King of Dragon Pass is a game first published in 1999 by A-Sharp Games. It is a fairly unique approach to gameplay; the majority of play consists of responding to events, which is married to a lightweight simulator game. It has famously opaque mechanics, and it is possibly one of the best strategy games ever made.
Well golly gee I want to play this just from that little recommendation! Where can I get it?
For a long time, the only way you could get this game was through paying A-Sharp to burn a copy onto a CD and mail it to you for 20 bucks. Now, though, you can get it from the Apple App Store for half that price, and it's worth every penny.
I am one of the lucky few who already has this game/is going to buy it for Windows. How do I get it working on a modern operating system?
First of all, run the game in the smallest resolution your computer will support- it originally ran on 640x480 and does not scale at all. Secondly, running the Mtplay95.exe file in the mt subfolder and using it to select Opal.mfx should run the game without a hitch.
So how is this going to work?
Stark and I will be running rival clans against one another, seeking to become the first King of Dragon Pass (ps this is the ultimate goal of the game). We will alternate updates with one another to show off our differing perspectives on how the years went.
What about the music?
I'm glad I made up this question! The entire soundtrack of King Of Dragon Pass is available for free download and play here:
Click
All right then! Let's set the stage; the world is called Glorantha, and....
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Children! It is time for lessons! No, not hunting lessons, nor weaving lessons, nor the lessons of cowherding. Those are all very good lessons, but these are special ones. It is time for you to learn who you are. What's that? Yes, you know your names, for sure. And you know your parent's names. How many know the names of your grandparents? Good. Your great-grandparents? Ah, your family has always been long-lived. But none of you know the names of your great-great-great-parents. Neither do I know mine. We cannot know their names, but we remember them in many ways. We remember them as the Ancestors to which we have a shrine. We remember them in our heritage as Heortlings. We remember them by following Orlanth and his clan. And we remember them by keeping the story of their deeds in our hearts. Settle down, children. It is time for a story.
Long, long ago, when gods and men walked the world together, there was a great war. The Gods War. Orlanth was one of many gods at the time, fighting to become great. He had only these two things: his sense of honor, and his family of other gods.
After many struggles and trials, Orlanth at last won the heart and the hand of Ernalda, the Earth Mother. They wedded, and all the clans that followed them came together for the wedding.
Each of the clans decided where they would stand for the wedding preparations. Many stood with Orlanth and partied and quaffed the Eight Known Drinks, and they grew closest of all to Orlanth. Some stood with Orlanth's loyal servant and companion Elmal, and guarded the wedding hall from Orlanth's many enemies. They grew closest to Elmal. We, along with many others, sent our women with Ernalda, where they drew apart and learned the Secret Names, which they must never tell. All you young girls will learn some of these names when you pass into adulthood. We grew close to Ernalda, and women pledged to her have often led us.
Following the grand celebration of the wedding, the new Gods Clan did many great deeds as they sought to remake the world. And we mortal clans stood alongside them and aided them as they did.
The greatest role we had in these deeds was when we aided Issaries the Talking God in Jested's Settlement. There he outwitted many strange and hostile deities to negotiate a great peace. Ernaldissa, it is a very long story. Come next Sacred Time, though, we will re-enact it for all to see, and if you like, you can ask me for the telling of it later.
At last Orlanth and Ernalda remade the world in their image. Thus began the Storm Age, a golden time for all the Orlanthi. Here Orlanth's son Vingkot became the first King of the Orlanthi, though he was not the last.
Under Vingkot we received into our clan the remnants of a defeated people we called the Stick Farmers, for their strange ways of tilling the earth. They became full and honored members of our clan, rather than the thralls that some other clans took.
Vingkot had many enemies on the earth that we fought alongside him.
Boztakang, a great warlord of the Trolls, was our greatest enemy among them, and trolls and we have never gotten along since.
But the Storm Age could not last forever. It ended in catastrophe unthought of. Yelm, the Sun Emperor, was cast down from the sky and the world plunged into unending darkness. Blood rained from the sky, and the waters of the sea came to life, mocking us as they gnawed at the land. This was all due to Chaos, whose gods and champions and creatures slaughtered many gods and mortals. Others rose to prominence fighting Chaos. But in the end, Orlanth and many of his kindred had to flee for the Gods World, and left mortals behind. Only those gods and mortals who could hide survived. The world died in the Chaos Wars, and some say that we have never truly left them. This was our darkest hour. Few of us were left to wander the cold, dark world.
But there were some who stood up against Chaos.
Heort was a king who fought Chaos and won. He fought it not just in the ways of Orlanth or Urox, but in the ways of Issaries and Lhankor Mhy, and Chalana Arroy. Heort gathered many people together, and made the first Laws. With the Laws were Chaos forced to retreat, and in gratitude all the people who followed Heort called themselves the Heortlings. The Children of Heort.
Heort recognized that some clans were better at the ways of war, and some were better at the ways of peace, and some lay in between. We were one of these in-betweeners, what they call a Balanced Clan.
At last, through the efforts of Heort in the Mortal and Orlanth in the Gods World, the Sun arose again and light returned to the world. The First Priests established themselves to reawaken the ancient links between mortals and gods. Our clan aided in the awakening of Chalana Arroy, the Healing Goddess, and we have been linked to her ever since.
The Dawn took place 1300 years ago. Since then, the gods have lived in the Gods World, and we have lived in the Mortal World. Though we can cross over for visits, to reenact the great deeds and stories of our gods, and we can speak to them and they us, and occasionally shall a god walk among us, we are irretrievably separated. Thus did we come to settle in lands named after mortal heroes. We lived in Heortland, after our second great king.
Know, children, that there are Humans, the Young Race, and there are the many Elder Races, Aldryami, Mostali, Dragonewts, Uzko, to name a few, and there are the foul races of Chaos, which I shall not name here, and there are Dragons. Dragons are a thing apart. They come in the shapes of great winged lizards with burning breath, and they come in the shapes of men with dragon souls, but scholars and seers say that these are but their dreams and passing thoughts. The true dragons lie elsewhere. Some six hundred years ago, dragons came to Heortland, offering to teach their ways to us.
We accepted. We learned their speech, and we learned many secrets from them. Dragons had been our enemies in the past, but we shrugged, and said "No feud among the Heortlings lasts forever. Why should one outside the Heortlings do the same?" Others disagreed. They refused the dragon, or they politely declined, or they drove it away with violence. We learned much.
Many of those who welcomed the dragons went to Dragon Pass- yes, the place we are right now! We did not. They settled, and they seemed to thrive, until one day 200 years ago the dragons slaughtered all the humans that lived in the pass. They killed and ate all the dragonfriends, and we wept and tore our clothes at our foolishness. But regardless, we cannot go against our ancestors. If a dragon comes to speak with us, we will hear him out. We will listen, no matter what it brings. We will not be foolish, of course. If a dragon should tell us there is gold or iron in his mouth and opens wide, we will decline as politely as possible.
Trouble came to Heortland about a generation ago. A man calling himself the Pharaoh, an exile, came to usurp the throne of Heortland. He started a war over the throne, and our clan was divided. We decided to split ourselves rather than kinslay, and we who damned the Pharaoh as an upstart left for Dragon Pass.
Many other Heortlings decided to do the same, and so when we arrived, with our new clan, we found friends and enemies here to greet us. We arrived with little other than the livestock we drove with us, the personal belongings of our families, and a few other things here and there. We have but one temple, and our connection to the gods in this strange land is weak. But we will persevere, and grow strong. We are Orlanthi. We are descended from the love between the Storm and the Earth, and we have weathered far worse than this.
Our tula is a good one. The land is fertile, with plenty of pasturage for our animals. Much of it remains to be explored for the many secrets that all good land has.
When we arrived, we claimed more land than we needed, so that you children, and your children, should have room for your cows and your fields when you are ready. My story is nearly at an end, but the end of a story is always the most important part.
We are Orlanthi. We are Heortlings. We are the Lonisci Clan. Carry that with you always. No matter where life may take you, you will always be one of the Lonisci. And that is not a small thing to say. Go, children. Go, play, help, learn, and, most important of all, remember. For some day, one of you will be in my place, telling our history to the little ones.
