Parallel to these thoughts about the game mechanics (especially the fight occupied my thoughts for long), I still gathered information about the factions. I’ve been keeping in mind more and more that their lore and attributes now could and should be in harmony with the (very few) decided mechanics – so I’ve started to put boundaries in their tales. No, this is not true… let me try in another way: so I’ve started to translate their background story, nature and properties into the board game.
First of all, I’ve finally had a fifth faction to the game, the Forest Ranger. Let me tell you about him in this post, and I’ll show the developments with the other four in the next ones. So: I’ve always wanted to have some kind of a parasite species, or other “alternative” ways of life, a powerful spiritual being, something that only exists via other game/player accessories. I’ve had some prefigurations (I just hope I’m using this word right – as a reference, “preconception”, something that has part(s) that anticipates something I desire in my idea, a previous example, some vibe I would like to achieve, a direction to start the design): Tom Bombadil, Ego from marvel and Warcraft night elves lore. Also, I really wanted to use every piece of my game and I really wanted to have trees in it – actually this was in my very first ideas that I had from this game. So here, I finally had the perfect opportunity to utilize the flora.
This is an ancient entity that lives in symbiosis with (and could exist only via) a planet’s flora. The spirit of the forest, the soul of the planet, the power of nature. It could take a semi-physical form – when it becomes strong enough – on the surface, and prefers to do that in the forest ranger’s ancient archetype. It could put their “sighs” or “breaths”, “whisps” onto the trees and higher vegetation to gently harvest the energy from them, while the plants benefit from the organized order the Ranger provides. It could also bring those to “active life”, to mobilize and use them to its own agenda – while the trees gain some level of consciousness and raw animalistic life force. But this active, warrior life comes with a great price, as the entity maintains connection so close to the flora – it will be hurt greatly by any damage taken by them.
By biological systematics it is a symbiont – but not very far from a parasite. Traveling in undefined ways to infect planets, harnessing all sources of energy from them – sounds like a true parasite. But gently doing these in as long geological periods as eons, living in harmony with the planet and becoming one with it to achieve a superior form of life, helping the flora in many ways – now it’s a different story. It always starts with infecting the core – if there is one, using the less sophisticated and more robust energy sources, as magnetic, thermal or later tectonic – and slowly “annexes” the planet, layer by layer to finally reach the surface – where it flourishes.
Their problems always start with the appearance of higher forms of fauna.
Now translating this to the game, the faction will have only one figure on the map, but could use the trees in two ways, by putting markers on them:
- as energy source (whisps)
- as active force (warriors – ents)
and if every tree is removed from the map, the faction is destroyed. That one figure is non-fightable or by itself can’t fight in any ways, so when getting into battle, it will be immediately put back on the player’s board. Every action is through that figure (this is up to debate in later versions), so the player has to organize things clean. The faction can’t use the traditional means of energy storing, or make contact, trade, alliance with any other – by flavour this is ok, but maybe too much restriction – so TESTING is needed again. A lot.
I’ve got the desire to make the faction capable of altering the terrain in some ways – lowering or elevating the tiles at least – but I haven’t got enough testing information (by being it nonexistent), so I saved it for later.
Aaand this is it, in rough lines, next time we will discover the other factions in deeper detail.