Questions from the Overhype Studios Discord channel.
SPOILERS abound for the Battle Brothers novel SPOILERS
So I just saw Casey is working on a 2nd book, is it a continuation of the setting (and timeline) /will characters return?
Book 2 picks up shortly after the end of Book 1.
Was Yuchi an Alp, Nachzehrer, or even a Necrosavant?
This is intentionally left a mystery. However… Richter and Yuchi’s appearances, personalities, behaviors, and even plotlines are meant to helix around each other in an almost chiasmatic way. One being the Wight, the other the traveler. They finally come together when Yuchi gets to Richter. There, the traveler tells Arvid that he requires a man, a child, a beast, and the dagger to connect to Davkul. In this moment, Arvid gets confused and looks around and asks: “which of them is a beast?” Who is who or what is what is still up to the reader to decide for themselves.
Yuchi’s personality is meant to be alien and foreign. There are some elements in the way he moves and talks and acts that I don’t mind touching back on: Yuchi himself is clearly not from the region at all, and in fact takes to basic things with strong, almost childlike curiosity. Whereas Richter is frequently known on sight for being the Wight, Yuchi is often met with a bit of intrigue as people have never seen anyone like him before. He has by far the most unusual name in the entire book: Yuchi Eveohtse. He wields the most unusual weapon in the book (the golden spear). He is very active at night. He identifies beasts and creatures quickly. When faced with just one or two enemies, he passes through moments almost ethereally (e.g., the woodsmen, the crossbowman, the whittler, Arvid, Louis, Adelbrecht, Richter). He seems almost unharmed or unfazed by torture. He is unconcerned when death is around him. Elements of smoke and fire frequently parallel his presence. He is upset when Louis destroys his bag of goods containing a dead child and a dead wolf sewn back together. He is a cultist in service of Davkul. Most importantly, he has long teeth, a wide mouth, and very strange, possibly unpurse-able lips.
To stir this pot a little, have some fun quotes :)
Here is Yuchi when he meets the woodsmen:
The other hunter nodded. “Aye, you talk funny and you look funny. Where you from?”
“East,” the traveler said. “Far, far to the east. And indeed I am peculiar in complexion, an unusual creature even amongst my own kind but, where I hail, we welcome strangers and all the dreams that they may carry.”
“We ain’t from where you hail, sir, and right now you ain’t there neither.”
The traveler said, “I only need to open my eyes to know I am not home.”
Here is Elletrache talking about the beast slaying guilds hunting Richter:
Trash grinned and said, “Oh, ol’ Elletrache and friends used to hunt Richter here. Them rustic localities was referring to him as a ‘wiederganger’ and we was in need of coin so sure, we’d seen to him as we would see to a beast. Except ol’ black hat here was a little more dangerous than expected.”
“A wiederganger?” Crockett said. “Mean like a revenant? Those are just myths.”
“Old myths at that, but old myths be what we slayers like to see more than anything in this whole world. Anyhoots, the beast slaying and witch hunting guilds eventually hashed it out after Richter here shot two of ours.”
“They shot first,” Richter said.
On the realness of monsters.
Just as it is in the game, the element of missing information/lack of knowledge is still present in the novel as a major theme. Creatures are known, but in a vague, almost mythological sense. Note, in Battle Brothers the game, sometimes even your own victories are treated as hearsay. This is partly by design and to be paired well with the gameplay itself — the player is meant to interact with the royals, for example, but maintain that sellsword image at the end of the day no matter what weight they pull.
But yes the creatures are very real, though not everyone knows everything about them. This balance of knowns and unknowns is directly touched upon in the book numerous times just as it is in the game (though far less abstracted for narrative purposes). There’s actually one solid example as it relates to alps. Richter and Crockett toward the end of the novel have a discussion on the matter. Remember that Crockett is a well-read historian when gauging his response:
“I was dreaming,” Richter said.
“Nightmare?”
“It felt akin to that which would come from an alp.”
“An alp,” Crockett said, laughing. “The fairy tale monster?”
“Alps are capable of giving incredible nightmares,” Richter said. “And this one was simply too real, unlike any I’ve experienced before.”
“I can ask Elletrache if there are any in the area, but… Richter, c’mon.”
“And were you so earnest in your knowledge of witches before we met?”
A few things transpire quite quickly there: Crockett at first shrugs off the suggestion of an alp as a sort of joke, claiming alps to be fairy tale creatures. Richter then asks him if he thought witches were fairy tales before the events of the novel. The historian concedes that Richter is speaking to a serious and very real matter which he might heretofore have been ignorant of.
In the epilogue, Arvid, a learned scribe, has a very similar conversation, but this time he’s talking to an uneducated commoner and things end a little differently:
“Do you know what an alp is?” Arvid said, looking toward the man.
The man cocked his head. “A what?”
“It’s a creature that stalks around in the night, they say it can put nightmares in your head. I don’t think it’s real but… you don’t care what I’m saying, do you?”
The man grinned and shook his head.
[Side-note: To me, this is a far more realistic view of a brutish yet realistic fantasy world. The novel is littered with side-characters who simply stick to whichever job they have. None of these people are going to know much of anything about the world beyond what they can see and touch. The roads are far too dangerous for one to satiate idle curiosities, right? At the same time, these people are still important. Richter talks to many of them: tanners, tailors, toymakers, guards, merchants, torturers, soldiers, cartwrights, homesteaders, storeowners, etc. At one point he tells Sophia that her knitting socks is important — and he’s not being ironic about it. These people are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. They make the world turn, even if the world deems them unimportant. And, remember, Richter himself was one such person in his past life: his first real job was digging wells for villages.]
If the game lore and book lore are related/same, then how do we get the Obsidian Dagger from a witch hut? Or was it just some choices that loosely fit with the game lore and rule of cool?
They are the same weapon.
Why was Claire let live? I understand the situations Richter was in didn’t allow for it, but there wasn't any indication that he would seek help to actually burn her? Even with his colleagues from Sommerwein or any mercenaries. Or did I miss any reference?
Claire’s death would sow carnage across the land as her life is needed to quell the northern barbarians and help bring an end to the conflict between Marsburg and the lowlanders (barbarians get quelled -> Sommerwein follows through on an obligation to help Marsburg -> lowlanders go back to their bogs). A dying Bones is the one who tries to press this reality upon Richter, because Bones knows the company is being left in the hands of a man who would almost certainly do as his vocation suggests (hexenjager). But Richter does not respond to him in the affirmative. It’s only when Hobbs seems excited to the idea of killing Claire does Richter seem a little drawn away. You have to keep in mind that Richter isn’t just protective of Hobbs, but he’s protective of the Hobbs that is yet to be. He stewards him against the cruelties of the world lest those cruelties shape the boy as they have already shaped Richter. This theme is touched upon numerous times, such as when Hobbs always tries to look at Richter’s weapons but the witch hunter keeps them out of sight; or when Carsten is sort of pulling Hobbs into the hexenjager trade and Richter intervenes; or when Hobbs is deadset on killing Claire and the witch hunter chides him for promising death.
When Richter is confronted with the choice of saving Hobbs or killing Claire, he chooses the former. He also goes against his instincts and against who he is. The witch hunter, obviously, does not save the boy. The witch hunter kills the witch. But… that’s just not who he is in that moment. So Richter, an ace marksman up to that point, actually misses and hits Hobbs — an almost immediate admonition of his choice, or at the very least an inkling into the idea that it was an unnatural one even if it were morally just. To drive that point home, he then fights Adelbrecht in a rather atavistic, carnal battle where his liver (emphasis on the organ’s purpose) is terribly wounded by a function of the witch hunting trade (the wristed crossbow). Richter then shreds his hand to pieces to shred Adelbrecht himself into pieces.
But there is a second time when Richter has a chance at Claire…
Richter later wakes up and finds himself at a ferry town with the company still with him. After getting his bearings, a weak and beleaguered Richter heads back into the woods. He finds Claire again and prepares to kill her but as he does so he sees a young lindwurm slither into frame, clearly hexed by the witch. A few things then happen: 1) he can hardly even aim to begin with and when he imagines pulling the trigger, he visualizes himself shooting Hobbs again (visualization of failure). He’s very much badly wounded and mentally shaken. 2) as he sees her get on the lindwurm, he realizes that even if he kills her, that monster will likely go kill anyone and everyone at the ferry. 3) it’s heavily suggested that if Richter dies there and Claire survives, the genie will be out of the bottle in regards to her abilities. Carsten’s trainings come to mind in the moment, where he talks about immense powers and annihilation; he then makes a reference to the grandness of a Grimalkin. And then, rather curiously, Richter remember Carsten confidently saying that the return of a Grimalkin is likely to be nothing more than myth (see above creature talk). Staring at an amazing contradiction there, Richter then takes off his witch hunting hat and backs off.
When he gets back to town, he enters Immerwahr the monk’s store and there we find Richter in a quandary. On one side, he stares through a window at his company, and to the other side is the forest. Not to get too far into the weeds here, but much of Richter’s tale is about who he is to himself and who he is to others, and that whenever he tilts one way it upsets the balance of the other and vice versa. As he watches Hobbs and the company, Richter and Immerwahr have this exchange:
“I know you’d come in with that lot,” Immerwahr said. “And I know this morning you’d walked out of town without them.”
“Aye.”
“So what will you be doing now, then? You haven’t quite returned, and you haven’t quite left.”
The book then closes with Richter, who has been called the witch hunter the entire novel, taking the mantle of captain.
What actually happened at Dagentear? lol j/k
All in due time.
What is your favourite game reference?
When Richter and Adelbrecht first meet, we learn that Richter was present at the Battle of Many Names. He was a pathfinder in the southern flank (the lowlands) and there’s a reference to an ill-advised cavalry charge into the swamps. Adelbrecht asks why he didn’t tell them that was a bad idea, and Richter mentions that he was just a kid then and the glory hound nobles all ignored his advice.
In Battle Brothers the game, one of the earliest events added was the ‘traveler’ event, where a guy will sit with the company and exchange stories. One of the first variations of that event was one where a traveler angrily tells the story of some idiot nobleman who charged cavalry into a swamp and got everyone killed.