It’s been a while since I’ve stuck my nose in anything Game of Thrones related. I think I just lost interest in what happens when you invest years in a bunch of books and then invest even more years in a TV show and then it all comes to an abrupt and disappointing end.
But just because something ends badly doesn’t mean you can’t – eventually after a long enough grace period – dive back in and enjoy whatever you enjoyed before it came to an unsatisfactory ending. And when I saw a mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord called Realm of Thrones that turns the world from Calradia into Westeros and Essos and populates them with characters and locations from Game of Thrones, I decided to give it a try and see if I can still enjoy the characters and fiction I spent so much time with years ago.
Table of Contents
Winter is coming
The mod has been in the works for a while and, like Bannerlord itself, is now in an Early Access state: not finished, but plenty to play with. Along with the map of Westeros and a sizable chunk of Essos, there are hundreds of NPCs from Game of Thrones, the major cities and families from the books and shows, dozens of towns and villages, and yes, even packs of white walkers patrolling north from the wall. That’s where I start playing, in Castle Black, with a new character called Skip Happyfish (last name comes from his banner, which is a smiling fish, and his first name comes from what I do with dialogue in sprawling RPGs). And then I quickly get to work and do what I always do in the various Game of Thrones mods I’ve played over the years: I look for famous people and try to marry them.
That’s kind of the problem with a world full of fantasy celebrities like Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Ned Stark, Jon Snow and many more. I put Bannerlord’s medieval warfare and quests on hold and turned the game into my own version of Pokémon. I can’t catch most of the famous Game of Thrones characters, but I want to meet them all and invite as many as possible to join the Happyfish clan. I don’t have time for others: no B-list characters like the Karstarks or Freys, and definitely no randomly generated characters that aren’t from the books or the series at all. I immediately start searching the mod for the most famous people I can find.
It does not take long. Right there in Castle Black I meet Sandor Clegane. He’s not as big as I expected, but I invite him to join my little clan, which is currently so small it’s just me. I can’t find anyone else of importance in the castle, aside from a guy named Charles Foulbreath (unsurprisingly, he wasn’t in the books) and Commander Jeor Mormont, who’s far too important to walk around in the snow with me. But at least I’ll take the time to introduce myself. Speaking of snow, I don’t see the ever-sulking Jon Snow anywhere, so I take the dog and leave.
We’ll be immediately attacked by Raiders, the weakest yet most common enemies in Bannerlord. There’s only about a dozen of them, and I reckon Clegane can take on at least ten at a time while I kill the other two. Wrong on both counts! Sandor goes down almost immediately, even though the looters basically only have rocks for weapons. A moment later I join him face down in the snow, and we’re dragged around in chains for a while before I can escape.
Happy landings
I go down to Winterfell where I meet Theon Greyjoy who is probably just hanging around innocent and has no intention of betraying anyone. I hire some lowly mercenaries to ride with me and meet a woman named Scabby Sansa, who I assume isn’t the Sansa we know from fiction. After we leave, more raiders attack us, but this time I’m victorious, and so begins the well-known practice of winning fights, taking prisoners, and selling them and their gear to make a bit of money. Over at the Dreadfort I meet Ramsay Snow, who apparently hasn’t become a Bolton yet, but is well on his way to becoming a bad bastard.
In the cold north, I get impatient and drive to the place everyone in Westeros really wants to go: King’s Landing. It also looks great in the mod and in the tavern I find my first real Game of Thrones A-lister: Tyrion Lannister. I am adding him to my slowly growing clan. He seems like the kind of guy you could blame for pretty much anything, but right now it’s nice that he’s just hanging out with me. We pick up a few small jobs here and there, and while guarding a caravan we run into some robbers, but once again my growing little gang comes out on top. Then I raid a village up north just because I’m driving, kill and take a bunch of villagers and make a whole bunch of people, including the Starks and the Boltons, extremely angry at me. Luckily I’m able to overtake Robb’s war party and decide it’s getting a bit too hot to stay here, although I make a quick detour back to Castle Black to pick up Sandor again, who managed to escape the looters who took us previously captured.
I’m escaping to Essos, the less popular continent, and there my memory is a little blurry when it comes to places like Pentos. Did something happen there? Important things? Or am I thinking of Bravos? I really can’t remember – it’s been years since I read the books, and after the last season of the show, I think I blocked out a lot of it. Joanna Swyft, Boros Blount… these names sound familiar, but when I meet them I don’t know who they are or what they have been doing.
dragon lady
However. I know why I’m actually in Essos, and that’s to track down Daenerys, who’s way over in Mereen. The scale of the Realm of Throne map really comes into focus as we ride and ride and ride for days just to even get close to Meereen. Finally, I stroll into the throne room and meet the mother of dragons, although she doesn’t seem to have her famous pets yet. I’m trying to marry her, but all my gold, pets, and weapons don’t add up enough in the trade window to even affect her opinion of me. I can’t even join her because I’m at war with the North over this village I raided, so I’m content to help her find horses and put Sandor and Tyrion in charge of one caravan to build some money.
Since I don’t have much else to do in Essos other than look for Daenerys, I return to Westeros. I sell almost everything I’ve collected from raiding and looting and prisoner sales to give the north a lot of gold so I can finish our little war, and then I think it’s time to get really into trouble. I ride with my 30 or so followers north of the Wall and into wildling and wight territory. The wildlings aren’t particularly friendly – I can’t enter Craster’s camp, and everyone else will just speak to me from their castle walls instead of letting me in.
wight wedding
And then we meet some real wights patrolling the snowy woods. There are many of them. They speak for the undead pretty well, but instead of trying to negotiate, I decide to challenge them to combat. While my clan puts up a good fight and we kill about half the wights, what’s left is more than enough to wipe us out. All my progress, gone, Clan Happyfish destroyed. It starts all over again as I am once again dragged across the land in chains, this time by undead ghouls.
On the plus side, I saw a lot of Westeros and Essos and met pretty much everyone I wanted to. The mod is totally playable as it is now, even in Early Access, and the map is huge. Any Game of Thrones fan should find plenty to enjoy here. Just stay south of the wall, at least until your squad is larger than Clan Happyfish.