Kohan

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Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns
Developer(s)	TimeGate Studios
Publisher(s)	Strategy First
Release date(s)	2001
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single player, MP over TCP/IP, Modem
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T)
Platform(s)	PC (Linux/Windows)
Media	CD (1)
System requirements	PII-300 MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 400 MB HD, 3D accelerator video card with 4MB RAM
Input	Keyboard, mouse

Kohan is a series of real-time strategy computer games developed by TimeGate Studios. The series concerns the fate of the fantasy world Khaldun and its heroes, the Kohan. To date there have been two games and one stand-alone expansion pack in the series:

Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns (March, 2001)
Kohan: Ahriman's Gift (November, 2001)
Kohan II: Kings of War (September, 2004)

1 Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns
- 1.1 Overview and plot
- 1.2 Playable races
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns

Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns (KIS) is a real-time strategy game published by Strategy First for Windows in 2001 and ported to Linux by Loki Software. Immortal Sovereigns was widely regarded as being a very innovative game, especially for a fledgling game design company. It was praised as eliminating much of the micromanagement inherent in real-time strategy games while introducing new concepts to the genre.

[edit] Overview and plot

KIS follows the story of a Kohan named Darius Javidan as he fights the rise of the Ceyah, Kohan tainted by evil, to re-establish Kohan society in Khaldun. According to Steve Hammesch, TimeGate Studio's lead designer at the time, the storyline of KIS was influenced by Persian mythology and Zoroastrianism.^[1] The Kohan are a group of immortals given the task of protecting and fostering Kaldun by the Creator. Although the Kohan can be killed with violence, they only remain dead until they are "awakened" through use of an amulet assigned to each of them.

When the Creator desired to build a new world he consulted the two greatest of his Saadya, angel-like beings, named Ahriman and Ormazd. Of the two plans proposed, Ormazd's best fit the Creator's vision and the remaining eight Saadya were ordered to create the world, which Ormazd had named Khaldun. During its construction, however, Ahriman, whose plan had been rejected, plotted Khaldun's downfall. While Kohan culture bloomed early on in Khaldun's history, it was destroyed in The Great Cataclysm when certain Kohan desired to be free from the will of the Creator. The Kohan defeated the Ceyah and the traitors were sent away from Kohan society. One Ceyah, Vashti, formerly known as Roxanna Javidan, Darius Javidan's wife, was particularly rebellious against the Creator. She murdered her husband and led the Ceyah armies with hopes of becoming a tyrant over all of Khaldun.

[edit] Playable races

There are seven distinct playable races in the Kohan series. All of these are common within the fantasy genre although some races have names specific to the Kohan series. The Mareten (humans), Gauri (dwarves), Drauga (orcs), Haroun (elves), Slaan (lizardfolk), Undead, and the Shadow all have Kohan that resemble them although supposedly all Kohan originally appeared human. It is explained that Kohan who dwell with a certain people for a number of years begin to take on their physical attributes. In Immortal Sovereigns and Ahriman's Gift, the player can gain control of Gauri, Drauga, Haroun and Slaan settlements and control units from these races, but the player's main settlements are always Mareten settlements. Instead of selecting a playable race, the player selects a faction which has units unique to it. Players of the Ceyah faction can produce Undead and Shadow units as well as Mareten settlers and engineers.