver had been eradicated nearly to a man, with only a few lucky survivors who happened to not be present when the rest of the gangs were massacred in their hideouts.

Over the next nine months, the bandits learned what fear was as one after another, the gangs that came to exploit the conditions in Jonkver were hunted down. The fortunate ones perished when the mercenaries struck their camps. The unfortunate ones were handed over to the local authorities who were all too eager to make examples out of such criminals with gruesome public executions.

Some of the gangs who were newer or more cowardly had already left the territory early on, and Molina’s gang was one of the last that still remained, partly because of the “job” they had agreed on, and partly out of pride. Both she and her brother soon came to regret that pride, however, as the mercenaries found their base and attacked them as well.

At first, it was manageable enough, just a bunch of young kids, probably rookie mercenaries, trying to take on their camp through the gate after they pulled off a diversion. The idea had merit, sure, but their attempt to burn the gate down fell apart since Molina herself was a reasonably powerful mage of the mud affinity. She had nonchalantly doused the flames even while she commanded the bandits who were good with bows to rain arrows at their assailants, and things looked winnable at that point.

But then they came.

The second group of mercenaries that struck their camp was less numerous than the first, and looked even younger at that. There was no comparison between them, however, as those younger kids had simply uprooted the fences in their way on their way in without even losing a beat. Similarly, while the other group was fighting hard against a smaller number of her bandits, those newcomers pushed their way through the others almost like a hot knife through butter.

Molina’s brother even charged in himself, in an attempt to rally their underlings’ morale, but Molina could only watch how his prized sword - a heirloom they had managed to steal back from the noble that had taken over their possessions - was snapped in twain by one of the young mercenaries, who then snapped her brother’s neck as well the next moment.

Then they came for her.