Come reminisce about The Banner Saga: Factions at http://Twitch.tv/stoicstudio with:

John Watson, Technical Director and Founder

Arnie Jorgensen, Chief Creative Officer and Founder

Alex Thomas, Principal World Designer

Zeb West, Creative Director

Matt Rhoades, Design Director

We hope to see you there!

Those of you who have been with us for the entire journey know how important and formative Factions has been to the development of combat gameplay in the Banner Saga.  We look forward to returning to such times in the future, with new games, and new experiences to share with you.

One of the backend services we rely on for Factions is being retired and we currently do not have the time or resources to update the game. Factions had a good run and we truly appreciate all the bannerfolk who spent time there! 

We want to give special thanks to our Conclave members and two in particular, stoicmom and spicykorean for maintaining and encouraging the Factions community during the past few years! 

To all who played – thank you for keeping the banner waving all this time.

Please make sure you follow @BannerSaga on our social media channels for upcoming news and events. 

To chat about this news or any other Banner Saga news, we encourage you to join our discord channel, here: https://discord.gg/bannersaga

Skál!

Buy selected physical items and receive a Stonesinger miniature as a free bonus with your order. While supplies last, of course. This offer will be available from July 1, 2020 to August 31, 2020.

Stonesinger will ship with any of the following items:

– Apparel

– Glassware

– The Cloth Map

– Warbands Miniature – Bellower

The appearance of a Stonesinger upon the battlefield is a cause for great terror and alarm. These foes wield powerful magic, channeling the dark energy with their spear-like weapons which seem to function almost like tuning forks. Stonesinger strikes are known to spread a deadly disease to humans and varl, and they have exhibited the ability to explode the armor of other dredge units, sacrificing them and causing massive shrapnel damage to nearby enemies.

The Stonesinger miniature stands 2 3/4″ tall and may be painted.

Banner Saga: Tales from the Caravan is a one-of-a-kind anthology of stories from both the creators and their fans. These tales were selected for their quality and how they gently expand the world of Banner Saga in ways the games could not.

Here is a copy of the Table of Contents. Some stories are marked as potential spoilers.

“Take this Axe” by Ivan Weis-Palacios, a survivor’s story of the First Great War.
“The Tale of the Silver Yox” by Alex Holt, a fable about the mythological beast.
“Haugr’s Grin” by Alexandra Singer, a child’s tale about a blind varl.
“Too Much Rope” by Arren Roach, starring Shieldbanger Mogr sometime around the Second Great War.
“An Old Promise” by A.M. Russell. A kidnapping by kragsmen does not go as planned when a heroic veteran emerges to pursue them.
“The Lies that Bind” by Evan Dicken, a prequel story that seeds the origins of Rugga’s rise to power in Boersgard.
“What is Re-Told” by Alex Thomas. A story of the menders and their henchmen. (May contain spoilers for Banner Saga 3.)
“The Caravan from Tistel” by Alex Chimienti, details the fate of the town of Tistel during the Third Great War.
“Only Bjorulf Knows” by James Fadeley, a novella about the exploits of Sigbjorn, just before the events of Banner Saga.
“Stranded” by Alex Thomas and James Fadeley. A “what if” tale starring Eirik and Valgard, taking place just before Banner Saga 3. (Contains spoilers for Banner Saga 2.)

The collection also comes with a special introductory letter entitled The Scrivener’s Note. 

Be sure to drop by the Stoic store to pick up a copy! And while you’re there, check out all the other great merchandise for sale!

“The Silver Yox” by Alex J. Holt
“Haugr’s Grin” by Alex T. Singer
“An Old Promise” by A.M. Russell
“Take This Axe” by Ivan Weis-Palacios
“The Caravan from Tistel” by Alex Chimienti

The anthology will be released in both ebook and print formats, but that’s far from all. Longtime fanfiction writer Arren Roach will be joining the ensemble with an original tale starring Mogr. And our special guest is none other than Black Library author Evan Dicken with his new story “The Lies That Bind.”

The collection will also include “Stranded” and “What is Re-Told” by Banner Saga’s Lead Writer Alex Thomas, as well as James Fadeley’s Only Bjorulf Knows— classics that have never before been released in print. However, these two ne’er-do-wells are scheming something diabolical. Keep your eyes peeled for any last minute tricks they may scrape together before publication…

A parting note for all the other participants of our recent submission window. We encourage anyone interested in sharing their stories to take advantage of FanFiction.net. This long lived site has fantastic support for various documents and a great, supportive community of fellow writers. As of this post, there is not yet a Banner Saga category among the games. But if several stories are added, that could change very quickly.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted work. And know that only the game trilogy has ended. The Banner Saga is just getting started…

If you are a Banner Saga 3 Kickstarter backer, you should now have Eternal Arena automatically added to your game on Steam or GoG.com. Find it in your DLC list or look in-game for the purple Eternal Arena banner (above Survival Mode).

Hone your skills in your own, custom battles! Take those skills and prove you’re the best by getting the highest score on our Eternal Challenge leaderboards! New challenges every week!

• Eternal Challenge: Come back every week to compete in a tournament with a global leaderboard.
• Arena Mode: Design your own battles, choose the enemies, and change the rules in this spellbinding sandbox mode.
• Play with all 46 characters, plus all enemies, and battleboards from the entire Banner Saga Trilogy and refine your party tactics.
• 39 new achievements (including 3 hidden ones)!
• 3 new leaderboards.

Our community has been asking about this for years. The time is NOW!

If you have questions or need help, you can ask in our Discord channel or send us an email to support[at]stoicstudio[dot]com.

Enjoy!

In a few months, Stoic will be publishing an anthology of stories. It will collect several old tales and a few new ones within the Banner Saga universe. But of course, who better knows the ins and outs of the world than our own fans? So today, Stoic is announcing a special open call. We’re seeking short stories from our very knowledgeable fans to expand our forthcoming volume.

Are you ready to carve a few runes of your own?

Submission Details:

The ideal story length is no more than 5,000 words long. Please submit stories to mailto:submissions@stoicstudio.com in RTF, DOC, or DOCX format. Only one submission per author please, and be sure to format your story in William-Shunn guidelines. Stories must be in English (US preferred, but UK is just fine). You may use a few Old Norse words if you want, but don’t overdo it. The deadline is midnight UTC on December* 16th, 2018.

Compensation:

Because of the franchise nature of the stories, we’ll be looking for long-term or indefinite publication rights. Selected authors will be given both an ebook and print edition of the anthology, and a Banner Saga t-shirt of their choice (pending availability). If selected, we’ll work with you on publishing rights and compensation therewith.

What We’re Seeking:

We want original flash fiction and short stories that highlight the wider Banner Saga world. Stories should illustrate a conflict, be it personal, survival or combative. Stories should also be canonically possible (so no killing Rugga for example). Ideas could include:

• Original characters, either before or during the events of the Banner Saga.
• Supporting characters like Sefa, Sven or Holfi.
• Myths about the gods.
• The legends regarding various, unique items like Betrayal or Farthingjord.

If you haven’t read The Gift of Hadrborg, the sun stopped moving a few weeks before the events of the first Banner Saga game. So anything earlier than that still had day and night cycles.

Resources:

We highly recommend you at least play the original Banner Saga game. The Gift of Hadrborg is a good read for information about Strand. Likewise, you can check out Only Bjorulf Knows for more details— it’s available for free at the Stoic Store. And don’t forget to checkout out the Banner Saga wiki and consult the map if needed.

What to Avoid:

• Stories outside the realm of canonical possibility. So Ekkill holding Iver’s severed head isn’t ideal.
• Vanilla Viking stories. We’ll figure out quickly that it’s not really set in the world of Banner Saga.
• While myths about the gods are welcome, please don’t submit stories where the gods are clearly still alive.
• No stories with a dredge or horseborn as the central protagonist.
• We also recommend avoiding menders.
• Anything in which the technology is pushed passed the Viking era (No Iver with a boomstick, please).
• No gory violence or sex. You can hint or allude to it, but we don’t need to see it.
• No new races please. Though you may jest about the existence of dwarves.
• Please no “Choose your own adventure” style stories.
• No excessive cruelty. We don’t need another Ramsay Bolton.
• If you want an original location, a tiny village not on the map should be fine. Nothing bigger though— we don’t need to discover Banner Sagamerica.
• No mention of third-party brands, no matter how many dunks Ekkill scores in those sweet, sweet Reeboks.

Finally, we really recommend focusing on original characters. You can have folks found in your roster as support cast but the less entangled they are, the better. If your story is selected however, we’ll gladly hear any other pitches you have in mind…

We look forward to reading your submissions. Good luck!

*— Formerly November, see update.

You can check back here after the AMA starts, and we will post the link to the AMA, or you can visit this link to find it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5smddl/we_are_stoic_indie_developers_creating_the_banner/

It’s been awhile since we’ve given you a proper status update with information regarding what we’re doing and what’s keeping us busy.

First off, let’s talk a bit about The Banner Saga 2. We’re including a lot of improvements this time around based directly off feedback from the first game and so far it’s shaping up quite nicely. We hope the additions of destructibles, new objectives during battle and brand new characters and classes helps add some variety to combat. The story continues and picks up right where things ended in The Banner Saga and if you beat the first game you can import your saved game (choices, characters, stats and items) straight into The Banner Saga 2 to pick up exactly where you left off.

Secondly, The Banner Saga is coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. This is taking a lot longer than we anticipated so we apologize. We’re wanting to give you the best possible experience on consoles and Vita so we want to make sure we get everything just right. When is all this happening? Well, we’re still not sure on an exact date yet. We have plenty of work left to do, but we’re making great progress.

Third, we’re working on a lot of other Banner Saga related projects that we think you will really enjoy. We can’t share many details on it just yet but we’re excited to see the world of The Banner Saga continue to grow and expand.

Finally, thanks so much for all of your kind words, your support and your continued understanding as we work on the game. We are eager to get The Banner Saga 2 in your hands so you can continue your saga!