CRONE & CROWNNotify Me
Coming Soon · Kickstarter 2027

Crone and Crown

Recruit a warband. Bargain with the Crone. Pay her in corruption. Win, or rot trying.

The Crone
The Crone
“Keeper of the Cauldron. Older than she looks. Which is saying something.”
The Premise

The witch is friendly.
The cauldron is not.

You are the last hope of a kingdom in collapse. You have a warband of peasants and exactly one ally with any real power: The Crone.

She'll fuse your fighters into stronger ones. She'll sell you bargains most kings would refuse. She'll watch, dryly, as you take them anyway. Every favour costs corruption. Take too many, and the kingdom you saved becomes hers.

“Three offers. One of them is actually reasonable. The other two are interesting, which is a different word entirely.”— The Crone
The Loop

Recruit. Brew. Conquer.

Every round is a small disaster you choose the shape of.

I
Recruit
The Tavern
A back room. Twelve gilded slots. Six factions of fighters waiting to be hired — knights, hierophants, lichkings, plague-priests, and the kind of rogues who don't say their names. Pick badly and you'll still survive. Probably.
II
Brew
The Cauldron
Throw two units into the pot. Throw three. Add an ingredient if you found one in the woods. The Crone watches. Something comes back out — sometimes a legend, sometimes a smouldering pile of regret. Either way you pay.
III
Conquer
The Road
Auto-battles on a six-wide front. Synergies fire, fusions trigger, someone shouts. You watch. If your warband holds, you move down the road. If they don't, the Crone consoles you — briefly — and offers another bargain.
The Factions

Choose your kind of ruin.

Each faction has its own logic, its own god, and its own cost. They all win differently.

Battle Priest
HOLY
Faith · Radiance · The Doubtful Saints
Battle priests, hedge witches, and saints of genuinely uncertain conviction. They heal. They revive the dead. At six they call down Divine Radiance. The Crone finds this professionally offensive.
Knight
NOBLE
Honour · Banners · The King's Challenge
Knights, lancers, sea raiders who found better armour. They hold the line. At six, the highest-cost Noble is Crowned — survives the battle and earns you crowns. Dies, and the whole court suffers.
Lich
UNDEAD
Bone · Patience · The Lich Tide
They don't die when you kill them. They persist for three seconds at 1 HP, still attacking. At six, the third death triggers Lich Tide — every Bone Remnant on the field raises as a fighter. The Crone considers this efficient.
Shadow falconer
SHADOW
Silence · Knives · Bad Ledgers
Untargetable for the first two seconds of every battle. Spellblades, falconers, cursed merchants who do not announce themselves, do not file taxes, and at six, strike the strongest enemy for 40% of their HP every ten seconds.
Plague Knight
PLAGUEBORN
Spores · Miasma · The Great Rot
Every attack stacks Miasma. At five stacks, the target rots at 3% HP per second. At six, enemies begin the battle already infected. The Plagueborn mean this kindly. That is, perhaps, the worst part.
Beastmaster
BEAST
Blood · Fury · The Bloodfrenzy
Bears, beast-riders, things the beastmaster found in the woods and decided to keep. They get faster as they take damage. At 25% HP the entire pack enters BLOODFRENZY — +50% attack speed, +30% damage. The Crone recommends not being nearby.
✦

The Crone will see you now.

The Kickstarter launches this autumn. Be on the list and you'll get a backer-only unit, a first look at the campaign video, and the Crone's grudging respect.