Hello, I'm also interested in knowing the whole story of Warrider, and I'd love to explore it and do my research in game! I'm trying to run Warrider on my laptop as well, and can't get any of these links to work:
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/mount-blade-old-versions.30480/
Do you know how I could get them running?
Alternatively, do you know how faithful to the original Warrider "Light & Darkness: Heroes of Calradia" is?
Thank you!
Not sure about the forum link you provided, but
here's Warrider (MnB version 0.202) at mbrepository. I'm sure that if you look hard enough, you can find other old versions on there as well. As to running on the laptop, there was a fix posted by someone on the Steam forums, but I don't currently have a link. Something that also worked for me was, when running the game, to open the 'Options' tab in the top menu (run the game windowed) and change the render options, or something. It will make the game run smoothly, otherwise the framerate is impossibly low and it's unplayable. One of the versions after 0.202 didn't work for me, but the next ones did without any tweaking.
I don't know the whole story of Warrider, but from what I do know, the protagonist (the player character) is a native of Zendar, a neutral city-state on the border between Swadia and Vaegirs (the first and only two joinable kingdoms). The two kingdoms are at war, so the player has to join either one against the other - I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary to advance the plot though. The quests are mostly the same: the player is first hired as a common soldier with meagre pay, given radiant quests (capture enemy lord, chase away vagabonds, defeat bandit party, etc.), and the more quests the player does, the higher their salary. This is also necessary in order to receive certain unique quests that may or may not be related to the overall plot. There's a location called 'War camp' (or something like that) where Swadian officers give you the quest to recruit the Khergit hordes to side with Swadia against the Vaegirs (the Vaegirs give you the same quest, though by different means, I think). The player goes to the Khergit Khan who, in turn, gives them a quest to help a local wiseman find a cure (that turns out to be a magical artefact - you never really see it) from a mysterious disease that afflicted his children and is threatening to kill his daughter soon. The wiseman has the player travel to a witch that possesses the artefact and uses it to turn people into ghouls (supposedly living zombies, or some such, though they act like regular troops). Once that is done, he supposedly helps the Khan's daughter. From there, the story kinda stops as the game was never finished or tweaked properly. There's another quest where the player is tasked with either quelling (Vaegirs) or supporting (Swadia) the rebelling village of Serrapa. Even if the villagers agree to stop their rebellion, the lords betray them and send a punishing party, killing them all (the player is even given a quest to assist in this). It is implied that something sinister's to happen to the village and its former - now dead - inhabitants, though the game doesn't progress from there for me. From what I've read around the internet, the Khan's wiseman - who is originally from this village - is secretly a necromancer and will use the artefact to raise armies of undead, and the player has to stop him. He actually organized the rebellion, so you can say it was part of his master-plan. King Harlaus - the former king of Swadia, killed by the player in one of the quests that I never got - also comes back as a zombie and you have to fight him, twice, I think. If I remember correctly from what I've read, the player is to also get hold of an enchanted sword so as to make fighting the undead easier, but I'm not sure. The game also has three hero-companions: Manrid, Borcha, and Ymira. Of these, only Marnid's story is the same as in Warband (with slight change in details, for instance he mentions his family-name, and was supposed to sell his goods in an out-of-Calradia location instead of Sargoth); Borcha is still a horse-thief, but his story is different, and you can recruit him if you agree to transport him to Tihr for execution (one of the lords gives you this quest), but set him free instead; Ymira is a peasant girl fleeing some "bad people" that I've never met personally, but I think she was talking of either bandits or the undead. Not sure what else to say.
As for Light & Darkness, I don't know, I've never played it.
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