Fantasy conquest on a curving 3D world — with a captain you build, and captains who remember.
Ride out from the last lit tower across a curving 3D world, and build your own captain in 3D. Recruit armies, fight turn-based tactical battles and lead heroes who remember every winter. Three peoples, a fair AI, a map editor, hot-seat and online play. Fully playable in English and Hungarian.
3peoples
18named heroes
68creatures
93buildings
68spells
40skills
60artifacts
24missions in 3 campaigns
Watchfires, Lanterns and Knells — each with its own buildings, creatures, heroes and town.
Face, build, hair, beard, headgear, outfit and colours — and your captain rides the map and the battlefield exactly like that.
A 12 × 10 grid, spells, war machines, walls and gates, morale and luck — or let the auto-battle settle it.
What your heroes live through goes into a chronicle: traits, opinions, sworn comrades — and now and then a refusal to march.
30 recipes, six kinds of material; a unique piece carries the name of the captain who had it forged and a line from their chronicle.
Up to eight players on one computer or over the internet, 15 ready-made maps and a map editor of your own.
Dense, zoned maps with guarded passes in the classic style; seven new creatures, eight landmarks, four war machines and the Stormrunner; every picture in place; 40+ fixes after an independent test — and ancientcrowns.com is live.
Simpler levelling up, a smarter route, a way back through the magic gate, a world map on the O key, and the peoples got subtitles.
The three peoples
humans, keepers of the fire
A sworn alliance of the highland holds and river towns of Valemarch. The Watchfires keep the old signal fires burning against what walks the deep passes. They hold the river with fires, not with walls: when one tower burns, the next lights its own, and by dawn the whole line knows what is coming up the water.
people of the water
A loose league of the reed-raft towns and salt-lantern harbours of Tidereach, strung along a coast the sea keeps taking back. Where the Watchfires hold a line, the Lanterns give ground on purpose and let the silt close behind them — but the silt does not forget, and the water comes back, eventually, to where it went out from.
the undead
A procession of the funeral towns of Hollowmere, sunk into the marsh, where burial only means setting someone down for a while. The Watchfires hold a line and the Lanterns give it to the silt; the Knells simply collect what fell and walk on. After a battle they win, some of their fallen get back up — but their dwellings refill more slowly, so for them a quiet week is a loss.
Campaigns
One captain carries the campaign: their level, skills, spells and a few artifacts stay with them from mission to mission.
Watchfires · 8 missions
In the western passes the light does not carry from post to post, but sound does, through the rock — a line used to be held there with horns. It has stood silent for ten years: there was nobody to spare for it. Hearthwatch is sending someone now.
Lanterns · 8 missions
The Lanterns do not hold Tidereach with a wall, but with patience: they go out at low water, carry off what can be carried, and are home before the tide turns. This campaign is the once the Lanterns take back the coast they only ever lent out.
Knells · 8 missions
The Knells do not bury: they set someone down for a while. But the marsh has lately been swallowing faster than the procession can find new high ground, and for the first time in two generations it has to look for land it did not choose.
Captains
Six per people: warden, marshal, loremage, outrider, quartermaster and adept.
Watchfires · Warden · Rain Drill
Took the watch at Rhone Ford at nineteen and has not handed it back.
Watchfires · Marshal · The Mason’s Word
Speaks to a company the way a mason speaks to stone: slowly, and only once.
Watchfires · Loremage · Burned Ledgers
Believes the watchfires were lit to answer something, not merely to warn of it.
Watchfires · Outrider · Goat Tracks
Says a map is a thing an enemy can steal, and a memory is not.
Watchfires · Quartermaster · Iron Strongbox
Counts the covenant’s grain, its iron and, when pressed, its dead.
Watchfires · Adept · Root Speech
When he asks the ground for a wall of thorns, it usually obliges.
Lanterns · Warden · Turning Tide
Gave up two raft towns to the silt in one season and calls it the best trade she ever made.
Lanterns · Marshal · Harbour Dues
Nobody has yet found the bottom of her ledger.
Lanterns · Loremage · Tidecall
Reads the pull of the water the way a clerk reads a column of figures.
Lanterns · Outrider · Silt Running
Crosses flats that swallow horses, at the hour nobody else will try them.
Lanterns · Quartermaster · Shipwright’s Timber
Holds the salt tally for nine harbours and the grudges of about as many.
Lanterns · Adept · Deepsong
Sings to deep water until the water sings back.
Knells · Warden · Grave Watch
Buried people for twenty-two years before she started walking.
Knells · Marshal · The Procession
Never raises his voice and is never asked twice.
Knells · Loremage · Whispers
The crypt walls answer her and she writes down what they say.
Knells · Outrider · Night Running
Crosses the marsh at night, because the marsh sees better by day.
Knells · Quartermaster · Bone Kiln
There is not a crossed-out line in his book.
Knells · Adept · The Vigil
Tends the vigil candles at the back of the procession and knows which flames burn for the dead and which against them.
They multiply every week — a slow start is a real cost.
More heads than there are sides to come at it from: it answers every blow. Surrounding it is the mistake.
It circles the bare ridges and the snow passes. It comes in low and takes the whole rank it passes straight over.
A body quarried from sand a lightning strike fused to glass. No blind side, and planted where it stands.
A corpse of the lava fields: it breathes fire, and it answers every blow it takes, not just the first.
Its bite does not close, and what it strikes from the side reels on its next turn.
It lies atop a cinder cone, big enough to have glassed the rock under its own heat — and it does not sleep as deeply as your grandfather told it.
Did you know?
Small things that really work this way in the game.
Tester programme
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The last lit tower is waiting
Three peoples, an ancient crown, and a captain you shape yourself. Playable in your browser right now.
