Heroes & Parties

The muster roll

Tapping a tile hangs a roll down the left edge: a seal for every party standing there and one for the holding under them. The seal you tap unfurls its callout beside it. Here that is the Lord's own party, with the soldiers marching under them and everything they can be told to do.

Tap a tile and a roll unfurls down the left edge of the map, with a seal for everything standing on that square:

• A seal per party, carrying its hero's face, the moves it has left in the badge beneath, and a copper dot when that column is still owed the day's orders. Several of your columns can stand on one tile. They hang one under another, in muster order, with no pager to page.
• A seal for the holding, if there is one: sage-green, with the building's own figure and its level.

Tapping a seal opens its callout beside it, and closes the last one. You only ever command one thing at a time.

A party's callout

The heading is the hero, with the move points left, how full the column is (3/9 — the hero and eight followers, or ten under The Long Column), where they stand, and a bar of their health; tap it for their unit sheet. Under it, a chip for every soldier marching with them: a face, a name and a sliver of health. Tap a chip to inspect that soldier, hold it for the Army hub's muster board. A soldier who needs attention says so in their chip's tooltip (unpaid, 💰 mercenary, ⚒ drilling, ✋ wage withheld, or 🎖 ready for promotion), and an unpaid one is ringed in red.

Then two rows of commands. Orders is what to do with the column today:

• 🥾 Move takes the column in hand: the next tile you tap is where it marches, and the march card prices the road before it walks it.
• ⏳ Wait means done with this one for today, the same wave-past the ⏭ Next chip does, so the count up there always agrees with the roll.
• 🏕 Camp halts the column to mend, and lets go the moment everyone is whole again — full health and full Essence — with a note in the chronicle so you know they are ready. Use it when a column has been mauled and you want to be told when it can fight again.
• 🛡 Defend holds this ground until you say otherwise, and never releases itself. Use it for a column parked on a pass, a ford or a hall it is guarding.

Both stop the morning muster asking this column for orders at all; see Camping a column. Each lights while it is the standing order, and any march order lifts either.

The party is what belongs to the column rather than to the day: 🛡 Muster (the board, at a holding of your own), ✨ Skills (the hero's arts and the party's errands, badged with how many could be worked from where it stands), 🎖 Promote (lit and counted when someone qualifies), 🪤 Set Trap, which is field work and lights only in the open, and 🤝 Join, which lights and counts when there is a column of yours within hail that could fall in.

The ✕ on the callout puts the column down and clears the roll.

A holding's callout

The city's seal unfurls its four doors, and "Open ›" for the sheet behind them.

The holding's seal carries the city's own business: ⚔ Recruit (the one door onto every kind of hire this holding offers), 🚩 Reinforce (soldiers raised here and walked to a column of yours wherever it stands), 🔨 Works (build and research) and 🏛 Jobs (Followers put to a craft). Open › goes through to the full city sheet.

The unit sheet

Left to right: 3D model of the hero, their stats and level (center top), equipment slots (paper doll), and satchel/vault inventory (right side; tap items to equip or unequip).

Tap any soldier, hero or regular, and their unit sheet opens: one screen for everything about them. The figure on the left is that soldier in three dimensions, wearing your banner's colours: a Lord in crowned plate, a bow-armed rogue as an archer, a champion in circlet and plume, a chimera in its own hide. Tap the name at the top of the sheet to rename that soldier. The paper doll around it shows their two hand slots and three accessory slots; weapons, shields and artifacts come from battle spoils, marauder hoards, and dungeon chests, and ride in the satchel of the party that found them. Tap a satchel piece to equip it, tap a worn piece to stow it. The guild vault is another matter: it opens only inside one of your cities, so what one party finds in the far wilds reaches another party's hands by walking it home or sending a scout. Inside a city, Store all in vault on the sheet stows the party's finds (or hold a single item's chip to stow just that one). Carried pieces are marked 🎒 and vaulted ones 🏛. A few tricks of the trade:

• Warriors are strong enough to wield a two-handed weapon in each hand.
• Rogues shoot bows half again as hard, and a matched pair of daggers turns them into a whirlwind.

Heroes can learn up to three skills. Every skill must be researched first at your Town Hall (or specialized buildings like Barracks or Laboratory), then assigned to any hero of the right class. The full catalog of arms lives in Arms & Artifacts, and every skill and its research path in Skills & Research.

Paying the army

Shows all sources of gold and costs, and warns if you're at risk of not paying someone. You can hold soldiers' pay intentionally (wager against 3 days of grace) or disband them.

Every soldier costs upkeep each day at dusk, heroes and garrisons included: 1⚗️ for a warrior, 1🪙 for a rogue, 1💎 for an alchemist, 4🪙 for a mercenary, and gold for creatures. The purse pays out in a fixed order: heroes first (your Lord is always first in line), then anyone you have ⭐ pinned, then the field armies, then the walls. When coin runs short the tail of the line goes hungry, and every soldier keeps their own count. Three unpaid days and a regular deserts. A mercenary walks the first night pay is missed. An unpaid creature rampages through its own ranks and flies off. Your Lord grumbles, but stays.

Three places tell you where you stand. The treasury across the top of the map carries every coin with its daily net beside it. Tap it for the day's ledger: which holding pays what and what the army costs. The Army hub carries the pay line itself, with an ⚠ At risk filter that gathers everyone who will go short. And if ending the day would leave anyone unpaid, the dusk reckoning opens by itself: the bill grouped by cause, how long each resource lasts ("dry in 2 days"), and who walks first, each with a one-tap out. Desertion is a choice you saw coming, never a surprise.

Two levers on a soldier's panel put a shortfall under your control: ⭐ pay first pins a soldier to the front of the line, and ✋ withhold skips their wage on purpose. That is a wager against their three days of grace, for when the coffers need room to breathe. Heroes and mercenaries refuse to wait.

When a soldier has outlived their wage, disband them: half the bread and elixir that raised them returns to the stores (+20🍞 +10⚗️), though the Follower is spent. Mercenaries and other gold hires are dismissed with nothing; their pay stays spent.

The Army hub

One screen for managing all your soldiers: Rolls (the roster), Recruit (hiring), Muster (assigning to parties), Training (who's being drilled where).

The 👥 button in the top bar opens the Army hub, and everything you can do to a soldier lives behind it: Rolls, Recruit, Muster and Training.

Rolls is every soul under your banner: field armies, garrisons, marchers on the road, trainees away at a hall, even scouts on errands, with level, strength, wage and standing side by side. Filters pick out the field, the walls, the mercenaries, or everyone at risk. Copper rows are ready for promotion, red rows are in pay trouble. Tap a name and the panel beside it carries every order that soldier can be given: train, promote, station, join, disband, and the ⭐/✋ pay levers. The dark footer answers "can I afford my army?" at a glance and names the resource that runs dry first.

Growing your forces

Units level up from battle (experience for wounds dealt and kills) or paid training. The unit sheet shows both paths: earn XP in the field (free, but risky), or pay the drillmaster. The drillmaster only charges for what is left to learn, so a soldier three-quarters of the way to the next level trains for a quarter price. Field experience and paid training work together. Drill happens at a hall of the soldier's calling, and the new level arrives at day's end. Where the army is already standing at one, Train is right there. Where it is not, Send to a hall… lists every hall you hold that trains them, nearest first, with the cost and travel time — and a soldier's own sheet carries Send to drill, which picks the nearest hall for you, so you can act on a weak soldier where you noticed they were weak. They walk there, spend a day training, and walk home; the army holds position for their return. You can call them home any time on the road. The Training section of the Army hub shows who is away and which leg they're on.

Recruiting takes a Follower plus food and elixir (the faithful march on bread, not coin), and every recruit signs on under a name of their own. Mercenaries cost pure gold but demand pay every day and walk the moment you miss it. A veteran of the same class standing at the recruiting building mentors newcomers, and recruits start at half the mentor's level.

Champions and more heroes

A veteran of level 3+, standing in one of your cities or at the hall that trains their class (a rogue at a Shadow Guild, a warrior at a Barracks, an alchemist at a Laboratory), can be promoted to Champion for 150🪙. A champion leads a party of their own, and every hero leads up to 8 units, or 10 under The Long Column. The unit sheet shows the whole road as three checks: the level, the coin, the ground. The button is right there when all three pass, and the command card's 🎖 slot lights up whenever anyone under the selected hero qualifies. A fresh champion raises a banner of their own on the spot: they split into their own party the moment they are promoted (marching from the next day). Draw soldiers to them from the Army hub's muster board. Rarely, a dungeon holds a caged hero who will join their rescuer, champion-ranked but expensive to keep.

The muster board, and mustering from afar

The Army hub's Muster section is the board. Every party within hail, meaning this tile or the next one over, stands beside the garrison as a column. Drag a soldier between columns, or onto the walls to station them, or tap one to read them on the Rolls, where their orders are. Every chip carries its daily wage, and the eligible carry their promotion button inline. Stationed units defend the walls (and mentor recruits at trainer buildings) until a hero fetches them back.

Two of your own columns can never stand on the same square, so "within hail" is what makes any of this reachable: park a second hero beside the first and the two can trade soldiers freely. Each neighbouring column also carries Fall in, which strikes its banner and folds the whole thing into the column the board is paged to. It is the reverse of promoting a champion out. 🤝 Join on a party's callout opens this same board, lit and counted whenever there is a column within hail.

Recruit has two halves. Hire here is the bench of everything the holding under your army will take on. Muster from afar raises a recruit at a holding somewhere else and walks them to you: it lists what you can raise by calling, notes the holdings it draws from, and picks your best source (strongest mentor first, then nearest). The receiving party holds position until every marcher arrives. The 8-slot cap counts marchers on the road, contested holdings (under half their land held) cannot muster at all, and you can recall a marcher home to move early.

Scouting and couriers

Scouting is a rogue's trade, not a unit you buy. Any rogue marching with a party, meaning anyone but the hero leading it, can be sent out. Send them from the command card's ✨ Skills sheet, which gathers the party's errands alongside the hero's arts; the fastest rogue rides. Choose their errand:

• Chart the unknown: they ride for unexplored country, burning off the fog of war in a wide circle as they go, then turn for home.
• Carry the finds home: they load up everything in the party's satchel and deliver it to the vault of your nearest city.

Either way the party keeps marching; it never waits on a rider. The return leg chases wherever the party has gone since, so a three-day errand becomes a longer one if you have marched two days the other way. Send a rogue and the party loses a blade until they return. A rogue who takes up a bow rides as an archer on their unit sheet.