Build 25473632

What your people believe — and what it costs you

A whole layer of Turkic belief now runs underneath the road. None of it is magic. No offering brings rain, no omen shortens a road. It all works through morale, through reputation, and through what the column thinks of the master leading it. That was the only way it belonged in this game.

Your banner means something now

• Each of the 28 banners has a clan that counts your house as kin — their escort costs you 25% less.
• It also decides which signs your people read as good. All seven omens now carry a fourth choice that only appears under the right banner: the same wolves are a blessing to a house of the Wolf and a threat to everyone else, and neither reading is more correct.

Earth and water

Four lands, four customs: the first fat to the fire, the first water poured back into the sand, a cloth on the thorn at the pass, nothing cut at the water.

• 12 new encounters — 214 in the game now.
• The land remembers across journeys. Keep the custom and the crossing is easier next time. Break it and it stays broken: you cannot buy your way back by being good once.
• Settled ground has no custom. It belongs to people.

The rite for the heir

Held at Ötüken for the master who comes after. The one who pays for it never sees what it buys — which is the whole point of playing a house rather than a person.

The kam

A sixth crew role. 55 to hire, 5 a day.

• Turns a good omen into more than it is — but he cannot soften a bad one.
• His price is not paid in silver: every thirteenth day he will not break camp. Overrule him and you save the day and lose the column.
• He can be wrong. Twice, and nobody listens to him any more.

The twelve years

Every journey falls in an animal year. It changes only which omens come more often, never what they do — and it turns the roll of masters into a chronicle: in the Year of the Hare, under the Falcon, the third master died.

A new tab at the House

The Sky — your ongon, what each land remembers of you, the rite, and the turning of the years.

A note on languages

The 14 new encounters are English for now. The other 200 are translated into all twelve languages and stay that way; these will follow.