The Windsong

[megane]

The Windsong

The Windsong are essentially historians: they spend centuries at a time hiding in their Foundation, located on an island in the frigid northern seas, simply watching and recording what goes on in the world outside. However, the reason for this devotion is to keep track of the balance of power in the world -- their original, founding idea was that, were any nation or empire to gain too much power and influence, that nation would bring about the end of the world.

Thus, when their research reveals that this seems to be the trend, they leave their lives of secrecy and vigilance and go to root out and destroy whoever threatens to bring about the apocalypse. This time of war is known as the Great Balancing, and hasn't occurred in millennia; the other peoples of the world have long since forgotten that the Windsong ever existed. But now it has come once again.

As a faction, they are centered on the idea of fighting indirectly, due to their general hatred of war; rather than big, hard-hitting units, they rely on their numerous abilities and a good mix of damage types to kill things:

• Seekers. Quick, maneuverable skirmishers. Neither a dedicated scout unit, nor a primary fighter, the seekers employ their great speed and mobility to take on both roles.
• Scribes. The mage historians of the Windsong have learned to wield a powerful and ancient magic, lost to those in the outside world. Their ranged attack is magical and slows; where human mages are the damage-dealing powerhouses or their faction, scribes are used more for support, allowing seekers and weavers to take out the target.
• Weavers. The leaders, healers, and warriors. Essentially the opposite of, and complement to, the seeker. They can heal, and wield an arcane melee attack as well as a bow.
• Gatekeepers. Strong defensive units tasked with protecting the great Foundation, these are very difficult to dislodge, especially when stationed to garrison a village. They are, however, quite slow, and lack a ranged attack.
• Couriers. Hovering scout units, who devote their magical abilities to flying, rather than attacking. They excel at covering long distances, but have trouble in rough terrain, and make use of their bows and rocks to attack.
• Sky Shards. Small, barely corporeal chunks of magic, shards are very weak, but fairly cheap. They're useful for sneak attacks, as they are quite fast and can teleport between villages.

The Windsong are currently a part of the Era of Myths; my thanks to JW for keeping track of them. Any and all comments on both my art and their balancing are welcome. I am currently engaged in doing base frames for all the units, a process which is unfortunately fairly slow, due to my perfectionist attitude towards everything, as well as my lack of creativity and general suckiness.

[TheBladeRoden]

hark! Are those original sprites?

[Urs]

I assume that the leader of the bunch is flying, right? She needs a shadow so that you can see that she's floating.

[Gresnor]

This sounds like a pretty cool idea, I like the concept of the race, being a sort-of forgotten race dedicated to balance and everything. I wonder if it would be possible to give them some immunities to some things for a little more flavor?

[megane]

Urs:

Nope, she's not flying, and she does have a shadow, it just happens to blend with the forest.

[Urs]

Oh. Oops.

Perhaps the fabric of their clothing needs to have more wrinkles? It looks to 'perfect' right now, almost as if it's out of clay. That might help to show that the unit is, in fact, touching the ground.

Also, the bottom right guy looks really, really fat. I know this is because the glowing thing is casting light onto his stomach, but the shirt should be less round at the bottom.


Overall, however, they look really, really good.

[Vendanna]

I must say that they are cute.

I'll wait to see how they evolve, they at least looks something I would want to play someday to see how they fare against other factions

[Weeksy]

Give them a water unit or a flyer, and if you choose to give them a water unit, give them a 7 mp scout (a sail-cart with blades on the wheels? it could have wose-style resists but with 20% less on pierce and impact, and a low damage, high strike blade attack, poor moves on everything but grass, sand, and hills, and no traits.) or something else...

EDIT: You might want to cut the XP requirement for the scribes by one or two, and the lorekeeper has nothing to level into.

[megane]

Give them a water unit or a flyer,

Well, another line I was considering was the Courier -- it's a guy levitating himself along with a bunch of rocks, which he hits people with -- with fast movement over flatland and water, but very slow in anything rougher.

I also considered having a lv 0 flying scout with very low attack, say 4-2, that's invisible (except when it attacks yada yada). It'd be good for getting around behind enemy lines and taking out units they thought they had screened.

So, something like this:

- Courier (7-2 m b, 5-2 r p) 8mp
- - Reaver (11-3 m i) 4mp
- - - Dreadnought (11-4 m i) 4mp
- - Messenger (8-3 m b, 7-3 r p) 9mp

Wisp (4-2 m a) 5mp, invisible
- Sigil (5-3 m a) 5mp, invisible

Edit: as for a sail-cart, the Windsong dislike mechanical things; just as they prefer to avoid entanglements with other nations, they also dislike relying on anything other than their own skill.

[lu_zero]

better a fly unit

I tried it a bit and seems quite nice to play, could you please upload an EE+Windsong?

[megane]

could you please upload an EE+Windsong?

Here you go.

Put it in (wherever your user data is)/data/campaigns/Windsong_Era/eras.

[Weeksy]

Lorekeeper doesn't level into anything, and some of the level-ups are a bit riplib, such as the harbinger getting 'zerk... I'd give him the 'zerk attack as a secondary blade attack, and have him keep his normal damage and attack from his level 2 as his primary.

EDIT: does this have anything to do with the 'wind on fire' trilogy by William Nicholson? It does sound vaguely similar to the Windsinger people, who sit on their island, but the unit design is very different, their style of 'combat' was to run.

DOUBLE EDIT: Randomly, I got a notice that one of the animations uses a depreciated 'sound' tag after I closed the unit description...

[megane]

does this have anything to do with the 'wind on fire' trilogy by William Nicholson?

Never heard of it; they come straight from my fevered imagination.

Randomly, I got a notice that one of the animations uses a depreciated 'sound' tag after I closed the unit description...

I get that too. Looked through all my units, and there's no sign of a sound tag -- I have no clue.

The Lorekeeper is supposed to stop at lv2, but I suppose the Harbinger could have (12-3 m b, 11-3 m b zerk, 33-1 r f) or something, with the zerk set never to fire on defence so he doesn't kill himself smacking royal guards... hmm

[Noyga]

I tried the era ...
I find them cute, but overpowered, you're right, their balance need some work...
Don't trust the AI for balancing, especially for a faction like this where you have many abilities (usually the AI doesn't exploit them well).
I may add them (probably edited) in the next major release of the EE.

[Weeksy]

Lorekeeper needs AMLA if he stops at level 2, currently there's nothing, not even +3 hp