The battles of the past define the present. This is Shield's High.

Gather around friends for I have a story to tell. A thousand years ago, a military force

assembled in Europe and rallied under the banner of the cross. This Christian army believed

no less than their eternal salvation was at stake. These warriors, knights, foot soldiers

and peasants traveled three thousand miles to do battle in the heart of a vast enemy

empire. Despite their religious zeal and bravery, this army of Christendom was embarking on

what could have been a suicide mission. From a purely military standpoint, they were

outmanned and outmatched. They had no idea of the enemy's true strength or will to fight.

But death in battle was to be rewarded with the elimination of all penance for sins. The

Pope himself had promised no less. Before they left behind the familiar castles and farms

of Europe, the true believers sowed the sign of the cross onto their shoulders and chests.

They called this cruchesignatus for one with the sign of the cross. From which many decades

later we would get the term crusade. And in the year of our Lord 1095, their initial

call to arms in the defense of Christendom would come to be known as the first crusade.

This religious and military quest marked the first time in centuries that the forces

of Christian Europe would strike back at the Muslim conquest that had consumed so much

of the known medieval world. The incredible, somewhat say, miraculous success of the first

crusade would be a harbinger of holy wars to come. This assemblage of Christian warriors

would conquer Jerusalem and set in motion 200 years of fighting between warring Muslim

factions and the crusader city-states that were established by this counter invasion of

Christendom. From AD 1095 to 1291, the Near East, what is currently Israel, Syria, Lebanon,

Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, was enmeshed in crusades and jihads. But it was the first crusade, a military

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