The Lich Wars

The Lich Wars is a deep narrative alt-history RPG where you live the life and career of a soldier across two devastating wars infected with necromancy.

The game unfolds through branching interactive fiction, with RPG skills and skillchecks, and a unique narrative-driven combat system. 300,000 words (estimated) of hand-written narrative from an award-winning team of writers, with lots of side-content as well as three main career paths.

The Lich Wars is the prequel to our CRPG The Necromancer’s Tale. This time, we lean more directly into story and writing, which were among the most praised elements of our previous game. The Lich Wars delves deeply into the period 1700-1728, which was merely skimmed over as a brief prologue in The Necromancer’s Tale. 

You will investigate and witness the events that brought necromancy to Rulsthen, and how it infected everything. Meet key characters from our previous game during their earlier careers, and learn what formed their beliefs.

The Lich Wars is an entirely stand-alone game: there is no need to have played The Necromancer’s Tale. Indeed, the two games could be played in either sequence.

The story is presented with hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations and portraits, maps and 3D tabletop scenes. You will visit much of the alt-history kingdom of Rulsthen, near Venice. You may also travel across Western Europe as you march to the Great Northern War and the War of Spanish Succession.

The game has partial voice-acting, establishing the personality of each character and providing voiced narration in key parts of the story.

As a new recruit in the Rychva Musketeers, 7th Company, you have only a short time to establish your origin story and form friendships before you are pitched into a long and bloody war against Venice. Following the war, with your country reeling from the shock of necromancy, you have three separate career paths to choose from (thus, offering three main playthroughs).

Your military career spans 17 years in the inter-war period, bringing you across much of your country, into neighbouring countries, and across Western Europe. Carve out a soldier’s life alongside lifelong friends, perhaps lovers, who were established during the Venetian War, while black magic and its social fallout fester in your country. Immerse yourself in the life of 18th Century Rulsthen through core- and side-content.

And then, the civil war of 1727 hits…

Your choices affect relationships, career progression, military promotion and duties, optional content, who survives, and what happens at the end of the civil war.

The Lich Wars explores the early romantic & gothic themes of technological anxiety, unfettered progress, the ethics of war, and the destructive mental infection brought on by dark magic. This is a time at the cusp of rational thought and superstition; science and magic. The world is dark and dangerous. Courtly intrigue collides with black magic even as chemistry emerges from alchemy.