I have a few updates for you about Norland. Unfortunately, we won't make the scheduled deadline, May 16th. We've done what we could, but the game needs additional testing and debugging; it doesn't perform as well as it should. I’d like to postpone the release for a few more weeks to ensure we deliver a well-functioning game. Norland’s new launch date is set for July 18th.

I'm sorry about the additional wait, but we will continue to open up the demo version and conduct regular playtests so you can see how the game is evolving and getting closer to a state we can be proud of.

Let me tell you what we've been up to for the past few months.

After the playtest ended, we'd been quite silent for a while, and we signed the game with the folks from Hooded Horse. I’d like to share what we've been doing during this time.

In short, the extra time has been beneficial for the project. We wrapped up adding new mechanics a couple of weeks ago and are now focusing on optimization, bug fixes, interface improvements, and polishing the overall gameplay experience.

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Trading is now possible only through contract negotiations. Neighbors will offer simple resources for sale, such as rye, wood, and iron, and buy more complex ones like tools, weapons, and medicine. As cities develop, demand will change — if small settlements want to buy tools, developed cities will be interested in heavy armor or swords.

We have moved foreign trade to a special interface where all contracts, status, and automatic trade servicing options are visible for convenience.

We've also slightly changed the conditions of foreign trade — contracting requires friendly relations (above 25) with the neighbor. However, if the neighbor is part of a state hostile to you, the relationship threshold is even higher (since they risk their relations with their sovereign). On the other hand, if your trading partner is in the same state as you — a union of cities or a vassal state — trade is possible at any level of relations. This speaks of a common trade area and is an important advantage of states that will motivate you to unite or go to war.

The volume of goods a city offers to sell or buy is influenced by its size and the integrity of its villages. Moreover, war in its territory raises the prices of its goods and causes migration to neighboring provinces.

You will need to make contracts not with the king, but with the most skilled trade lord of the neighboring city — the Trader (after all, it's fair, as you can also send your skilled trade lord for this). Neutralizing this lord can be very profitable in terms of trade revenue.

Agriculture and farming are central to Norland as reflects their fundamental importance to medieval lords. As happens in nature, soil fertility in a province will depend on deforestation, which prevents soil erosion. Starting from 80% deforestation, fertility will gradually decline and fall almost to zero if the trees are completely cut down. However, trees grow back (and the more there are, the faster), so you can find a balance between the fertility of the fields and the flow of timber — and compensate for the shortage through foreign trade.

For those interested in reading about how this process affected real civilizations, I refer to Jared Diamond's book Collapse.
Now, the iron in mines is finite. You can extract 100 units for each level of the mine (and the cost increases with each level). Caravans also bring less iron and steel. Thus, the only infinite source will be the predefined five provinces on the world map selling iron. Controlling them will be very important from the middle of the game (in conjunction with the trade reduction conditions I wrote about earlier. It may come to the point where you have to fight bandit camps in neighboring territories so that iron supplies do not decrease).
You could previously set up one production chain and earn money for the rest of the game, but now you can't. Each product has a natural demand in the world, and if you sell too much to a caravan, the market becomes saturated, and the price begins to drop. Over time, saturation decreases, and the price returns to normal.

Demand also grows when you enter a common state with neighbors. Also, by selling goods on the world map, you do not saturate the market, and thus, you can sell much more.

Market saturation, foreign trade reform, iron shortage, and soil erosion work together to balance the early and late stages of the game and add an additional strategic level of planning to the world map.

The chancellery now employs three clerks, but they give 100% of the Lord's management skill, who manages the chancellery when issuing instructions (and 80% if the chancellery is managed by another clerk).

Paper usage is now more logical — one paper per instruction. However, paper production now requires tools and therefore consumes iron (which is now in deficit).

By deploying patrols near buildings where prisoners work, you prevent their escapes during the day. Also, a daytime patrol will rush to help if a worker is attacked by a fleshwolf. By the way, fleshwolves now contain three pieces of meat — if your lord suddenly wants a fresh steak, you know where to get it.

Bandits will more frequently break into peasant dormitories and have a greater chance of successful robbery. After stealing 40 coins, they will leave the settlement.

Executioners work slower — both in investigation and in intimidation (since inspecting the scaffold now does not require the whole day).

This isn't quite the right word, but overall, the idea is that if your price on the internal market is lower than the price at which goods can be sold to a caravan, it attracts vagabond speculators, who buy your cheap goods in significant quantities and take them out of the province (to sell profitably elsewhere).

Of course, you can fight this through terror, but in general, "drying up" the money supply in the peasants' pockets is now significantly more difficult, increasing the importance of crime.

Lords and warriors now get more upset when they have to eat rutabagas and drink moonshine than peasants, and meat and ale please them less.

Now, characters of different cultures react not to abstract numbers but to the specific actions of your king. The Kaidens are pleased when you wage war, the Makha when you trade with neighbors, the Tanaya when you engage in intrigue, and the Varnas are happy if you have not participated in conflicts for a long time.
Characters also rejoice when you terrorize a culture they dislike.

The knowledge has been categorized and centralized in one place. We also added about 10-15 more items.

A lower level of intelligence is no longer an insurmountable barrier to reading a book. However, studying and writing a book above the lord's intelligence level will incur a significant time penalty.

Some knowledge can be passed between lords during regular deep conversations, but now we have added the social action "Wise Conversation," which greatly increases this likelihood. We have also reworked the mechanism of knowledge generation among lords on the world map, so some will acquire significantly more knowledge than others. Invite them to gain rare knowledge from other cultures (or kidnap them).

With the onset of aging, lords not only begin to degrade their skills, but they also gradually forget knowledge. Additionally, older lords have a chance of developing senile dementia.

However, older lords have a significantly higher chance of passing on knowledge through Wise Conversation, so they have something to share with their grandchildren.

Starting from mid-game, disasters may strike your province. This could be a crop failure due to an infestation of weevils, a migration of nectar-obsessed fanatics, an epidemic, a large group of aggressive fleshwolves, and so on. Some of these can be profitable – for instance, a drop in rutabaga yield also causes a rise in its price, and if you stock up in advance, you can make a decent sum.

Currently, we have designed 9 disasters.

Sometime before a disaster, you will receive a letter from the Matriarch herself, warning you of the impending trial, so you will have time to prepare (although, if your relations with Her Holiness are not good, there will be no prophecy).

We spent a couple of weeks improving AI behavior in battle.

• When attacking bandit camps, they do not rush at you en masse but wait in place. Thus, the defenders have the advantage of several volleys from archers.
  
• Archers predominantly target unprotected soldiers.
  
• Enemies know how to divide their forces into several groups. They create a support melee squad that, at the right moment, flanks and attacks your archers. You will also need to create several armies to counter this tactic.
  
• When the enemy attacks your town, they do not run to the center but first fire arrows at buildings on the edge of the settlement to lure your troops into their archers' fire.
  
• The enemy's support squad may run to loot the hall when a fight breaks out.

The initial tutorial has been reworked, and illustrations have been added to most articles in the help menu.

• Slander has been significantly strengthened. It's the best way to destroy alliances safely.
  
• The opinion of the king's spouse matters. Communicate with her, too.
  
• Most diplomatic tasks in other cities can be performed not by the king but by a lord envoy.
  
• Your vassals think less of you if your army is weaker. They also know how to revolt if their attitude towards you is hostile, and they know how to do it together.
  
• Your enemies will nibble away at your kingdom piece by piece rather than trying to attack your capital all at once.
  
• The tax on the army is now calculated based on the combined combat skills of your fighters. Thus, the size of this tax and the need to maintain a large army to keep your vassals peaceful balance the tribute they pay you.

Roads now cost money but speed up characters' movement by 30%. This adds an additional level of city planning, motivating you to create more natural cities with street-oriented exits.
- The path to gaining loyalists has become clearer, as now an individual peasant's house provides a significant mood boost but also requires iron for construction.

• Statistics menu revamped
  
• New decorations, music, and videos added at the beginning of the game

Thank you for understanding the need for this delay. As of today, Norland now has over 500,000 wishlists on Steam. With so many of you waiting for the release, it's important that these extra weeks be spent refining the game and ensuring we deliver our full vision of what Norland can be.

~Dmitry

We're pleased to announce the upcoming release date for Norland, our medieval simulation and story generator. It will launch on PC Steam Early Access on May 16, 2024. We shared our release date trailer at the Triple-i showcase and you can check out an extended version here.

In Norland, every character, from the highborn aristocrat to the lowliest peasant, lives a life full of complex behaviors influenced by their class, desires, and personal relationships, creating a dynamic society where actions have significant consequences.
Players are tasked with navigating their families through the challenges of governance — balancing the needs of their citizens, dealing with internal and external political intrigue, advancing through technological discoveries, and surviving the cutthroat nature of medieval politics and warfare.

Add Norland to your wishlist today and write your family's legacy when Norland hits Steam Early Access on May 16, 2024.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1857090/Norland/

Hello @everyone ,

We are closing the playtest at this moment. Thank you very much for your feedback; we received a lot of interesting and useful material in the feedback and are now diving into intensive development.

Content creators!
A big request - from this moment, please do not make videos or streams about the game, no matter how you got it (we are tolerant of... hmm... such things, but also ask you to respect our requests). You can send an email with your application to influencers@hoodedhorse.com (please mention Norland in the subject of the email) so that the publisher can add you to the list of content creators who will receive the latest builds among the first, giving you time to prepare your videos and streams. Thank you!

And yes, if you had interesting stories in the game, let me know - I've created a special topic for this.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1857090/discussions/0/4205867979936877786/


Thank you all once again, your participation makes this game much better than if we were doing it alone.

D.

Hello, friends, we have some updates to share!

Summary: We have signed with Hooded Horse, and the final Early Access release date is set for May.

First, I want to say thank you for your feedback, patience, and communication. I think we have one of the most pleasant communities I've ever seen.

As you know, since the end of December, we have been conducting playtests and carefully studying your feedback. External testing with hundreds and thousands of people is significantly different from internal testing with dozens. We encountered notable issues with stability and balance, but at the same time, we (and our esteemed playtesters) don't see any fundamental problems with the gameplay, so I think the game is in its final stage.

Nevertheless, the need to work on stability and optimization, as well as the vast amount of pre-release preparation, which includes producing trailers, marketing content, communication with content creators, and localization (we are grateful for the help of our language volunteers, but the volumes are simply very large) prompted us to start a collaboration with the fastest and smartest publisher of complex games on this planet - Hooded Horse, with whom we recently signed a publishing agreement for our game.

We discussed with the folks at Hooded Horse the best option for a release date, considering the need and size of the advertising campaign, the schedule of major releases in the spring, and the amount of necessary work on the game, which became clear after the playtests. We concluded that this will be May of this year. Since they want to run a large advertising campaign in these months, this will be the final date, which we will not be able to shift, much as we might want to. In addition, our partnership guarantees stability in the game's development and its long-term support for many years to come. We will announce a more precise date - the day of the EA release - later on.

In the remaining time, we intend to polish the game to a shine and also add some interesting things that will diversify the gameplay. In addition, we will continue external and internal testing, so you will have the opportunity to play the game before its release.

Thanks,
Dmitry

Hello everyone ,

I'd like to provide an update on the current status.

First of all, thank you all for participating in the playtest, for filling out the surveys, and for being actively present on our server.

Secondly, the playtest has gone well, and we don't see any fundamental issues that would require us to delay the release for a long time. However, we do have some balance and notification issues that we've addressed and now want to further test in another playtest. We've just launched it, adding 2000 more participants. Those who already had access will also be able to play. This playtest will last for 5-7 days.

We have started preparations for a marketing campaign ahead of the release, but the team wants to ensure that the balance is right before announcing specific dates. I also believe this is in the best interest of all of you, especially those who have encountered the challenges posed by the Church and other issues in the last build. 🙂

Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to your feedback,

Dmitry.

Hello guys,

We have just launched the beta Steam playtest, adding 200 new players to it. In total 700 people now have access to the version - 500 old (they got an update) and 200 new (they got an email from Steam). We will add more.

As I mentioned before, this testing (we've been a bit delayed with debugging this version) will show us the readiness of the project for an early access release, after which we will be able to determine the release window.

If everything goes well, it will be quite soon.

I won't mention specific dates until we receive feedback on this version because I've made careless promises too often already, but I sincerely hope that it won't be a prolonged process.

Thank you all for your support and patience.

(I was told that at the beginning of devlogs, I should introduce myself, and I decided not to argue with that. So...)

Hello everyone, this is Dmitry Glaznev, and I am the designer of Norland.

First, some news and plans:

- We've mostly finished the global map, although we encountered some difficulties. We've given it to our internal testers, and after fixing the bugs this week, we'll start playtests, which will help us determine the release window.

- We've successfully started editing translations with the help of our fantastic volunteers. To speed things up a bit, we are inviting additional volunteers. Please fill out the form here:

https://forms.gle/QxsJR7Vux5KFCtU58



Part of our team continues to upgrade interfaces that require adjustments due to the accumulated changes. We are improving tutorials and sounds, and most importantly, we have completed the global map. We wanted to do this a week earlier, but we encountered an interesting problem that we had to solve (it turned out quite well).

Developing a complex global map for a city-builder-based game is an interesting and challenging task. Typically, this involves the player's focus and their main gameplay time constantly being on the local map, while the global map is a completely different game space that competes with the first. We can't dedicate too much time to the global map because it distracts from the tasks on the local map and creates a feeling of losing control over what's happening. Therefore, city builders with an active global map are quite rare.

In our game, we solve this through a discrete (pseudo-turn-based) flow - the daily schedule. Map updates occur once a day at 11 o'clock when characters work peacefully, and nothing urgent happens. Players can visit the map and calmly check the news. The map is the source of events, challenges, and the primary place for applying military resources in the game.

So, what have we done to improve it compared to the demo version?

Now in Norland, you can send troops to assist in any conflict between neighbors (for example, during a vassal's rebellion), and you can also receive help from them. An allied neighbor's squad arrives on your local map and participates in the upcoming battle on your side.

AI can do the same - your enemies help their rebellious vassals, defend their friends from annexation, and so on.

At first, we tried to create permanent agreements based on this, regardless of the political situation of the subjects, but this caused a lot of logic conflicts. So, we came up with an alternative form of government.

Solving this issue took us several days. In the end, we decided to create a different type of state - alliances of free cities. They are equal to vassal kingdoms, and they have a leader. Allies also change their sovereignty, but they don't get protection from the suzerain in exchange for money; instead, they are obliged to help each other. This is a very effective form of protection, but not suitable for aggression. Joining alliances is easy (especially for kings of the same culture, as they have mutual sympathy), but in the second part of the game, when there are fewer independent provinces, vassal kingdoms restore balance through aggression. All that alliances of cities can do is to ultimatively force their neighbors to leave other alliances or vassal kingdoms.

Instead of a crown, alliance leaders use a symbol of golden wings.

Simulating of the map shows interesting and diverse configurations that may occur by day 30-50. Sometimes it's one huge empire fighting against a massive alliance. Sometimes fragmentation is higher, but usually, 3-4 fairly large states are formed, which can pose a challenge to players in the late game.

2-3 kings on the map (far from the player) receive abilities at the start - Ambitious Conquerors. These kings are convinced that they are destined to conquer the world or simply desire limitless power. Either way, they consider the surrounding neighbors to be insignificant, more economically skilled, and strive to build their own kingdoms. These troublemakers add dynamism to the map, but since they are born far from the player, they can strengthen in the relative tranquility of their relatively peaceful province before encountering them.

As a reaction to various events, neighboring kings now write you personal letters, sometimes not mincing words.

• If a province comes under attack, the prices of the goods it sells double. Therefore, by provoking conflicts, you can make money.
  
• The "Spouse's Opinion" thought - it is characteristic of kings and queens to consult with their spouse. You can gain an additional lever of influence.
  
• The "Slander" action will help sow discord between two kings. With a hostile attitude towards the suzerain, a vassal will rebel, independent lords will start a war, and a common ally will leave the alliance. The best way to destabilize overly strong countries.
  
• Poisoning has become a knowledge and is more accessible for study and application.
  
• Social actions during visits have been extended, and diplomacy has been improved overall.
  
• Dark deeds like gold robbery work more clearly and are penalized by the Matron's opinion, and thus, embargo levels for the caravan.
  
• New missions will be added, such as a request to eliminate an enemy or participation in conflicts with neighbors.
  
• Permanent trade contracts with a predictable profit.
  
• Suzerains now strive to protect vassals, but vassals can rebel (and receive help from the suzerain's enemies).
  
• Clicking on another kingdom, you can gauge the neighbors' attitude towards it by the color of their borders.
  
• The mechanics of the Sinister Horde have been changed. Now it's a single entity that moves across the map, destroying city after city. You can wait for it, but you're unlikely to survive alone.

We believe all of this has made the map truly vibrant, with kings and states being distinct from each other in terms of culture, chosen forms of government, leader obsessions, and more.

Thank you for staying with us, and thanks to our wonderful volunteers and testers.

Hello everyone,

In our Discord, I've already mentioned that in November, during testing with our internal testers, we encountered two issues - the routine actions of lords and the poorly functioning global map with few events. While these problems are not critical, we decided that we should address them and then retest the game to ensure a maximally enjoyable gaming experience at all stages. This led us to make some adjustments to our plans and postpone the game's release to January. We could have possibly tried to release it at the end of December or the beginning of January, but this period is considered the worst time for a release in the year.

On the other hand, we have arguments in favor of not having indefinite delays.

Firstly, we have finished adding new mechanics to the game, and we are now focusing solely on debugging, interfaces, combat tactics, and overall quality.

Secondly, we know how to solve these problems, and we do not see anything critical that would affect the game's overall architecture. Furthermore, we have already resolved the issue with the routine actions of lords, and a new global map is in the works - we need a week to finish and test it internally. After that, we will commence the promised playtests, and based on their results, we will announce the release date and begin the pre-release advertising campaign.

We regret that it has come to this, but these are complex games, and the current market situation, where the fate of a game depends on initial reviews, forces us to be very cautious. Ultimately, the situation with delays (not only for us but for all small teams) would be different if players left positive reviews like "This game may have flaws, but at least it was released on time. Keep it up, guys! I recommend it!" So please be patient. Thank you.

• We doubled their lifespan while slowing down the acquisition of experience from actions and the chances of illness. At the same time, we kept the speed of knowledge acquisition, pregnancy chances, and other factors. This way, lords will have more time to learn new technologies, of which there are now more than a hundred (by the way, we keep adding new ones - recently we added the "Logistics" knowledge, which speeds up the movement of your squads on the map). We didn't increase their lifespan too much to maintain the generational dynamics.
  
• We also automated the education of children. Now you have the option of "General Education," where your chosen teacher will teach the child all skills in a row, starting with those they have talent for. By the way, bishops can now also teach, but it requires a good relationship with them.
  
• We made the Chancellery knowledge available for purchase almost at the start. This way, you can choose between economic efficiency and free time for lords almost from the beginning.
  
• We also revamped the inspection system. They always lasted for three days, but lords would visit them every day, giving instructions "for the future." Now they visit them every other day, giving them more freedom. The duration of instruction actions is displayed in buildings, in "royal overview" mode, in the lords' menu (it shows the time when the nearest instructions will stop being effective), and the hourglass icon on the lord's portrait indicates that they have no management-related tasks for the day, allowing you to assign them to other tasks.

Our internal testers have positively evaluated these changes, so it seems the issue is closed.

We thank Hannibalingus, PotioN, bliden, and vangolla for their help in identifying the problem and devising solutions.

Regarding what we did with the global map, I will tell you more later when it is also approved by the guys. For now, I will share information about other small changes we made in November, aside from the major cultural mechanics that I already talked about last time.

In the world of city builders and strategies, there aren't many games where characters have time for conversations. Therefore, we taught our characters to voice their dialogues, which had a good immersion effect. It works when the camera is zoomed in, so there won't be a cacophony of sounds. It's somewhat similar to Simlish, but it's actually a distorted Welsh language in which actors read excerpts from Darwin's Origin of Species.

We have started implementing building rotations. For now, it's only for residential buildings (although they make up 90% of city construction), but cities already look more lifelike, with real squares and streets.

This menu, "inspired" by CK3, is designed for those who get lost in the multitude of mechanics and don't know what to do next. It highlights current issues, moves the camera when clicked, and explains how to solve them. Don't know what to do next? Follow the advice menu. We thank Gironimo for the suggestion to create this menu.

We've moved away from traits that were granted based on a character's childhood outcomes, as this mechanic was not intuitive and felt too routine. Instead, this whole bunch of traits has become genetically inheritable from the character's father and mother. You will also see from whom exactly the character inherited a particular trait. By the way, talents are also inherited, so choose a bride for your heir carefully!

Now characters don't instantly die of old age; they spend a few days in bed before passing away. When this happens with the king, strong mutual animosity arises between the heir and the second-in-line (the second heir) - as the king is helpless and cannot punish anyone, the second heir is strongly tempted to seize the crown, and the current heir suspects them of this. Tragic events can unfold!

Now your relationship with the church is more complex. The bishop's opinion of your king is just one of the factors. The Matriarch also looks at the number of fanatics, your actions on the map, sinfulness, and so on. At low relations, all fanatics in the city receive a significant mood debuff, and the caravan's assortment of goods also depends on this. For example, you will have a choice - either produce advanced weapons yourself or improve relations with the Matriarch up to 50.

Children until they reach adulthood now live in a house with their mother, and you can also evict and move any lord into any house.

We have also expanded and revamped the training system, as it had become outdated since the summer demo version.

And we are also redesigning all building interfaces, character interfaces (including creating an event log menu), and cities. Here is what our Figma workspace looks like.

That's all for now; stay tuned, it's going to be interesting. In the coming weeks, aside from the global map, I will also talk about the game's lore and combat tactics, which we have been working on during these months.

Dmitriy.

Hey all,

Some time ago, we introduced and tested the culture mechanics with our internal testers, so it's time to tell you about it.

We refer to them as 'cultures' rather than 'ethnicities' or 'races' because, like in real life, it's a social construct rather than a genetic one that defines values, language, and biases, and it can change through assimilation (for example, among children during education).

At the start of the game, there will be four cultures: Tanaya, Kaiden, Varns, and Makha.

Cultures have their own language and knowledge. This means that, in addition to the 50 books written in the universal Imperial language, we have added around 50 books written in the languages of these cultures. These knowledge sources provide various bonuses, improve weapon proficiency, develop skills, and more, but only carriers of these cultures can read them. Some of these knowledge sources are also textbooks for other languages, allowing access to the knowledge of other cultures. Additionally, there is an option to translate books into different languages.

Different cultures have different notions of what makes a successful settlement. For some, it's population size, while for others, it's dynasty prestige or army size. The more representatives of a particular culture, the stronger the pressure it exerts on the player's policies. As for the kings, they have roles distributed among cultures that determine their reactions to various events and neighbors. For example, Makha culture respects kings with more knowledge, while Kaiden culture looks down on neighbors weaker than them.

Like social classes, cultures have their traditional skills, allowing their carriers to work more efficiently in different industries. Warlike Kaiden are more efficient in blacksmiths crafting armor and weapons, while skilled Makha specialize in alchemy and brewing. The more representatives of different cultures in the city, the more efficient the economy, as characters from different cultures can work in various parts of it. However, the downside is the rise in xenophobia.

Some cultures are intolerant of others (and respect their own). This is reflected not only in the personal relationships of lords and kings but also in alarm when there are too many representatives of the disliked culture in the city. If characters of a certain culture feel unhappy, they may start a riot by attacking representatives of the disliked culture. Unfortunately, horizontal aggression towards another culture based on prejudice instead of holding the elites responsible for prosperity (in our case, lords) is a realistic element we've included.

Most migrants share the same culture as the one chosen for the city at the start since they migrate from nearby villages. However, the culture of some migrants is determined by the culture of neighboring cities. When a neighboring city goes to war, migration from there intensifies, which can lead to increased tension. To control the cultural composition, players can engage in the repression of a particular culture, causing its representatives to be intimidated and stop coming to the city for some time.

Now, let's talk about the cultures themselves.

Former barbarians on the border of the Crimson Empire, which used them to guard its borders, the Kaiden value honor and martial valor above all. Their songs extol bravery and heroism, while their material culture is notably austere and ascetic.

Values: Strength. Kaiden are happy if the army of the province where they live is stronger than that of their surrounding neighbors, and they are dissatisfied if it is weaker than all others.

Xenophobia: Varns. For many centuries, the Varns troubled the empire with their raids, while the Kaiden defended it. Echoes of this ancient conflict are preserved in songs and proverbs. Kaiden do not trust the Varns and consider them wild people without honor.

Traditional Skills: Weapons and Armor. Kaiden peasants play with weapons from childhood, which makes them more efficient workers in these productions.

Knowledge: Military. Books in the Kaiden' language are naturally dedicated to weapons, military art, and loyalty

Once a great culture, the founders of the Crimson Empire, the Tanaya culture eventually became too steeped in religious dogma, which was one of the reasons for their downfall. Nevertheless, they still retain many aspects of imperial culture, from efficient bureaucracy to special ties with the Church of Saint Sophia, which supports them in conflicts with their neighbors.

Values: Faith. The Tanaya do not conceive of themselves outside the church, so they especially value it when their province has good relations with the Matriarch and are concerned when these relations are poor.

Xenophobia: Makha. The greedy babblers of the Makha have strayed from the Holy Mother and, in their pride, spawned heresy that consumed everything the Tanaya had built over the centuries.

Traditional Skills: Bureaucracy Paper production and office management are based on the traditional high literacy among the Tanaya peasants.

Knowledge: Bureaucracy, demagogy, and religion. Books in the Tanaya language provoke the use of intrigue and religion instead of brute force.

The oldest civilized people of Norland, who created the first cities, philosophy, and trade, the Makha have long been overshadowed by more enterprising Tanaya, and for many hundreds of years have been in demographic decline. Philosophers and heretics, the Makha are practical and prefer money and earthly comfort above all other values. The Church of Saint Sophia traditionally views the Makha with suspicion, believing that the seed of heresy still lives within this culture, and does not support the Makha in conflicts with their neighbors.

Values: Prestige Prestige is the result of a developed mind. Therefore, the Makha are happy to live in the most prestigious province and are dissatisfied if they have to live in the most backward one.

Xenophobia: Tanaya Hypocrites and schemers, only waiting for the moment to strike in the back, the Tanaya are responsible for the fire of civilization, once ignited by the Makha, almost dying out.

Traditional Skills: Workshops and Alchemy For many centuries, the Makha have honestly created the best tools and the best potions in Norland, and their family secrets make them excellent workers in the Workshop, Brewery, and Alchemy.

Knowledge: Textbooks and Potions Development of intellect, trade, as well as special treatment of Nectar and their famous ale.

The native inhabitants of the central plains of Norland, the Varns were pushed eastward by the expanding empire. Their seclusion and strict social antagonism of "us versus them" allowed them not to dissolve into the empire like other native peoples. Possessing ancient knowledge of Norland's nature, animals, and plants, the Varns seek their own unique path in harmony with the living world.

Values: Fertility Close to nature and having experienced the danger of extinction during long wars and migrations, the Varns are primarily happy if the population of their province is higher than that of their neighbors and are dissatisfied if it is low.

Xenophobia: Kaidenp Once brethren to the Varns, the Kaiden sold their old gods for imperial gold and trinkets and drove the Varns from the land of their ancestors.

Traditional Skills: Gifts of the Earth The Varns know how to deal with nature to make its fruits yield plenty of delicious food. Growing cereals, gathering from the forest, and swine farming are familiar to them from childhood.

Knowledge: Agriculture Proper food preparation, farming, hunting, and longevity.