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 spacecraft have been developed and the elves, dwarves, humans, and orcs of the world of Irdya have ended their isolation from 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 Thunderstone add-on 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 add-on 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.

New Features

Terrains

Thunderstone introduces new sets of terrain on top of the traditional Wesnoth terrains. The two major terrain sets are Uninhabited and Space. Space is the void between the heavenly bodies and is only passable by spacecraft, robotic or semi-robotic creatures that do not need to breathe oxygen, and creatures shielded from the harsh environment and provided with oxygen with a specialized suit, such as the human Scout. Uninhabited is a similar environment except on a planet or moon, one hostile to living creatures. The major difference is that only fliers can travel in Space while any machine small enough to enter the atmosphere (all except the biggest spaceships) can travel on or directly above Uninhabited terrain.

Electric Damage Type

Thunderstone also introduces a new damage type called "Electric." Electric is similar to fire, but is usually produced from high-tech weapons. Electric's main difference with Fire is that it does extra damage against high-tech machinery such as spaceships, thus making it an effective counter for otherwise powerful units.

Weaponry and Ranges

Thunderstone introduces many new weapons of a higher technology level than standard Wesnoth, including guns. It also introduces a new attack range, long ranged, that is mostly used in spaceships and other weaponry capable of much higher range than bows or most guns, such as sniper rifles. Because of long ranged's rarity, it usually provides no retaliation to the attacker which is a key strategic advantage.

Guns are portable machines that shoot projectiles at people and have replaced the bow as the ranged weapons of choice. Thunderstone is the dawn of the space-traveling age for the sentient races of Irdya, so guns vary from bullets to bursts of harmful electricity. Unlike bows, the rapid-fire capability of guns enables many guns span two ranges. For example, a shotgun is able to be used in both melee in ranged. For such weaponry, they tend to have more damage but less strikes when close up. All standard guns that can be used in melee have firststrike there.

Despite the abandonment of the bow for the gun, some close-ranged weapons are still used. These wide variety of objects are not necessarily disadvantaged since they are usually unexpected weapons in a ranged world.

Six All-New Factions

Elves

Elves are still in touch with nature and in the years of peace they have greatly enhanced their magical skills. Elves focus heavily on this 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. They remain intensely conservative, and their technology is ultra-reliable even if it lacks the finesse and efficiency of human or elven work.

Orcs

Orcs have stolen most of what they have from the more civilized species, but focus mostly on war. Their technology tends towards the crude, overpowered hack, and is notoriously (and sometimes comically) unreliable. The flip side of this is that in any environment that doesn't outright kill them, orcs are less helpless without their tech than the other speaking peoples.

Shaxthals (Biomechs)

Long before the arrival of humans, the ancient civilzation of the Argazars dominated Irdya. Losing a war with the planet Rythé, and found themselves close to complete oblivion. But 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". These invincible legionnaries combined the toughest and most lethal attributes of every creature known by their creators. They served as protectors to the Argazars, but could not guard them against Rythénian strategic weapons. The Rythé desolated the lands of Irdya, destroyed the cities, and buried the works of the Argazars.

A remnant of the Argazars, buried deep in the very underground base where shaxthal production was centered. The Rythénians thought their race was gone, so they ceased attacking the planet. No one knows what events took place on the surface during centuries and millennia that followed, as the shattered ecology of Irdya reknit itself. But what is known, is that the Argazars lost control over their creations -- or, rather, their creations ceased recognizing them as masters. Whether this was due to a mutation in the shaxthal or the remnant Argazars themselves is not known.

Without the direction of the Argazars, the instincts of the shaxthals prevailed. Their drives were a strange and predatory mixture of those of their biological ancestors and the warfare programming of their artificial bodies. Those instincts eventually drove them them to consume the remainins of the Argazar civilization. Eventually they took the Argazars' bodies and integrated them into their own buiomechanical plan. For they had been designed with an assimilation system that allowed them to integrate into new environments, or adapt the environments themselves to suit their needs, including any living organisms that might inhabit them.

The Shaxthals kept most of the technology of the Argazars, losing magic and the advanced forms of biomanipulation with which they had been created. Reduced to barely a few dozen, the Argazars figured out a biological weakness of their creations, a way to destroy most of the Shaxthals en masse. All but a few of the strongest shaxthals perished. Fatefully, the Argazars decided to keep them in cryogenic pods instead of destroying them forever, as they thought there might be a last hope of using reprogrammed shaxthals to rebuild their civilization at some point in the future. That foolish thought was almost condemned the Great Continent to an armageddon millennia later.

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. The chaos mages of the Empire even enabled them to them able to reproduce by natural, asexual means. Thus modified, they became the principal and most dreaded 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 adapted to the time-renewed ecology of the surface world. They then began to prey on the speaking peoples of Irdya.

Velirsshi

The Velirsshi are mysterious aliens about which little is known who have come into contact with Irdya before in several instances. In their most recent encounter, some Velirssh were minions to the forces of Chaos.

Needed art

Factions/units

• Elves (megane?)
• Humans
• Dwarves
• Orcs
• Shaxthals (Shadow_Master?)
• Velirsshi
• spaceships

Terrains

• space terrains (space, nebula, asteroids, etc.)
• moon terrain (basically greyscaled desert, I (Aeth) can do this myself)
• metal floor/walls (dependent on new Indoor terrain type for 1.5)
• various futuristic looking villages/castles, including a space-located spaceport "village"

Coordination

IRC Channel

#thunderstone (freenode.net)

Forum Thread

Coming soon!