MGR Overview
OVERVIEW
THE WORLD OF MOUSE GUARD
The world is a very different place than it was a few centuries ago. The relative stability of The Territories, and the authority and responsibility of the Guard to protect it, are based on the assumption that things have been thus for a long time; the truth, however, is more sinister, and is kept from most folk. Those who have tales of earlier times are largely discouraged from telling them, and the younger generations tend not to believe them. The character and loyalty of the Guard, the strength of Lockhaven, and the creation of the Scent Border all give the sense that this is the way it is. Even the recent uprising and war has not diminished those beliefs.
Around the year 900, The Territories were held (from Lockhaven) by a monarch - the last such figure with that title - known to history only as the Winter King. He had at his side the greatest alchemist ever known, whose name is similarly lost, but whose title was The Masked One. It was this mouse who fashioned the recipe for the Scent Border, the substance that keeps most predators out of the Territories. This was originally placed in a closed circle several miles around Lockhaven; the rest of the Territories were unprotected.
The Winter King was the final king in a long-existing dynasty; information about that ruling family, such as it is, is deep in the Lockhaven archives. Like his predecessors, the Winter King exacted tribute from the various settlements in the Territories, assuring their loyalty by a hostage arrangement, whereby scions of important families had to offer sons and daughters as servants in Lockhaven to guarantee the town's good behavior. Violations and rebellions were put down in brutal fashion.
Predators outside of the Territories were pacified by exchange of goods and regular sacrifices - blood payment in exchange for safety. Since most predatory species lacked the skills and sciences mouse culture had developed, it was an arrangement that satisfied them and kept the Winter King's domain largely safe. It was not perfect, and indeed it had begun to break down - predatory individuals, acting on their own, might take actions in violation of agreements made with the King, and mice angry at the arrangements would deliver faulty or shoddy goods, refusing to give their best workmanship to greedy animals who could not do the work themselves.
Despite all of the dissatisfaction, a rebellion against the system could not have succeeded if it had not been for the choices made by the Masked One. First, he used his alchemetical skill to create the Scent Border - making incursions by predators all but impossible, and making the principal reason for the Winter King's authority irrelevant. If the Territories did not require the Winter King's protection, why would he need to be obeyed? Second, he introduced a terrible poison into the food supply of the King's Guard, the violent, dangerous armed force that was loyal to the King. The poison was, of course, indiscriminate, and it killed both good and bad mice, including many civilians resident in Lockhaven and beyond; but with a large number of his Guard dead or dying, the King lacked the ability to suppress one final, brutal rebellion against his rule. Lockhaven was overthrown, and possession of it changed hands as town fought town and brother fought brother. Only the arrival of a legendary hero - the original Black Axe - eventually established order, and the founding of the Guard. Towns were left to govern themselves, without any attempt to exact tribute from Lockhaven; the Guard promised protection without sacrifice or payment; and eventually the Territories evolved into the society that exists today. The Winter King was killed during the rebellion, and the Masked One fled, never to be found.
Nonetheless, the evidence of that violent time still appears occasionally. The Matriarch of the Guard will often assign missions to trusted Guardmice to retrieve such evidence, and it is stored deep in Lockhaven's archives, not to be examined or discussed - an era best forgotten. And so it has been.
