I know this thanks to the in-game encyclopedia, which is basically Mount & Blade Facebook. She has a belt inlaid with precious jewels and expensive fabric. This is Anidha, a noblewoman of the Aserai. I'm off to off to Quyaz, the Constantinople of the game map, to propose to another woman far beyond my station. That means leaving the front and travelling to a city where my name is not synonymous with being unceremoniously bashed to sleep by Imperial warlords. It's time to get back on the dating scene. "Fall back, Culharn!" the commander barks at me. I inch forward within the walls of our castle, to open the gate and let the idiot computermen out to fight. "Stay in reserve," he orders through an on-screen prompt, as a hundred buggy men struggle to open our own gate and find the enemy. In one fight, the Aserai commander gives me 7 horse archers to lead, a real honour. I get in a couple more battles, alongside a band of merry murderers I've collected. But Arwa had wounded me more deeply than any mace. I could have pressed on, and asked her for another chance to prove myself. "I don't think we have that much in common," Arwa had told me, when I failed just one of the three questions on the love quiz. It's like romancing a partner in Mass Effect, except everyone asks you the same things, essentially handing you a government-sanctioned relationship questionnaire. When you want to marry someone, you outright tell them so, and you have to do a couple of courtship conversations. This was the result of a bad persuasion roll. "I don't think so," she said, and took her 28 men to the front lines to stab Imperial bellies. I once told Arwa I was honoured to live in an era where such a valiant warrior could make a name for herself. You can wed whoever, be she a courtly lady of high repute or a valiant murderqueen like my beloved Arwa. You do this just by throwing your charm stat around. Thankfully, developers TaleWorlds understand the importance of romance and have made it possible to tie the knot with a single lady, or single man if your character is a woman (there's only straighto romancing so far, unfortunately). So I marched south with a small band and signed up with the Sultan of Aserai as a mercenary.īut what is a warrior without a warriess? A disgusting bachelor of the sword, that's what. They are shockingly desirous of other people's wars. Forest-dwelling woad-bathers with an absurd love for vowels and triskelions. If you don't follow the swashbuckling realm of Mount & Blade, the Battanians are basically Celts. For the purposes of another stupid adventure, I'm an outrageously tall Battanian javelin boi with an attractive bowl cut. They'll tell you Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is a medieval war game. It's hard to say what mystery ailments arise from love, when you're storming the battlements and slashing inaccurately at the air in front of your foe.
Or maybe that was the Imperial mace that cracked me across the skull. She made me feel dizzy, a real knock-out.
A fighty southerner who had been taken prisoner on four separate occasions, but still loved to go to war.