Video Game / Phantasy Calradia

Phantasy Calradia is a mod for the videogame Mount & Blade: Warband, which mixes the original Low Fantasy Calradian setting with elements (items, magic, fantasy races) taken from the Forgotten Realms universe.

The mod adds a lot of new items (some of them fitting with the new factions, some of them giving skills and states bonus), new skills, magical attacks (they actually work like reskinned throwing weapons), profane and divine spellcasters, and several new factions occupying new locations. There are sixteen new hirable companions.

The available factions are:

• Bleeding Throat Clan: Orcs
• Delthersam Empire: Undeads and necromancers
• Dokohan Koldoff Alliance: Forest Elves
• House of Ken Urden: Drow
• Norkrak Realm: Dwarves
• Order of Blazing Hand: Paladins
• Ridas Magocracy: Mages

Also, the six native factions are still present, with clerics added to their tree troops. The bandit faction received new parties from units of the new factions ("Lawless Elves", "Greedy Dwarves", "Orc raiders", etc). There is a brand new bandit faction made of Undead units, which is hostile to all the other factions (including the regular bandits).

The mod is a work-in-progress in a Beta state. The factions and units currently lack of background elements included in the game’s dialogs.

Some additional informations and a download link are available here.

For tropes related to the setting and gameplay which are unchanged from the unmodded game, refer to the Mount & Blade page.

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The Phantasy Calradia Mod Provides Examples Of:

• Absolute Xenophobe: The wandering undead are hostile to absolutely anything, including the non-undead bandits and the actual undead major faction. If your own army includes undead summoned by necromancy, there is a random chance that they turn hostile during a battle. On the other hand, like other bandits, they aren't script to slay each of their prisoners but they eventually recruit them, which can lead to bizarre things like living troops fighting for a zombie/skeleton party.
• Action Girl: There are a some of them among the new companions, who are: Alithyra (Elf), Cortranna (Human), Maraga (Dwarf), Ninnock (Gnome), Quionna (Drow), Raesrira (Human), Umie (Human), Unaella (Orc).
• Affably Evil: The new faction leaders have the same dialog lines that the native ones, so you can have perfectly courteous conversations with Orc or Drow leaders.
• Amazon Brigade: Some elite units of the Dokohan Koldoff Alliance, the House of Ken Urden, the Order of Blazing Hand, and the Nord Kingdom are female belonging to a special troop tree.
• Animal Theme Naming: The highest Orc mêlée fighter is a unit named "Orc Bear Warrior".
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Most of armours (except mage robes, Twilight armour, and Elven mail shirt) and helmets (except mage hats and hoods, and Twilight helmet) provide a malus to magic users.
• Automatic Crossbows: Repeating crossbows seem to be favoured by Gnomes. It is also an item that Berembert is able to craft.
• Backstab: It is one of the new skills. It provides a damage bonus when attacking an enemy from the back or the side with weapons having the "Stealthy" property (daggers, some short swords, clubs, throwing knives, etc). The backstabbing is especially used by most Drow and some Elvish units.
• The Berserker: A barbarian player character can enter in a rage mode. What it does is that every time the barbarian is struck in combat, there is a chance that he/she will be enraged. Rage will boost the barbarian's melee damage by an amount proportional to the damage he was dealt in the attack that triggered the rage. It is expressed in percentiles, that means that if the barbarian gets a 300% damage, all strikes he or she deals until another rage is triggered, will cause 3x the damage they would do normally.
• Black Knight: The Death Knights (existing in zombie, skeleton, and shadow flavours) which are part of the wandering Undead parties. Their armour is the most powerful, and it is one of the few which doesn't provide malus to magic.
• Bling of War:
  • One of the best war horses wears some golden plating.
  • The Crowned Bascinet is a helmet fit for battle which contains a golden crown.
  • Valkyries (unique Nord heavy cavalry) wear a set of golden armour called "bronze armour".
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Most of Elven units.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using necromantic summoning hurts the Player Character.
• Character Class System: The class is chosen during the character's creation quiz. There are nine character classes (inspired by standard fantasy settings), which grants some specific starting stats / skills and inventory, with some special features depending on the class. This being Mount & Blade, the classes only affect the starting stats and the player still has flexibility to make his own built. The Phantasy Calradia character classes are:
  • Fighter
  • Barbarian
  • Paladin^note Choosing this class will punish the player for attempting to put points in Necromancy or Stealth skills by removing the points without refunding.
  • Ranger
  • Cleric
  • Bard
  • Rogue
  • Mage
  • Necromancer
• Charm Person: An especially successful artistic performance provides an ally party created from the city to follow the player character party.
• Church Militant:
  • The Order of Blazing Hand is a whole faction of them.
  • Each other faction have a high tier mêlée unit with a cleric role on the battlefield.
  • The "Sanctimonious Fundamentalists" are special bandit parties composed of clerics from human factions.
• Color-Coded Armies: The faction colours on the world map are:
  • Bleeding Throat Clan: Dark red.
  • Delthersam Empire: Black or very dark grey.
  • Dokohan Koldoff Alliance: Dark green.
  • House of Ken Urden: Dark purple.
  • Norkrak Realm: Brown.
  • Order of Blazing Hand: White.
  • Ridas Magocracy: Dark blue.
  • The player faction if leading his own independent kingdom: Red.
  • Wandering hostile Undead parties: Blue (darker than the Nords).
  • The native major factions and the wandering bandits still wear the same colours.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: Profane spellcasters wear robes and hats / hoods which specific colours linked to their position inside the magic troops troop tree; each of them provides greater protection, depending on the position inside the troop tree. From the lowest rank to the highest:
  • Novice: White.
  • Apprentice: Yellow.
  • Journeyman: Green.
  • Adept: Blue.
  • Expert: Red.
  • Master: Black. It is also the colour worn by necromancers.
  • Archmage^note actually not a rank in the mage unit tree but the Ridas Magocracy faction leader: Purple.
• Combat Medic: Clerics. They are armoured high tier units with mêlée weapons and a script which makes them regularly heal the allied unit around them.
  • It is possible to play a kind of Combat Medic, thank to the glove-item Ring of Healing, which provides this effect during battle.
• A Commander Is You: For the new factions
  • Bleeding Throat Clan: Spammer / Brute.
  • Delthersam Empire: Spammer.
  • Dokohan Koldoff Alliance: Ranger / archer Specialist.
  • House of Ken Urden: Guerrilla / Spammer.
  • Norkrak Realm: Brute / infantry Specialist.
  • Order of Blazing Hand: infantry Specialist / cavalry Specialist.
  • Ridas Magocracy: magic Specialist.
  • Actually, the player is able to make his faction become a Balanced one, thanks to the Calradian special units hirable in the towns which he controls. The Calradian troops are explicitly meant to balance the new factions weaknesses without having to lie on units from several factions.
• Cool Crown:
  • The Elven Tiara helmet looks like a simple circlet. It is the most armoured Elven helmet.
  • There is a knight-like helmet which includes a crown (cf Bling of War above).
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • The Ridas Magocracy troops are only made of Squishy Wizards and Golems, the latter being created to serve as their mêlée troops, but they are very expensive and can only be hired in a very limited number. It makes an army mostly made of Ridas Magocracy troops very vulnerable to mêlée fighting (especially heavy cavalry), although they can very devastating with their long range spells.
  • Drow troops consists in relatively weak mêlée and ranged unit mostly useful to Backstab, with some mages (with the same problem that the Ridas Magocracy), and Orc slaves as very cheap light infantry. A Drow army can win open battles if leaded very carefully by a very tactical player, but any siege involving Drows (especially as defenders) will turn as a failure, unless the non-Drow enemy suffers for a big numerical inferiority.
• Crossover: The mod is one between Mount & Blade and Dungeons & Dragons (especially with a Forgotten Realms feeling).
• Cut and Paste Environments: As the modders state that creating new scenes for the new settlements is quite low on the development priorities list, currently each of them is a clone from one already existing from the original game. Each of the new towns is an exact copy of the original Dhirrim. That’s why the Mage Tower, the Bloody Cliff, or the Obsidian Spire doesn't look like a tower, a cliff, or a spire.
• Dual Wielding: Some Drow troops fight with a sword in each hand. Since dual-wielding combat is impossible in Mount & Blade, the off-hand sword is technically a shield shaped like a weapon.
• Epic Fail: When the player character attempts to perform a speech in a town, if said speech is especially terrible, it will attract a hostile mob following the player.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Obsidian Spire (capital city of the Delthersam Empire) is supposed to be one.
• Evil Wears Black: Black clothes are mostly worn by necromancers and Drow.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Delthersam Empire is implied to an undead expy of Ancient Egypt, as it is an ancient empire lying in an arid desert and populated with mummies.
• Flaming Sword: The Flame Tongue, a powerful one-handed sword.
• Friendly Fireproof: Offensive spells only damage the enemy. The only exception is "White Bolt" (see Revive Kills Zombie below).
  • Blatant Lies. All spells are considered ranged weapons and will affect anyone hit by them if the player casts it regardless of affiliation, just like any other ranged weapon.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Maraga describe herself as the best sniper in Calradia and is the only companion whose starting inventory includes a firearm. In-game, her starting skill in firearms is identical to any of the other companions (and the player character): 0.
• Glass Cannon: Mages can decimate groups with their fireballs, but they have low hit points and can’t wear armour without suffering from a malus.
• Golem: They can be bought in the Mage Tower (the Ridas Magocracy starting town) by someone who has a high enough relation with them. The golems are also the mêlée units of the Ridas Magocracy.
• Heal Thyself: A Paladin PC has a the special ability "Lay on Hands", which can heal himself. Its efficiency is based on the PC's honour rating.
• Hellish Horse: Some of the most powerful undead knights ride the Nightmares, which come straight from Dungeons & Dragons.
• The Horde: The Undead bandits and the Orcs, both bandits and the Bleeding Throat Clan. The latter benefits from a script which automatically gives it several thousand of free units.
  • Hordes from the East: The Bleeding Throat Clan starting location is a town and a few villages in the most Eastern part of the map, in the East of the Khergit Khanat lands. ironically, the Khergits are an expy of a real life example of the trope but, in the mod, they usually are the first victim of the Orcs.
• Horse of a Different Color: Orcs ride Wargs (big wolf / hyena like mounts).
• Humans Are Divided: The game retains the classic human kingdoms of Mount and Blade, while the various other races get their own little kingdoms all to themselves; a little forest on the Swadian/Nord border for the Elves, the city of Bloody Cliff to the east of Khergit territory for the Orcs, etc. There are also two new human factions (the Paladins in the frozen Vaegir lands and the Mages on the Rhodok South coast), which both have a small territory with a size similar to the other factions. The humans kingdoms are just as prone to fighting each other, if not more so, than the non-humans.
• I Call It "Vera": One of Maraga's starting weapons is an unique arquebus named "Old Bessie".
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The main settlement of the Bleeding Throat Clan is a town named "Bloody Cliff".
• In My Language, That Sounds Like...: One of the Ridas Magocracy lords is named "Master Nibar". If you say his name with a French pronunciation, it sounds like "nibard" ("boobies").
• Infinite Supplies: The Quiver of Plenty. It is a stack of 30 arrows with average-high damages, and which slowly automatically replenish unless the character fired all of them.
• Mage Killer: The Vedmaks (unique Vaegir units) have been created to serve this purpose.
• Mage Tower: The Ridas Magocracy starting town is supposed to be one. The settlement is even called "Mage Tower".
• Magic Knight: Clerics from all factions and some specific Elvish units (Elven Spellswords, Eldritch Knigths); the latters are the only units described as "Fighter-Mages" in the mod’s official documentation. The most fitting example would be a character with spellcasting abilities and wearing the Twilight armour and helmet (Death Knight equipment), as they neither provide bonus nor malus to magical ability.
• Magikarp Power: Like Marnid and Ymira from the unmodded game, the companion Kevtil starts level 1 with very low stats and a knife. He then can be upgraded to become anything the player wants, after gaining levels.
• Matriarchy: The House of Ken Urden is led by female lords (they actually are Dungeons & Dragons Drows transported in the Calradian setting). Also, the Dokohan Koldoff Alliance and the Order of Blazing Hand leaders are female.
• Mistaken for Servant: Fruorin mistakes the player character for one when they first meet in a tavern.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Nothing prevents the player character to play against the stereotypes of his race/class (and any race/class combination is allowed). For example, playing as an Orc bard vassal for the Dokohan Koldoff Alliance.
• The Necrocracy: The Delthersam Empire is led by a lich and his subjects are mummies.
• Necromancer: The player character is also able to become one, with the relevant skill. Each use decreases the player character reputation.
  • The Delthersam Empire is described as a faction of them.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Norkrak Realm is a faction of Dwarves axe / hammer wielding warriors with some resistance to magical attacks and some affinity with technology (they use the only firearm of the mod). The bandit parties derived from the faction are described as greedy Dwarves looking for precious metal.
  • Contrary to the usual archetype, Phantasy Calradia Dwarves aren't a One-Gender Race, as there is a female Dwarf (Maraga) among the new companions.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons are a playable race. They are red-skinned (literally) humanoids, with cloved hooves and small horns. Also, there are wandering demon parties on the worldmap.
• Our Elves Are Different: The Dokohan Koldoff Alliance are classical surface Elves focused on ranged attacks (each of their units have a ranged weapon) and magic. The House of Ken Urden is a band of Drow who started to conquer the surface.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Gnomes doesn't correspond to a specific faction, but their are two mercenary Gnomes (Ninnock and Berembert) hirable in tavern. They visually aren't very different to Dwarves (maybe a bit shorter). They are relatively weak. They also seem to have some affinity with technology, as Berembert has a unique skill allowing him to craft items.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The Bleeding Throat Clan and the Orc raiders, both being hordes of relatively weak barbarians. There are also some Orc slave units serving as cannon fodder for the House of Ken Urden troops.
• The Paladin: Apart from the whole paladin faction, this is also one of the character classes. Being a Paladin makes you start with a sword, a shield, a very light armour, 1 point in the Faith skill, a positive relationship with the Order of the Blazing Hand, and a negative relationship with Orcs, Drows, and Undeads. Paladins are forbidden to use stealth attacks and necromancy.
• Pistol-Whipping: Drow crossbows can be used as mêlée weapons.
• Playing with Fire: Most of offensive spells.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: The Dagger of Precision and the Dwarven Thrower (a thrown hammer), both being supposed to be throwing weapon automatically coming back in their thrower hand. They actually don’t, but this is compensated by their number of ammunitions, which is way higher than other throwing weapons.
• Rage Helm: Standard equipment for high-level Dwarves.
• Revive Kills Zombie: The "White Bolt" spell is a spell which affects all units in a 2 meters area around it target. It heals all living units and damage all undead units, regardless of their actual faction. Bad use of the spell could make the spellcaster destroying his own undead or healing the enemy troops, which explains why no AI units are equipped with it.
• Save Scumming: The mod has a special skill named "Entertain", which allows to perform speeches or play music in a town. Success grants money, a huge party morale boost (especially useful, since morale drop rate increase proportionally with the party size) and some renown; failure means losing morale and renown. The skill level has an influence on the amount of gain / loss, not on the totally random success probability, forcing the player to save before an attempt and to reload until it works.
  • The ability isn't affected by the Save Scumming limitation of the unmodded game (see the Save Scumming entry on the original Mount & Blade page).
• Shock and Awe: One of the offensive spells is a thunderbolt inflicting damages inside an area around its impact with the ground.
• Squishy Wizard: Spellcasters must have high intelligence, detrimental to strength, then their hit points are a lot reduced. Also, most armours give a malus to spellcasting.
• Truce Zone: The Four Way Inn provides a neutral place to hire recruits, store money, and buy powerful items.
• Turned Against Their Masters: During each battle, a Necromancer player character is regularly subjected to skill checks in order to determine whether the summoned undead suddenly become hostile to the player. The check result is influenced by the Necromancy skill level and whether or not the player character carries a Necromancer staff.
• The Undead:
  • Dem Bones / Voodoo Zombie: Skeleton and necromantic zombies form big hostile parties on the world map. The Necromancy skill allows the player character to summon some in towns.
  • Living Shadow: Shadows are another kind of undead forming big hostile bandit parties. Unlike skeletons and zombies, they can gain levels and be promoted to superior ranks.
  • Mummy: They form the regular army of the Delthersam Empire and can be recruited in the villages they own at the beginning of the campaign (in the area South of the Sarranid Sultanate).
• Unicorn: It is the mount of the highest tier Elvish cavalry unit.
• Wutai: The strange mercenaries, who wears the strange^note "strange" isn't a subjective commentary but the actual name of the items armour pieces and swords (samurai swords and armours Dummied Out from the unmodded game).
• You No Take Candle: How speak the Orc Raiders when met on the world map.
• Zerg Rush: Orcs (especially those from the Drow unit tree), skeletons, zombies. All can be hired / summoned by the player character. Orcs take the cake, though, as at the start of the game they get an army of literally thousands of orcs and get to rampage with it.

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