Thunderstone

In the years following Under the Burning Suns and Invasion from the Unknown, the remnants of civilization have come in contact with high technology. Over a hundred years of mostly peace has allowed rapid advancements in a rebuilding world. In this age of mixed magic and science, the first powerful spacecrafts have been developed and the elves, dwarves, humans, and orcs of the world of Irdya have ended isolation with the galaxy at large...

Thunderstone is the far future of Wesnoth, a post-post-apocalyptic world where fantasy and science fiction collide. The core of the mod will be an era, consisting of six all-new factions - Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Shaxthals (Biomechanicals from IftU), and Velirssh (aliens featured in UtBS and IftU). The mod will also include a new space terrain for spaceships (although expect to see spaceships as often as you see ships in standard Wesnoth), as well as extra units and terrains necessary to be the core for scenarios and campaigns based in the far future of the world Wesnoth.

Planned Factions

Elves

Elves are still in touch with nature and they have developed their magical skills. Elves focus heavily on magic, rejecting technologies which they find disharmonious, and excel at biology and medicine. Much of their technology is magically-enhanced. Tactically, elves focus on mobility and precision fire.

Humans

Humans are still the jack-of-all-trades race. Balancing magic and science, humans are generalists who adapt to novelty more effectively than the other races of Irdya. Their technical strength area is computers and miniaturization. They, more than the other speaking peoples, tend to win by luring opponents into fatal mistakes.

Dwarves

The dwarves are the master technologists and builders of Irdya, especially in the areas of power, weapons, propulsion, and large-scale engineering.

Orcs

Orcs have stolen most of what they have from the more civilized technologies, but focus mostly on war.

Shaxthals (Biomechs)

An ancient civilization inhabited the planet; those were the Argazars. Long time ago, they were losing a war with the planet Rythé, and found themselves close to complete oblivion, until with their great knowledge of biology, genetics, technology and even magic, they were able to create the ultimate weapon: the biomechanicals, known in their ancient tongue as "Shaxthals", invincible legionnaries. They were made of the best characteristics of every creature known by their creators. They served as protectors to the Argazars in the beginning, but one fateful day, a great cataclysm desolated the lands, destroyed the cities, and buried them down into the ground.

Most Argazars were not able to survive the devastation, but a few ones struggled to sustain their lives in a underground base, where the shaxthal production was started. The Rythénians thought their race was gone, so they stopped attacking the planet. No one knows what events took place in the surface during centuries, millenia, eons. But what is known, is that the Argazards lost control over their creations, because of a small detail that slipped through the original design.

Their instincts prevailed, a strange mixture of those of the original mangled beings they were in the past, and those that were programmed into their artificial bodies. Those instincts commanded them to start consuming the remainings of the Argazar civilization. They took the argazan bodies and integrated them into their own lifeform. For they had an advanced assimilation system that allowed them to integrate into new environments, or adapt the environment themselves to suit their needs, including any living organism that inhabit them.

The Shaxthals had the same knowledge of technology of the Argazars, just not that of genetics or magic. With barely a few dozen of men left, the Argazars figured out a way to destroy the Shaxthals. The strongest ones, few though, survived. Thus, the loremasters decided to keep them in cryogenic pods instead of destructing them forever, as they thought they could still be a last hope of survival at some point in the future. That foolish thought was what almost condemned the Great Continent to its armageddon.

Long after the Fall of Wesnoth, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Chaos figured out a way to resurrect the creatures, and reproduce their technology by artificial means, and even figured out a way to make them able to reproduce by natural, asexual means. They were converted then into the main weapon of the Chaos Empire. After the defeat of Argan the Shadow Master, the Shaxthals were freed from their imprisonment in the dark hives of the Heart, and managed to integrate to existing environments in the outsides, and even adapt the environments to suit their own needs. Their intelligence continued evolving, to a point that some privileged ones became self-sentient, and started to inflict destruction and strife in the existing races, which managed to keep the situation under control thanks to their technological advance, until the shaxthal's own advance got to a point above the former.

Coordination

IRC Channel

#thunderstone (freenode.net)

Forum Thread

Coming soon!