Is the Northern Alliance more "modern"?

[TheGreatRings]

-They're formed by a group of rebel slaves fighting in the name of freedom.

-They are a multi-racial alliance: various campaigns portray them as including humans, dwarves, even orcs as I recall. They also ally with drakes, elves, and undead. So they seem to be perhaps the least bigoted and xenophobic faction. Perhaps most tellingly, their first leader is depicted as being in perhaps the only interspecies romantic relationship in mainline (with an elf princess).

-A major member are the dwarves of Knalga, who are depicted as being technologically advanced (good smiths/miners, having guns).

All this makes them a rather intriguing faction, and I really find it sad that out of a dozen or so mainline campaigns, as far as I know they appear in only three and star in only one. I was wondering if anyone agreed with this analysis of the NA as a more modern state, or had different opinions on the NA. I'm also wondering why they're such an underused faction. I mean, I know the game is called Battle for Wesnoth, but other factions besides Wesnoth are used far more (the elves, especially). Even considering the fact that the NA was only around for the latter part of the time period the game is set in, they should show up more, I think.

[Jaume]

Sounds a lot like the European Union: former slaves of the Nazi Empire or the Communist Brotherhood, who eventually united in the name of freedom. Yet today it's a shambles nobody seems interested in, instead everyone is looking at China, the USA, the BRIC, or the Middle East countries - which all have an identifiable head of state. I'd bet not many here know who the President of the European Council is, and that's the problem: who would like to play an Alliance led by an anonymous leader?

[Joram]

Part of the issue is that NR is one of the newest campaigns to be added to the game. When I read the title of the thread, I thought this was going to be about how "the campaign NR was a very different style from most of the other campaigns, is it more recent?" Of course, you know that, but I wasn't looking at who was posting, just the post.

I think its youth has a great deal to do with it though. There just hasn't been as much 'spin-off' campaign work done. As an example of the opposite case, HttT was the first mainline campaign, is now almost a decade old, and has got dozens of spin-off works. Just give it some time, and people will expand their horizons to include other nations and people groups like the Northern Alliance.

That's actually one of the things I love about this game. Way back when, the timeline was bare, the map rather empty, and there were just a couple real factions. Now, years later, everything is slowly getting filled in and fleshed out. It's literally open source world creation!

[Iris]

Part of the issue is that NR is one of the newest campaigns to be added to the game.

4 years ago (1.3.x) doesn’t sound very new to me anymore. OTOH, LoW was added in 1.5.x, DM in 1.7.x and DW in 1.9.x.

Granted, LoW and DM were around even in 1.0 times. DW is most certainly newer than NR.

[TheGreatRings]

Makes sense about it being relatively recent I guess, but like shadowmaster said its not that new.

I don't know, it just seems like a very interesting faction that doesn't get much attention. Though I guess you could say it stars in two campaigns: Northern Rebirth and Hammer of Thursagan. Though its just the dwarves, not the Alliance as a whole, that are the focus of the second one.

[Joram]

"The mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding fine"

Yes, NR isn't 'new' in the sense that its multiple years old by now. Also, a couple of campaigns have come out since then (but I will add that I'm not going to count DW till it's on the stable branch ). However, I still believe that the principle holds. I see Wesnoth lore as a great tree sprouting off of its root, HttT. Nearly every mainline campaign is connected to HttT, but few of them have campaigns that are connected to them (and not HttT). In that sense, I see Wesnoth as currently leaving the 'second generation' of campaigns (those that are sequals/prequels/history-relating-to/about-characters-from HttT), and only just entering the 'third generation' (those campaigns that are breaking further from the mold). Yes, there are several old campaigns that have nothing to do with HttT, but they are rather outnumbered and most of them are just 'pocket-campaigns' that don't affect the history of the world all that much (DiD, TB).


So as my initial quote was intended to convey, imo, Wesnoth growth moves very slowly, but it sure does spectacular stuff once it gets there. I think we'll see more stuff happening in the Northern Alliance in the near future, along with the more distant corners of the map and all those 'neglected' people groups like the drakes and mermen (I feel pretty safe prophesying on that last point, what with DW and the coming drake campaign ). My applause to all the people who have made it happen.

[Boldek]

the northern alliance was really a bunch of slaves and escapees, random drakes, crazy dead people, elves, anyone that cared to join, that fought for freedom from orcs. They even befriended the orcs to undermine the warlords, but my reason for not that many campaigns of them is that an alliance like that won't hold. I am pretty certain that the minute the old leaders like Tallin and the dwarf dude died, there goes everything. dwarves don't naturally join forces with elves, orcs, and men, when they can help it, and the drakes just sort of dropped in. It was really centered around the peasants in dwarven doors, so I am pretty sure of this: the next war master will sway the heads of the orcs, and probably cause ninety percent to break off. the humans and the dwarves will probably stick together longest, with the drakes and elves pulling out as soon as the orcs invaded. the races are so different and the fact that the people that started the alliance weren't so powerful, leads me to conclude that the knalgan alliance is all you have left.

[TheGreatRings]

It survived quite a while:

http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Timeline_of_Wes ... _Eye_Karun

This means the Alliance was alive hundreds of years after the events of Northern Rebirth.

As to how this worked... depending on how long dwarves live in Wesnoth, some of the original leaders might still be alive. Another explanation, however, is that after a while people got used to the idea and realized that they were stronger together than on their own.

I do wonder what it was up to during the events of Eastern Invasion, since I don't recall any sign of the Alliance in that campaign (and boy Wesnoth could have used their help). Some possibilities:

1. The Alliance was relatively weak in this period, and stayed out of it because they were dealing with internal issues.

2. The Alliance was strong but it was under an isolationist leader.

3. The Alliance was strong but had poor relations with Wesnoth and basically said "let them die." Though this wouldn't cast the Alliance in a good light at all.

4. The Alliance was fighting the Undead forces, but we just never see what's happening on that front.

Clearly, however, they were both able and willing to engage in foreign military adventures during the era of Son of the Black Eye.

[Turgon]

Well, I think the Campaign Eastern Invasion is just older than the Northern Rebirth Campaign... that's just the matter.

[13arrage]

Well, they can only appear in campaigns that actually take place within their sphere of influence, between the orc tribes and wesnoth proper.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing the northern alliance again, it's interesting, if horribly cliche.

[TheGreatRings]

How is it any more cliche than any of the other factions?

I mean:

Undead: generic evil monsters ruled by dark wizards.

Orcs: generic barbarian hordes.

Wesnoth: generic medieval fantasy human empire.

Elves: generic Tolkien rip-offs.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still.

[Boldek]

the northern rebirth was fun, in the sense that every possible badguy and goodguy with 10000 gold on the field going berserk, but I agree that it was different in the sense that sure, the rest were cliched, but they were epic cliches. The other factions were anything you would find in a fairy tale and these northern alliance people, were a little more wacky than the others. frankly, I don't like playing with big alliances, because then you end up fighting orcs and undead when you can be kicking drake or elf, or crazy undead mage.
I mean like, while the others were very generic, the elves and men and dwarves and drakes all going 'lets fight against the wicked orcs for freedom!' was a little boring. no politics beyond the dwarf wants to kill the mage, the mage wanna kill the dwarf, and with all those soldiers it just turned into a massive stampede. I wanted to see something like the drakes turning on you, or the mages going insane, or somehting that would give me something other than big bad orcs to fight.

[Turgon]

I had great fun playing Northern Rebirth. Of course it was somehow cliche that there were these really big armies but that was at least something that was still missing in Wesnoth for a long time. It's just the most overexaggerating campaign, turning a peasant into the mightiest leader withing all the mainline campaigns (if he has the Staff of Justice). Of course it's about great battles and stampedes, but for a single campaign that's ok as it doesn't happen all the time in Wesnoth.