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[Iggy_Gamechuck]

And, I also have new lore for you guys :-)

In the game, there are basically three political factions, and the duke Nicolas represents the main opposition to the current system in the Animal Kingdom. Nicolas started the reformist movement

The duke started as a general in the Lav rebellion, but has since amassed a large following among the influential scholars and the gentry.

Similar to King Lav, Nicolas is a strong believer in the hierarchy of animals and division of labour within the castes as defined not only by the Ark myth but also by (dubious) science. However, unlike the royalists, Nicolas believes that the lesser castes have the innate ability to perceive the true leadership of individuals.

Thus, leadership of the Kingdom should not be birth-given, but attained by the will of the animals by a democratic procedure. The leader should then be selected as a Chancellor, and his power stemming from not only his innate abilities to rule but also from the animals perceiving and acknowledging these abilities. This, Nicolas believes, will make rulers more accountable and less prone to tyranny, as has been known to happen.

Nicolas has adopted several ideas from scholars and academics on how a transformation of the monarchy into a democracy should improve life for all animals, regardless of caste. These ideas are frowned upon in the royal circles, and as a duke himself, Nicolas has to be careful in his words and actions, since open rebellion against the King will only get him in one of the aforementioned work camps of the Kingdom.

His followers are often referred to as “reformists”. Some of them feel that the monarchy is an outdated notion, and some just want a system where they wield more local power.

Read more about duke Nicolas on our dev blog :-)

[Iggy_Gamechuck]

The three game factions explained: Your choices WILL matter so choose wisely

In the past few months we’ve endeavoured to explain the basics of the political and social intricacies of the Animal Kingdom in 1848.

You can read about the principal actors – Coriolanus representing the revolutionaries, King Lav representing the monarchy, and Duke Nicolas representing the reformists. But what are the real differences between all these eagles and tigers and lions, if any?

Well, our ambition was to write these factions as equally appealing and for the player to have real difficulty deciding which faction to side with, not going the easy route by giving each leader certain flaws so the choice is between varying shades of dark-grey (like in so many games today), but for them to be paragons of real underlying ideological issues they present. We wanted their worldviews to give you real pause about their world and by extension ours.

Charles receiving a letter from King Lav.

In essence, the main question that divides these factions is their view of the concentration of power – should concentrated power be checked (and if yes – who watches the watchers?), or on the flipside – should concentration of power be done away with completely?

To find relevancy, one might liken the royalists’ worldview to the modern managed democracy of many technocratic governments, the reformists to the worldview of representative democracies seen in the liberal west, and the revolutionaries worldview as the equivalent of direct-democracy.

They will all be presented to the best of our ability, and as this is a difficult task, we’ve decided not to dive into any of their arguments today (however we have been known to discuss this on our Discord). We will leave the bulk of this for the players and the game, but today we will just “lay out the battlefield”, and let your imagination take over, after reading the three “manifests” of these factions.

Read the whole article on the game factions and how they work on our development blog!

[Iggy_Gamechuck]

This week’s lore post is about the various mysteries that Charles will encounter (and hopefully solve) in the southern continent of the Animal Kingdom while searching for the origins of the Ark Fantastic (this being the second act of the game).

Since we don’t have many art assets for the southern continent yet, this blogpost will be filled with pictures of the step-by-step artwork process for our first artwork ever – the three protagonists exploring the southern jungles.

This artwork was done way back in 2018 when we still had many different ideas on what exactly we want out of the game, and served as one of only a few mock-up pieces we sent to our Creative Europe application in 2019.

In a way, the pictures tell their own, separate narrative from the text, and hopefully, both are equally interesting.

The Mysteries of the Southern Continent

For as long as collective memory serves, the Kingdom has been a large landmass, surrounded by sea on all sides. This is the continent we now call Kingdom Proper. However, a new southern continent was found during the recent times of King Michaël.

This caused major ontological and cosmological troubles for the scholars of the Kingdom – how to fit this new continent into the world we thought was just a single landmass surrounded by sea and nothing else? Many hermeneutical ideas about the Ark myth had to be done away with, and many more had to be re-framed to fit newfound truths – such as the existence of monkeys, crocodiles and various birds found on the southern continent, all of which bear no mention in the Ark myth. At least not in its modern form.

If you like what you see, read the rest of the lore post on our development blog 

[Iggy_Gamechuck]

Unlike in some other RPG titles, you should not believe just everything you read, and not everything is a part of the game lore. Or is it? As a reputable scholar, Charles will often be in a position to debunk such stories, or, better yet, use his scholarly reputation to prove them true!

In this Ark Lore, we bring another tale from the Animal Kingdom, written in the form of a diary by an unknown hero, who fought a legion of the Undead.

Author’s remark: The images seen in this blog may not be related to the characters or the places of the story.

“How I defeated the Scourge of Blavgoz and his legion of bloodthirsty undead” – A true story

Dear reader, How I would love to tell you of my successful infiltration into the wolf’s den!

Infiltrating the lair of the villainous monstrosity has become quite easy after using my superior intellect.  Letting the poor townspeople deliver me in an empty casket of wine, as an offer to the wolf, was really an ingenious plan!


The hero is unknown, but his diary has been preserved. Legends about his adventures are still alive among the town folk who occasionally talk about the grim past of the Kingdom. But, they are just legends, after all.

But now came the more difficult part of my quest: finding and destroying the ritual foci so that these bloodthirsty undead might finally be put to rest.

Unfortunately, I found myself in quite an ordeal: They had delivered the barrel right in the midst of their living quarters and from the sounds permeating the thick oaken barrel, I could hear their vile gurgles and cries, as well as smell the thick rancid stench coming from the decomposing bodies of the undead soldiers.

The only thing that stopped them from breaching the barrel this instant was a speech from their master, the dretched scourge of Blavgoz himself!



I was sure that I could take out a dozen or so of these creatures with my martial prowess alone. (My rapier was left behind in Blavgoz as the still wine-coated inside of the barrel would taint the fine steel of the blade, a risk I was not willing to take.)

There were, going from the sounds, hundreds of those creatures just waiting for their master’s speech to finish! Even my formidable abilities would be tested to their utmost limits when faced with a horde of that magnitude!

And suddenly, in a flash of insight, I connected every puzzle piece and clearly understood what I had to do. From my satchel, I took the wooden doll I had found by the roadside. This, dear reader, was the doll that started this entire adventure, the doll of which I had traced the origin the entire way to the downtrodden village of Blavgoz.


An ominous-looking gate.

All the while under the impression that I had to find the poor little girl to whom it belonged.  Nothing could be more false… I actually had the ritual totem on me all the time and I didn’t even realize it!

I took another look at the doll and clearly saw the vile miasma surrounding it, why hadn’t I seen this before? I made my decision and snapped the doll to pieces in a single, fluid motion.

Suddenly I heard bodies collapsing on the ground, at least a hundred of these bound creatures were finally free from their wretched curse. The wolf almost choked in the middle of one of his sentences and it became quiet…. Very quiet…


If you want to hear some scary stories from the legends of the Kingdom, camping is the best activity for that.

“Well”, I thought, “Time for some fine ass-whooping!” as I burst from my barrel in a cloud of oaken shards and metal fringes. And let out one of my world-famous battle cries. Before beating the ever-living snot out of the still bedazzled scourge of Blavgoz.