Essos Dev diary : Some Flavour

Essos information has been scarce these past few months, the reason being a lot of us have been busy in that time and progress has slowed. But rest assured we are still going, we have decided on a vague plan to make our next release an Essos one. This will be after Sons of Abraham has been released so we can take advantage of any features we can use for the mod. So hopefully a December release! In the meantime here is some things we have been working on:

Piracy
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The regions of the Stepstones and the Basilisk islands shall be inhabited by pirates! Aurane Waters shall be a playable pirate in A Feast for Crows:

As you can see pirates have their own piracy religion which both allows them to raid provinces and negotiate rivers. They have mechanics very similar to that of the Wildlings, in that they have a free invasion casus belli and a philosophy of only following strong rulers. If you have a weak heir your realm will fracture with all higher titles being destroyed, but of course you can try and rebuild your pirate realm if this happens.

Triarchs
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The Free City of Volantis has a unique system of Governance which we are trying to replicate in the mod. Volantis is ruled by three Triarchs with equal power that are elected in yearly elections. Of course the game engine only allows for one ruler who directs foreign policy and the like, but we have introduced an election system whereby two junior Triarchs are elected each year:

Any landholder of the republic chooses a political party: Either the Elephants, the party of merchants, or the Tigers, the party of the warriors. Any Valyrian party member of the republic can stand for Triarch:

At the moment the head Triarch, the ruler of the republic, rules for life (something which we are hoping will become moddable in the next patch so they to are elected yearly). The junior Triarchs, elected yearly, have a few powers they can wield against the senior Triarch, including veto of wars of aggression and appointments to the council:

But if a Triarch doesnt toe the party line, e.g. the Elephant party expects Elephant Triarchs to veto wars, the party members will be unhappy and their re-election will become less likely. To balance this Elephant pacifism Elephant patricians can much more easily sieze trade posts from non-Elephant patrticians using party support. Hopefully this will all make Volantis a more unique merchant republic to play!

The Bleeding Years
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After the Doom of Valyria and before Aegon Targaryen invaded Westeros, the nobles of Volantis tried to establish a new Valyrian Freehold themselves, conquering Myr and Lys before attacking Tyrosh, upon which Aegon came upon his Dragon to oppose them. In the Bleeding Years scenario, which has replaced the Seven Kingdoms, the war betwen Volantis and Tyrosh is in full swing: