[MOD] The Plain of Glittering Stone

[Madfrancis]

[MOD] The Plain of Glittering Stone; A Black Company Mod

The Plain of Glittering Stone​

Spoiler

“Sorcerery. You're born to it or your not. Most of us not. Hell, and most that is, well they're lucky if they can get a candle to burn with a light let alone without, and while they may good for clearing up the ‘camp sicknesses’, they ain’t much good fer else and damn more trouble than they’re worth!

No matter, the swords always been good enough for me and the Company. Fact is we even do a fair trade in wizard huntin’. Nah! And not any of them charlatan hedgewizards or sour-mouthed bone throwers either but the real stringy bastards!

Some of em, the real powerful ones, you gotta not just kill em, but then you gotta keep em dead too, or at least asleepin’ forever. Even if they ain’t one of them big-daddy sorcerers, you still gott decapitate em, which ain’t no easy feat by the by. Not only that, though! Once their head’s apart their body you gotta dismember the body, burn all them parts and the head a-seperate, then bury them ashes as many leagues apart each other as you can get em.

I tell ya true, them wizards are real sons’a’bitches to put down ... but no buncha lads does one better!”

-Sergeant Schnell, of the Black Company, Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar

Current (alpha) version Plain of Glittering Stone v0.10
Compatability: 2.5.2
​

Main Features:
I intend to recreate a system of magic that closely resembles that which Glen Cook created for his world.

• Including various magnitudes of sorcerous strength
• Various sorcerous talents
• Sorcerous longevity, including a system for aging and arcane maladies.
• Various spells that one can plot to acquire, either through being taught by another, stealing the knowledge or through personal research.
• Sorcerous duels, including those that end in the losing sorcerer becoming a loyal servant of the winner ... or else!
• 'Taking' (controling) and 'Naming' (stripping of all power) of wizards
• Powerful Sorcerers require a Plot to truly dispose of.
• Powerful Sorcerers can be brought back if not killed correctly, or if left dormant too long.

I intend to recreate the Black Company, Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar.

• A new mercenary group
• Events based on having mercenaries in your employ

I intend to recreate the Plain of Glittering Stone, a mystical realm connecting sixteen mirrored worlds through gates spaced evenly along its circumference. Or at least something closely resembling this.

• A province connected to 16 distant places only enter-able by those who command powerful magics.
• 16(#?) different bookmarks, representing different worlds. Choose which world you want to play in and Characters and Cultures from the other 15 become potential invading hosts and send invading hosts out yourself.
• Events surrounding this province

Maybe more. We'll see.

• New special units
• New retinues
• New Ages (bookmarks)
• New combat tactics

Full list of intended changes:

Spoiler

Magic:

• Full range of Sorcerous abilities created [unbalanced]
• Full range of aging events created for those extending their lives through sorcerous means. [unbalances]
• Full range of sorcerous talents created. [unbalanced]
• Spell traits system in development
• Arcane decision to replace whithered and useless limbs/missing bodies with various golem bodies.
• More in progress ...

Mercenaries:

• NA

World:

• I want to get a stable working version out and then hold an AAR contest. I need to select 16 different versions of the world to use as slightly different iterations of each world and thought if I could get enough AARs together I could choose 16 of the most interesting to make part of the mod.

 

[Madfrancis]

Currently I am developing the system of magic that I will use. Once that is done I'll release it as a stand alone so that I can get some play testing and start to balance it out. Then I will go into working on other story based stuff and experimenting with map stuff for the Plain.

Eventually I will decide whether I am going to create a whole new custom map or just take some artistic license and create a Plain of Glittering Stone that is connected to the far corners of the earth rather than to whole new worlds. The books only give moderate information on one world and minimal information on maybe three others (out of 16), the rest are never mentioned so trying to recreate this part of the books does very little other than create lots of work. Simply connecting the disparate realms of the earth to a mystical gateway will more than represent the travel across worlds including trade and warfare with strange and distant peoples.

After that I may try my hand at creating some new emergent religions based around sorcerer god-kings (rare, but should occur from time to time, maybe just in custom bookmarks).

Essentially its still a super WIP. This is just here now as a place holder and somewhere to organize my thoughts and get input from others. It might also take me a while because this is my first attempt modding CK2 to any real extent and I am learning everything as I go.

Anyway, thanks for following this if you are and any input is always welcome.

Magic System

Trait Based Magic System
I am creating a trait based system that gives bonuses to characters which simulate that characters use of magic in their everyday lives in order to accomplish any and all tasks they set to.

Rather than creating a spell for every situation, I have created traits that represent base levels of ability and knowledge (Magnitudes 1- 4) and various groupings of sorcerous spells and abilities (Talents 1-3). As an example, it is assumed a wizard who has fire talent can light things on fire when necessary and as such will, when necessary, light things on fire using the appropriate spells and at the best of his ability to do so, without me telling him to. In short, magic is defined by traits which give bonuses in a general sense rather than a group of decisions you can choose from to accomplish specific things.

Sorcerous Magnitudes
The various Magnitudes give an underlying general bonus to Characters, representing the use of magic in their lives. They also boost piety gain, allowing for the greater use of the various Talents.
There are four magnitudes of sorcery, 1st (weakest) through 4th (strongest). Sorcerers grow in power as they age with many living well into their two hundredth year (and longer depending on how powerful the sorcerer is) if lucky enough not to be killed by some violence or another. Sorcerous ability can be passed along to children, but its tenancy is to grow less powerful in later generations, often times eventually disappearing altogether. That being said there is also a random factor determining whether someone is born with Sorcerous ability and at what inherent strength. So while congenital powers may grow weaker over generations there are always new powers being born to infuse (rarely, but it still happens). Breeding Sorcerers together is a time tested way of keeping sorcerous ability in the bloodline.

There are also ways, rare and difficult though they may be, in which a Sorcerer may increase her power.

Sorcerous Talents
There are also 6 Talents. Each of these Talents have three degrees of strength, 1 being the weakest and 3 the strongest. Talents give more specific bonuses but cost health to have, representing the power drain that can be expected from every day usage. Talents have abilities that can be turned "On" or "Off". Turning talent abilities on and off takes time and lowers health while on (determined by the talent level).

Sorcerers can either be born with Talents or spend time and energy developing Talents. They can also gain Talents from other Sorcerers, either freely or through coercion.

Magnitudes and Talents
Magnitude 4
These sorcerers are so rare that they often live unchallenged by another's power for many generations. Often great Empires are created and or crumble in these sorcerer's wake. Very little can be hidden or kept from them when they turn their minds and will to acquiring something. On the battlefield they can be devastating to their enemies. Not just through their own martial abilities and personal magic but also through the aid they lend their own soldiers with battlefield-wide offensive and defensive spells. Inherently hardy a sorcerer of this magnitude is virtually indestructible requiring ritual dismemberment and destruction. Powerful wards, incantations and expenditure of great energies are necessary to ensure the job is done permanently, and even then there is no certainty. Magnitude 4 sorcerers are able to break the will of lesser sorcerers and bind them to their will.

Magnitude 3
Magnitude 3 sorcerers, while not as rare as Magnitude 4 are still rare with only a few being born worldwide in any given generation. While still inherently hardy, magnitude 3 sorcerers are more easily put down by other sorcerers and even by enough non-sorcerers and require much less expenditure of energy to keep dead. Magnitude 3 sorcerers are powers in their own right, though and are often tempted to seize power from those less capable than them, setting up kingdoms (or theocracies in less educated lands) for themselves. They often attract the services of other sorcerers of lesser strength or even sometimes, band together with a few others of similar strength to accomplish some goal or another.

Magnitude 2
These sorcerers are more common and can often be found serving in various ways in the courts of kings, dukes, barons, and counts and any courts that don't have one serving them are usually ruled by someone with sorcery of their own. Most people known as sorcerers or wizards fall into this category.

Magnitude 1
More than rare, less than common. Often times only knowing a trick or two to help them through life they they are labeled as little more than witches, hedge-wizards, fortune-tellers, whitch doctors and alchemists.

Charm Talent

Making Talent

Internal Focus

External Focus

Arcane Mastery

Ritual Mastery


Sorcery, while imbuing one with varying (according to strength and skill) degrees of hardiness and long life does come at a price. That very same hardiness can work against a sorcerer as they age. Unless they are very powerful and have discovered the magic of self preservation and regeneration (rare and hard knowledge) sorcerers tend to become broken, twisted creatures albeit more and more powerful for it. Wounds taken in battle can leave a sorcerer maimed for life (which may be quite long), or limbs crippled by disease will wilt and rot but never drop off or kill the sorcerer. The study of sorcery is also inherently dangerous and can have many debilitating side effects such as shrinking, maiming/loss of various body parts, or the grotesque twisting of the sorcerer's very flesh. Very powerful sorcerers can even have their heads separated from their bodies and still survive, though if their body is destroyed the head is rendered incapable until a new body is created for them. These new limbs and bodies are often made of clay, wicker, metal or other mundane materials and then animated by deep magic. As a sorcerer grows older and more powerful they also become more prone to the twisting nature of their craft. Only the most powerful (or vain) can keep themselves whole and often only at great price. The body is not the only thing to pay the price, a sorcerer's mind can easily break in small or large ways during the use and pursuit of their powers.

Here is the spreadsheet I am using to keep track of all the traits and their bonuses.

 

[Madfrancis]

Installation:

Spoiler

1. Download the .rar file from the link above and install into your mod folder.

Compatibility with other mods: Vanilla and eventually, once I get permission from the team and an official Charlemagne build is out, LI.

Changelog:

Spoiler

0.01:

• Added Sorcerer Magnitude traits, events, etc.
• Added Sorcerer Talent traits, events, etc.

0.03:

• Added new culture, Melniboneans with some blood line and racial traits.
• Added new religion, Chaos Pact
• Tweaks to magic system determining whether newborns are born with sorcerous blood.
• Removed Sorcerous Talents until I can get the events to fire like I want for those born with sorcerous ability.

0.04 :

• Talents have been added.
• All bonuses removed from traits until re-balanced.

0.08 :

• Talents and Magnitudes re-balanced and code cleaned up.
• Added new decisions allowing for the gaining of Talents.
• Added Longevity trait and a decision to gain it with.

Credits:

• MadFrancis

 

[Old Man Jenkins]

This looks interesting!

Will it be on the Ck2 map or it's own world?

 

[Madfrancis]

Will it be on the Ck2 map or it's own world?

Not sure yet. The books speak of 16 worlds all with a gate connecting them to the Plain of Glittering Stone. However that is about all the books say of most of those 16 worlds. The stories themselves take place mainly in one one world with brief stop-overs in two others. Other than that there isn't much mentioned. Most cultures encountered are earth analogous and actually fit just fine into the time period of CK2.

In the books the Black Company travel all over a Europe-like continent then cross a sea and travel through lands of mediteranean/roma/greek cultures, then into lands of egyptian/north african cultures, onward into african jungle cultures, and into an Indian like subcontinent with a multitude of religions and castes and so on. From there they access the Plain and travel to two other worlds, one with a Buddhist-like monastic sect and the other with a northern germanic tribe of sorcerers who had traveled there from the original world a thousand years ago.

In other words it would be a lot easier to just re-conceptualize the stories into an earth setting than to create 16 new worlds (all technically on the same map :\) that would be filled essentially with the same cultures and religions as earth. In this scenario I would simply create a Plain of Glittering Stone that connected 16 disparate points on the earth, bringing together religions and cultures not used to such exposure. Regardless of whether I make a unique map or not, I will probably set something like this up to use as I build the map anyway.

But we'll see when I get to that stage.

 

[Helkoi]

I may have ideas about creating mercennary companies event. For instance, it could be possible to increase the price of the compagnies so no one could engage them without using a decision. Rather than being "employed", the company could then join the war and have events depending on it (and the payement before and after the war). I could work on that very test and make some test if you're interested.

 

[Madfrancis]

I may have ideas about creating mercennary companies event. For instance, it could be possible to increase the price of the compagnies so no one could engage them without using a decision. Rather than being "employed", the company could then join the war and have events depending on it (and the payement before and after the war). I could work on that very test and make some test if you're interested.

Thats sounds perfect! Would love to see what you come up with.

 

[Madfrancis]

So I have the most basic of basic versions of the mod for vanilla, all DLCs, current build 2.2.xx. It's not much but it should work fine and is a modest beginning for something that I hope becomes much grander.

I'll be getting more time to work on this over the next few months so I'm hoping to make some decent progress now. Currently I am working on getting the rest of the magic system framework in place and working. Once that is finished I can begin to work on events, decisions and plots for and targeting sorcerers. Eventually I will get to some mercenary units and flavor events surrounding them. Then I can move onto working on my multi-dimensional gateway and the hordes of other-worlders ready to invade through it ... so, uh, yeah. Got some work ahead of me.

 

[LDRevolution]

cant wait to see what you come up with the magic system, question you ARE intending on making a map for this right?

 

[Madfrancis]

I'm still not sure about the map. Making a map to be accurate to TBCC (The Black Company Chronicles) would be a pretty tall order. To make it canon I would need 16 different worlds and a 17th, connecting all of them to each other. Not only that, but in the novels the other worlds are left mostly unseen and unknown so I would have to create these other worlds and their inhabitants myself, from my own imaginations.

However, the main gist of the Plain of Glittering Stone (Trans-world gateway) was that it connected disparate lands and peoples together, initially for trade and cultural exchange but then eventually for warfare and conquest.

I have tossed around the idea of rewriting the concept just a bit. I would make another province, the Plain, and have it be connected to 16 (maybe play with that number) different provinces around the map. This would recreate many of the intended results (bringing cultures into contact with each other that normally would never have any) without requiring me to somehow fit 16 worlds and their people onto one map. I would also make it a place through which pre-created hordes may invade through (other worlder invasions). Those are just my initial thoughts regarding the map issue, but I'll really start to tackle that problem later, once the magic system is fully completed. Until then, the mod will be designed around Vanilla (and possibly LI once they have an official post-Charlemagne release to start compatibility work with).

 

[Madfrancis]

cant wait to see what you come up with the magic system, question you ARE intending on making a map for this right?

I just posted a rough overview of the magic system and how it is intended to work. I'll be fleshing it out as I get time.

 

[Madfrancis]

0.04 up. This is the complete set of Magnitude and talent traits as well as on_birth events allow for random births of new sorcerers. 1% of all new children will have a chance to be born with Sorcerous ability of varying strengths with a greater chance if either or both of your parents were sorcerers. It is fully playable and probably fairly compatible with any mod that doesn't add or subtract religions.

Currently there are no bonuses to any of the traits. I am going to start thinking about and playing around with appropriate bonuses for each trait. I will be using bonuses applied by the traits themselves, and then also through character, province, holding and technologyc modifiers as needed. Speaking of which, if anyone knows of a comprehensive (or relatively so) source list of modifiers and how they scoped I would greatly appreciate it if they could direct me to it. I'll post a link to the spreadsheet I will be using to help chart out how I want all these traits and their bonuses to work together.

EDIT: I've added a version of the mod with traits that have some rudimentary (and relatively arbitrary) bonuses that have not really been play tested for balance at all.

Sorcerous ability has a good chance of being passed on to children if you are strong and a weakening chance if you are a lesser magnitude sorcerer. Sorcerous ability should usually breed itself out of a family line in three or four generations unless new sorcerous blood (preferably of higher magnitudes) is introduced into the gene pool.

The rates of birth need to be played around with. I'd like to have a fair number of 1st magnitude sorcerers acting as councilors and courtesans. 2nd magnitude should be somewhat common in the world but still a valuable commodity or small power in their own right. 3rd magnitude sorcerers should be rare and dangerous, with only a handful being born in any given generation, throughout the world. 4th magnitude sorcerers should be an once in a generation or two event.

Currently the base rates are:

1% of children born will have a 21% chance of 1st Magnitude, 20% chance for 2nd Magnitude, and a 58% chance of nothing.

The remaining 10% will then have have a 30 chance of 3rd Magnitude and a 10% chance to be a 4th Magnitude sorcerer.

I will also be looking into creating a mana or some such system. Using piety is going to create too many conflicts that I'm just not happy with. My initial thoughts are that it will operate like prestige and piety for the most part, just only applicable to magic stuff. Or it may be a fixed value (determined by magnitude, artifacts, buildings, etc) that allows you to run a certain amount of sorcerous talents at a time. We'll see what I end up liking better (leaning towards the first, but the latter would be simpler).

EDIT: I found this in regards to the list of modifiers but it hasn't been updated since January.

 

[thelogannator]

I read this book series recently, and as soon as I did I thought there should be a CK2 mod for it, this is awesome.
As far as a map goes, have you seen these fan created maps?
http://wraggj.people.cofc.edu/blackco/

I still wonder how powerful these magnitude numbers are, are you saying magnitude 4 would be the dominator/lady, for example and magnitude 3 would be the ten who were taken or the shadowspinners? Where does Goblin or One-eye fall?

Please keep working on this mod it looks awesome

 

[Madfrancis]

Wow. Go travelling for a year and when you come back the world is very different. I'm reapplying myself to this mod but it will take me a while to learn all the new modding capabilities and options regarding all the new features with the last two expansions that have dropped since I've been gone.

As far as a map goes, have you seen these fan created maps?
http://wraggj.people.cofc.edu/blackco/

I am definitely looking at those, but the map is so far down on my list of priorities right now.

I still wonder how powerful these magnitude numbers are, are you saying magnitude 4 would be the dominator/lady, for example and magnitude 3 would be the ten who were taken or the shadowspinners? Where does Goblin or One-eye fall?

The Dominator would be a Magnitude 4 sorcerer, the Lady a Mag 3 and Goblin and One-eye Mag 2's. Magnitude is more a measure of innate/potential power where Talents represent actual ability. Each level of Magnitude is a pretty significant jump in power. Talents also have levels of ability (1-3) and are more representative of different levels of study and training.

 

[Madfrancis]

Been working on this lately. I have a working barebones magic system now complete with on_birth events for developing or inheriting magical traits and talents. I also have decision-based event chains for attempting to learn or improve new and existing talents.

Currently working on:
Balancing all the bonuses given by magnitudes and talents
Trait and decision icons.
Brainstorming and mapping out more events, decisions, plots and ambitions

 

[1930sman]

This magic system sounds awesomely fun, hope you get an updated version eventually. Haste makes waste after all. :3

 

[Madfrancis]

Thanks! I was really pushing to get something updated before I went on vacation, but the bonus layout took longer than expected and now I am on vacation. This link is the current version of how the bonuses will work. Black numbers are traits and uh, i don't know ... orangeish brown? is a character modifier. These obviously will need a lot of play testing and I will be putting up a version for just that when I get back. The second page of the spreadsheet highlights traits I have planned for the health side of things (particularly the negative effects that the pursuit of sorcery might have on a character). Anyway, much more to come and I will keep you all updated, but hopefully will have a basic version for dl shortly after the first.

 

[Madfrancis]

Okay. Plain of Glittering Stone v0.05 is up. Should be compatible with the current release and any mod that doesn't change the decision icon strip (will just give you weird decision icons anyway).

Pretty sure I'm using some decision icons from the GoT mod as placeholders until I can create my own. If this is an issue I'll make take this version down until I can get to drawing my own icons.

EDIT: Just to be clear, this is a bare-bones version and I put this up to get some feed back while I tinker with the current event and decisions scripts and get them all working as I want.

 

[Madfrancis]

v0.06
* Fixed some scripting issues and added some localisations.

 

[Brother Zael]

i love you