Video Game / Songs of Conquest

Songs of Conquest is a Turn-Based Strategy fantasy video game developed by Lavapotion and published by Coffee Stain Publishing.

In it each player takes control of Wielders, people capable of powerful feats of magic, directing them to explore the map, develop settlements, and build up armies with which to destroy rival factions. The game has competitive multiplayer and a skirmish mode with bots, as well as a single-player campaign for each faction. At the moment, only the campaigns for the Arleon, Rana and Loth factions are released, with the Barya Campaign being planned for the 1st Quarter of 2024.

The game was released into Early Access on May 10th, 2022 on Steam, GOG.com, and the Epic Games Store.

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Songs of Conquest contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Precursors:
  • The former subjects of the Aurelian Empire regard Queen Aurelia's reign as a Golden Age. Everyone else, not so much. If Queen Aurelia planned her rise to undeath while she was alive, her former subjects might grow to despise her, too.
  • The Aurelian Empire invaded the swamps of Rana and annihilated the dragons, leaving its inhabitants at the mercy of slavers for centuries. There's hints the dragons weren't the innocent victims the Rana believe they were.
• Action Initiative: Units with the Quick trait can allow them to deal their retaliation attack first before the enemy's attack. It is a default trait to the Dreath/Dire Dreath, but research allows Faey Spirits/Faey Ragers to gain the trait.
• Actually Four Mooks: The game follows the classic formula of unit stacks. Each unit has a number that represents the amount of creatures in that unit who act like one.
• Admiring the Abomination: Hillar and Magnolia's reactions to Scavenged Bones and Legions are along the lines of "how magnificent" and "how useful."
• Affably Evil: As fitting the game's Grey-and-Gray Morality, flat-out evil characters are rare in the story.
  • The Baryans are slavers who will do just about anything if it's in their contract, yet they're often friendly with their enemies and many in the Arleon and Rana campaigns try to persuade the player characters not to fight them.
  • The Loth wielders are all on good terms with each other and constantly invite outsiders to join their cause, even letting some enemies go free after defeating them in hopes they'll come around later. Brother Hillar in particular may be an arrogant and selfish necromancer, but still insists he and Baryan wielder Everthink are friends and wants to study together with him, even after Everthink shows horror at what he's doing and tries to stop him.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Units inexplicably change hands depending on the direction they're facing.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Unlike the Arleon and Rana campaigns, the Loth campaign shifts perspective to different wielders for each mission. The first mission is focused on Baron Aldus, the second and fourth mission is focused on Hillar, and the third mission is focused on Roderick.
• Animated Armor:
  • Melkoth is a spectral wielder bound into the armor that he once wore during the Golden Age of the Aurelian Empire. When the Arleons defeat him in the third mission of the Arleon campaign, they find nothing inside the armor.
  • The Legion and High Legion are a collection of Oathbounds buried too close to each other and instead fuse into a spectral abomination of weapons and armor.
• Arc Words: "The Marsh gives life" is one for the Rana.
• Bald Mystic: Loth wielder Ambertina is a member of the Unseen Society with a clean-shavened head who specializes in Destruction magic.
• The Berserker: Horned Ones/Queen's Guards and Rats/Plague Rats have the ability "Berserker," which only activates if they receive damage. Upon activation, it increases their movement and damage, while decreasing their defense in return. The Queen's Guards has the Defend ability to help mitigate the effect.
• BFG: The Hellbreaths/Hellroars are Baryan's powerful artillery that can destroy any force with impunity. They can shell a target and hurt both it and anything near it, but has to reload after the attack. The Hellroar has a special ability that increases the attack's radius at a cost of halving its damage.
• Big Bad: As revealed in the final mission of the Arleon campaign and the latter half of the Loth campaign, it appears Queen Aurelia, as a ghost, is this to the setting at large.
• Black Magic: The creation of undead is antithetical to life itself, blighting the land and killing plants. It's stated to have been outlawed in Arleon for a long time — and with good reason.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Because of the time and cost involved in upgrading your town, building the structures, and purchasing the units, it's often advantageous to stick to stacks of low- or mid-tier units instead of going for the flashy higher-tier ones.
  • Stack size upgrades. Sometimes merely having twice as much of a unit is better than giving them all sorts of boosted stats and new abilities.
  • The Eth'Dra may not have the incredible stats or numerous abilities of dragons, but the fact they're useful shooters and far, far cheaper to get than dragons means you might still want to use them even if you have dragons available.
• Cain and Abel: Baron Silverlink and his sister Magnolia are both siblings, but belong to two different factions: Arleon and Loth, respectively. In the second mission of the Loth campaign, Magnolia clashes with her brother when she shifts her allegiance to Loth.
• Can't Catch Up: Dreath and Dire Dreaths are strong for their ability to strike first, but they lack research upgrades that improve their offense and health, as the Foundry's upgrades only affect human and harima units, and the Dreath are classified as neither. Rats and Plague Rats have a similar issue, but at least have numbers to make up for their lack of upgrades.
• Came Back Wrong: Those bound by oath to Aurelia and brought back from the dead don't quite come back with their full mind. The Loth wielders are confident they'll figure out how to fix this in the future, while other factions use this as proof the oath is fundamentally flawed.
• Cap: Unlike Heroes of Might and Magic, there is a size cap that limits the number of stacks on a single troop, preventing the player from creating a doomstack. While the troop size can be increased by the Economy research building, the rule of thumb is that low-tier troops have a high size cap, while high-tier troops have a low size cap. In addition, there is a limit to the number of Wielders fielded at a time, which can be increased by the number of settlements the player owns and upgrading settlements to the higher tier, and Wielders are locked to 3 troops at a time by default, which requires picking the Command skill to increases the troop limit up to 9.
• Chain Lightning: Chain Lightning is a Chaos spell that deals damage to the target and bounces to 2 other units for the same damage.
• Climax Boss: Wiesh serves as this for the Arleon campaign.
• A Commander Is You: The Wielders control the armies, but don't participate in battles themselves aside from casting spells.
• Cool Mask: Wiesh, the Returned, wears a golden death mask decorated with ambers, despite being a ghost that shouldn't even have headwear. His mask is also an artifact that can be worn by everyone, including himself.
• Culture Chop Suey: Barya is an amalgamation of various Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, calling to mind both Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire in their emphasis on mercenaries, gunpowder weapons and accumulating wealth.
• Curbstomp Battle: The game intends the finale of Rana mission 3 to be one of these, giving you a massive army of dragons to demolish your enemies with.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Sabotage is a Destruction spell that reduces the enemies' defense and spell resistance.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: For fans of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, one of the first things they'll notice about Songs of Conquest is that it's right clicking that makes your hero move, not left clicking.
• Darkest Hour: The Rana campaign has a brief, but effective one: Rasc fails to find a new home for his people, the dragon egg he discovered is useless, and a huge Baryan army has tracked down the Rana refugees and started slaughtering them, which Rasc and his followers can't stop because mountains are in the way. Thankfully, all of this triggers a Traumatic Superpower Awakening in the Eth'Dra and turns them into dragons, who then burn through the mountains to stop the Baryans.
• Defend Command: Unlike in Heroes of Might & Magic, where defending is a default ability to all units, defending is an ability limited to units that specializes in high defense. Oathbounds/Legionaries and Guards/Protectors have the Guard trait that grants 10 extra defense to adjacent allies, Oathbounds/Legionaries, Queen's Guard, and Storm Guards have the Defend ability to grant itself 25% additional defense and spell resistance, and Shield of Order and High Legions have the Protect ability to grant themselves and adjacent allies 25% additional defense and spell resistance.
• Dem Bones: The Oathbound and Legionnaire are skeletal warriors who are risen by the Barony of Loth to once again serve Aurelia and restore the empire. Meanwhile, the Scavenged Bones and Blessed Bones are an accumulation of bones morphed into a singular being.
• Dig Attack: Adult Crawlers can tunnel to a different hex on the battlefield, popping up the next round of combat. Once they surface they can only attack, not move, so guessing where the target will move to is important to make sure the Adult Crawler pops up where it can be used.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Ranged units can move and attack, unlike ranged units in Heroes of Might and Magic. However, they receive a penalty that halves their damage if they move and attack on the same turn. This is averted with Toxicologist and Bane, who can move and attack without receiving the penalty.
• Duty That Transcends Death: The power behind the Barony of Loth's undead. Anyone who vowed an oath to serve Queen Aurelia can be raised from the dead to continue serving her. Luckily for everyone else, it also means they can't just raise dead enemy troops for their armies; they have to excavate ancient Aurelian tombs for undead soldiers.
• Epic Flail:
  • The Spectres wield a spiked ball and a chain, while the Seneschals swing their censers like a flail.
  • The Brute/Scarred Brute's weapon is a flail. The Brute's flail has metal balls attached to a rope to swing at their foes, while the Scarred Brute's flail has bladed head attached to chains to swing at their foes.
• Extra Turn: Rejuvenation is a Creation/Chaos dyad spell that allows a targeted ally that has already acted to gain an additional turn in the same round. Leveling both Creation and Chaos Magic allows the spell to target additional allies, up to 3 times.
• Expy: Cecilia Stoutheart is a highborn Fiery Red Head Action Girl Frontline General campaign character for the game's knight faction who has to deal with seeming allies turned necromancer... just like Catherine Gryphonheart of Heroes of Might and Magic III.
• The Fair Folk: While certainly not evil, the Faey can be vicious to any who they perceive as trespassing on their lands or despoiling nature.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Eth'Dra are produced from a Level 3 dwelling, but in cost and power are really more of a mid-tier unit. Dragons, on the other hand...
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Artificers, the upgraded version of the Tinkerer, replaces their wrenches for flamethrowers, which lets them deal damage to the target and any unit behind them.
• Fixed Damage Attack: The Justice spell, at its base tier, kills a single unit in a troop, with the high tier version of the spell killing up to 3 units. This spell is very strong against high-tier troops, due to their low unit size.
• Fog of War: The map has two levels of obscurity: areas that are unrevealed to the player are hidden completely, while revealed areas that are far from Wielders and captured buildings are covered in shadow.
• Freakiness Shame: Downplayed example in mission 4 of the Loth campaign. The Legions seem aware they were once multiple separate people burned together into one huge undead mass, but the Loth wielder's response to them is to say their new forms are impressive and useful.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played straight with most unit's attack, with the exception being units that can attack more than one unit, like the Hellbreath and Dragons. This is averted with spells, so be cautious with tossing spells when the enemy is within your units' range, unless you have a lot of spell resistance to throw it on top of your units.
• Frog Men: The majority of the swamp-dwelling Rana are frog-like people.
• Geo Effects: Units standing on raised sections of land gain bonuses to both offense and defense against enemies on lower ground, and ranged units will also gain a bonus to their attack range.
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • Spectres and Seneschals are ghostly priests that swing their flails and censers, respectively, at their foes. As ethereal ghosts, they can ignore zone of control and, for the Seneschals, steal essence from surrounding foes. As far as the storyline goes, they're notably the only undead who can hold a coherent conversation with Loth wielders.
  • Wiesh is also a ghostly wielder who returned from death to lead the Unseen Society in resurrecting Queen Aurelia.
• Giant Spider: The Tremors are a band of Rana that rides on giant spider-like mounts. They are so big and scary that they can intimidate adjacent enemies to lower their defense and initiative and, through research, remove the enemy's ability to retaliate.
• Glass Cannon: Arleon's Faey Spirits/Ravagers, Barya's Sassanids/Shadows, and Loth's Spectres/Seneschals are high-initiative, fast-moving, hard-hitting troops that are relatively fragile for their damage output. Rana Hunters start out as this, too, until upgraded into Storm Guards.
• Green Thumb: Two spells, Earth Block and Entangle, are plant-based spells. Earth Block is a pure Creation spell that summons a bush of thorns that block the opponent's path, while Entangle is a Creation/Arcana dyad spell that traps the target with vines, preventing them from moving.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: No faction in the game is entirely sympathetic.
  • The most straightforwardly heroic character, Cecilia of Arleon, still ruthlessly kills her fair share of enemies who didn't want to fight her or were trying to surrender.
  • The Rana were enslaved by the Baryans and are fighting to be free... but their hatred of Barya leads them to slaughter humans that had nothing to do with their slavery, nonhumans that help the humans, and nonhumans that simply want the Rana to stop killing people.
  • The Baryans are slavers... but they frequently try to minimize fighting where possible and usually are only motivated by money or their contracts.
  • Sure, the Barony of Loth is The Necrocracy... but Baron Aldus only turned to the Unseen Society because his people were starving and screwed over by multiple outside forces. Many Loth wielders are honorable or at least respected by their followers, such as Sir Roderick. They frequently invite people to join them, let many of their enemies go free, treat their undead minions like people, and have great internal unity.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Rasc's initial goal is sympathetic: escape his slavers, free his people, and lead them into a safe haven within the marsh. By the end of the campaign, though, he's arguably become just as bad as the Baryans, if not worse, wanting to commit full-on genocide of all humans in the world.
• Heinous Hyena: The Dreaths and the Dire Dreaths are Beast of Battle deployed by the Baryans. They are ferocious predators who are quick enough to deal the first strike before their prey.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: The Legion/High Legion's attack can deal damage to enemies adjacent to the target. Similarly, the Artificers and the Dragons/Elder Dragons can deal damage to the target and anyone behind them.
• Hero Must Survive: Despite mechanics existing for Wielders to be brought back when defeated, you lose instantly in the campaigns if this happens to your main hero.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: In Patch 0.85, the Toxicologists and Banes can move and attack without receiving an ranged damage penalty. In addition, the Banes replaces their Aim ability for the ability to ignore zone of control, allowing them to get out of melee range and fight with their ranged attacks.
• An Ice Person: Ice Bolt is a Destruction spell that deals damage and decreases the target's movement and initiative.
• Insistent Terminology: During the Loth campaign, Brother Hillar repeatedly tells people of all stripes and species that he's not commanding the dead, but the undead.
• Interface Spoiler: The fact that Eth'Dra transform into dragons is The Reveal of the Rana campaign... but seeing as the Rana unit recruitment menu shows the former creatures upgrade into the latter, it's not quite as surprising as it could be.
• It Was with You All Along: The main twist of the Rana campaign. Rasc spends much of the story searching for the dragons to help against the Barya. He gets the help of the Eth'Dra and finds a dragon egg... but the egg is petrified and useless. One Darkest Hour and Traumatic Superpower Awakening later, it turns out the dragons are transformed Eth'Dra, meaning Rasc had already found his objective much earlier.
• Lawful Stupid: Baryans often come off as this, since they will not break, alter, or fudge contracts once they've been made. Even if the contract is blatantly unfair, even if breaking it would help innocent people, even if following it will get them killed.
• Level Editor: The game comes with a versatile map editor.
• Lightning Bruiser: Dragons have top-tier stats in just about everything, moving far and fast, hitting hard, and soaking up enormous amounts of damage.
• Lizard Folk: Some other sentient species of the Rana are lanky lizard-like Shamans/Sages, and the much bigger, stronger, and cooler Eth'Dra.
• Long-Range Fighter: In this game, ranged units have two type of attack range: Range and Deadly Range. While ranged units can attack any enemy that are inside their range, if the enemy is in their deadly range, they deal 50% more damage. While many of them have a melee attack to retaliate, it is preferable to not let them get flanked as it prevents them from using their ranged attack. Some ranged units, like the Aurelian Scholar and Hellbreath, are incapable of retaliating.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Units with the Shielded trait, like the Arleon Footman or the Rana Chelun, are more resilient to ranged attacks.
• Madness Mantra: Unless you're a wielder of Loth, the only thing any of their various undead creatures will say to you is usually some variation of "Bound to oath. Bound to Her. Bound to conquer."
• Magic by Any Other Name: Essence is magical energy generated by units that Wielders can tap to and cast any spell as long as they have enough Essence collected, and aren't restricted to one spell by turn. There are five types of Essence: Order, Chaos, Creation, Destruction, and Arcana.
• Magic Missile Storm: The Faey Queen's special ability Faey Fire casts a barrage of magical fire to random enemies.
• Magic Music: Since this is Songs of Conquest, each faction has a musician unit that has the special ability to provides buff (or for one unit, debuff) to their allies. Arleon has Minstrels/Troubadour, which buffs defense and spell resistance, Loth has Cultists/Oathsingers, which buff their spell damage, Barya has Pipers/Steam Pipers, which buff their initiative and melee and ranged offense (provided by the latter), and Rana has Tremors, which debuffs the enemies' defense and initiative.
• Medieval European Fantasy: Arleon is a textbook example of this, with typical peasants, knights, and nobles.
• Mounted Mook: The Knights/Fist of Order and Riders of the Swamp ride on horses and the non-flight avian ravagers, respectively. These units have the Charger trait, which increases their melee offense by 10 for each step.
• Muggles Do It Better: According to the Musketeer's Flavor Text, Sanaz Truesight dismisses magic in favor of firearms.
  "Magic? Antiquated. Gunpowder is all the magic my army needs!"
• The Necrocracy: The Barony of Loth in practice is an unholy coalition of the living and undead ruled by a cabal of mages.
• Necromancer: The Necromancers are upgraded version of the Aurelian Scholar, who serve as Loth's long-ranged fighter. Ironically, they cannot summon the undead themselves, with that ability belonging to the Blessed Bones. Instead, they can spend their turn generating additional arcana and destruction essence for spellcasting. They also resemble a bishop, instead of an Evil Sorcerer.
• Non-Elemental: Unlike the obviously-elemental Fireball, Ice Bolt, and Chain Lightning attack spells, Arcane Storm seems to be a raw magical attack.
• Obliviously Evil: Many Loth wielders see nothing scary about their undead minions and view them as honorable soldiers, seem to not notice the obvious harm their magic's doing to the environment, and are honestly confused when anyone opposes them using necromancy to conquer the world. The final cutscene for the Loth campaign, showing the spread of their influence, even has the map becoming gold to reflect how the wielders all sincerely believe they're doing what's best for everyone.
• Pistol-Whipping: When the Musketeers/Veteran Musketeers are forced into melee combat, they will whack the enemy with the stock of their gun as their melee attack.
• Plague Doctor: The design of the Banes, the upgraded form of the Toxicologist, resembles a plague doctor, especially their masks. Ironically, Banes spread the blight through their venomous crossbows, rather than cure them.
• Playing with Fire:
  • The Destruction spell Fireball deals damage to anyone in the targeted space and the adjacent hexes, while the Destruction/Creation dyad spell Breath of the Phoenix deals damage to anyone within a horizontal line of 3 hexes.
  • Eth'Dra hold magical fire in their hands and throw it as a ranged attack.
• Poisoned Weapons: Plague Rats, Toxicologist/Banes, and Shamans/Sages can inflict a poison that deals damage to the target based on the strength of their attack for 2 turns.
• Poor Communication Kills: Most of the Arleon campaign has Cecilia fighting Faey, who take forever to explain they're upset about Loth raising the dead and absolutely refuse to listen to Cecilia when she says she has nothing to do with it and is trying to stop it herself.
• Portal Network: Beacons allowing fast travel were set up across the land during the rule of Aurelia. Part of the Loth campaign revolves around restoring them. In-game, they function as a Warp Whistle.
• Power-Up Food: One of the research from the Grand Armory is Hearty Meals, which increases Arleon's human units' HP up to 3. Their third and final level also increases damage by 1.
• Professional Killer: The Sassanids/Shadows are Harima assassin who excel in dealing massive damage against anything they strike, especially since they can both negate the enemy's ability to retaliate and, for the Shadows, move through enemy's zone of control to reach frailer targets.
  Sassanid's Flavor Text: "Everything's a deal in Barya. Sassanids deal in death."
• Proud Merchant Race: Barya is the merchant faction that loves gold and mercenaries.
• Pyrrhic Victory: An achievement called "Pyrrhic Victory" is obtained if the wielder is victorious but has only one unit left at the end of the battle. While the intent is that the wielder won at a heavy cost of an equally powerful opponent, you can also win a battle with only one unit.
• Read the Fine Print: The Baryans are major sticklers for this and Exact Words, such as in mission 1 of the Loth campaign. When Aldus asks for their tribute, the Baryans point out the contract said they'd only do so if he maintained the roads. Never mind that the roads were damaged by recent flooding, not neglect, and Aldus was planning on fixing them (with the money he's asking the Baryans to give him.) Never mind that Aldus' people are starving, either: the roads haven't been maintained, and the Baryans will now fight to the death against Aldus to keep their money, firmly believing they're in the right the entire time.
• Reinventing the Wheel: Upgrades from the Military and Economy research building do not carry over to future missions in the campaign. In fact, you have to keep one Military and Economy research building active, or else, you suddenly lose the upgrades from those buildings.
• Resistant to Magic:
  • Wielders: Vilja, Everthink, and P'Cha's specialization is a 40% spell damage resistance, in addition to P'Cha starting with the Magic Resistance skill.
  • Units: Scavenged Bones/Blessed Bones, Adult Crawlers, and Brute/Scarred Brutes have a natural 50% spell resistance, while the Faey Ragers can spend a turn that grants them immunity to spell damage.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • Cecilia Stoutheart, main character of Arleon's campaign, is also a Baroness, and leads her troops in defending against wrathful Faey, invading mercenaries, and the living dead.
  • Baron Aldus is this for Loth. He actively visits with his subjects, cares about their problems, and fights on their behalf.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Insect Swarm is a Creation spell that summons a swarm of flying insects to lightly harm the target and reduce their initiative, which allows your units to more likely move before them.
• Shock and Awe: Faey Nobles and Queens can summon lightning against their enemies, and Wielders can use the previously-mentioned Chain Lightning spell.
• Shout-Out: More than any other unit, Song of Conquest's dragons seem taken directly from the Heroes of Might and Magic series, with a two-hex breath attack and, as in Heroes 2, green dragons upgrading into red ones. Additionally, the un-upgraded (green) dragon's health (180) and damage (40-50) stats are the same as the un-upgraded green dragons from Heroes 3, though this is perhaps coincidental.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The Arleon, Rana, and Loth campaigns all overlap with each other, meaning some things which happen in one campaign might be the result of something that happened in another campaign which the characters didn't see. It requires playing all three to best understand what's going on:
  • Silkspool frees Rasc in the Rana campaign's first mission, then dies in the Arleon campaign.
  • After Loth mission 2, Hillar and Magnolia leave for the marsh, get defeated in Rana mission 2, and regroup in Loth mission 4.
  • Cheekham takes a brief detour from the Rana campaign to get beat up by Cecilia in Arleon mission 2.
  • After their appearances in missions 1 and 3 of the Loth campaign, Aldus and Roderick get dealt with in missions 3 and 4 of the Arleon campaign, respectively.
  • The final Loth mission involves their wielders trying to beat back the Rana invasion started in their final mission.
  • Merkoth gets fought in both in Arleon mission 3 and Rana mission 4.
• Sincerest Form of Flattery: The game's description admits to being inspired by '90s strategy games, but the developers specifically cite Heroes of Might and Magic 2 during the interviews. The similarities are apparent in design and gameplay.
• Sinister Minister: The Necromancers resembles a bishop because they wear dark ecclesial robes and miter and wield a staff with skulls carrying candles like a candelabra. This fits Loth's zealous devotion to Queen Aurelia.
• Slave Race: When the Aurelian Empire conquered the Rana, they were enslaved by their human oppressors, especially Barya. Suffice to say, they will take it no more.
• Status Buff:
  • Every faction has a musician unit with a special ability that grants a buff to the army, with the exception of Rana, whose musician unit inflicts a debuff to the enemy army.
  • The pure Order spells, save for Pacify, improve allies' stats. Protection grants defense and spell resistance to an ally, Quicken grants initiative and movement to an ally, and Rally grants an army-wide buff to melee and ranged offense, defense, and spell resistance. Leveling up Order Magic allows Protection and Quicken to be applied to additional units, up to 3 times at tier 3.
  • Aggression is the only ally-buffing pure Destruction spell, which increases the ally's melee and ranged offense. Leveling up Destruction Magic allows it to be applied to additional units, up to 3 times at tier 3.
  • Onslaught is an Order/Chaos dyad spell that grants a targeted ally an additional attack, which is useful for ranged units, like Arleon Militia/Sappers and Barya Musketeers/Veteran Musketeers, that have to reload after they fire with their ranged attack. Similarly, the Rapid Fire spell is an Order/Destruction dyad spell that grants an army-wide additional attack buff to ranged units.
  • Invigorate is an Order/Creation dyad spell that grants an army-wide buff to initiative and movement, similar to Quicken.
  • The two spells, Ethereal Scales and Aegis, are defense-buffing spells that affects melee and ranged resistance, respectively. Ethereal Scales is a Creation/Arcana dyad spell, while Aegis is an Order/Arcana dyad spell. Both spells can be increased to target multiple units, up to 3 times, but require leveling up both their required Magic skill.
  • Burst of Strength is a Chaos/Destruction dyad spell that grants an army-wide buff to their damage.
  • Strengthen Essence is an Order/Arcana dyad spell that doubles a targeted ally's essence generation.
  • Fury is an Order/Chaos dyad spell that grants an army-wide buff to their melee offense at a cost of defense.
  • The Fist of Order and the neutral creep Outlaws can spend their turn to activate the ability Strengthen, which gives extra melee and ranged offense and damage to adjacent allies.
  • Faey Nobles/Queens, Sages, and the neutral creep Outlaws has the Inspiring trait, which gives extra melee and ranged offense and initiative to adjacent allies.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: The map is filled with buildings that the player can convert to their side for additional income.
• Swap Teleportation: Swap is a Creation/Chaos dyad spell that swaps the position of two friendly units to each other.
• Swarm of Rats: The Rats/Plague Rats are Loth's basic unit. Although its stats are weak on paper, its high troop size and cheapness allow them to amass and be a threat in the battlefield.
• Sturdy and Steady Turtles: The turtle-like Cheluns are a sub-type of Rana that boasts high defense, but lack movement. As shown with P'Cha the Hermit, they are Wise Old Turtles, especially Elder Chelun, who has the ability to spend their turn to generate more of their essence.
• Tech Tree: Unlike Heroes of Might and Magic, there are research buildings: the Military research building, which upgrades unit's capability, and Economy research buildings, which improve gold and rare material generation, the ability to construct two buildings, essence generation, and unit cap. Constructing them require the city to reach level 3, as they can only be built on a large site.
• Teleportation: There are two spells, Chaos Step and Dimension Door, that teleport an ally to a different position. Chaos Step is a Chaos spell that moves an unit to a random hex adjacent to the targeted hex, while Dimension Door is an Arcana spell that moves an unit to the targeted hex.
• A Thicket of Spears: Pikeneers and Veteran Pikeneers are Baryan mercenaries who wield polearms. They have an extended melee range, and the Veteran Pikeneer has a special ability that lets them strike anything that enters their range.
• Token Heroic Orc: To the Rana, Silkspool was "the only good human." In honor of him, they spare a few friends of his they otherwise would've killed.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: During the Darkest Hour of the Rana campaign, the Eth'Dra witnessing the Baryans slaughtering the refugees triggers their transformation into dragons.
• Turn-Based Combat: Fights occur on a hexagonal battlefield where sides take turn by giving their units commands.
• The Undead: The Barony of Loth is the classical necromancer faction, filled with liches, skeletons and large skeletons.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Silkspool never could've known that his simple act of letting Rasc go free would lead to a full-on Rana uprising, leading to the killing of countless of his own people.
  • The Baryan Rules Lawyer mercenaries in the Loth campaign kickstart an entire necrocracy when they use Exact Words to screw over Baron Aldus. This makes him desperate enough to accept help from the Unseen Society, who—finally given official protection for once—are able to launch their mission to find Aurelia.
• Walking Ossuary: Loth has Scavenged Bones, units made from the bones of many different people animated as a singular undead.
• Warp Whistle: In maps that including functioning beacons, Wielders can travel between claimed ones instantly.
• Weather Manipulation: Tempest is a pure Chaos spell that summons a heavy storm that reduces all ranged unit's offense, both friendly and hostile.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Baron Aldus is trying to keep his lands afloat in a time of crime and natural disasters. Being a pious believer of Aurelia, he has no qualms accepting help from fellow faithful... even if they're necromancers.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: During the Rana campaign, Rasc goes to a lot of trouble to find a supposed dragon egg that he thinks is key to bringing back the dragons, but after carting it around for a while, he discovers that it is useless.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Many defeated wielders in the campaign pull this. Some just run away offscreen after being defeated in battle, while some of the Faey use magic to escape.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: There are six resources in the game: gold, stone, wood, glimmerweave, ancient amber, and celestial ore. These resources are used to train units (some high-tier units require one of the three rare resources), construct buildings, and research upgrades. Gold is acquired by owning towns, capturing gold mines and houses, and upgrading gold generation through the Economy research building. Stone and wood is acquired by constructing buildings that generate stone and wood, as well as capturing Stone Deposits and Lumber Camps, respectively. And, finally, the rare resources, glimmerweave, ancient amber, and celestial ore, can only be generated through capturing their respective resource generator and researching upgrades through the Economy research building. Each factions prefer generating one of the three resources: Arleon and Rana generates glimmerweaves, Loth generates ancient ambers, and Barya generates celestial ores. Wielders can also generate these resources through skills, like Tax, Stone Cutter, Wood Mason, Crafty Spiders, An Eye for Amber, and Find the Meteors, respectively.
• Zerg Rush: Loth has access to Rats, which have the lowest recruitment cost, highest maximum stack size, and fastest recruitment rate of all units. Due to these advantages, it's actually considered totally viable to have an entire army of nothing but rats - they'll drop like flies, but you can easily replenish them faster than the enemy can kill them.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Risen are undead Loth soldiers that are resurrected from the recently fallen living soldiers. After battle, Loth wielders can recruit Risen generated from the number of human units, like the Cultist/Oathsinger, Toxicologist/Bane, and Aurelian Scholar/Necromancer, killed in battle. Due to their weak stats and limited accessibility, they will never snowball out of control, unlike Skeletons in Heroes of Might and Magic, but will be decent meatshields.

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