I'd personally say 'less' atrocities (Though it would depend on how one defines an atrocity), and more like a series of incidents along the lines of "You steal my sheep, so I steal yours." which might sometimes escalate to "You take my woman, so I take yours..." which could further escalate to "You killed one of mine, so I take one of yours" et cetera, which might sometimes lead to larger conflicts, but not all to often.
Atrocities certainly did happen, though I'd wager that you would mostly see smaller incidents such as the above, with outright massacres/genocides (Which is what I generally describe an atrocity to mean) being 'fringe' moments when things plainly descended into outright chaos and when shit-hits-the fan. There are certainly notable exceptions when atrocities were committed, such as concerning Julius Caesar's 'conquest' of Gaul, where atrocities certainly did happen, but I believe that the largest factor in that was essentially down to Julius essentially being heavily in debt, and Gaul was a prime target as it contained a fair amount of wealth, hence the stealing of gold and enslavement of a large populace of native peoples. (Julius Caesar also cracked down on rebellions with iron-fisted brutality, but this is quite standard concerning crack-downs on rebellion in pretty much every era)
Fair. Should probably have said "what would now be considered atrocities" but that's bit of a mouthful.
You're actually more or less describing a
blood feud in the first paragraph, or rather how minor offenses might escalate into generation-spanning cycles of revenge killings. That kind of thing happened *within* societies and was so distruptive trying to find alternative ways to deter and settle offenses was a major driver in the evolution of early law codes (such as the "wergild" fine paid by the offender to the victim or their kin to avoid retaliatory violence).
Conversely such low-intensity offenses *between* societies tended to be taken more in stride and as part of a loose general consensus that a certain degree of such rough horseplay was par for the course and by itself of no real concern - unless things were getting seriously out of hand the frontier folks were generally expected to settle such things between the people concerned. Unless of course someone of importance on either side
wanted to escalate such fairly routine low-intensity bickering into a proper
casus bellum for whatever reason, which has happened though didn't always go quite as planned. A classic example would be Emperor Manuel IV Diogenes using raids by border tribes outside the Seljuq Sultan Alp Arslan's effective control as an excuse to declare war in 1071; that one went
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as while the Sultan mostly just wanted his western flank secure (he had plans to expand southwards at the expense of his coreligionists, plus the two men apparently became fast friends) and duly offered Manuel very light peace terms the loss of political prestige suffered by the latter led to him being deposed by domestic rivals - duly followed by yet another round of Byzantine civil war. In short order this led to a power vacuum in Anatolia which the Seljuqs quickly filled - Alp wasn't too happy about what the rebels had done to his pal Diogenes either, plus his fall rendered the peace treaty between the monarchs somewhat null anyway. This critical territorial loss was in hindsight the beginning of the end for East Rome and more immediately led to the new emperor Alexios I Komnenos asking the Pope for military assistance in 1095 - quite unintentionally kicking off the First Crusade...
Now that's some new levels of Not As Planned. :|
Similar episodes weren't unheard-of on the Chinese steppe frontier though there the more typical flashpoint was the Emperor deciding to ban trade with the nomads for some dumbshit reason. As the nomad princes' power base relied heavily on their control and redistribution of imported Chinese luxury goods this almost unfailingly led to major wars in very short order... Analogous trade distruptions were the leading cause of outbreaks of large-scale Japanese piracy on the coast of the Middle Kingdom for that matter.
But I digress.
It is certainly true that the bar for atrocity actually worth notice was far higher in bygone times than it is now. Devastating enemy territory (what Medieval Europeans termed
chevauchée) was a pretty universal basic strategy and naturally involved any amount of unpleasantness to the resident civilian population, to speak nothing of what the premodern take on "counterinsurgency warfare" tended to be like. Think "kill 'em all and let God sort them out" - this was incidentally also the usual approach to domestic urban riot control... Similarly it was something of an universally recognised standard that fortified places that failed to surrender on term in time and had to be taken by storm were entirely at the mercy of the victors - "three days of unrestricted pillage" was something of a common traditional norm in the case of cities. This came in no small part from the fact that the assaulting troops tended to be pretty pissed off at having to risk life and limb to settle what was more or less already a done deal, and the commanders' inevitable loss of control over their forces in the general chaos of such events. The traditional "three days of pillage" was as much a rough rule of thumb to how long it typically took for commanders to restore a semblance of discipline and start getting their orders listened to again as anything else...
It took extraordinary brutality, in the specific meaning of the term (ie. "beyond the norm"), to actually make contemporaries sit up and take notice. Actually deliberately massacring entire cities, depopulating whole regions, murdering troops who had surrendered on terms - that's the kind of stuff that got you called ugly names even by people quite inured to endemic warfare and violence. The Mongol conquests were probably the most spectacular and large-scale example of this kind of nastiness - modern casualty estimates are in the 30-40
million range which is quite a whopper for Medieval Eurasia. (May also have contributed to the spread of the Black Death which killed off some
75 to 200 million and traumatised entire societies for centuries.) Many of the successor states their empire fragmented into kept up the tradition, Tamerlane being probably the best known example.
Bit of a double-edged sword in psychological warfare terms; while a reputation for such pitiless savagery may help cow targets into submission it's also 10/10 for convincing those that do opt to resist to fight to the bitter end as surrender isn't exactly a palatable option...
The Assyrians and Romans were other notable examples that pretty much made a core policy of utter ruthlessness towards resistance or revolt (though major conflicts within China routinely came with pretty hair-raising butcher's bills too, if now often largely as collateral damage). Arguably worked better for them if only because they were for a long time operating in relative power vacuums with few if any rivals capable of challenging them on equal terms.
Everywhere else though, I'm in total agreement. Particularly concerning mercenary work, what with the personal guards of several Roman emperors being specifically chosen from among the Batavi, or of hiring Varangian guards from among Norse/Danish mercenaries et cetera.
The great thing about such foreign soldiers of fortune is that they have no prior connections to domestic power blocks and their agendas, or independent power bases on which they might try and seize power. As their income and only too often continued well-being directly depended on their employers (they tended to get used as reliable enforcers which made them unpopular among the local elites, and it wasn't unusual for their employers to hold them above the law specifically to alienate them from the commoners by way of largely unchecked outrages) they were distinctly less likely to get involved in palace coups, assassination plots and other power plays than natives.
Of course sometimes careless and/or incompetent rulers started relying on them
too much while letting native troops decay to the extent they became effectively the sole fighting force in the realm, at which point the mercenary chieftains - themselves typically aristocrats in their native societies - were wont to start wondering why were they still bothering to take orders instead of giving them... examples including the gradual takeover of the Abbasid Caliphate by their Turkish mercenaries over the 800s and 900s and the Egyptian Ayyubids getting deposed by their own Mamluk slave-soldiers in 1250.
So it goes.
This is actually tangentially relevant for the game since Sabina, as an adopted outsider, is free of baggage connected to established internal tribal politics and factionalisms. Tribal warbands moreover tend to work more on the principle of influence and reputation than clear hierarchies and chains of command - outside their immediate social circles of friends, relatives and underlings ("household" servants-cum-troops etc.) the leaders' ability to mobilize warriors largely boils down to the regard they're held in (Viking chiefs might have some trouble putting expeditions together if they were thought to have bad "weather luck" for example) and ability to present plans that look worth following.
As such once she's proven herself that makes her an attractive leader to Orcish warriors for whatever reason not keen on the established big-shot leaders of the tribe or just tired of their bickering - and of course the novelty value of her coming from a dramatically different military tradition draws the curious and the proto-hipsters (WITH AXES). Plus given the human empire has been going all Roman and beating everyone within reach into submission there's likely a certain aura of military excellence attached to the whole species... after all if they've kicked the shit out of about everyone else they
must know what they're about, right? Follows that a human leader "gone native" would benefit from the same mystique in the eyes of potential followers - and more practically has inside knowledge on the workings of the resident military superpower which is something the more prudent sorts thinking in the longer term ought to appreciate. Mutual enemies and all that.
A burning ambition to prove herself, carve out a power base and Get Shit Done to achieve that conversely has obvious attraction to young bravos with similar aims and those just looking for some action (and, naturally, loot) which can't hurt.
