Tales of a land far, far away.

So this week my writing has taken a rather different turn to the usual, rather than concentrating all of my efforts on Vinland or even direct development on the mod I am working on, Prophesy of Pendor, I have been working on something related, yet very different. We have a large and very active community of fans at the Tale Worlds forums, and one of them asked me if it would be OK to run an RPG based on the lore of Pendor. This was something of a nice endorsement for the team, as I know that James Landes and I (along with a plethora of other writers and contributors) have invested a massive amount of time into producing the backstory for Pendor and fleshing out the world in which hundreds of thousands of characters live in.

One of the hallmark features for Pendor are the “Knighthood Orders” which are essentially organisations inspired by the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller. The reason I joined the Pendor Team after the release of Prophesy of Pendor 2 was to flesh these Orders out, and give them a real sense of being and belonging in the world, because before they were simply normal knights pimped out in some rather sweet gear. Part of my work on joining the team included creating a rivalry and conflicts between the various Orders of Pendor, and generally bringing them to life, they now act as non-state military forces, each with their own story, goals, objectives, heroes and of course a political agenda.

The result of this was a nice range of different Orders, each with their own personality and individuality. A few examples follow below;

The Order of Dawn : A fanatical Order dedicated to the ideal of justice and to the mission of destroying the evil cult of Heretics that plagues the realm. Over time their execution of this sacred duty has turned them into zealots and they will punish anyone for even the smallest of crimes or even by the tiniest affiliation to the heretics. This is truly a story of evil encroaching on even the best of intentions.

The Knights of Eventide : As the Order of Dawn becomes increasingly paranoid over the effects of the Heretics, there remained a small faction who believed the way to fight the heresy was to understand them properly. However as part of Dawn’s slide into zealotry, they banned any manuscripts or items considered heretical in order to stave off corruption. A schism occurred and the Order of Eventide was formed by those who sought to use their knowledge of heresy against the perpetrators. The irony now being that the Order of Dawn’s greatest fear seems to be realised as there are rumours that the heretical corruption has spread to the inner circle of Eventide, and threatens to undo all the work they have done to destroy the heretics.

The Order of the Ebony Gauntlet : There is an ancient race of beings that live just outside of human society known as the Noldor, or more colloquially as the elves. The Ebony Gauntlet believe that the Noldor want only the complete destruction of humanity and fight to promote human supremacy in the world, using any tools at their disposal to achieve this goal; xenophobia, racism, genocide. After all, the Noldor are not human, which makes them mere animals that deserve to be trodden under the iron-shod feet of humanity.

Now the players of this RPG have taken on a role from the various Knighthood Order’s that both appeared in Prophesy of Pendor 3, and will be appearing in Prophesy of Pendor 4. The setting is immediately following the events of Prophesy of Pendor 3, where the one hero prophesied has risen to power and united Pendor under one sovereign. Prophesy of Pendor 4 is occurring in another war torn continent which is home to Pendor’s greatest enemy, the Snake Cult.

Not much work had yet been done connecting the events of end of Pendor 3 to those in the beginning of Pendor 4, but now the results of this RPG could well bridge the gap, and better yet it has been done by the community itself so that they have more of an emotional tie to the game; it is even possible that their characters may appear in Pendor 4, who knows?

Oh, yeah and in a little aside, they made me play the King...