"Names heavy with glory and bitter with the cynicism that every army feeds on" - Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

Three men had stood on a ridge at the head of the Tybor Gap, overlooking a battlefield riddled with bodies. Among those bodies lay their fallen brothers and sisters - brothers and sisters not of blood but of battle. Their Black Lion banner was torn and bloodied but stood in the center of where the enemy lines had been entrenched at the top of the valley, where the enemy lines had been broken by their brutal, costly assault. The Black Lions, who had been sent deep behind enemy lines again and again to kill command staff and disrupt the enemy camp under cover of night. But this time things had been different. This time they had been sent into the maw of the enemy. Impossibly skilled as they were, it had been a death sentence. The Black Lions, the finest of Aquilonia's soldiers, were sent to pay the butcher's bill by a jealous, bitter general.

And so three men had stood, and watched. Their service was done - none could ask more of them after today. But where do men such as these go? They were excellent soldiers, one and all - after all they had been hand picked from amongst the best the armies had to offer. And yet they were not simply soldiers any more. Trained to a razor's edge, they had been sent in to do impossible tasks again and again, sharpening that razor into something nobody liked to think about. They were soldiers, scouts, trackers, assassins, saboteurs. There could be no return to normalcy for these men, no retiring to open a pottery store or smith horseshoes. So on that bloody day the Lions of Tybor were born - hardened mercenaries of surpassing skill. Sellswords beyond the norm.