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Oathbound

Oathbound is a roleplay-focused mod that is centred around a brand new type of relationship. It introduces a new character interaction under Diplomacy, allowing landless adventurers to swear an Oath of Loyalty to a ruler of their choosing. This creates a unique relationship between the Oathbound (the adventurer) and their Oathholder (the ruler), that can only be severed by the death of either party.

• Swear an Oath - As a landless adventurer, pledge your loyalty to a ruler, becoming their sworn sword and devoted follower.
  
  
• Oathbound Trait - +3 Martial, +10 General Opinion, +25 Opinion of fellow Oathbound characters, + small monthly prestige.
  
  
• Oathbound Alliance - Unlike traditional alliances, the Oathholder can call their Oathbound to war (which is automatically accepted), but the Oathbound cannot call their Oathholder to war. In addition, the Oathholder does not need to be the war leader, so they can call their Oathbound into every war they are apart of. This makes for a one-sided but thematically appropriate bond of duty and service. (The alliance is not displayed on the character sheet.)
  
  
• Perspective - All events (where it makes sense) / content are written both ways, meaning that as a ruler, an adventurer can approach you to swear an oath, while if you are an adventurer, you can obviously approach a ruler.

The Forced Oath - When an ambitious Oathholder dies (is in their final moments on their deathbed), there is a high chance that they will compel the Oathbound to swear an oath of loyalty to their own successor (only if their heir is their child.) As an Oathholder (Ruler) yourself, you can trigger this event with your Oathbound by decision if you are ambitious, and if your heir is your child.

Note: Oathbound went through a recent re-write and as a result this feature has been disabled for the player currently as the logic needs to be re-thought. An ambitious AI can still force the player to be their heirs Oathbound on death.)

Make Your Oath Permanent - a new Decision which upon being pressed will swear yourself and your future lineage to the Oathholder's line. Upon the Oathholder's death, you will automatically become their heirs Oathbound. If the Oathbound dies, your heir will automatically swear themselves to the Oathholder. Your heir must be of your dynasty, and the Oathholder's heir also be of their dynasty. This will continue in perpetuity until the bonds between your line and theirs are truly broken (no one is either valid to swear the oath, or be sworn to.)

(Currently, this includes cadet branches of the dynasty, I wonder if house-only might be better, or a separate decision entirely.)

Sway Vassal for your Oathholder - you can now help your Oathholder towards a stable realm by swaying individual vassals on their behalf.

I recently re-watched The Last Kingdom and the journey of Uhtred & Alfred and wanted to try to recreate a similar dynamic to that in CK3 – not just a mercenary for hire, but rather a sworn sword.

This mod couples very well with some of my other mods:

• Adventurer's Beneficiary as you can then go off on your own and declare wars for land on your Oathholders behalf.
  
• Nye's Aggressive AI to make the AI a little more competent and interesting to work with.
  
• Adventurers Don't BANKRUPT The Realm if you intend to spend a lot of time in the Oathholders realm and don't want to be constantly bankrupting them!

The AI uses this mod, and I have seen between 0-10(ish) Oathbounds at any given time so I think AI usage is in a good spot. Also, you can only swear an oath to one ruler, and a ruler can only have one Oathbound at any given time (outside of special events.)

Oathbound is compatible with every mod and every overhaul. All scripts are custom made. If Oathbound is not working for you, that means you are using another mod, likely outdated that has broken certain on_actions, which is NOT a problem on my end and therefore nothing I can do to fix it.


Anyway, enjoy!



It is difficult to design this mod further, as while the whole point is for the Oathbound to benefit the Oathholder and therefore by nature is pretty one-sided, I don't want to make it too punishing for the Oathbound. The following is just some spit-balling for potential upcoming updates:

• A Forged Oath - Maybe a scheme, duel, or both in which an ambitious ruler can force an adventurer to become their Oathbound?
  
  
• Oathbound To War - The Oathholder sends the Oathbound to war for a random claim that they have? (I have absolutely no idea how to do this currently, but I'd imagine with some research it is possible.)
  
  
• Forced Education - Demand to educate Oathbound's heir / children and Demand Oathbound, if skilled, to educate their heir. (Suggested by One Proud Brazilian)

These were some general thoughts that I quite like.

Genetics, Death & Difficulty
Better Landless Adventurers