A list of available sub-commanders that you can meet, befriend, or betray in the Dwarven lands of Ilfand.

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Heroes & Officers

Note- a commander’s alignment often has an effect on how they view your character. Depending on your own alignment, it may be easier to recruit certain officers at the expense of others. Neutrally aligned characters have no philosophical bias, but that doesn’t mean that they will be easy to recruit. Neutrally aligned players have no penalties when recruiting heroes, but receive no advantages either.

Dwarven Lands

Name: Jack Harrigan

Race: Lowland Dwarf

Background/Qualification: Hunter, Disgraced Rifle Commander

Alignment: Neutral

Command Role: Master of Sharpshooters

Player Tech: Punt (drop-kick your way to glory! Instantly kills short enemies below 25% health)

Special Tech: Bump Reloading (-20% reload time for rifle & skirmish units)
Unique Unit/s: Wind Riflemen (Expensive, but devastating rapid-fire riflemen. They boast good accuracy and a phenomenal rate of fire, but have less range than other rifles and a weak melee attack)

Quote: “Hunting’s got it’s benefits. You stay fit, see a lot of nature’s beautiful creatures, and kill them. Oh, and your customers don’t court-martial you for doing the job properly.”

Bio:

Harrigan was raised the fourth of five children, the son of a drayman and a mill worker in the industrial town of Wharton St. Eave. By the time he was 15, his mother and one of his brothers had been killed by industrial accidents in the notorious Wharton Manufactory. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, Harrigan enlisted in the military and joined the 33rd Midlands Light Infantry, a scouting and skirmishing force whose main duty was to keep watch over the frontier between the Highlands and Lowlands.

As Harrigan’s home town was on the frontier, the 33rd regularly made contact with Highland Reavers. In several bloody skirmishes Harrigan distinguished himself as a leader and a marksman, and the generally poor equipment and constant supply problems plaguing the regiment necessitated that he and his peers become very talented trackers and hunters. He eventually rose to the rank of sergeant, then obtained a battlefield commission as a lieutenant, as well as a detachment of riflemen. He distinguished himself in many actions, but was frequently passed over for promotion due to his breeding and his mixed heritage- Harrigan’s mother was a Highlander.

When House Guld, one of the more powerful Highland clans, pressed hard into Lowland territory the high command ordered the 33rd to intervene. Harrigan and his rifles moved quickly to intercept the enemy only to find that the attack was a ruse. No sooner did this news arise than Harrigan got news that House Guld had besieged Wharton and planned to use his home town as a staging ground for the real invasion. After a brutal forced march to bring aid to his beleaguered home, the regiment arrived to find that the city had been captured intact, its surviving citizens held hostage.

The high command, seeking swift retaliation, demanded that the 33rd retake the city at all costs, and as quickly as possible. The exhausted troops of the 33rd did their duty, driving into the town before the Highlanders expected them. Even so, the fighting was brutal and costly. Many residents were slain by the Highland clansmen as they withdrew, the town was set ablaze, and the 33rd Regiment’s numbers halved in the furious, desperate fighting. In the aftermath, Harrigan’s family was dead, his home burnt to the ground, and his beloved regiment about to be dissolved. The survivors of the 33rd, far from being hailed as heroes, were blamed for the genocide by the townsfolk and the high command for reckless aggression. Their officers made natural scapegoats, particularly those of peasant and mixed heritage. Stripped of his family and home, his countrymen drove the final nail in the coffin by stripping him of his rank.

Harrigan withdrew from society for the most part, meandering the hill country northward until he settled down as a hunter near the village of Harmon. He still has no love for the Highlanders, but is reluctant to go back to war in the name of the pompous and unfeeling commanders of the Lowland Army, even if he retains his respect and sense of duty for the King and Senedd. He has grown increasingly disturbed by certain signs in the surrounding countryside, however. A number of people have gone missing in the woodlands and reserves around Harmon, and while Harrigan doesn’t want to admit it there seem to be signs that Goblins, long thought to have been driven extinct by the Dwarves, are spiriting people away for food or worse.

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Name: Bryce Menzie

Race: Highland Dwarf

Background/Qualification: Former Reaver

Alignment: Royalist

Command Role: Reconnaissance Officer

Player Tech: Sucker Punch (gives your character the ability to strike with your offhand, briefly stunning an enemy and making them vulnerable to a critical hit)

Special Tech: Sabrage (improves light cavalry melee damage and morale by 20%)

Unique Unit/s: Menzie’s Reavers (light cavalry who can fire Dragon Muskets from horseback and boast a high rate of fire)

Quote: “They say I orphaned a lot of kids out there. Fair enough, I suppose, and I do feel guilty about it. Of course, they’ve orphaned a lot of us too, haven’t they? You see any of them in here?”

Bio:

Bryce grew up in Lachlea, the capitol of the venerated Highland Clan, learning to ride at an early age. More interestingly, however, was his peculiar interest in making trouble. Even as his parents tried to instill some discipline in him by shipping him off to Kirkspot Academy he had an amazing propensity for thievery, vandalism, and sucker-punching students before making himself scarce. He got away with it for a long time due to his scholastic aptitude and because he never allowed himself to get caught for anything serious. In spite of his intelligence and aptitude, he was still too much of a headache for his instructors, who were not often keen on entertaining impertinence. At the first real opportunity they threw young Bryce out of the Academy.

Within a year his family’s money and influence had put Bryce back in. His second stay at Kirkspot was more restrained, but he had plenty of old enemies in school that he could no longer avoid, each with their own axe to grind. With no desire to be cleaved in two, he took the fastest route out of Kirkspot, which turned out to be the Boys Cavalry of the Lachlea Reavers. There he applied his riding skills against the very real threats of the Lowland and Midland cavalry. He found that in life as well as in school there is always a place for an arrogant, sucker-punching hooligan, even on the battlefield.

He graduated from the Boys Cavalry with honors, but chose to stay with the Reavers and their light cavalry instead of moving on to more prestigious and comfortable duties with the heavy cavalry. He found that life in the field suited him, and that the Reavers gave the best degree of operative freedom and individualism possible- a perfect way to stick it to those mechanical cogs the Lowlanders. At first he gleefully and enthusiastically went on raids into enemy territory, capturing animals, plunder, and slaves. The work was always high risk, with little room for error. Bryce was especially adept at night riding and reconnaissance, and he favored pistols, dragon muskets, and sabers over the traditional lances and axes of the Reavers. In time he returned home and organized his own force of Reavers exclusive to Clan Lachlea, outfitted and trained in his particular idiom. The Lachlea Yeomanry moved independently and was commanded directly by Bryce. The years spent observing and harassing the Lowlanders with his own private force of Reavers were the best of his life, but they were not meant to last forever.

As in his youth, Bryce’s constant harassment and raids had made him a hated target, enough so that his bounty began to overshadow the loyalties of his soldiers. He was betrayed by one of his own men for 2,500 pieces of silver, and while the betrayal continues to sting Bryce wore the price on his head with pride. His capture by Midland Cavaliers was greeted with great cheer by the Lowlanders. In spite of his cockiness, Bryce was disturbed to see so many orphaned children and widowed wives at his tribunal, baying for blood. The judges found him guilty of several war crimes, sentencing him to death- but not without an offer to pay reparations. His then formidable personal wealth vanished in an effort to gain favor with the judges. The bid worked, to an extent- Bryce Menzie is currently a prisoner of the Lowlanders, languishing in a cell in The Old Pillory, a military stockade near the Lowland city of Bannog.

He remains loyal to his nation, but he feels somewhat repentant over his conduct and his ‘take no prisoners’ policy. While he has become a proponent of nobler conduct in combat, he also has an axe to grind of his own with the dwarf who betrayed him. If someone could somehow extricate Bryce from his present circumstances and help him locate his own personal Judas, he would be a loyal ally and a brilliant light cavalry expert to have on one’s side.

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Name: Owain Conwy

Race: Lowland Dwarf

Background/Qualification: Professor, former Board of Ordnance councilor

Alignment: Radical

Command Role: Lord Alchemist

Player Tech: Micro-Refining (reduces raw material costs for smelting metals & rare earths)

Special Tech: Quicklime Grenades (alternative grenade that blinds or burns any caught in its explosion)

Unique Unit/s: Experimental Howitzer (Howitzer battery that fires projectiles with special alchemical warheads, with or without a Lord Alchemist present in battle)

Quote: “When you mix two precisely measured chemicals under the same conditions multiple times, you always get the same result. This explains why chemicals are so much simpler than people.”

Bio:

Raised in an orphanage in the city of Pennyford, Owain started as far from a scholastic upbringing as anyone among the teeming peasant masses. At an early age he was sold by contract to a local tanner, who immediately set him to work with the dangerous and obscenely smelly chemicals involved in the creation of fine leather. As a matter of life and death Owain learned the basics involved with volatile chemicals, what to mix, what not to mix, and what to stay away from wherever possible. He was one of the few child workers who made it to adulthood without being crippled or poisoned by the chemicals and machinery at the plant. With nothing more than a desire to escape the living nightmare of the factory, he saved up enough to purchase his own contract and promptly quit his career in leatherwork. He was lucky to escape with only mild neurological damage and blue-stained hands.

Free, but penniless and unemployed, Owain did what he could to make the most of his qualifications. The alchemy lab at Pennyford University was not generally of the habit of taking in poor drifters and granting them an education, but they had a steady need for delivery boys and disposal staff, as they had a tendency to die. Owain took the job more out of necessity than desire, but he took advantage of rubbing shoulders with the most brilliant chemists in the world and eventually worked his way into an apprenticeship. From there he was ‘discovered’ by the university staff as an alchemical savant with an almost natural aptitude. In reality, he had been working with chemicals since he was 6 and had more firsthand experience than many of his peers.

He climbed his way up the academic ranks before gaining a unique opportunity to serve the people and the nation, a polite euphemism for inventing new ways to blow people up for the Queen’s Engineers. Though technically a commissioned officer, his main responsibility was taking hazardous risks handling hazardous chemicals with the hope of outdoing his predecessors, most of whom were missing fingers, arms, etc. Even so, as a commissioned officer he was getting paid handsomely to take the same risks he used to endure for free. He was respected for doing the job well and being willing to endure risks to protect his peers, and even fought in the field in charge of several experimental artillery units. After becoming one of the co-inventors of the Percussion Fuse for exploding artillery shells he got enough political clout to be elected for a very prestigious position on the Royal Board of Ordnance, a council of just 40 Dwarven scholars who spent entirely too much time kneading their palms and giggling about new ways to blow people up.

Confident and powerful, the one thing Owain didn’t expect hurt him the most. He took enormous pride in being a success story, an orphan who rose up to become one of the country’s most important technical experts. Without any children to call his own, his offspring were his ideas, all patented and protected, and the main source of his income. However, when reports started coming in that a percussion fuse that he had designed was killing his countrymen he reacted as any technical expert would- first with shock and dismay, then by thoroughly testing his own design for flaws. The public outrage leveled towards him intensified as people became convinced that he was using his seat on the Board of Ordnance to rip off the people and sell defective parts in the process. After spending his fortune on defense lawyers and investigations, ruined by reputation, the court found him not guilty. Apparently the manufactory fabricating the fuses saw fit to make alterations without his consent in order to save money.

Regardless, the damage was done. Owain lost his seat and a large part of his credibility, to no fault of his own. He returned to teaching at Pennyford for a meager income, his greatest regret being that he has no great cause to fight for and that he will likely die anonymous or in shame. As he gazes into his autumn years he wishes that he could once more gain the chance to be a people’s hero, even if it means plunging back into war.

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Name: George of Crewford

Race: Highland Dwarf

Background/Qualification: Retired Highlander commander

Alignment: Royalist

Command Role: Warlord

Player Tech: Banshee Yell (applied on the battlefield, this causes enemy units in the area to suffer a temporary morale penalty. In party quests, it boosts the entire party’s attack speed by 25% for 25 seconds)

Special Tech: Crewford Ale (Permanent boost to army HP & morale, but at a slight cost of accuracy)

Unique Unit/s: Highland Skirlings (an elite group of Highlander swordsmen armed with dirks and bucklers and clad in fine breastplate- tough, fast, and brutally efficient in melee)

Quote: “I don’t want revenge. I just want my town back! That’s the rub, right there, that last part!”

“Not the Beer!!”

Bio:

George is a quintessential, old-fashioned Highland Dwarf. He worships the old gods, cleaves his enemies with old axes, wears the old clan tartan wherever he goes, and endures the tribulations of maintaining his grand old beard. Where many of the Highland clans had seen the very fabric of their society shaken by industry, war, and social upheaval the small clan of Crewford continued to live much the same way they had for centuries.

George’s simple homespun ways, however, belie his experience in dealing with other cultures. Crewford sits close to the center of the continent at the base of the lofty, nigh impregnable Mar Meingefn Mountains. Clan Crewford, acting as a protectorate of House Sheil, controls the last set of mountain passes between Dwarven, Human, and Elven lands. Throughout George’s life he has fought off bandits, rebels, and agents of the world’s nations who have tried to claim their vital overland crossroad for themselves, and in doing so he became a feared and respected warlord, leader of the clan.

For forty years he fought foes from all directions, but in the end the churning cogs of industry tore the old ways away from Clan Crewford. First House Sheil built a railway leading into Crewford under the pretense that it would be a great boon to commerce. Then merchants and settlers poured in, followed by foreign soldiers to protect them. George had no personal quarrels with foreign cultures, but they seemed not to share his views. Over time, the moneyed industrialists and restless settlers took more and more control of the town from its government to its commerce. When House Sheil demanded that Crewford produce troops to fight other Highland clans while simultaneously inviting Lowlanders to set up a foundry right on the town’s pristine rivers George had enough. As diplomatic avenues had failed, he gathered together his loyal troops and drove the provincial leaders of Sheil out of town, then destroyed the construction site for the new factory. A week later, Sheil responded by besieging the mountain fortress of clan Crewford and dragging the families of the warriors out to dig trenches. Eventually, the defenders cracked, and even though the bloodshed was light George was stripped of his noble title, his authority, and his wealth. Reduced to living on the hospitality of his neighbors, little more than a living historical relic, he watched as his town’s cultural identity was stripped away and replaced by a factory whose noxious fumes and pollution turned the town’s crystalline rivers black.

His influence is all but gone, yet he holds out hope that someday he will find a way to retake his town and his clan, even if it means going to war against mighty House Sheil and their allies the Lowlanders.

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Name: Ruthyn

Race: Lowland Dwarf

Background/Qualification: Former Lowlander Colonel

Alignment: Neutral

Command Role: Mercenary Captain

Player Tech: Authentic Vintage Turncoat (allows you to create and ‘store’ a second set of customized outfit colors/patterns in the lining of your clothes. These can be switched back and forth at will for aesthetic purposes, and the first dyeing is free)

Special Tech: Contract Bidding (reduces mercenary hiring & upkeep costs)

Unique Unit: The Dirty Two-Hundred ( Lowland and Highland line infantry deserters with combat experience, with good HP, accuracy, and reloading times)

Quote: “So I hear you’re a hero. Well isn’t that gods-damned fantastic? Okay, hero, make yourself useful and hold that mirror right there. Dwarves these days have to shave, after all, and that’s not easy with one hand and a dead barber!”

Bio:

While technically a Lowland Dwarf, Ruthyn spent so much of his life fighting alongside and against Highlanders that he seems more culturally inclined towards the old ways than those of his roots. However, interpreting his philosophy as anything other than purely mercenary is a mistake. By name and reputation he is one of the toughest, most ruthless mercenary captains in the realm.

Truthfully, Ruthyn has never known much of a life outside of the army. He grew up the child of a soldier during the early, intense years of the Civil War and tagged along with the army until he was old enough to join the service. While in the Lowland Army he fought as a light infantryman, then as a cavalryman before struggling his way up to the rank of sergeant. After being given one too many seedy assignments and watching most of his men get killed, he came to the conclusion that the Lowland Army didn’t deserve a Dwarf of his skill and that there had to be a better way of going about war.

Thus, he deserted, taking a few friends and sympathizers with him- about two hundred, in fact. As a highly respected leader among his peers, the “Free Company”, later renamed “The Dirty Two-Hundred” followed him into the Highlands, the one place where they would be safe from the provosts. Shrewdly, he fled into the lands of Clan Sheil, which had recently become an ally of the Lowlanders yet was still independent enough to be outside the laws of the Lowlands. There he and his company found no shortage of fights. Most of the skirmishes were risky, controversial affairs where outsiders masquerading as bandits could do a lot of damage without implicating anyone.

Over time, the reputation of the Dirty Two-Hundred grew, drawing mercenaries in from far afield to join this effective, charismatically led free company. Ruthyn traveled as much as he could and kept in contact with all sorts of mercenary groups in order to keep his force modern, relevant, and a step ahead of the crowd. They took on assignments both heroic and diabolical with equal aplomb, provided the money kept flowing. However, as with any endeavor in war misfortune was never too far away.

Two years ago an anonymous client working through an agent contacted Ruthyn and offered him an assignment involving the liberation of a vital coal mine in the Lowlands. While he was still a wanted man there, it wasn’t unheard of that Ruthyn would occasionally lead the company into operations in his homeland. The agent was offering good money and paid 50% of the fee up front, so with his loyalty secured Ruthyn sent in the company. While at first the liberation of the mine and its workers was an honest, straightforward assignment of driving away a nest of violent bandits, things went bad when the company entered the mine itself to clear it out. As the last few men entered, someone set off an explosion that sealed the entire group inside. Further cave-ins killed more than half of his men, and the bandits still inside the cave took advantage of the confusion to kill many more. In the end, only Ruthyn himself and 8 of his best men survived the attack- but they still had to escape the mine.

In a dangerous, but typically inventive and brave maneuver for Ruthyn he attempted to use explosives to blast a new path out of the mine. Risking further cave-ins as well as exhaustion and dehydration, he and his 8 men carved a new shaft that led to the surface, then escaped back to the safety of their base in Sheil. Since then Ruthyn has been consumed with revenge, seeking the ones who set him and his company up to be killed in such a manner. He wants to seek answers in the Lowlands, but knows that he can’t openly move through their society anymore without risking capture by the authorities. He needs someone to assist him in finding answers and finding revenge. With that, he offers a very uncommon thing- his loyalty, free of charge.

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Name: Gustav the Hale

Race: Giant

Background/Qualification: Former grenadier & sapper

Alignment: Royalist

Command Role: Veteran Engineer

Player Tech: Custom Powder Formula (a more volatile mix of black powder makes explosive traps 25% more effective and slightly increases their splash damage range)

Special Tech: Grenade Launcher (eliminates hand-thrown grenades and equips 1 in every 10 soldiers with a dedicated grenade launcher that lobs grenades at 250% the distance of a normal grenade)

Unique Unit/s: Forlorn Hopes (grenadier giants with nearly unbreakable will and good HP, yet high maintenance costs)

Quote: “I once ran into a Highlander commander who wouldn’t surrender, so I singled him out with a grenade. Took off both his legs, so he laid down his arms. His subordinates got the picture.”

Bio:
As an individual, Gustav is fairly common among Giants. His demeanor is gentle despite his size and his devotion to family and community make him come off as a typical country man, but there are some who believe that his kindness and simplicity is a mask, or even a way of atoning for another life. These people are absolutely correct.

As with most Giants Gustav joined the army at the age of 15, accepting training in one of the most decorated and frightfully intense infantry units that the world has ever seen: the King’s Bergrisi Grenadiers. He served as a line soldier in the prestigious regiment for some years, fighting alongside the Lowland Dwarven army. There the 5th Royal Engineers noticed his uncommon intelligence and his excellent grenade throwing skills even by the standards of his peers and asked if he could be transferred to their unit.

This was highly irregular. Giants and Dwarves, while allied, seldom mixed their units together due to obvious logistical problems. However, the Royal Engineers felt that Gustav’s brain, rather than his arms, justified his joining the Engineers. After some controversy, the 5th Royal Engineers admitted him, pulling him off of the front line and likely saving his life. The Dwarves were right to take in the Giant. He could grasp complex mathematical concepts as well as any other engineer, could understand the purpose of a good defensive strategy, and could lift heavy things on occasion. His star rose in the 5th, where he put his new skills to use in sieges and defensive actions. The one brave Giant of the Royal Engineers became something of a symbol, but he always felt a bit odd being held out as an example at the exclusion of his peers, who were just as brave.

He distinguished himself in battle against a large Highland counteroffensive one year. In a nightmare scenario, the 5th Royal Engineers and the 24th Light Artillery were confronted by the enemy without the assistance of any cavalry or infantry. Gustav pulled non-essential staff from the two regiments onto the battlefield and set about building a network of breastworks, traps, and obstacles. The Highlanders attacked immediately upon seeing that the enemy had left so much artillery largely unsupported, but as they entered the battlefield they found that explosive fougasses confounded and trapped the infantry while carefully positioned wooden stakes made the enemy’s cavalry grind to a halt. They discovered too late that they were in the range of conscripts lobbing grenades at them and light artillery pieces peppering them with shot. For hours the Highlanders threw themselves at the defenses, but whatever they tried they couldn’t break the line. Many survivors of the last wave recounted seeing a lone warrior, a Giant, lobbing stones at them instead of grenades and charging them with a shovel in hand, whipped into berserk fury.

For his heroism Gustav became a model soldier of the Dwarven Confederacy and an icon among his people- for a while. The less public truth about the battle was that the 5th Royal Engineers had taken some bad casualties, among them most of Gustav’s new friends. He wanted to fight to honor him, but neither his King nor the Lowland Senedd wanted him in harm’s way any longer- he was too important a propaganda tool. He traveled, made awkward speeches, and remained silent about his feelings for years, then went home and took up menial work as a construction worker.

Gustav, ever a humble individual, always regretted being held up as a hero, but there are times when he misses the fighting and the satisfaction of seeing one’s enemies driven back. There are also times when he wishes he could do more to help his people directly. Dwarven deserters and bandits prowl the countryside, and the land has become increasingly chaotic and dangerous as the war begins to slip out of the control of the Lowlanders and Highlanders. In a most disconcerting move, a rather large force of rebels threatens to enter the lands of the Giants. Gustav knows that in spite of the fact that they are only Dwarves they could enter the kingdom without much resistance and destroy many lives. To do so they would have to pass through the village of Basajaun, following the river all the way to the capitol.

The King can do little to respond to the threat, as most Giants of military age are in the service of the Lowland Army in active combat areas. He feels that a town militia, even one organized by his formidable defensive skills, won’t be able to stop a marauder invasion should it take place. He needs an ally, any ally, to assist him.