Prophesy of Pendor 4.0 Developer Notes

I have spent two years at MCC. I’ve been working on getting an associate’s degree in game design. It was the winter semester of 2011 and I was in the capstone class for the interactive media and game design degree. Jim had forewarned me that it was going to be a tough class. If only I knew what he really meant.

The first few weeks of class was a little tough since we were scheduled to finish our book in the first 6 weeks of the 16 week class. At that time I thought keeping up on the reading was going to be the hard part of the course. I wish it was.

Jim informed the class that we were going to be making a mod for the game Mount & Blade and that the mod was going to be Prophesy of Pendor: Legacy. I was aware of the story behind Pendor, having read about it in a previous class. It was a good story; I couldn’t tell if it was real.

At the next class period, Jim assigned everyone a task to be in charge of for developing the mod. After we knew what they were responsible for, we were curious as to where we would be getting our information. Jim said he would take care of it the next time the class meets.

Class had started and everyone was wondering why Jim wasn’t there. I figured he was just running late, it happens. It wasn’t long until he rolled into the room. He was pushing a cart loaded with boxes. There was no doubt that they were old; I could see mold growing on some of them. I was wondering what the hell was in these old boxes and why is Jim bringing them in here? Then it hit me. They must be the boxes sent to Jim by “E”.

I didn’t believe it. I thought Jim had just brought in some crappy boxes to get us into a “Pendor” kind of mood. Jim announced that the boxes were the ones he had received from “E” and that in these boxes are where we would be getting our information for Prophesy of Pendor: Legacy. He could tell that some of the class still wasn’t convinced that the boxes contained manuscripts sent by someone who goes by “E”. So Jim put some of the boxes out on our desks and told us to look for ourselves. I waited a while, then I went to over to a box someone else had opened. It was full of worn manuscripts. I didn’t know what to do. I just picked up one of the manuscripts from the box and laid it out on my desk. I was in shock. I don’t remember doing much more than staring at the script in awe.

Jim informed us that the scripts were mostly written in Latin and French. To get the information we would have to translate the scripts. This was the hard part of the class.

I didn’t know Latin or French and neither did anyone else, at least that I knew of. I wasn’t too worried at first since I was in charge of making the game map. I figured there would be a map sitting in one of the boxes half decayed or something like that. Turns out it wasn’t going to be that easy. I didn’t find anything resembling a map in any of the boxes.

Now the real work began. I scanned a few of the scripts into a computer so I could translate them at home.

Handling the scripts was scary as hell. Due to their frail condition, I didn’t want to touch most of them. I was afraid it would fall apart; then what would I do? It’s not like there are extra copies lying around.

At home I brought one of the scripts up on my computer. I also had an online translator brought up next to the script.

I got frustrated very quickly. The scripts were hand written and very old. This made it hard to distinguish letters and words clearly. Try to figure out what letter I was staring at was a tough job most of the time. On top of that, I had to figure out if the script was written in French or Latin. Let’s just say that I didn’t accomplish much on the first night.

The next day in class I scanned a few more of the scripts. Even though trying to translate the scripts was a pain; I was overwhelmed with curiosity. That day I made a little more progress on the translating, but it wasn’t enough to get any information from the script.

I continued translating at home. The script was saying something about an ancient volcano that had become filled with water and had become a giant lake. I got really excited since that was geography I could use to make the game map. I continued working and then my computer crashed. I lost the script file and the translated file I had made. It was odd since I couldn’t find any reason as to why my computer would crash when it did. After that I decided to start saving my work more frequently (duh!) and in different locations. I never did get to find out what else the script had to say about the volcano.

In class everyone was talking about what they had found in their scripts. I asked a few of my classmates if they had found anything about geography. This wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped. All I was able to determine was that Armala was mostly surrounded by mountains. I didn’t get anything particularly detailed, but at least it gave me someplace to start on the map.

We spent weeks translating. It took me a while, but I eventually got used to it. Finding information for the map was difficult. There wasn’t anything that said “The geography of Armala is…” The most I could get was references to landmarks. I really had to work with my classmates to find more references to landmarks in Armala.

Some of the scripts had nothing to do with the history or geography of Armala, but just contained general information. One script I translated was basically about deductive arguments. It was trippy how a rotting script from a very long time ago contained some of the same basic information about philosophy as my text book I got last year.

The translating of the scripts was tough and time consuming. My grades in other classes started to slip and I was never able to get enough sleep.

One day I was very tired and was moving one of the scripts over to the scanner. I wasn’t very careful, since I wasn’t very aware of what I was doing. Due to my mishandling of the script it tore. The first thing that popped into my head was Jim bashing my brains out with a keyboard for ruining an irreplaceable script.

I managed to find the guts to tell Jim that I tore one of the scripts. He spared my life and told me to put the pieces into an envelope so that they wouldn’t get lost.
After countless hours of research and talking with the other students I was able to create a rough sketch of what Armala might have looked like. I was very relieved.

My next task on the mod was to do some of the coding. That meant that I wouldn’t need to translate the scripts anymore. I was a slight relief, but I was still very curious what other things were contained inside of the scripts.

I read about a lot of different things that were in the scripts. I won’t forget about them. Although I’m moving on after this mod is complete. I will always draw back on those old decaying manuscripts for inspiration for future work that I do.

-Michael Shields
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My name is Alex Dziesinski, and I am a student of game design in the Interactive Media capstone class. Game design had not been my original intent. The first year of my college experience had been spent in the industrial engineering program at Grand Valley State University. All my life people had been telling me what a great engineer I would make, but it was not what I was destined for. When I should have been using the software to design pump housing fixtures or locating edges for vise clamps, I was too busy designing swords, laser cannons, race cars and space vehicles instead. I eventually ended up at Muskegon Community College. Where I planned to use my talents to (hopefully) design the best games the world has seen.

This game design course had been my first introduction to the world of Pendor. It was both wonderful and fantastic. Especially interesting was the history behind the story itself. I had been skeptical at first, but there was the box from Edinburgh with all of the mysteries inside sitting on the countertop. My doubts were erased.

I was more than a little apprehensive as I began searching through the various manuscripts and old cracked books from the box. The distinct feeling of disturbing something ancient arose, like I was some sort of crypt robber. Childhood memories floated up of watching Raiders of the Lost Ark – and I was Indiana Jones. Maybe it was a little less dramatic than that, but no less interesting. I was dealing with a story here that was as old as stone. The feeling of reverence was palpable. Though slightly discomforting, it was also empowering. I had a task before me. It was something that I had never done before, and I felt compelled to make sure I did it right.

Among other things, I had been tasked with researching the Great Enemy; the Snake Cult. Translation was a painful process, but rewarding. This new box contained a great deal more information about the Cult and its leader, the Sindari abomination Azi Dahaka. This being was the lasting legacy of the fallen Sindari’s misguided quest for power, and part of what gives prophesy of Pendor 4.0 its namesake. As I learned more of the history of these peoples, a sense of dread crept into me. The abomination sucks at the very fabric of space-time itself; it must in order to survive. 

-Alex D.

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When Jim brought in his box and claimed it was given to him by a mysterious resident of Scotland, I was ready to dismiss it as a pep rally trick that he has used on us once before. Until he gave us a chance to look inside. What we found inside was nothing short of astounding: Manuscripts, maps, backgrounds of different people and gods. It is almost as if this one box contained an entire world, the history behind it. My curiosity and interest piqued as I dove into the world that was Pendor.

Some students went into creating a map to contain this world. Others went on to discover the factions of people that occupied this world, and still more went on to decode the cultures and histories to tie every faction together. Me? I implemented two smaller factions that the player would fight. I even did a couple of sound effects for the Snake Cult (some of the team still claim they would mistake me for a rattlesnake).

I was assigned to smaller factions known as the Jatuzen Tribesmen and the Heretics. I have spent many hours going through the manuscripts to find information on the Heretics and their demonic rituals.  This stuff gave me nightmares.


~Alex S.

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It was a day of class just like any other… or so I thought. I entered the classroom, but something seemed out of place. The room was silent; a certain sense of mystery was looming. It was then, that I saw a few boxes that were not present before. Jim walked into the room with a serious look upon his face. He said “Class, today we have a special assignment that I need your help with. Inside these boxes lies some very important information; information that I alone can’t uncover.” He opened one of them and started to unpack what looked to be ancient scrolls, older than anything I’d ever seen before.
“In these texts, there is information about Pendor.” Jim said. As a collective whole, the students of the class exchanged looks of astonishment. “This is it,” I said to myself “The real deal, sitting right here in front of us.”


I was hesitant to leave my seat to even look at the manuscripts. It appeared that even breathing too heavily near some of these articles would leave them nothing more but dust and all the information would be lost.

A few other classmates had already grabbed some of the papers and had started to flip through the pages; I couldn’t find anything in the box that had any portions of English writing on it. Continuing to browse carefully through the articles, I noticed something that stood out from the rest. A leather notebook with an insignia of an “S” with a sword running through it was ripe for the picking. Unwinding the string around the notebook I soon realized it was a journal entry, however many of the dates were too worn to make out. It had almost seemed as though someone had scratched them from the very face of the pages as to make sure no one ever discovered the time of the events. There was a name referenced, Santara. The entries I could translate teemed with information about this land of Santara and its affiliation with the Barclay Empire.

While punching in one last translation for the night, I noticed mentioning of a call to arms. It seemed the keeper of the journal was either a knight or some sort of hired mercenary. The thing that struck me as odd was that he referred to the army he was in as “Los Conquistadores.” The original writings were in Latin, yet the entire entry in the journal was now looking as though the writer was of a somewhat Spanish origin. I wondered how the battle would play out. The time was getting late, and I needed my rest. The journal left me pondering about how life would have been in the kingdom of Santara. It would be no easy task, but I felt ready to take on the challenge of filling in the lost chapters.

“Here goes everything” -- Mitch Piotrowski 
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I recall the freezing cold Michigan wind hitting my face when I walked into Muskegon Community College to start up my second winter semester. I take great pride in being in the game design program and I have learned much. But nothing had quite challenged and fascinated me as much as what Jim has shown us in our capstone course.

It all started when Jim showed us the story of Pendor. He had gathered snippets of information from a friend of his and had converted the work in a mod for Mount and Blade calling Prophesy of Pendor. He then brought in all of these old transcripts he had received by someone only known as by “E”. No one knew at all whom this “E” was.

All of us in the class took it upon ourselves to begin working through the musty information regarding a land south of Pendor called Amala. It was there that I started discovering some of the histories of these ancient kingdoms.

The one that caught my interest and took up most of my time was the story of the Kingdom of Nosheru and its leader, Antarrah Rashim. The kingdom felt very similar to those old Arabian nights tales I heard as a child. This captured my sense of adventure, so I began digging further into the kingdom's history. I stayed up late a few nights translating and reading any info I could find within the transcripts. My girlfriend even decided to help out and was able to bring me out of my almost fanatical obsession with Nosheru's history. Most of the transcripts I read into had to do with the kingdom suffering under the rule of an self centered and cruel dictator. Subsequent transcripts dealt with a rebellion initiated by a General named Antarrah, with the support of the lower classes of the kingdom.

Sadly most of the transcripts I had in my possession only dealt with the early history of Nosheru. Events after the early rule of Antarrah were nowhere to be found. Some time later I was informing my classmate, David, about my problem and his face seemed to light up. As luck would have it he had been translating documents detailing the later years of the kingdom, along with accounts of Antarrah's son Erron. Working together we began to piece together a better picture of what Nosheru would have been like.

It had been situated near the homelands of the Jatu tribes within the lands of Amala. Many of its peoples lived in southern deserts. Under the policies of Antarrah Nosheru had prospered economically and militarily, managing to carve out a place for itself as a major power after the chaos of the fall of the Baccus Empire. I am still continuing my research into this kingdom and am hoping to piece enough of it together to help present en masse to the public in the form of our mod, POP 4.0 Legacy.

-Zach

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You can never just walk into Jim's class and expect to not learn or to be challenged. As soon as I think I have my head wrapped around something I get something else thrown at me.

The other day a cart loaded with a few old boxes on it was wheeled into the room. The boxes were full of manuscripts, all in regards to this place called Pendor. Specifically they were Pendorian accounts of a land to the south called Amala. They were all very old and fragile, so I moved to pick some of them up. I wasn’t sure what one to grab, I was scared to death that they would just fall apart in my hand. But watching my class mates picking them up, I went for one.

I brought it back to my desk and sat down. I began to read it.

It was hard to make out a lot of the information within; everything was very old and musty. So much of it was written in Latin and French. I was not looking forward to how long this was going to take to translate. However I was determined and curious, so I got to work.

Within the some of these ancient pages there was something about a man named Erron. He was the son of a King Antarrah Rashim. He was made the leader of his father's Knighthood order. Erron was a companion of the son or daughter of the King of Pendor. The writing on one of the pages was faded and was hard to tell exactly what they meant but it appeared that it had to do with how Erron fought alongside the son or perhaps daughter of Pendor in many battles.

Sadly this was the extent of what my documents revealed. There was little about the kingdom Erron grew up in, or about his father. Some time later I was listening to my classmate Zach, when I realized that he had been working on the exact information I needed! After talking we began to compare our notes. I learned more about the history of Antarrah and the rest of Erron's family.

I loved how our story’s connected! If there was a connection between these two manuscripts maybe there were even more connections in some of the others? I went around the class room to each of my classmates to see if any of them had any more connections to my story so that I could put all of the pieces together. Unfortunately I had no luck. I couldn’t believe it, out of all of those manuscripts there were no other connections. I felt let down.

Even after this class is complete, I will keep looking for answers. I will use the knowledge that I did gather from these manuscripts, so that I can cure my curiosity and find the next part of the story.

David Klinger

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As a Game Design student, it was during my second semester at Muskegon Community College that I was invited to join the Prophesy of Pendor Development team and was brought on to design the opening splash screen for the mod and to do some initial beta testing. In order to become familiar with the games back story and mechanics, I was encouraged to join the forum and read through the many posts made by the team throughout development. During my initial research I immediately became intrigued by the team's sheer passion for the story behind Pendor and for their incredible display of knowledge pertaining to ancient history that was evident throughout their written collaborations. However, much of the content in these posts I would not come to understand until a year later and so I paid them little attention.

I had been introduced early on to a brief history of the events that set the development of the mod in motion; the story of Vance and the possessions he had given Jim on his death bed. As I read through the articles, I couldn't help but wonder if it were reminiscent of an event in the past, or a clever tale meant to captivate the interest of an audience. Though I leaned more towards the latter, something struck me as odd... I had the chance to get to know many of the contributors of POP and as I pondered the individuals that the team consisted of, I realized that none of them except Jim had a background in the game design field. Much to my surprise, the team consisted of a variety of folks, many with white-collar day jobs in various career fields, but none along the lines of game play or entertainment. So, I had wondered what had inspired these folks to come together and invest so much of their time into building this mod, but I didn't give that much thought either.

It was the beginning of the 2010 winter semester when I and my fellow classmates in the Game Design capstone class had received word from Jim of the workload we could expect to carry. We were informed that we were to complete the required material for the course within the first ten classes and then research the history of Pendor before beginning work on the newest mod; Prophesy of Pendor: Legacy.

This turned out to be an understatement, for we had no idea what effort was truly expected to be exerted throughout the course. The lesson materials consisted of a thirty-two chapter, 475 page text book on game design, a book about writing by Stephen King, and 11 quizzes which, believe it or not, turned out to be a cakewalk in comparison to what Jim had in store for us next.

At the beginning of our second class, my classmates and I gathered in the classroom and anticipated the kicking-off of the 'chain of quizzes' that was sure to invade and conquer our free time for the next six weeks. Jim was running late that day so we chatted amongst ourselves about our shared anxiety and our excitement to begin work on the POP mod. Not long after, Jim entered the room pushing in front of him a cart with a big box on top. As he passed by my seat, I could smell the age coming off of whatever it was that lay inside. Being highly sensitive to the smell of must and mildew, I quickly covered my nose and eagerly awaited an explanation... one that I would never have expected.

Having immediately grabbed our attention by the presence of the odor carrying box, Jim began to explain. He opened with a brief refreshment of the history we had all learned of Pendor and told us of the packages from Edinburgh, Scotland he had received from the mysterious 'E'. Then, as if to wash away any doubts that may be had, Jim pulled from the box a manuscript that was visibly beaten by time itself. The leather cover, once flexible and rich in color, was now dry, cracked, and faded into a material that was barely recognizable. Underneath, the battle to keep age away from the delicate pages had been lost long ago.

At first I thought the manuscript was merely a cleaver prop intended to motivate the class and to teach us a lesson in creating experiences. But then we were invited to explore the box further, and to my amazement, what we discovered was an assortment of old books, binders, and hand written notes, all pertaining to the world of Pendor and all having been tattered by the ancient hands of time. A closer examination proved that the material had been written in English, French, and Latin, which Jim had further explained that, once translated, these documents would be our sole source of any and all content going into POP: Legacy, just as the previous development team had done with the first mod.

For my share of the research, I took with me a stack of handwritten notes and loose leaf pages; some of which were once part of a greater masterpiece but now stood alone and out of place. The idea that these papers were not restricted by a cover or jacket to a single subject, idea, or theme but were instead a collection of all excited and inspired me. Handling the documents made me very nervous so I took great care, knowing very well that they could crumble beneath my fingertips if I didn't.

Given my past experience with graphic arts and the related software, I decided that my contribution to the mod would be strictly art based, so I immediately focused my efforts towards translating the documents in search of any visual descriptions of cultures, armor and clothing, heraldry, royal seals... anything that might be distinctive amongst individuals or societies. This turned out to be a gruesome process of deciphering an alien language using various online translators, though I did get lucky by coming across a few sketched images.

Translating the documents took up all of my time, free or otherwise, but I was immersed in the experience and deeply fascinated by the history I was uncovering... I was the first person to comprehend the foreign content of the text that I was deciphering since ancient times; like an archeologist uncovering the first remains of a prehistoric creature, I was holding thousands of years in the palms of my hands... the experience was truly unreal.

The cultures were fascinating, beyond belief. Some were very strict in the way that they were visually represented; having only the finest of metals and cloth such as with the Persian influenced people of Nosheru. Other cultures were much more difficult to attempt to visually represent, namely the Snake Cult with their Persian background and slight Egyptian and Aztec influence (et hem... Alex!  lol jk ). This posed yet another challenge and that was to research these particular styles during the time of their existence. To say the least, the workload for this course has been tremendous but the experience has been significantly more rewarding.

During school hours, and through collaborations with my fellow classmates and the development team on the POP forum, we were each able to share the information we had uncovered with others through topics and posts, making the deciphering process a little less individually arduous while keeping well organized and efficient. Nonetheless, it has been a great challenge for us all. Looking back, this, as I now understand it, is a likeness that I had stumbled upon a year before when combing through the posts from the original POP development team... or should I say, the holders of the many manuscripts pertaining to the fascinating world of Pendor.

- Jennifer Witham

Preview #1 - PoP 4.0 Overview
Preview #2 - Ashenborn and Snake Sect Banners
Preview #3 - More Banners and some Faction and Knighthood Order History
Preview #4 - Dev News and Faction Overview: Faction Traits
Preview #5 - Mettenheim Outpost
Preview #6 - The Snake Cult
Preview #7 - Faction Knighthood Order Overview
Preview #8 - Major Faction Preview : The Melitine Empire
Preview #9 - The Map of Amala
Preview #10 - The Companions
Preview #11 - A Beacon of Hope