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Tome of the Black Sun

There are those that say that survival is the most prevalent goal of mankind. Preservation. What does it mean in the shadow of the astral sea? Isn't everyone fighting for their lives? One way or another? The Cult of the Black Sun is full of fanatic and maddened followers worshiping the Black Sun, a mysterious, dead world still gleaming with the light it once possessed. Or does the radiance of our Black Eminence mean something else entirely?

Some people say the cult originally was founded by a Wizard King of ancient times, hailing from that world. He fell to madness and harnessed power that was well beyond his capabilities and imagination while researching the lost wizards of the void. Nothing but rumours, but who's to know the truth? He is long gone. But his grimoire, the Tome of the Black Sun had found it's way into the hands of the cult somehow. Now the cult wreaks havoc across the astral sea, spreading it's unfathomable dark influence that makes no difference between friend and foe.

Darkness. Madness. This is all that will be brought upon the living. And it is also everything that will stay at the end. Madness will encroach your mind. Darkness will seep into your soul.


Welcome to my first mod for AoW4! :)
I started this project because it appeared to me that creating a tome is as good as a starting point as any. Making a shadow tome itself was just where the flow brought me to.

I always prefer to make unusual and thematic things, so here we have a tome that, I think, is a risk-and-reward tome as it's designed around the idea of paying a high price for powerful tools to destroy your opponents. Now the risk is defeating or crippling your own units, but I think that's a fun concept. I originally had a few more things in mind, but had to rely on simplicity for the time being as some stuff I wanted to do was either too advanced for my level of experience or outright impossible to do.

Now in regards to balance, well... I honestly have no idea. I put quite a bit of thought into it and this is what I came up with, but if you have feedback in regards to that, please leave it in the respective mod discussion thread to keep the comments tidy and for visibility of course. Please note that I do not play Multiplayer and I don't intend to balance the tome around that.

Either way, I hope you're enjoying the mod and have fun! :)

• (Major - Gameplay) Matter Undone will get any unit standing on a mountain province stuck on the edge of that province. I currently don't know if this issue can be resolved. Obviously all stacks standing further in the province will vanish, which is to be expected. Wether they actually die, fall out of the map or whatever, I can't tell, but that's how it is. Just be very careful when using it and hopefully you won't use it as an exploit against others, that's not what the intended use for this is.
  
• (Minor - Graphical) When using Matter Undone on a large mountain consisting of more than one province, there will be a visual glitch until all those provinces are terraformed to astral void. There's nothing I can do about it and it's rather minor in my opinion.

No vanilla files were edited in the process of creating this mod, therefore it should be compatible with everything.

• To Maal for providing an updated and transparent version of the tome icon
  
• To the AoW Modding Discord for their friendliness, faith and patience
  
• To the creators of Craiyon for the Icons and the original tome icon
  
• To ERICdb for his Youtube Tome-Creation Tutorial Playlist

Currently the tome is only available in English. If you wish to create a submod for another language feel free to do so and drop me the link so I can refer to it here ^^

For me it is common courtesy to actually note the changes (or major changes if it's a ginormous update) in the change log tab on this mod page. This is important for transparency and visibility both for myself and you. So if I updated one of my mods and you wanna know what's changed, go and take a look over there.

https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/70534/Any

If I did not update this for a long time (Though I intend to keep it updated, but you never know) feel free to upload an updated version with credit and everything. Other than the obvious stuff, the lore custom bits on this mod-page and the tome itself belong to me and me alone. So no grabby-grabby, please. I guess all other things can be negotiated with me. In light of this I'll just drop this here;
© Holy Fool Sehrael