History VideoGame / Anbennar

* DeliberateInjuryGambit: King Daravan of Corvuria flooded the southern half of his kingdom to halt a massive gnollish invasion.

* ResurgentEmpire: This can achieved in-game for quite a few nations, while Jexis' Second Phoenix Empire was a (temporary) historic example -- when Jaher's sons were dead, his daughter Jexis took control of the remnants of the Empire, re-united Bulwar and then proceeded to conquer all the way to Anbenncóst, where she established a new capital and ruled for decades over an empire as mighty as her father's (then she was assassinated and her empire went the same way as her father's had when he died). If the Phoenix Empire is refounded, part of its ideological underpinning ends up as this trope -- the Empire is eternal not because it can't fall (it already fell twice, after all), but because like its namesake it will inevitably rise again from the ashes.

** The Phoenix Empire's story goes similarly to that of [[UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat Alexander's Empire]], although Jaher, the Alexander {{Expy}}, managed to conquer all the way to China before his death. The Sun Elf kingdoms in Bulwar correspond to [[UsefulNotes/MacedonianSuccessionWars the Diadochi]].

* ElectiveMonarchy: The Emperor of Anbennar is chosen through the vote of seven electors, each representing a particular people or class within the Empire.

* ElectiveMonarchy:
** The Emperor of Anbennar is chosen through the vote of seven electors, each representing a particular people or class within the Empire.
** Adventurer bands get to choose who will be their new leader from a multitude of options.
** The Grand Magister, leader of the [[TheMagocracy Magisterium]], is elected by the inner council which contains the heads of the 8 schools of magic.

* BrokenBridge: Marrhold's connection to the rest of the Dwarovar was severed with a cave-in hundreds of years before the start date. The tunnel can be restored for a hefty cost, allowing to bring in trade from the Dwarovar mountains.

* LizardFolk: Kobolds inhabit the Dragon Coast peninsula, as well as parts of the Serpentspine Mountains and Haless and are said to resemble small lizard-people. [[FantasticSlurs They dislike the name "Lizard-man", though]].

*** The Seascourge Gnolls of Viakkoc are a BarbarousBarbaryBandit equivalent; later, a splinter gnollish culture will move to the equivalent of the Caribbean and become buccaneers.

*** The Seascourge Gnolls of Viakkoc are a BarbarousBarbaryPirate equivalent; later, a splinter gnollish culture will move to the equivalent of the Caribbean and become buccaneers.

* NecessaryDrawback: The Serpentspine is a source of a truly astounding amount of wealth and power that can be amassed with relatively little conquest of other states due to the wealth and easy development of Dwarven Holds and the abundance of highly valuable trade goods including gems, iron, copper, and mythril. To offset this, nations in the Serpentspine have three unavoidable and incredibly nasty disasters to deal with over the course of the game.

* HorseOfADifferentColor: Only humans and (some) elves really ride horses and the various other races have other signature mounts.

** Wood Elves ride elk.

** The Ruinborn Elves of the less civilized regions of South Aelantir eventually tame and ride unspecified monsters, while the Kheionai and Taychendi Elves have more conventional horses.

** Harpies have no cavalry of any form and Gnomes simply hire human auxiliaries to act as their cavalry.
** Halflings change their cavelry as the game progresses, with human auxilleries, then transitioning to ponies, and finally riding specially-bred War-Hounds.

** Aelnar believes that "a stable society is a homogeneous society". It gets mission to culture-convert ''every single province'' in Noruin.

* KlingonPromotion: Orcish society considers strength to be a prime indicator of worthyness to rule. The Ozarm'chadash ("duel for honor"), a long-standing Orc tradition, is a duel between the chief and challenger to determine who gets to rule their clan. This trope is also why so many orcs willingly convert to the Corinite religion; she ''did'' kill the Dookanson, after all.

** The Imperial Free Cities, such as [[MilkManConspiracy Tellum]] and [[OurGnomesAreWeirder Giberd]]. The biggest and most famous of them is [[HubCity Anbenncóst.]]

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Extended lore for the setting, which has a canon timeline extending well past 1444/11/11, includes a theory known as the "1444 Divergence" that claims that time was divided into infinite parallel universes on Nerament (November) 11th, 1444, the day Corin died defeating Korgus Dookanson and ascended to godhood, and the day on which the game starts, conveniently explaining why the game doesn't have to follow the canon timeline. The exact details of what caused the Divergence are hotly debated amongst mages, theologians, and scholars, but usually center on Corin, Dookanson, or both. The three most common are as follows:
** "Time Loop Theory", in which Corin is claimed to have used some sort of magic to repeat her final battle with Dookanson until she created a timeline in which she emerged victorious.
** "Anti-Corin/Agrados the Deceiver Theory", which is popular among orcs and claims that it was in fact Dookanson's death that caused the divergence and was used by the old god of war, Agrados, to rejuvenate his own powers by absorbing Great Dookan's and that Agrados has actually been masquerading as Corin since her alleged apotheosis.

** If Aelnar manages to avoid the Rianvisa, it can be taken over by Lithiel and led down a path where it integrates the ruinborn as "Dusker" and "Starborn" second-class citizens[[note]]mechanically this adds Dusker and Starborn as accepted cultures, sets the multiple missions to culture-convert areas to accept Star Elf, Dusker or Starborn instead of just Star Elf, sets flags that allows events that flips owned ruinborn-culture provinces to Dusker and owned Dusker provinces to Starborn and has two missions do those conversions for every province you own at the time[[/note]]. It is still an expansionist, supremacist regime that desires purity and a homogenous society, it just has an easier time reaching those goals by being a bit more tolerant and flexible with its definitions of "purity" and "homogenous".[[spoiler: This is specifically if the Rianvisa is avoided. Lithiel goes down a ''very'' different route if she takes over through or after the Rianvisa.]]
** If Aelnar doesn't manage to avoid the Rianvisa, Sicrheior, while the most actively expansionist, stands out amongst the available rulers[[note]]at least, the ones with paths[[/note]] as being both comparatively sane and having nods to egalitarianism, rule of law and allowing humans and ruinborn to become second-class citizenships through long-term military service in his path for Aelnar. It still has the baseline issues of Aelnar, but at least it isn't building an extremely pervasive intelligence agency out of sheer paranoia, purging every non-elven race out of fanatic theocratic mandate, or using the ruinborn as [[HumanResources magical batteries]].

** Smaller mage towers are a common manufactory that give the mage estate extra influence, thereby allowing them to cast stronger spells.

** In the east, the Greentide, where Korgus Dookanson's [[TheHorde horde of orcs and goblins]] destroyed the local kingdoms. Most governments collapsed and most land became depopulated as people fled or were killed. As the horde's success grew, groups of adventurers and Lilac War veterans came to Escann to confront it, allying with the surviving Escanni. Korgus was eventually killed in battle, [[DecapitatedArmy shattering his horde's cohesion and ending the major threat]]. This leaves Escann open to be fought over by the remaining greenskins, opportunistic adventurers, and the few [[TheRemnant remnants]] of pre-Greentide states.

''Anbennar'' is a [[GameMod total conversion mod]] for [[Creator/ParadoxInteractive Paradox Interactive's]] Grand Strategy Game ''[[VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis Europa Universalis IV]]'' sporting its own original low-mid fantasy universe.

Similarly to the base game, the mod will see the player accompany a country from the [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy late medieval ages]] into the [[UrbanFantasy modern era]], except this time, progress and societal change will be sparked by and intertwined with the setting's fantasy elements. You will oversee realms inhabited by [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons DnD]] fantasy races as they manage their way through history and undergo revolutions of their own in parallel to humans, each race possessing its own strengths, challenges and abilities.

While work on the mod started on 2018, Anbennar has been a world in the making since 2012, being also the setting for Jay Bean's story [[https://bpc.fandom.com/wiki/Blackpowder_Chronicles_Wiki Blackpowder Chronicles]].

** Venáil's starting admiral, Calasandur Seawatcher, has ''six'' pips in his lowest skill alone, in a game where the average admiral is lucky to have more than three pips in any given skill.

* SolarAndLunar: In 1444 elves are split in two major cultural groups: Moon Elves in Cannor, and Sun Elves in Bulwar.

* SuperSoldier: As the game progresses, artificery begins dipping into this, and western kobolds focus on it to the point that they end up able to turn their ''regular'' army into soldiers that look more like almost human-sized walking dragons than kobolds.

* ViceCity: Estallen's ideas paint it as this, a sort of combination of Paris and Las Vegas with an emphasis on the sleazy (drunken parties, brothels) as well as the refined (such as [[TheFashionista fashion]]).
* VillainousUnderdog: The greenskins of Escann are in a bad position. While they technically hold more territory than the adventurer companies, the latter's higher technology, greater income through adventuring and ability to maintain larger armies mean that the orcs (as in the canon timeline) are ''screwed'' without a good helping of luck. This goes double for the goblins, to the point where they don't have any unique kingdoms. The end of their mission tree is titled "Survivors," which is almost a LampshadeHanging on how impossible that task is.
* TheWarJustBefore: Two of them, in fact:
** The Lilac Wars were fought over the succession of Lorent and Anbennar, and drew in basically every country in Western Cannor. Even after the peace treaty, tensions are still high between the "Moon" and "Rose" factions in 1444 (although this dies down eventually).
** The Greentide, fought between Korgus Dookanson's orcish hordes and an alliance of Marcher Lords lead by Corin, utterly annihilated the kingdoms of Escann, leaving the land open for bands of adventurers to stake their claim.

** The breakaway Aelantir colonial republics of Valorpoint and Marlliande are {{Eagleland}} types 1 and 2, respectively. The fellow breakaway Aelantir colonial republic of Cestirmark becomes the nucleus of the Trollsbay Concord, which is something of a European Union analogue (a regionally-defined multicultural confederal alliance with a reputation for slow bureaucracy and a goal of "ever closer Concord"), but can transition into the Trollsbay Union, an America-alike (notably, both Valorpoint ''and'' Marlliande are intended members of the Concord and Union).