The Places You’ll Go, The People You’ll Meet
Written by Fighting Fantasy stalwart Jonathan Green, this interactive adventure gamebook puts you into the shoes of the eponymous Valiant. A secret agent of the Crown Ministry of Intelligence and a protege of the renowned Mycroft Holmes, you are all that stands between the Covenant of the Enlightened and a plot to unleash dangerous super-sciences upon the world. Your efforts will take you from the Promethean Complexes of the Union Badlands to the tobacco-fogged lounges of Whitehall, the parched marketplaces of the Sultanate, and the great plains of the Commonwealth.
Now, anyone who has read past the rules pages of Dystopian Wars or Armoured Clash (to that bit at the back that accounts for a good third of your rulebook) will know that the Dystopian Age is already a rich and storied setting. It is a whole lot more than just little boats and tiny tanks for you to field on your tabletop. It is a horrifying alternate late nineteenth century, a compelling blend of genuine history and macabre fantasy in which super-science has brought the world of Queen Victoria et. al. to the brink of annihilation.
You will know, for starters, that the Covenant of the Enlightened are not entirely without form in the unleashing alien technologies department!
But Armoured Clash and Dystopian Wars are just the tips of the proverbial iceberg. There is only so much of the world that we can present through the lens of a 10mm miniature wargame. Small essays on the genesis of specific ships are relegated to fifty-word marginalia, where space permits it, or to a handful of paragraphs underneath a Unit Profile. Skirmish games like Mythos and Wild West Exodus let us zoom in a little closer. Old-time players may even recognise Valiant’s nemesis, the Enlightened Peer Gustav Eiffel, as a major player in the background of Exodus.
It’s safe to say that you will find the nefarious Peer still up to no good in his Badlands stronghold…
If a wargame gives you a top-down perspective of the world and a skirmish game brings you in to hover over a few individuals’ shoulders, then Valiant is here to lead you into the RJ fumes and grime of the Dystopian Age and push a worn service revolver into your sweating hand. Sure, any ORBAT can tell you that the Eiffel’s Promethean Complex is an industrial horror show, but only a great story can truly let you feel it.
Nor is any of this entirely one way. Great stories are what inspire great games. The lore of the Dystopian Age informs the miniatures we design, and shapes the rules those miniatures bring to the tabletop. It is manifested in our artwork, which itself then feeds back into the narrative and design. It’s the lore behind our setting that allows our miniatures to transcend the little bits of plastic that they are and become the famous armies that we secretly (or not so secretly) understand them to be, whether that’s making up stories for our commander units or devising long narrative campaigns for our armies to wage war over.
It’s when a game ceases to be a game and becomes a hobby.
A Narrative Focus
Some of you may remember that Valiant isn’t Warcradle’s first stab at fiction. We released a number of short stories right here on the blog, culminating in Warcradle’s first full-length novel for Wild West Exodus, Lazarus. Penned by well-known science fiction and fantasy author Sarah Cawkwell, Lazarus contains some exciting plot hooks that hint at where the new edition of Wild West Exodus is headed, so if you haven’t picked up a copy and given it a read, it's highly recommended!
We have BIG PLANS on this front and a number of upcoming releases that will significantly expand the narrative of the Dystopian Age.
As for what those plans might be… I’m afraid I’ve already said too much, and the overseers let me out of the word forges infrequently enough as it is. But stay posted. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to say about it all in the months ahead.
David Guymer