Player

Starting out

A new game starts at 8:00 on the 1st of spring, year 10,412. A bandit hideout lies near: footpads wait about 2 km off and a band of poachers 1.8 km off to one side.

A new Disclander is made before setting out. Pick a man or a woman, a name and a face; every rule is the same for both. Then you have 10 gold to spend:

Step	What you buy
Alchemist	Potions for your skills and attributes, 40 silver each, drunk on the spot. A point takes a potion for every ten you already hold
Kit	A piece for every slot, crude to fine, or a ready kit (Rider, Footman, Archer, Bare); a horse for 1 gold 80 silver, with its barding and saddlebags, or none, and you start on foot
Army	Men out of work, by name, each with his role, best skill, price and daily wage, and mules for the train. The page shows how many days the coin left pays their wages
Camp	Tents and bedrolls for the camp

You set out with what you bought, the coin left and a full stomach. Save preset keeps the lot to use again. Every rival Disclander spends the same 10 gold its own way, a horse first.

With no horse you walk, and your army marches at your pace. E takes a spare horse from the train, if it has one.

Moving

	Walk	Sprint
On foot	6 m/s	10 m/s
On horseback	8 m/s	20 m/s

A horse leaps off the mark: past 5 m/s within 0.75 s and at 90% of its sprint within 3 s. It coasts to a stop, backs up at 2 m/s, and turns wider the faster it goes.

Trees slow a horse more than a man. Ride close by a trunk and it drops to as little as 2 m/s, so through a forest a horse is little faster than a man on foot. A marsh or snowfield caps a horse at 0.7 of its sprint, and water at a man’s walk.

On foot you step up anything no higher than 0.4 m, so you can climb stairs and walk into houses. Jumping lifts you about half a metre. Crouched you move at half pace, crawling at 35%, with no sprinting or jumping. Water over 0.15 m deep drops you to 35% of your pace, falling to 10% at chest height (1.2 m). Nobody swims. A horse wades to 1.5 m.

Get off your horse (E) once it is below 2 m/s. It waits where you left it.

Health

You have 100 hp. Health comes back only at rest: none while your army marches, fights or flees, 1 a second when it halts or camps in the open, and twice that under a roof (an inn, a village, a friendly town’s walls). Not while you bleed. If you fall, you are back on a fresh horse 40 m from your army after 5 seconds, carrying a wound.

Wounds

Your wounds are by body part: head, torso, each arm and each leg. What a part takes in a fight wounds it lightly past a fifth of your health and badly past nearly half, and the blow that fells you wounds the part it hit. Your health as a whole is capped by your worst wound.

Part	A bad wound
Head	Dazes you for 2 s and darkens the edges of your sight
Torso	30% less breath (15% for a light one)
Sword arm	Swings 30% slower and 30% weaker
Shield arm	Breaks your block under a hard blow
Each leg	35% slower, and no sprinting

Wound	Health capped at
Light	70%
Bad	40%

An arrow that gets through your armour may stay in you, up to six a part. A part with an arrow in it counts as at least lightly wounded and does not mend. The Character screen’s Wounds tab (I) shows each part: pull an arrow out (it bleeds), or bandage a part with no arrow left, which stops the bleeding and heals it half again as fast, using bandages from the train. Camped or under a roof, every arrow comes out.

Wounds heal a day at a time at your army’s rate. See Battles. Steep ground, falls and the rim are on Biomes.

You tire like any man, by Breath and Rest, and so does your horse. Breath needs food in your stomach. See Fatigue.

Your horse

Your horse has 200 hp, twice a man. Blows that land low on you (from a man on foot, an arrow or a javelin) wound it by half of what reached you. Brought down, it throws you and dies, and you go on foot until you take a spare horse from the train. It mends out of a fight.

The pointer

Locked, you are the rider: the mouse looks and picks the side of your swing. Free, you are the commander: a click gives an order, never a blow. Left Alt frees it. Tap it to switch, or hold it while you point and click and let go to ride. A squad key frees it with that squad picked. On the world map it is always free.

The camera

The camera sits behind your shoulder, 4 m on foot and 7 m in the saddle, and is pulled in by walls, ceilings and hills. Four notches of the wheel in bring it to first person. Scroll out and you become your army’s banner on the map. The map takes over at about 400 m up on a clear day, lower at night or in fog or rain.

Keys

These are the default keys. Almost all can be bound again on the Keymap tab of Options.

Riding and fighting

Key	What it does
W / S	Riding: urge the horse on, or rein in and back up. On foot: walk forward or back
A / D	Riding: steer. On foot: step left or right
Left Shift	Sprint
Space	Jump; in the saddle, the horse jumps a hedge, wall or fence
C	Crouch, then crawl, then stand
E	Get off the horse, or back on within 2.5 m of it
Mouse	Look; the way you last moved it picks your attack or block side
Left button	Hold to wind up, release to strike
Right button	Hold to block; press during a windup to feint
Q	Swap the weapon in your hand for your sidearm
F	Use the door you stand by, or light or put out a camp fire

Leading your men

Key	What it does
Left Alt	Free the pointer
` / 1 to 9	Pick everyone, or one squad (or the train)
F1 to F6	At will, follow me, advance 10 m, charge, hold, archers fire or hold fire
M / B	Take up the marching or battle formation
Ctrl+M / Ctrl+B	Keep the current plan as the marching or battle formation
N	Pin a squad’s ranks, or free them
H	Make camp, or strike it
Ctrl+H	Keep the camp as it stands as the camp plan
K	Set the packs down, or pick them up
G	Gather after a fight, or loot a body

On the map

Key	What it does
Scroll wheel	Zoom from first person out to the whole disc
Middle button drag	Turn and tilt the view
Left click ground or a place	March there by the quickest way
Left click own banner	Select that army
Right click	Send the selected army a courier: march there, or join that army
X	Courier to the selected army: split in two

Anywhere

Key	What it does
0 / = / -	Pause, faster, slower (paused, 1x, 10x, 60x)
P	Party screen
I / J / U	Character screen, journal, realm screen
R	Hire, or the job board, at the place you are by
T	Trade at a town that welcomes you
O / L	Swear to a lord at his seat, or renounce your oath
F8 / F9	Quick save, quick load
Esc	Pause menu, or close a screen