Recap / Battle for Wesnoth – The Rise of Wesnoth

Mainline from: 0.8.1 and after
Created by: James Spencer (Shade)
Year of events: 2 BW to 1 YW

Long ago, humans used to live in Green Isle. Prince Haldric and King Eldaric lead one of the lands in said isle. In another parts of the isle, there are Wesfolk and the people of Southbay. The crown prince of Southbay decides to restart a war with the Wesfolk, so Lich-Lord Jevyan of the Wesfolk summons orcs from the old continent in retaliation. With orcs at his disposal, Jevyan has no use for the living Wesfolk, forcing Outlaw Lady to lead the Wesfolk into Eldaric's land. Haldric and Eldaric soon realize that even their lands are not safe from the orcs and the journey that leads to the founding of Wesnoth begins.

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This campaign provides examples of:

• Big Bad: Jevyan the Lich Lord is an extremely powerful undead sorcerer who once was one of the leaders of the Wesfolk before deciding to betray his own subjects and turn to orcs, unleashing their evil armies on the western continent and later plotting to invade the Green Isle and Wesnoth.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Jevyan and his armies of marauding orcs are evil, no mistakes, but pretty much all the heroes are no saints themselves: Haldric and his people have been suppressing and fighting back the Wesfolk, Haldric himself becomes gradually morally questionable under the influence of the Ruby of Fire. The Wesfolk themselves used to have Liches as their immortal leaders, glorifying their rule and commenting on how they turned anyone "evil" into a mindless undead slave. As for your non-human allies, one is in just to have a chance at slaughtering orcs, Lord Typhon sees his alliance to Jessene as merely business and even the local friendly Wose implicitly had Haldric recover the Ruby of Fire to divert the attention of the orcs from his forest.
• Call-Forward:
  • Upon first using Ruby of Fire, Haldric comments that someone should put it in a scepter or something, referencing how it is part of Sceptre of Fire in its first appearance.
  • One of the Four Tasks has you visiting the Three Sisters to slay a powerful vampiress sleeping there, using the very same map as Heir to the Throne. Another one has you slaying Khalkras, the Fire Dragon first mentioned in Eastern Invasion.
• Defeat Means Friendship: With the Outlaw Lady/Jessene of the Wesfolk: even if you refuse her help in the second scenario and chase her away, she will eventually catch up later and join the party. Given that joining forces with her allows you to hire the useful outlaws, it's adivsable to enforce the trope as soon as possible.
• Down the Drain: "The Sewers of Southbay" takes place in the titular Absurdly Spacious Sewer, which is a big enough for the player's entire troops to pass through while fighting monsters along the way.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: In the final scenario, the player will actually lose if they defeat all orc leaders - instead the player needs to leave one of the orc leaders alive so that Haldric's plan would work.
• Enemy Mine: One made against the player: as soon as Haldric and the wesfolk disembarks in the eastern continent, they catch the attention of two armies, one of dwarves and one of elves, about to engage in combat; they promptly form a truce to take out the intruders.
• Final Battle: The last scenario has Haldric's troops facing off against Jevyan and his orcish allies, defeating Jevyan and sending the orcs back.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Both Haldric's father and King Addoran opt for staying behind and make one last heroic stand against the onrushing orcish tides.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The lesson that Jessene imparts to King Addoran of Southbay. The people of Green Isle should flee to a safer land while they still can rather than plan to take their land back from the orcs. The Wesfolk has attemped the latter some time in the past which ends badly and they were forced to flee anyway.
• Orcus on His Throne: Lich Lord Jevyan encounters the heroes as early as midway through the campaign, but he opts to just let his orcish and undead minions to fight for him and does the same thing (plus shrouding the battlefield) when meeting Haldric's group again several scenarios later, only personally fighting Haldric's party at the end of the campaign.
• Prequel: The fifth campaign to be mainlined and is the one who explains how Wesnoth come to be. The two most immediate sequels would be Sceptre of Fire and Legend of Wesmere.
• Screw You, Elves!: Haldric was willing to go along with the four trials, but when Lady Jessene overhears the elves and how they plan to keep themselves uninvolved, Haldric plots to trick the orcs into believing that the Elves have the Ruby of Fire. As seen in Kalenz's campaign, this leads to disaster.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: After hearing that the elves secretly plan to not help the humans if more orcs come attacking, Haldric concocts a scheme to forge a treaty stating that Haldric gave the Ruby of Fire to the elves. Haldric then will let Jevyan kill him and read the treaty so that the orcs would go after the elves instead once Jevyan is destroyed. Aethyr convinces Haldric to let him take Haldric's position since he is a Death Seeker with no future once the orcs are dealt with.
• The Three Trials: Upon arriving in the Great Continent, Haldric is given four tasks to do (read: four scenarios to play) by the elvish council, which can be done in any order as long. The story progresses once all four scenarios are completed.
• Title Drop: Done in a Bookend way.
  • The opening narration ends with:
    For this is the story of Haldric the First and the Rise of Wesnoth...
  • And the epilogue ends with the narrator saying this.
    But some of us have remembered the true story of our arrival on this great continent. The true story of the Rise of Wesnoth.
• Title Drop Chapter: The final scenario is titled "The Rise of Wesnoth".
• Unique Enemy: One of the Four Trials have you fight a Vampire Lady, a type of undead not present in any other campaign.
• Wacky Wayside Tribe: On the way to the eastern continent, Haldric and his army end up fighting a bunch of Drakes living on a volcanic island and later a colony of Nagas infesting some shallows.
• You Shall Not Pass!: After the second scenario, Eldaric tells Haldric to lead their people to safety while he try his best hold off the orcs.

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