Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
Now compatible with Dominions Enhanced 2.13!
Castlevania was once known as Valachia, a mountainous coastal region of minor importance bordering the Pythium empire to the south and Ulm and Vanarus to the northwest and north. Mathias Cronqvist was a Valachian noble who fought in many bloody wars abroad as a mercenary knight, but also showed a keen interest in alchemical science and magical research. While on campaign, his beloved wife died, and in his sorrow and anger, Count Cronqvist sought ways to become immortal in defiance of the seemingly arbitrary whims of life and death presided over by a previous Pantokrator. Through extensive research, Count Cronqvist learned of the existence and location of the Crimson Stone artefact and used it to ascended to immortality, cursing himself with vampirism in the process.
Fresh with new dark powers, Count Cronqvist attracted the attention of the avatar of Death, further growing his powers and expanding his armies with demons and the undead. Renaming himself Dracula Vlad Tepes and pronoucing himself king and ruled with absolute terror over the peasantry of Valachia. He raised a mighty magic castle and engaged in wars to expand his power, declaring Valachia and the conquered territory as ‘Castlevania’. Although King Tepes enjoyed toying with the lives of mortal humans, he unexpectedly fell in love with a human healer named Lisa, and they had a dhampir half-blood son named Alucard. Lisa was later mortally wounded by Pythian witch hunters while abroad, and King Tepes declared a war of genocidal intent against all humans. However, his infernal armies were defeated from within by the combined efforts of his son Alucard and clan Belmont, who are a Valachian family of renowned vampire hunters.
With the coming of the Ascension Wars, Dracula’s castle has reappeared once more, and his servants led by the dark priest Shaft toil to resurrect King Tepes again to ascend to godhood
Welcome to my Dominions 6 mod! This mod is an attempt to create a Late Age nation out of the Castlevania series of games, primarily drawing from Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. I LOVE Castlevania but I am not an expert on the lore, and some canon and timeframes from Castlevania were edited to better fit the Dominions universe. Credit for almost all of the sprites goes to the rippers over at Sprites Resource.
Magic:
– This is primarily a Death and Blood nation, with some access to Fire, Air, Astral, and Water.
– Castlevania has 13 national ritual spells.
Priests:
– H1 priests out of every fort and a H3 out of the capital.
Troops:
– Most troops are either undead or demons, but there are some living monsters and constructs.
– The sacred units are based off the Sniper of Goth enemy and are a sacred archer with the blink ability in combat.
Summons:
– There are 8 units and 3 commanders that are ritual summons.
Heroes:
– The Dark Priest Shaft is a powerful H4 priest-mage, Alucard is a strong immortal combatant but also a heretic, and Richter Belmont is fighting for Castlevania after having been mind enslaved by Shaft (like in Symphony of the Night)
Pretender:
– Dracula Vlad Tepes himself as a Dom 2 pretender, but he cannot be taken Awake, both for thematic reasons and because he is a very powerful combatant with immortality.
Items:
– None at this time, I may add some in a future version.
Infrastructure:
– Normal cost labs and temples, starts with a very strong castle in the capital and has a research level 0 version of Three Red Seconds given the importance of Dracula’s magic castle to the Castlevania series.
Scales and Domain
– Starts with Death 1 and gets +1 Death on scales with half impact to population growth.
