Video Game / Swords and Sandals

"Gladiator, gladiator, gladiator, Swords and Sandals, Gladiatorrrrr!"

Swords and Sandals is a series of Flash-based Sword and Sorcery themed Web Games, developed and released by Whiskeybarrel Studios from 2006 to the present. It conists of three individual series: the main Swords and Sandals series of turn-based RPGs, and five spin-offs.

The main Swords and Sandals series are turn-based RPGs, in which you play an unnamed gladiator fighting in one of many arenas for reasons ranging from entertainment to the desire for riches and fame. The gladiator must battle their way up the ranks of the arena, defeating the powerful Arena Champions along the way until they eventually win their freedom. What makes it stand out is its style: the world is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink filled with Anachronism Stew, allowing you to fight humans, demons, golems, Automatons, Beast Men, dragons, and countless other creatures with weapons ranging from traditional magic to guitars. Also present is a fairly intricate metaplot and expansive lore.

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Tropes in these games include:

• Achievement System: The series started to include achievements with the original version of the fifth game; when the game made the jump to Steam, the older ones were retroactively given these.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Both the Yeti Project and Platos, two of III's arena champions, appear as wandering monsters in the remake of Crusader, acting as Superboss extremely difficult opponents against any faction that has enough numbers and guts to face off against them.
• Aerith and Bob: The names of characters in the series are fairly diverse. Some are relatively common, such as John, Anna, Sir Brian of May, and Louis. Others are overtly inspired by Greek Mythology and history, such as Platos, Spheracles, and Antares, or are simple descriptions of what the character is (like The Boneslinger, who’s a zombie cowboy). Others are completely fantastic, such as Arglaxx, Xanfar, and HeChaos.
• Alas, Poor Villain: “Villain” might be pushing it, but the protagonist admits to feeling no glory and faint sorrow at defeating The Yeti Project, and the narrative presents its death as a tragic, brutal end for a shy, reclusive creature that deserved better than to be forced to fight in Beastly Bloodsports.
• All There in the Manual: The plot is fairly sparse in the first two games, with most of details about the setting, timeline, and characters being found on the official site. This was downplayed slightly in the Updated Re-release of the games, which included a link to the site’s lore section.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • A common death animation in the series involves the gladiator losing an arm or leg and being left to bleed to death on the sands.
  • Ironhawk, the weapons salesman in Swords and Sandals V, lost his leg during the Siege of Braxis.
• And I Must Scream: The (male) Evil Ninja made the mistake of trying to steal the wizard Sagan’s familiar, a rare rainbow-feathered owl. Sagan turned him into a Sagan Blob, keeping him was aware of his surroundings but incapable of influencing his own body. You beating him allows him to return to human form and re-join his granddaughter.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • Swords and Sandals II ends with the Nameless setting sail from Doomtrek to Suul’s Gateway, drawn there by visions of Emperor Antares and a mysterious power deep beneath the mountains.
  • Swords and Sandals III ends with the Starbound Gladiator being taken aboard the Automatons’ ship along with Bhaargle and an alien gladiator, where an Automaton explains that they have been selected to compete in the Galacticus Fantasticus – the greatest gladiator tournament in the galaxy.
  • Swords and Sandals V has a downplayed example in its endings – while Antares is vanquished forever, either a new Big Bad has already come for the heroes to face (Betrayer of Brandor) or a new one will almost certainly arise in the future (Protector of Brandor). For now, though, your character can rest.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The Death Rolls of the Redux games are automatically reset if you fail three in a row, preventing you from constantly losing stats until you roll well. Adventures can also be consistently used to regain these stats, so there’s no risk of accidentally crippling your character through repeated bad rolls.
  • The infamous Yeti Project can be Nerfed in the Classic Collection, allowing you to fight him on much more even terms than his original, hellaciously difficult battle.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Antares, The Lord of Sorrow, and Thangreal’s dialogue all make use of this trope, presumably to emphasise their extremely advanced age next to the other characters. Sometimes slips into Ye Olde Butchered English.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Tavern Quests limits you to a party of four members per game. This is justified by the setting of the game: it’s a In-Universe D&D-like Role-Playing Game with four characters controlling the characters.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Critical and Grievous hits completely ignore armour, dealing damage directly to health instead.
• Army of Thieves and Whores:
  • The Legion of H is full of self-confessed psychopaths, vicious mercenaries, Card Carrying Villains, and enslaved Battle Thralls, all commanded by an unstable Psychopathic Manchild.
  • The Beast Force are the desert-dwelling version of the Legion of H, being comprised of unpredictable simian troops and bloodthirsty Beast Men. This is most pronounced in their Conquer the Realm ending, where they destroy almost everything man-made, reduce Brandor’s cities to stinking hovels, and let the continent slowly be overtaken by nature.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Stylonius of Southport is a narcissistic, arrogant boor in both lore and game: His opening quote is a boast about his victory being assured, and it’s noted In-Universe that he was one of the most arrogant men to ever set foot on the Arena sands. Amusingly enough, this was actually his downfall – he tripped on his own ego and fell into a spiked pit, but had gone out of his way in his will to specify he not be resurrected on account of “There being no need, as nobody could ever kill me anyway”.
  • Ultra Flavius is a brash, arrogant wrestler with a massive ego and a pencheant for showmanship, but a crippling lack of basic fighting skills. Like many others, this ended up being his undoing, as the Nameless Gladiator bested him in combat and sent him into a downward spiral.
  • Pigsus mockingly refers to his opponents as “piggies” and only turned to gladiatorial combat as an exercise regime, never really training that much. This was eventually his downfall, as the Starbound Gladiator mangled him so badly that he ended up being Killed Off for Real.
• Artifact of Doom:
  • HeChaos has two of these: the Seal of Disapproval and his crystal falchion, both of which grant him greater power in exchange for worsening (or causing) his infamous madness. This makes sense, considering the former is a physical representation of his deal with Archfiend Zeerzabahl and the latter is explicitly said to be cursed.
  • The Grail of Antares. As the name implies, it contains the pieces of Antares’ soul, keeping the former Emperor as a prisoner incapable of threatening Brandor. However, it can also tempt those around it with the prospect of power – the unnamed protagonist of V very nearly succumbs to its influence in a Good playthrough before being snapped out of it by Belgrave, while an Evil protagonist is drawn in.
• Artifact Title: The series is called Swords and Sandals in reflection of its roots as a gladiatorial combat game. This applies even to Crusader (which is more of a Turn-Based Strategy) and the prequel game Pirates (which takes place on the high seas).
• Art Evolution: The Redux versions of Crusader and Emperor’s Reign feature updated artwork for the NPC shopkeepers and some of the bosses. For example: original Arglaxx◊ vs. new Arglaxx◊.
• Art Shift: The Arena Champions and NPCs of the fifth game are much more detailed and realistic than the series’ signature cartoony art style, while the rest of the character models use the signature style.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Most of the tier 5 and 6 spells (such as Molten Death, Winter’s Core, Electrical Storm, and Eternal Damnation) have massive damage potential, but have extremely long cooldowns and even one takes over a thousand magicka points to cast, rendering you essentially helpless for the next turn if it fails and your reserves are too low.
  • Bards can kill people by insulting them and their guitars let you drain mana, damage health, and consistently achieve knockbacks against enemies - something no other weapon in the game can do. Wielding a guitar also give your enemy a 100% chance to hit with melee attacks against you. Considering most enemies and even bosses are melee-based, this can very easily turn Bards into Glass Cannons.
  • The Colossi in Crusader are generally this. They have extremely high HP and damage output, but are also extremely expensive to summon and maintain, on top of taking heavy damage from skills like Airstrike and Iron Gauntlets - both of which the AI loves to use the instant the battle begins.
• Badass Boast:
  • HeChaos introduces himself in the first game with one.
    HeChaos: I have made cities crumble and emperors cowl. How, fool, can you hope to defeat me?
  • Many pre-battle intros, ranging from Baron Wolfgang verbally flipping off Antares in Crusader Redux to the introductions the Arena Champions use in III are this, with the characters boasting of their prowess or taunting their foes. The player can also create a unique intro quote in 'III that runs along these lines.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Most arena champions canonically died during their battles, only to be resurrected by magical healing off-screen due to being Saved by Canon, wealthy or generally liked enough. (This is also the justification for the Gladiator being able to continue after dying.) It’s far from foolproof though, as several Champions were either too badly mangled (like Pigsus), too widely hated (like the Slave Driver), or too poor (like Nine Cat Jack) to warrant resurrection.
  • Raise Dead in Crusader allows you to raise a number of your troops from the dead for the duration of the battle. Unlike the former, they immediately die again at the end of the battle.
• Badass Normal:
  • It’s entirely possible to play your character as a nameless, generically-designed figure with no overt magical abilities or superhuman powers and still beat the game.
  • Several Arena Champions also count, using only (sometimes enchanted) melee or ranged weapons as opposed to magic spells.
• Badass Preacher: Father Painbringer, a legendary Hunter of Monsters and former gunslinger turned ordained priest and weapon vender. You’re on the receiving end of his badassery during his Arena Champion battle, as he’s secretly been serving the Automatons and has been instructed to test you. After the Gladiae Ultratus, he eventually returned to patrolling the Badlands and protecting the weak.
• Barefisted Monk:
  • The Golem Platos fights you both barehanded and unarmed in his SaS III Arena Champion battle, despite literally every other Arena Champion having a weapon of some kind. This is because he's only fighting due to being under an enchantment that renders him aggressive at the cost of also making him too mindless to use weapons or armour.
  • You can invoke this by putting most of your points into your Strength stat and going into battles unarmed, particularly if you also begin using the melee 'spells' like Barbarian Strike.
• Beat Still, My Heart: One death animation seen throughout the series features the victim’s chest being slashed open, prompting their heart to fall out onto the sands and continue beating for a few seconds.
• BFG:
  • Father Painbringer wields a powerful rocket launcher in his battle with you, and it’s quite the big gun.
  • Ultratus Omega’s dual weapons of choice. They’re at least twice as long as him and have a damage output in the hundreds to thousands at the minimum. They’re also chainsaws.
• BFS: The Daikatana and Greatsword are nearly as long as your character is tall.
• Beef Gate: The Dungeon Sentinels serve as this in V. You can reach their Boss-Only Level as long as you've beaten enough Arena Champions, but the Sentinels are pre-set to a certain level; because you can't advance further or retreat without killing the Sentinels, an under-levelled gladiator will swiftly end up getting killed.
• Big Bad: Emperor Antares serves as the main antagonist for half the main series and one of its spinoffs, as the one controlling Doomtrek Arena (where the protagonist is enslaved) or the one waging war on the realm. While he’s dead by the time of Swords and Sandals V, his shadow still looms large over the story due to the Grail of Antares and he eventually takes centre stage as the Final Boss, having been resurrected as part of a plot to kill him for good.
• Blatant Lies: HeChaos claims he killed The Great Beast in single combat. He wasn’t even in Doomtrek at the time, much less in the arena, as the 85,000 fans who saw the actual battle between the Beast and the Nameless will attest.
• Blue Means Cold: Ice-related weapons, spells, and armour always have some level of blue coloration to them.
• Blob Monster: Sagan Blobs, large gelatinous humanoids conjured by wizards to act as manual labourers. They also have a nasty tendency of eating their masters if they're too weak to control them properly.
• Blood from the Mouth: When a gladiator takes damage in the third and fourth games, blood may appear around their mouth during the damage animation.
• Bookends:
  • Swords and Sandals 2 Redux begins with the Nameless Gladiator washing ashore after a shipwreck and becoming enslaved. It ends with them departing Doomtrek Arena aboard a passenger ship as a free citizen.
  • Crusader Redux begins and ends with the Kingdom of Phaetor and King Lionel IX under the player's control.
• Butt-Monkey: The Fearful Prisoner, an enslaved senior citizen who exists purely to be killed by your gladiator in their first match and accumulated a losing streak in the hundreds before Antares fell. Eventually subverted as of III, where he Took a Level in Badass to become the first (albeit weakest) Arena Champion, then retired to a life of comfort and peace following the game.
• Celestial Paragons and Archangels: Archangel Sandalphon, one of the gods’ greatest warriors, briefly descends to Tritonia to battle the Nameless Gladiator as the Arena Champion of the Archangel’s Mantle tournament. He later makes an appearance in Crusader as the Colossus of the Kingdom of Phaetor.
• Chromosome Casting: The gladiators in the first game and II are all male. Averted in II Redux, which gives you the option to play as a female and has female opponents.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: HeChaos has a nasty habit of making alliances to his benefit with everyone from Demons to other humans, then stabbing them in the back when they're no longer of use to him. This becomes a plot point in Crusader, where his backstabbing tendencies start off a chain of betrayals that lead to the disintegration of the Imperium-Legion-Beast Force alliance. It's also bitten him in the ass as many times as it's helped him, with Antares cursing him with Sleep Deprivation for his backstabbing at some point.
• Climax Boss: Evil You in the second game – their defeat marks the point where the Nameless (mostly) goes from a self-serving Nominal Hero to a more traditional Unscrupulous Hero and firmly sets themself against Antares. Appropriate, considering you’re facing an Evil Knockoff representing all that is evil in you.
• Creepy Cathedral: The final dungeon of Swords and Sandals V is an abandoned cathedral of the Templar Church, now overrun by monsters and controlled by one of the Malevolence's henchmen.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: Downplayed. Several of the bosses (such as the Automatons Bluescreen Death and Bladetron v 2.0 or the Yeti Project) are exclusively focused on melee combat, but they’re fast enough to close the distance between the gladiators and avoid the usual Achilles' Heel of Gale or strong pushbacks.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Many of the death animations feature the gladiators quite literally hacking their victims apart, or severing a limb and leaving them to bleed to death on the arena floor. The killer will occasionally drag it out further by pretending to spare their victim's life, then striking them down just as the gladiator begins to show relief.
  • Finishing an opponent off with a spell in Swords and Sandals 3 yields a unique death animation, such as the gladiator thrashing around in pain and fear as their body burns to ash, or vomiting their guts up in obvious pain before keeling over dead due to poison.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Church of Suul has many similar aesthetics to Christianity. Their most commonly used icon is a crimson cross, their Crusader faction being is called the Templar Church, and the priest of the church in Swords and Sandals 2 resembles a stereotypical Christian friar, among other similarities. In addition to this, their religion centres on the worship of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god who is opposed by a Satanic Archetype.
• Co-Dragons: HeChaos and Arglaxx serve as this to Antares during the Crusades, with the latter serving as Antares’ enforcer while the former was in charge of his resurrection. This eventually breaks down due to the leaders’ mutual paranoia and backstabbing tendencies – Arglaxx attacks the Legion of H on Antares’ orders to bring HeChaos to heel, then backstabs Antares by conquering several of his territories out of fear that he’s next for the chopping block.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • A non-health version in Tavern Quests: Test Your Fate tiles are almost always situated next to "lose money" tiles, and failing the test will send you onto the "lose money" tile. Since you cannot go any further without passing the fate roll, it’s entirely possible to get stuck in a loop that drains your gold if you botch the fate roll repeatedly.
  • A rare example that works in the player’s favour: a Wizard in the third game can send a melee-focused character flying with Gale, repeatedly damage them with offensive spells as they advance, and then use Gale again due to it cooling down by the time the enemy has gotten into range again. Rinsing and repeating this allows you to easily take down even Arena Champions.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Redux's version of The Nameless is confirmed to have been a lawless Pirate on the high seas of Tritonia, prior to their shipwreck and enslavement at Doomtrek. Exactly what they did and went through during this time is never explicitly said, though their comments indicate that it was hardly a pleasant life and they’re somewhat glad to see the back of it.
  • The Player Character from the fifth game's backstory involves a years-long stint as a soldier in the Legion of H, where they were forcibly recruited following the Siege of Braxis. They fought alongside the Legion and watched countless friends die in pointless slaughters due to HeChaos’ poor tactics before finally getting the opportunity to desert. Depending on the player’s choices, they may also have lost their family and hometown to bandits before murdering the (now elderly) bandit leader in revenge, or been Made a Slave in the copper mines of Braxis for the duration of the Crusades.
  • The Fearful Prisoner was an old man enslaved under Doomtrek and reduced to The Chew Toy of new gladiators, being repeatedly killed and resurrected for decades on end before finally being freed as a penniless vagrant in an unstable, vastly changing world.
  • The Slave Driver was a kind, gentle young child and Animal Lover before a pox left him with horrific facial scars, which resulted in him being mercilessly bullied for years on end until he became a cruel, vicious brute in his teenage years.
  • Emperor Antares, of all people, is revealed to have one in Pirates: He grew up in the war-torn, shadowy land of Eldor Hath, raised by necromancer-priests in an isolated pyramid. His mother died of plague at a young age, and when he begged the priests who raised him to bring her back to life, they refused and mocked him. This provided Antares with the catalyst for his pursuit of eteneral life at any cost, setting him off the dark road that would lead to his present day status as a villain.
  • Xanfar the Haunted was once a brave commander of the Kingdom of Phaetor, only to be slain in combat and forcibly resurrected as a tortured spirit whose only escape from the pain of undeath is to take the lives of others. He’s painfully aware of his situation and unquestionably wants to die, but Antares’ lingering power won’t let him.
  • Mossocles the Venomous is a misanthropic Floralisk whose species and land suffered horrifically at human hands in the Crusades; their home forests were torched by the Legion of H purely out of spite and many of their tribes were decimated by the Iron Republic, courtesy of their treacherous king. These events essentially turned him into the bitter killer he is today.
  • Aergus the Deathwielder lost his father to assassins sent after Aergus by jealous rivals, resulting in him taking up the Deathwielder armor and killing them all in a grief-driven Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Having found that Vengeance Feels Empty and lacking any Worthy Opponents to challenge him, Aergus gradually became an embittered, suicidal gladiator desperately looking for an honourable end so he could reunite with his father in the gladiatorial version of Heaven.
• Darkness Equals Death: Do not go into a dungeon without a lit torch, lest you wish to meet the Grudars up close and personal.
• Deadly Game: In V, when Belgrave sends you to infiltrate the Legion of H, HeChaos forces you into one under threat of death as punishment for deserting the Legion. He asks you a series of riddles with multiple answers, and if you pick the wrong answer, he throws you off a cliffside to your death on the rocks below while cackling like a loon.
• Death from Above: The aptly-named Airstrike ability in Crusader involves having several dragons fly over the battlefield, dropping explosive meteors on the heads of the hostile army.
• Death Seeker:
  • Xanfar the Haunted’s opening quote in the third game all but states that he wants to die, but cannot due to Antares resurrecting him as an undead with little free will of his own. When you finally strike him down, his spectre gives you a silent look of respectful gratitude before moving on to the afterlife.
    Xanfar the Haunted: “The bells of death toll but my soul can find no rest... I yearn for the grave!”
  • Aergus the Deathwielder ultimately wants to die a worthy death in the arena so that he may rejoin his father in the Halls of Eternity. When you kill him in the arena, his final words are to gratefully thank you for besting him.
  • Implied. The Lord of Sorrow’s final words are a whispered “At last… rest,” sharply opposed to his earlier bombast when delivering his introductory threat.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
  • Dying in the main games has no real impact beyond breaking your win streak and sending you back to your last Save Point. III is particularly noticeable in this regard – unlike II, you don’t even lose gold or progress made since the last Save Point, but just lose your winstreak and are sent back to the town.
  • Downplayed by the redux editions and the fifth game, in which death requires a saving throw to be made. Failing the throw costs you a small amount of gold and (if three are failed in a row) a point of one random stat, which can all be regained relatively easily through duels and adventures, respectively. Averted in Survival Mode and Ironman difficulty, where dying once means the permanent end of your character.
• Deck of Wild Cards: The Evil alliance of Crusader gradually becomes this after the Legion of H's chapter, with Arglaxx and HeChaos both backstabbing Antares and going to war with each other.
• Degraded Boss: In the fifth game's final dungeon, the enemies you encounter include weakened versions of previous Arena Champions or Dungeon Guardians, such as the Demilich (a purple-and-green Palette Swap of the Lord of Sorrow).
• Demon Lords and Archdevils:
  • Archfiend Zeerzabahl is as demonic as his name implies, though unlike many examples he's almost always seen in service to someone other than the Malevolence.
  • Archfiend Coalbhaal is a demon from an unknown region of Hell, but he's actually much weaker than his name would imply. True to form, he resembles a humanoid Big Red Devil with powerful fire magic and is confirmed as a violent Blood Knight.
  • Solon Zerad, the Light's End is an extremely powerful demon in the fifth game, found at the end of the Lost Cathedral. If his introductory boast is anything to go by, he was one of those who originally destroyed the world of Tolotia, from which the Precursors of Brandorian civilization are implied to have come and he's certainly more than capable of breaking you in half if you come unprepared.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Antares goes from the overarching Big Bad in the first three games to a single (if very late-game) Boss Battle in III. Later subverted in V, where they return to their former status.
  • Bors the Mighty and HeChaos go from central figures in Crusader to item vendors in III. (Assuming the former is Bors – they share the same appearance, but Bors was canonically killed by the Death Imperium during the Crusades.)
• Downer Beginning:
  • Swords and Sandals 1 starts with your ship being wrecked, your crewmates drowning at sea, and you washing ashore as a penniless stranger on the isle where Doomtrek Arena stands.
  • In the original Swords and Sandals II, you start off as a slave in the Emperor’s dungeons, having been locked up so long you forgot your own name ^note Swords and Sandals II Redux has the protagonist come to Doomtrek under similar circumstances to the original game, being washed ashore and then enslaved to fight as a gladiator. You’re forced to become a gladiator by your sadistic prison warden through murdering a helpless, demented old prisoner, then sent out into the arena with a rusty knife and maybe a few scraps of armor with the expectation that you'll die for the amusement of the crowd in a few days.
• Early-Bird Cameo: If you move far enough across the main Gladiae Ultratus arena, you can see a private box where four Automatons are watching the fight. They’re the fourth, thirteenth, twenty-first, and final Arena Champions.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Hoo boy...
  • The earlier games had more cartoonish character designs and were overall Denser and Wackier, with fairly thin Excuse Plots, sparse worldbuilding, and very little interaction between characters.
  • HeChaos started out as a powerful conqueror and was the Big Bad of Swords and Sandals I, in sharp contrast to his later depictions as an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild and utterly incompetent lackey to Antares.
  • There are little to no female characters in the original versions of the first two games, with the only present female being the owner of the Magic shop. II Redux would give you the option to play as a female, complete with unique sprites and voice clips. There's also female opponents, meaning female gladiators can still be involved even when you're playing as a male.
• Elemental Powers: The main ones are Necromancy, Fire, Ice, Poison, and Lightning, though less powerful spells roughly correspond to other elements (such as Gale and Air).
• Elemental Weapon: Some rare weapons deal elemental damage as well as their standard damage.
• Endless Game:
  • Survival Mode in Crusader admits from the start that it cannot be beaten, only endured. You start out with a full-sized army of a chosen faction and face off against increasingly large and powerful enemy armies, picking up upgrades as you go until you are finally wiped out. You can also run into highly dangerous Colossi bosses, such as the Shih-Tzu Rantula.
  • Gladiator Rush in V pits your gladiator against a steady stream of increasingly powerful foes in a series of back-to-back matches, ending only when your character dies on the arena sands.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The protagonist of Swords and Sandals V has a scar on the back of their hand from their time with the Legion of H, with the backstory behind it influencing your starting stats and alignment. Among the possible options are murdering a superior officer during a dispute, shielding your eyes from a magical experiment gone horribly wrong, dodging a stab to the heart during a drunken Knife Fight, and being beaten mercilessly for dissent but surviving due to your hardy constitution.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • The penultimate boss of the second game is this to the player, being a physical incarnation of all their evil and negative traits. Appropriately enough, they’re a Mirror Boss who copies the spells, stats, and equipment of their original self.
  • All of the maps in Tavern Quests have reversed, evil-looking counterparts, such as the Vale of Heroes and the Vale of Villains.
  • Antares is essentially this to King Lionel. Antares is a ruthless Evil Emperor and Omnicidal Maniac hellbent on destroying all life on Tritonia, who prefers to act by manipulating his allies into doing his bidding; by contrast, King Lionel is a just and wise king who is both beloved by his subjects and willing to fight for their lives, repeatedly fighting on the frontlines beside his troops and friends.
• Feed It with Fire: By stacking your immunity to an element above 100% in the third and fourth games, spells of that element will actually heal you. This is also demonstrated by certain bosses – don’t even think of using lightning spells on Ultratus Omega.
• Final Battle: The final chapter of Crusader Redux is a single, climactic battle between the forces of the Death Imperium and the Kingdom of Phaetor^note Though some Templar Knights and Free States forces are fighting in the background to keep the bulk of Antares' army occupied, the focus in-game (since you play as them) is on the Kingdom's troops battling Antares and his personal force of skeleton warriors., with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Fittingly enough, the chapter is named "The Battle for Brandor."
• Forced into Evil:
  • Many of the troops of the Death Imperium are this, having been forcibly (and very much unwillingly) raised from death by necromancy and slaved to Antares' will. Probably the clearest example of this is Xanfar the Haunted, a Death Imperium commander who all but begs the Starbound Gladiator to kill him during their confrontation.
  • The Legion of H makes a habit of press-ganging people from Eddengarth and cities they raid, keeping them in line through fear and brutal treatment. It's also deconstructed in that this makes them exceptionally prone to violent infighting and desertion, as their lack of loyalty means they'll take any opportunity to get up the ranks or get out of the Legion as a whole, as seen in the case of SaS V's protagonist.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Both the heroic and villainous leader-trios in Crusader are roughly organised along these lines, with the neutral leaders (Celen and Bors) changing on a whim. This is particularly pronounced in their Conquer the Realm endings of the heroic factions, where the loss of one component of the trio tends to result in the others becoming unbalanced and suffering unfortunate fates.
    • Baron Wolfgang is the Id: an impious Boisterous Bruiser with a penchant for hard drinking, womanising at the nearest tavern, and bold, rash decisions. He’s one of the fastest to react to threats like Antares and the Legion of H’s rise, once he shakes off his hangover.
    • Sir Belgrave Rhykier is the Superego: a stoic, pious and somewhat cynical man who nonetheless possesses and provides a great deal of knowledge and insight about fighting The Undead and Antares’ other minions.
    • King Lionel Injade IX is the Ego: A balanced and fair ruler who acts as the mediator to the pious but jaded Belgrave and the energetic but roguish Wolfgang.
    • HeChaos the Scourge is the Id of the evil leaders – a reckless, impulsive, outright unstable commander who is ruled by his emotions, even acting against his own interests out of pure pique or to settle childhood grudges.
    • Emperor Antares is the Superego - a emotionless, patient, and logical commander who manipulates the other two to achieve his own goals and possesses great amounts of arcane lore.
    • Arglaxx is the Ego – while he does display moments of Hot-Blooded recklessness and Blood Knight tendencies, he’s also smart enough to recognise that Antares is manipulating him and tries to balance logical planning with aggression during his story.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In Swords and Sandals III, even if you spare an Arena Champion the chapter’s end crawl may make reference to them being killed in battle with you. Likewise, if you choose to put a Champion to death the end crawl may reference their survival.
  • Several Champions are killed in combat against you in the first two games, only to re-appear games later without any harm to them. Justified by a combination of off-screen resurrection/healing magic allowing champions to be brought back and retcons making it so that certain Champions (such as Belgrave and Baron Wolfgang) were never fought.
  • Antares’ skeleton army is stated to be Weakened by the Light, which causes them to slowly weaken and eventually crumble away if exposed to daylight. The Death Imperium’s forces can fight and move in the daytime without penalties of any kind in both Crusader and its Redux version.
• Gender Flip: In the original version of Swords and Sandals II, The Evil Ninja (like all the other gladiators) is male, but in the Redux version, The Evil Ninja is actually female (as mentioned by the Boss Subtitles refering to her with female pronouns).
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In IV, Baron Wolfgang and HeChaos are fine playing an Adventure Board Game with each other and a few other people, despite them leading opposing armies in Crusader. Arglaxx, who also led a different army in Crusader, works as a bartender in the tavern they play in.
• Golem:
  • One of several playable races in III, in which they appear as one-eyed humanoids made out of rock. Curiously, they bleed like any other race despite this.
  • The Lapis Devastatum is a massive Mayincatec-themed one of these, being a large statue of some kind animated by magic.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Malevolence, the series' Satanic Archetype. While they're never seen in person, they're all but stated to be the root of all evil in Tritonia and are heavily implied to be The Man Behind the Man to Antares. The Book of Lore sheds some further light on this: the Malevolence is the ancient enemy of Suul the One, having attacked Suul's homeworld of Tolotia and slaughtered all life there; Suul and a few survivors escaped through the Constellation Mirror to Tritonia, where they civilized Brandor and sealed the way behind them. The Malevolence's ultimate goal is to use Antares as a pawn to unlock the Mirror, travel to Tritonia, and do battle with Suul before exterminating all life there and moving onto the next world.
• The Grim Reaper:
  • The Dusk Harlequin, the Death Imperium’s Colossus, resembles a giant grim reaper wearing a blank White Mask of Doom and carrying a Sinister Scythe. Supposedly, it's one of the Malevolence's more powerful demons, sent to the mortal world to harvest souls for it.
  • Should you sleep in a dungeon in the fifth game, there is a very rare chance you might awake to one of these standing over you. All its attacks are thousand-damage One Hit Kills and its health is on par if not greater than the Final Boss. Surviving it at all (by running away and leaving the floor) gets you an achievement.
• Harder Than Hard: Ironman difficulty, which combines Hard’s over-levelled opponents with Permadeath. So not only are you facing enemies that are much stronger than you, any lost fight against gladiators or monsters means that you need to restart from the beginning of the game.
• Harping on About Harpies: One of the bosses in SaS V is Elyx the Harpy Queen, a gigantic Harpy with a penchant for wrecking ships and eating people. Weaker, PaletteSwapped versions of her re-appear in the higher levels of the Lost Cathedral.
• Hated by All: Nobody likes The Lumberjack. Your character actually earns most of the popularity they lost by killing Incy Wincy by reducing the rotten bastard to toothpicks.
• Hero Antagonist: While all of the Dungeon Guardians are this to some extent, Thangreal the Vigilant stands out. Unlike the other Guardians, he’s the only one to try and negotiate with you rather than attacking on sight, and fights you purely because he was charged with preventing Antares’ return at all costs, which the hero is actively trying to engineer so that he and Belgrave can kill the Emperor for good.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: If you encounter the Grim Reaper in a dungeon, run for it. Its attacks are all guaranteed OneHitKills while its armour and health are almost impossible to get through, but it will not follow you beyond the initial encounter.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each of Crusader's chapters is named after an element or title of the POV character, such as "The Lion of Phaetor" (Lionel IX) or "Baron of Wishful Drinking" (Baron Wolfgang). The only exception is the final chapter, which is named after the eponymous Final Battle.
• Immune to Fire:
  • Archfiend Coalbhaal’s fire resistance is enough to functionally shrug off any fire damage. Justified, considering he’s a Fire Demon.
  • Ultratus Omega is actually so resistant to lightning spells that they heal from being hit with them. Also justifiable, considering they're an Automaton.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The mysterious Automatons, who make their debut in Swords and Sandals III.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own:
  • By the time of the Battle for Brandor in Crusader, Antares has crushed the armies of Free States of Braxis and routed the Templar Church's forces at Drakondier, leaving only the Kingdom of Phaetor to stand between Antares and total defeat.
  • Antares blasts Sir Belgrave and HeChaos aside upon his resurrection in V, leaving you to face the full wrath of the Final Boss alone.
• Ironic Death: Mr. Omazing helped found the Gladiae Ultratus arena that Swords and Sandals III's main story takes place in. After being forced to turn to gladiatorial combat by the mounting costs of its construction and maintenance, he's eventually slain by the Starbound Gladiator in the very arena that he founded. The game even remarks on the irony of Omazing's fate.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Failing a story mission in Crusader yields a screen of your leader standing before their burning home castle, with a detailed description of how your failure led to their faction's defeat and your character's death or imprisonment. Particularly pronounced is the defeat during the Battle for Brandor, which describes an apocalyptic scene of Brandor in ruins after the war against the Death Imperium, with a badly-wounded and utterly exhausted King Lionel sitting alone amidst the bodies of his friends and soldiers, having finally lost all hope of stopping Antares. Antares finds and wordlessly finishes him off, leaving Brandor to be reduced to a lifeless wasteland by the omnicidal undead hordes.
• It Was with You All Along:
  • In true HeChaos fashion, Zeerzabahl's lost Seal of Disapproval was under his bed in Eddengarth all the time. Hey, it did say it was "Lost close to home..."
  • The final shard of the Grail of Antares is in Castle Claymore's Lost Cathedral, and has been since before the start of the story - Belgrave just refrained from telling you because he knew how corrupting it was, and hadn't yet found a way to reach it.
• Kill Enemies to Open: Several quests in the fifth game require you to kill a certain number of enemies before you can pass on to the next area of a dungeon, or require you to take down a powerful boss.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • As revealed in the Book of Lore, several Arena Champions from the second game were slain during the Crusades. Among those fallen in the battles were Daimyo Katsumodo, victim of a Legion of H phalanx charge; Lieutenant Dantus, slain by future Arena Champion Xanfar the Haunted; and Lord Talah’udin, presumed murdered by Arglaxx’s Beast Force during their conquest of the deserts.
  • Reg the Hammer bites it offscreen at the hand of Legion of H soldiers near the climax of SaS V, having outlived his usefulness to the Legion.
• King Kong Copy: In Crusader Redux, a new wandering monster is the Great Kong, a gigantic gorilla who is a recent escapee from a travelling circus, and the achievement for beating him is called; "It Wasn't The Airplanes..."
• Lampshade Hanging: Many of the loading screen tips remark on the overall oddities and implausibilities of the SaS world and its inhabitants, like automatons bleeding red blood.
• Laser Blade: Bladetron v 2.0’s weapons of choice are two Lightsaber-like swords.
• Last of His Kind: Thangreal the Vigilant is entitled as “The Last of the Great Northern Dragons”.
• Leitmotif: Part of the game’s theme (the guitar riff and Metal Scream of “GLADIATOR!”) plays at the start of every Boss Battle in the third game, while the fifth makes use of an ominous choir to signal the beginning of Arena Champion and Dungeon Guardian fights.
• Lemony Narrator: Downplayed; botching a resurrection roll may prompt the Narrator to grumble “Oh, that was rubbish!” in annoyance, but they are otherwise fairly non-snarky.
• Les Collaborateurs: The Lumberjack (A.K.A.: D’tanhin) was the king of several Floralisk clans during the Crusades, only to betray them to the Iron Republic in order to increase his standing. The Republic promptly decimated his clans, tore most of the forest down to build the city of Gallowstones, and ultimately betrayed him by turning him into an imprisoned gladiator at Suul’s Gateway.
• Life Meter: In all the games, there is a (usually red) bar representing your gladiator or leader’s health.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Many of the melee-focused Arena Champions are this, possessing extremely high damage output while also being capable of crossing the length of the arena in a few strides.
  • Your cavalry in Crusader have a rather high speed stat, and are some of the hardest hitting troops in your army shy of a Colossus.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • With the advent of stat-boosting equipment in SaS III pure Mages became this. While their damage starts out extremely low, stacking certain bits of equipment and putting most of your points into Magicka and Stamina allowed you to reach four or even five-figure damage outputs in a single cast, delivering a One-Hit Kill to all but the hardiest of enemies.
  • This was also infamously played straight with several bosses – their absurdly high armour and melee damage meant that fighting them in melee was a Luck-Based Mission reliant on good dodge and hit rolls, while mages could simply cast Gale and then spam tier six spells until the boss died or got too close (upon which Gale would have cooled down and could be used again).
• Living Statue: The Lapis Devastatum, a vaguely Mayincatec-themed animate statue that serves as the second Dungeon Guardian of SaS V. It also reappears in Pirates as one of several optional Boss Battles.
• MacGuffin Guardian:
  • The Dungeon Guardians act as this in Grail of Antares: they are a set of four powerful monsters, each of which dwells at the bottom of a dungeon and guards a shard of the eponymous Artifact of Doom. The Hypogeum has the Lord of Sorrow, the Forbidden Pyramid has the Lapis Devastatum, the White Wyrm Caverns has Thangreal the Vigilant, and The Lost Cathedral has Solom Zerad, the Light's End.
  • Platos, the Golem turned Arena Champion in SaS III, is implied to be acting as one by the Tome of Lore. While it's not made clear what he's protecting, he spends almost all his time standing guard over a point of access to Zyr Hath (The Forbidden Depths), though he never actually attacks anyone who tries to pass through.
• Machine Blood: Automatons somehow bleed red blood, just like the rest of the races in Swords and Sandals. They can also cry and pee themselves in fear, somehow. Amusingly, this is actually lampshaded by the game itself, with a loading screen tip questioning how they manage to do so.
• Miles Gloriosus: HeChaos the Scourge boasts that he has made cities crumble and emperors cowl in his first appearance, yet almost every scheme of his fails catastrophically despite his bragging and the man himself is repeatedly shown to be an incompetent, unstable General Failure. He also claimed that he killed the Great Beast at Doomtrek, which the 85,000 fans who saw the Nameless slay it vehemently disagree with.
• Mirror Boss: The penultimate boss of the second game is an evil duplicate of you, created by Bhaargle as a Secret Test of Character. When you defeat them in battle, the Nameless completes their Heel–Face Turn from lawless buccaneer and potential Dragon to Antares to become a full-fledged hero.
• Multiple Endings:
  • Swords and Sandals V notably bucks the trend of the series by providing two endings, determined by your alignment:
    • Defender of Brandor: The protagonist destroys Antares’ crown and the last of the evil Emperor’s spirit, finally ridding the realm of his evil. HeChaos the Scourge is arrested by Belgrave’s Templar Knights and dragged off to await trial, while you are rewarded with a large amount of gold and the adoration of Brandor.
    • Betrayer of Brandor: The protagonist wears Antares’ crown, absorbing his power for themselves and becoming The Malevolence’s new champion. You murder Belgrave and HeChaos before ransacking Castle Claymore, gaining a large amount of gold and becoming the new great threat to Brandor.
  • Crusader Redux also provides several endings in Conquer the Realm mode, with the exact nature of the ending varying based on the leader you chose:
    • King Lionel IX: Without the Templar Church and Free States to keep them in balance, the Kingdom of Phaetor gradually becomes increasingly decadent, and its people become disdainful of their liege. Its people eventually stage a wholesale revolt against the monarchy and depose the elderly King Lionel, reorganising the Kingdom into a republic.
    • Sir Belgrave: Though the Templar Church has won, Belgrave is utterly disgusted with himself for betraying and conquering his old friends. He resigns from his position as High Marshal and goes into self-imposed exile out of grief, while the Church turns Brandor into a theocratic state where religious rule is mandatory, Gladiator Games are banned, and “heretics” are burned at the stake.
    • Baron Wolfgang: As he and his men celebrate their victory, a drunk Baron Wolfgang decides he can fly and steps off a castle’s parapet. His men subsequently re-name Drakondier in his honour, while the Free States expand and prosper.
    • Celen Helmguard: Helmguard forcibly abolishes all noble titles and forces large numbers of citizens to labour at sword-point, turning Brandor into a heavily-industrialised realm of factories and bleak halls, guided by his Doctrine of the Common Man and enforced by his Brute Sqauds. Celen eventually dies of a heart attack after a few decades, but the Iron Republic endures.
    • Bors the Mighty: Having taken control of Brandor, the Sons of Frost spend some time consolidating their grip on the realm. Bors slowly becomes more paranoid during this time, executing several of his former allies on suspicion of treason before ultimately setting out with a large war-fleet to conquer distant territories. The fleet is never heard from again, and is implied to have been Killed Offscreen by a Leviathan.
    • HeChaos the Scourge: A victorious HeChaos razes Drakondier to the ground, intending to build the world's grandest gladiatorial arena in its place out of spite toward his childhood rival Belgrave. Construction of the arena got halfway before he ran out of money and lost the last few shreds of his sanity, ending his days as a deranged prisoner beneath his own arena.
    • Arglaxx: The Beast Force rampages across Brandor, destroying everything they find and reducing civilized cities to stinking hovels. The remaining sentient races flee overseas or to Eldor Hath, leaving Brandor to be reclaimed by nature and become a land of overgrown jungles, forests, and plains full of Beast Men.
    • Emperor Antares: Antares’ undead armies overrun Brandor, butchering all sentient life within a year and raising them as undead soldiers to swell his legions. The victorious Emperor subsequently returns to the south to conquer his homeland of Eldor Hath, before using preparing to seek out and massacre new worlds via the Constellation Mirror.
• More Dakka: One of the many weapons you can purchase in the third game is a minigun, which has this effect when firing.
• Multi-Melee Master: Thanks to dual wielding, you can carry two entirely different one-handed weapons at once. (Though the second will always have their damage reduced slightly).
• Multiple-Choice Past: Swords and Sandals V allows you to create a backstory for your character in this manner. The broad strokes of the backstory remain the same ^note In rough order: the character leaves home for some reason, then does something good or evil related to this reason. They get drawn into fighting in the Crusades and perform some valorous act at the Siege of Braxis, which results in them being press-ganged into the Legion of H for several years. During their service with the Legion, they are left physically scarred by an incident and see many of their fellows die, causing them to desert and make for Suul's Gateway, where our story begins. but the individual elements can vary dramatically (such as the PC may have leaving to study with Arkimagus' mages or fleeing in terror as bandits razed it to the ground.)
• Ninja: The aptly-named Evil Ninja and Evil Ninja Redux are both obviously inspired by them, with the latter even wielding nunchucks.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Antares is eventually finished off this way during the final battle of the Crusades - after he's weakened by a surprise attack from Sir Belgrave, King Lionel takes the Emperor's head off with his sabre.
  • The end-game Warrior skill Whirlwind gives you up to a 10% chance of decapitating your opponent on a power attack, instantly killing them.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Pushing an opponent onto the spike pits at the edge of the arena causes them to make a saving roll; if they fail, it causes instant death as they land on the spikes or fall from the edge of the map to their off-screen doom.
  • The Whirlwind ability provides a chance (from 1-10%, depending on level) to decapitate your opponent when performing a power attack. Unsurprisingly, this instantly kills them.
  • Performing a normal or power attack on your opponent in the third game has a very low chance to sever an arm or leg, or just plain cut them in half regardless of health or skills. In all cases, this finishes them off on the spot and the match is decided in your favour.
  • Extremely powerful melee weapons, such as the Yeti Project’s club or Bladetron v 2.0’s swords, can cause this by default due to their extraordinary damage output ^note For context, endgame characters in Swords and Sandals III have health in the mid hundreds to low thousands, with the latter mostly being Champions or very Vitality-heavy PCs. The damage dealt by the weapons quoted above is in the mid to high hundreds before strength bonuses, and they’re both encountered in the early-to-middle game, meaning that most player characters simply do not have the health or armour to endure even a single strike from them.; similarly, spells cast by a character with extremely high Intellect have a tendency to wipe out their opponent’s health bar in a single shot.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: One of the bosses you can fight in Crusader is the Shih-Tzu Rantula, a bizarre hybrid between a Shih-tzu dog and a scorpion. It looks like a giant dog head with several scorpion stingers covered in fur acting as the legs, and it's even noted In-Universe to be rather odd.
• Palette Swap:
  • The maps of Tavern Quests are all essentially the same, with the late-game maps (such as the Vale of Villains) being colour-inverted, mirrored versions of previous maps. They even have the same tiles and Fate events in roughly the same places.
  • The Dungeon Sentinels of V are all identical beyond the colour of their cloaks' trim, which changes from dungeon to dungeon.
  • Several late-game enemies in Grail of Antares/V also re-use the models and animations of bosses from games past and present (such as the Harpy Queen or the Dusk Harlequin), with a few minor alterations to their colouration and size.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Power attacks can deal huge amounts of damage, but are the least likely to hit due to suffering a hefty accuracy penalty.
• The Power of Rock: Guitars are a weapon in the third game, and playing solos with them can damage your enemy’s health or magicka. Their unique kill animation even involves summoning a pair of amps and playing music until the target’s head explodes!
• Pre-existing Encounters:
  • In Tavern Quests, spaces containing monsters are helpfully marked out by a cartoonish demon head tile. Stepping on one triggers a battle against a randomly generated enemy gladiator.
  • Dungeon Sentinels in the fifth game always inhabit the fifth, tenth, or fifteenth floor of the dungeon in question, with the dungeon’s final boss always being found on the twentieth level. There is no way to progress or escape the floor without taking them down, though the game is kind enough to somewhat warn you of their presence before you run into one.
• Prepare to Die: With the exception of the Lapis Devastatum, all of the Dungeon Guardians and Sentinels greet you with a sinister warning or threat running along these lines, warning you to turn back due to them being bound to defend the pieces of the Grail of Antares and prevent his resurrection at all costs.
• Secret Test of Character: Evil You is created as part of one, in which the Nameless must confront a Shadow Archetype of themself which represents what they'll become if they side with Emperor Antares. Defeating them results in the Nameless completing their Heel–Face Turn and siding against Antares once and for all.
• Series Continuity Error: Arglaxx is referred to as a Baboonman in SaS III. This is likely an error, considering he is established as being a dog-like Beast Man in all his other appearances (Swords and Sandals II, Pirates, Crusader, and his brief cameo as a bartender in Tavern Quests).
• Sleep Deprivation: For his incompetence and betrayal of the Imperium during the Crsuades, Antares cursed HeChaos' to suffer terrible nightmares should he try and sleep for more than a couple hours at a time. Unsurprisingly, this has just rendered him even more unhinged.
• Switching P.O.V.: Crusader's story mode changes the Player Character with each chapter, beginning with the Good factions and ending with the Evil factions.
• Riches to Rags: Mr Omazing used to be the fourth-richest citizen of Brandor before losing much of his wealth in founding the Gladiae Ultratus arena, forcing him to turn to gladiatorial combat to make ends meet. He ultimately dies at the Starbound Gladiator’s hands in the arena he founded.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Assuming you wear multiple bits of gear from different armour sets, this is the resultant image – it’s entirely possible to wear a Ninja-like mask and royal ermine cape atop a Ancient Greek myrmidon's armor while wielding a futuristic keytar.
• Timed Mission: Several of the quests in V are timed:
  • One of the earliest has Fizzacles place a time-delayed fatal curse on the player for his entertainment. The PC has to find him and have him call it off before the curse kills them, with the time remaining represented by a burning candle.
  • HeChaos does something similar during a flight of fancy, demanding that the PC find him a certain amount of his favourite food in the White Wyrm Caverns or die from a time-delayed curse.]]
  • One of the final stages of The Lost Cathedral puts you on a race against time, courtesy of the castle's defensive wards. Failing to achieve your objective in time results in the level's ceiling collapsing on your character's head, unsurprisingly killing them.
• Treacherous Advisor: Reg the Hammer has secretly been serving the Legion of H all along. His pushing you to explore the dungeons and battle the Arena Champions was a means of using you to find the remaining Grail pieces while gaining your trust. They’re ultimately Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves on HeChaos’ orders once you have all bar one of the Grail pieces, as they’ve outlived their usefulness and don’t want to risk being backstabbed by someone whose loyalty is easily brought.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment:
  • Many of the bosses have unique weapons or armor that straight-up cannot be brought anywhere else in the game. Unsurprisingly, 90% of them are much more powerful than yours.
  • SaS II: Redux subverts this trend by allowing you to pick up two unique pieces of gear (a weapon and a helmet) from defeated Arena Champions. While you can only get one during the battle, defeating their Vengeful Ghost lets you pick up the other.
• Vengeful Ghost: After slaying an Arena Champion in the second game's Redux edition, you will encounter their vengeful spectre the next time you visit the Battle Pits. Defeating the ghost condemns them to wander the Halls of the Hypogeum for the rest of eternity and lets you loot more of their unique equipment.
• Weakened by the Light: Sunlight causes the regular skeleton soldiers of the Death Imperium to weaken and ultimately collapse back into inanimate bones. More powerful undead seem to be immune to this effect, as Antares is never mentioned as being weakened or injured by light.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Downplayed in Crusader Redux – if the leader of your faction is defeated on the battlefield, they will be whisked away by medics while your troops run away in terror. While you immediately lose the battle, you keep any troops still alive when the leader fell.
• We Can Rule Together: In SaS V’s final chapter, HeChaos offers the Gladiator the chance to work with him to resurrect, then betray and steal the power of Antares. It’s up to you whether you take their offer or not.
• When Trees Attack: The Lumberjack is a giant tree-person and is actively out to kill you.
• Words Can Break My Bones: If you invest in Charisma, your taunting can damage enemies, push them back great distances and drain magick.
• You Killed My Father: Battlemaiden Anna is out for Arglaxx’s head because his Beast Force murdered her parents and forced her people to flee during the Crusades. While she ultimately falls to the Starbound Gladiator, he agrees to take up her quest for revenge; Arglaxx is eventually crippled in battle with the Gladiator, and survives only due to the efforts of die-hard Beast Force loyalists.

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