EK2 Submod: Blackdrake Rising NEW STARTDATE
Blackdrake Rising is a mod with a brand new start date for Elder Kings 2 that allows the player to play in 3460 / 2E 540 or roughly 90 years after the second start in the base mod and 42 years before the events in ESO. This time period is 7 years after the Reachman, Durcorach the Blackdrake has conquered Cyrodiil, and is when he began his invasion of High Rock. While this mod is not finalized it is very much playable and allows the player to play at a more developed start with more innovations already discovered.
There are several rules built into this mod which should give the player more control with how the start date is set up. For example, one rule will unlock primogeniture for every culture while another makes Durcorach’s vassals have the religious protected contract and forces them to have a truce with him for 10 years to help keep the realm stable…for now. Another rule will add over 80 new special buildings to much of the map primarily in High Rock, Sentinel, Cyrodiil and Skyrim but there are others spread out as well as 3 new duchy buildings: Imperial Barracks, Mage Barracks, and Breton Banks. Many of them are balanced around the building additions made in the Unbound mod which I really love and highly recommend so if some areas seem sparse that is why. Just to reiterate, this mod is NOT finalized but I wanted to put it out to get some feedback and well its very playable.
FUTURE WORK:
Future work will be adding more game rules to allow the player to have more control on setting up the start, many more relatives for the rulers in the starts, MANY more courtiers, more buildings, some events, an event chain for some of the bookmark characters, replacing some placeholder rulers, BALANCE, and finishing the start date (blasted Black Marsh) and then perhaps I’ll add a Varen’s rebellion bookmark or something. I will also try to finish my other mod which should provide a lot of quality of life game rules (like the rules in this mod) and many more lore buildings/artifacts/dynasty legacies/MAAs/governments/characters etc.
MOD COMPATIBILITY AND CREDITS:
This mod should be loaded AFTER any mods that change the History files for Titles or Characters because I had to edit several of them for this start date. Load unbound before this mod since there is a colovian history file in it and if you load it after my mod it will override the changes I made like giving Varen traits and some vassal contracts. Credit for some of the characters goes to Suraru who did the Alliance War bookmark mod and who also helped explain how to do several things for the mod, Maxime for always patiently answering my questions, as well as the Unbound Mod team for their work which helped me, as well as the Elder Kings 2 team for making EK2 and the EK1 mod for CK2 for providing much of the history.
If anyone has any requests for the mod or some characters they would like put in or have some modding they would like me to add to it feel free to message me and I’ll see about adding it for the next version. Hope you enjoy!
