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CK2 Dev Diary #36: The Witching Hour

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a good time during the Holidays. I know I did, but now it’s time to don the crown, strap on the sword and get back to work on Crusader Kings II (and my other game, of course...) Now, what better way to start off the new year than with a bit of harmless witchery? In the terribly long eras before the great thinkers of the Age of Reason would have us replace magic with science, the “occult” was of course seen as a normal part of life, and society lived in fear of curses and evil spells. But… just because you’re superstitious does not mean the witches aren’t out to get you! Just like today, the desperate and the unscrupulous would seek power by any means necessary, including the worship of demons and evil spirits...

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This brings us to my favorite Society in the upcoming expansion Monks and Mystics; the Demon Worshippers. These brothers and sisters of the left-hand path come in several varieties: Abrahamics get “Lucifer’s Own”, Tengri pagans get the “Plaguebringers”, the Indian faiths are afflicted with a particularly nasty type of Kali worship, Baltic, Slavic and Finnic pagans get “The Cold Ones” (evil shamans) and Germanic Pagans have those who curry the favor of Hel and of powerful jotuns. Regardless of religious context, they are all united in their self-serving, utterly ruthless quest for power in the world of the living, and care little for their fate in the afterlife. As they advance through the ranks, Demon Worshippers get powers like “Dark Divorce”, “Summon Familiar” and “Tainted Touch” (a health curse.) Through their network of agents, they can also attempt to abduct relatively low ranking characters. Now, a lot of the content for the Demon Worshippers is hard to explain in terms of placebo effects and natural phenomena, so if you don’t care for the supernatural I suggest simply not joining those Societies (because rooting out their covens and persecuting them through your Court Chaplain is reasonably historical and adds flavor to the game.) However, if you really don’t want them around, you can turn them off through a Game Rule.

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Next up are the infamous Assassins, a Shiite Muslim Society that - unsurprisingly - specializes in murder. The elusive Assassins consider themselves the true followers of Allah, and will do anything to further the advances of Shia Islam and protect their fellow believers. Consisting of loyal warriors as well as competent spies, wielding manipulation and social skills as expertly as a dagger, they specialize in asymmetrical warfare, striking hard at the heart of their enemies. Their special powers include intimidation and murder. For example, they can get a Favor with someone (if you have the Conclave expansion) by leaving a dagger on their pillow. At higher ranks, they can also mark someone for death, so that lower ranked members will get that murder as a mission. Since this Society is also a political entity and a Holy Order of sorts, the Grandmaster gets the power to raise special troops.

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There is more to say about these Societies; their other powers, missions and semi-random events, but I don’t want to spoil it all. Oh, and if you have the Way of Life expansion, you can use “Spy On” to find out if a character is a member of a secret Society like the above...

There won’t be a CK2 stream today, but stay tuned for something next week (and a new dev diary, of course)!
 
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I'm actually not sure. The planned DD for next week involves some cut stuff, so a re-shuffle will have to be done. Exciting times!

Hi, so I am not aware that this question has been answered yet, as I saw it earlier in the comments. Are the Assassins going to be renamed to there respected name of "Hashashin," or are we the community going to have to mod that? Just curious. Also I think making some of the Holy Christian Orders part of the societies would be a nice touch. Look forward to hearing from you.
 
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Or perhaps you could start writing these things ambiguously again instead of having to make them clear cut fantasy thereby forcing people to either live with it or ditch a quite large portion of content. And before you say that most people don't have fantasy switched off, then I don't have it switched off despite not liking the downright fantasy stuff. I just think that what you have to give away (where many things are ambiguous and could well be explained) is worth more to keep than the annoyance of having the downright fantasy stuff---for now at least. (Especially given that things like immortality are something you can just decide not to do and the AI don't do them).

In fact it probably wouldn't really be that hard to come up with slight alterrations (perhaps even just of the fluff text) to get the ambiguity back.
Now obviously I don't know what the things they can do do, but you said the tainted touch is a health curse. Going by that and keeping the name in mind then you e.g. could have that you put something toxic on your hands which then gets transferred to the vic when you greet him.
For instance the secret society could have discovered some "cursed soil" (alpha radioactive material) which upon ingestion slowly withers you away. So put it on your hands and thereby have it transfer to your enemy. You rinse your hands thoroughly, whereas he just goes eating and hence ingests some of the cursed soil meaning that his health will be negatively effected by the radiation which continually will be emitted inside him.
There you have something which to people of the time would be magic, but is perfectly explainable.
Wow, I'd love to "like" this post! Unfortunately, my poor decisions on the forum in the past have made that impossible, so I'll just create a whole post to let you know! :)
 
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This is a lot of flavour for CK2 which is always nice however I'm concerned it might be a bit too overwhelming for my playstyle. I'm not much a roleplayer, I like the Kingdom building, waging wars and ruling a realm aspects the most.

This will be a fantastic addition for the modders though!
 
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I guess this means the generic portraits are French then. Are there any other cultures that don't have a portrait pack at this point?
Yeah Dutch. Which is odd dutch and german should have the same, they are the same in this era (Even having them as separate cultures is a anarchronism), while french/norman/english should use the same (since most characters are nobles). Up until the hundred years war the english nobility basically are french. Even today the french are probably the closest culturally linked with the english (except perhaps the americans).
 
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Can Zunists/West Africans get a demon cult? Or will they at least have the option to join the Lucifer one? I usually only play those two dominantly but I want to do the cult stuff so badly.
 
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This is my question as well. Will there be Non Muslim assasian societies that can be joined..
Why would there? The Hashashin were a Nizari sect of Shi'a Islam. There will be mods for sure, but I don't think the game should support such a thing more than it should allow for Norse Benedictines, or Zoroastrian Ecumenical Patriarchs.

Some more information on the historic Assassins can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins
 
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There should be some more societies like:
1, The Cult of China insists to explore and expand map to far east
2, The Cult of Cat who are slavers controlled by their cat pets
3, The Holy Order of Doge who fights against the Cult of Cat
4, The Cult of Bear who make sure the game is bearable.
5, The Cult of Paradox Players who gets random events like spending gold buying new DLCs to improve one of five attributions.
6, The Cult of Paradox who make those DLCs
.....
 
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i think doomdark is a member of the cult of Vicky the Third :eek:
oh, the fearsome cult of Vicky the Third. With enough sacrifice and when the stars are right, the elder queen Vicky will awaken with her grand fleet and army from the deep to colonize the entire world! And everyone will lose their sanity driven mad by the complex economy... :eek: .....(Something must be off based on lores. :p)
 
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The Assassins seem like a fun group to have charchers join ( Also my favorite game was assassin creed series and thus I always wanted to have those assassins in Ck2 ) and I am going to assume the Templars are going to be around to see the war between Assassins and Templars play out in Ck2 as well :D.

i wish you could be Sunni islam or christian and have a assassin order as well. But that is a minor thing that I am sure a mod will take care of. What really matters is that this expanson is looking great and I have a AAR in mind where i can see some of my characters joining a secret society and trying to gain the upper hand in there plots :D

keep up the great work Paradox :D
 
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The Assassins seem like a fun group to have charchers join ( Also my favorite game was assassin creed series and thus I always wanted to have those assassins in Ck2 ) and I am going to assume the Templars are going to be around to see the war between Assassins and Templars play out in Ck2 as well :D.

i wish you could be Sunni islam or christian and have a assassin order as well. But that is a minor thing that I am sure a mod will take care of. What really matters is that this expanson is looking great and I have a AAR in mind where i can see some of my characters joining a secret society and trying to gain the upper hand in there plots :D

keep up the great work Paradox :D
you can already play out a war between the Hashashin and the Order of Solomon's Temple in CK2 - both are Holy Orders of different religions :p
 
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things copied would only make sense for the pagan reformers, who are all, looking at the other religions and borrowing the best ideas to adapt to their modernised, codified forms? maybe zoroastrians? as adaptation could happen in resurrection. but only in the post old gods starts.
i dont feel they'd make sense for already established in an organised form religions like christianity or sunni
 
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I guess this means the generic portraits are French then. Are there any other cultures that don't have a portrait pack at this point?
South and West Slavic cultures, as well as Hungarians still use default European portraits.
Default Arabic portraits are used on the entire Arabian peninsula, Levant and North Africa.
 
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Oooo, while I understand that sometimes ideas need to be cut, I'm still interested in the process that led to ditching them, how far into trying to implementation they got before being scrapped, and so on. The behind the scenes work and thought processes for projects are always interesting to me... can you share any of these? unless these are just things that have just been pushed back to the next DLC?

We might talk about cut stuff in the post-release DD, but since the base Societies system is coming in the patch we might also add them later so we don't want to reveal them too soon.

I understood that reference before EA ruined it.

Will societies be able to reveal themselves when they feel sufficiently powerful? For instance, if a Secret Shi'ite gains near enough the equivalent of the Arabian Empire, can they proclaim "HAHA! I was a Shi'ite all along!"

More specifically: can Devil Cults do this?

Devil cults cannot do this, Secret religions can do something like it though - but details will need to wait until a later DD.

Are societies global, realm based, or some global some realm based?

Societies are global.

Hi, so I am not aware that this question has been answered yet, as I saw it earlier in the comments. Are the Assassins going to be renamed to there respected name of "Hashashin," or are we the community going to have to mod that?

That's more of a derogatory name that became widespread. You're free to mod it, of course, but we're going to stick with Assassins, which is equally incorrect historically I suppose but nicely descriptive.
 
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