--Three Distinct Leaders--
*Obek Lurdran, called the Crusader, is a Lawful Good holy warrior. His traits are Industrious and Organized, and he favors the melee and divine lines. Obek has the ability to recruit the mighty, reality-shaping hero known as Imjar the Font
[Not Yet Feature-Complete].
*Ashel the Reborn is Neutral Evil. Once a powerful sorceress, she is now an incarnate spirit of fire searching for a mortal host. Her traits are Raiders, Summoner, and Adaptive, with Summoner as her permanent trait, and she favors the arcane and recon tech trees. Eventually, Ashel can possess any unit to give it incredible arcane power
[Not Yet Feature-Complete].
*Marganna Maude - Chaotic Neutral and quite insane - commands the cult of reclusive seers known as the water witches. She is an emergent leader; her unique trait grants her free water mana and promotes all recon units to Amphibious. She favors the arcane and naval tech trees, for she alone can train Water Witches - deadly mage-level spellcasters that become even more powerful when joined into a Coven.
--Unique Arcane Line--
*Due to ancient taboos, the Hesperans do not train any form of spellcaster directly (except for Marganna's Water Witches).
*Instead, special non-combatants known as Scriveners have the ability to spend gold to create magical totems and inscribe them with spells based on available mana.
*Totems are immobile units (but see the recon line, below) that can cast any spell they have been inscribed with.
*This effectively gives the Hesparans the ability to convert gold directly into spellcasters. However, because Scriveners are a national unit, there is a limit to how quickly totems can be created and inscribed. In addition, each Scrivener can create only a single Archmage-level totem, preserving the limit on access to spells of that level.
*It is both awesome and highly thematic to put a row of Fireball-inscribed totems at the borders of your territory like a wall of defensive turrets.
--Unique Recon Line--
*The Hesparans forgo traditional recon units in exchange for the Order of the Drakon. Members of the order are highly fanatic mage-hunters, dedicated to purging the world of "evil spellcasters" (and anyone else their masters tell them to).
*Chapterhouses, the Hesparan Hunting Lodge replacement, grant health from wine and happy from ivory. They also empower any recon unit visiting them with a one-shot version of the Marksman promotion.
*Most recon units are basically suicide-shock troops, with low defense. In addition, in order to "fight fire with fire" recon units can carry totems, allowing them to bring some spellcasting ability into battle with them.
*Because members of the Order of the Drakon do not carry hawks, Hesparan hawks have another purpose - they are trained to transport totems, including retrieving them from the field.
*Since any recon unit can function as an assassin, Hesparan assassins have a different purpose - meeting armies in the field and softening them up with poison and collateral damage.
*Note that the names of the recon units all come straight from my head; they are basically just words I made up. If they have some kind of meaning, that is entirely accidental.
--Unique Divine Line-- [Not Yet Implemented]
*Because the Hesparans are from another dimension with completely different gods, they are eager to learn of the gods and divine powers of their new home. They are also extremely practical and unprejudiced when it comes to religion (except for their sacred taboos, of course, like believing most arcane spellcasters are inherently evil. You know, small things like that...).
*Instead of training priests of specific religions, the Hesparan Evangelist UU can spontaneously convert to any religion at a city containing that religion, gaining the powers of a priest of that religion. Under Obek Lurdran, Evangelists can also found a temple of any religion that the player has researched.
*Similarly, the Godspeakers automatically gain the powers of a high priest of the current state religion... whatever that happens to be at the moment. Obek's Godspeakers are even more flexible - they can choose whether to convert or not when a new state religion is chosen.
--Other Features--
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[Not Yet Implemented]The Hesparan Champion UU, the Runeforger, starts out weaker than a normal champion but can dispel a mana node (reverting it to raw mana) to gain extra power based on the kind of node consumed.
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[Not Yet Implemented]The Hesparan hero, Kasheel the Homefinder, is an early-game mounted unit available at Cartography. He can carry totems and explore rival territory, and gains a unique ability based on his leader: Under Obek, he can spread any researched religion to any city for a gold cost; Under Ashel, he can act as a spellstaff for totems he carries; and under Marganna, he has Water Walking.
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[Not Yet Implemented]At Divine Essense, Obek can call forth the impossibly powerful hero known as Imjar the Font. Imjar is non-combatant and cannot gain XP. However, he is immortal, can be inscribed with spells up to archmage level like a totem, and has the powers of a high priest of whatever religion he wishes.
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[Not Yet Implemented]At Commune With Nature, Ashel can train the cult of Pryomancers, Druid UUs with powerful fire magic and fire affinity. Additionally, she gains the ability to possess any one living, non-Pyromancer unit. The possessed unit gains a significant power boost, archmage-level magic, and one-shot immortality; however, if it dies (permanently), Ashel loses her traits.
*At Arcane Lore, Marganna gains the ability to combine any three Water Witches into a powerful Coven, her Archmage UU. Like water witches, covens are limited in what spheres of magic they can learn. However, they are mighty spellcasters who can call forth deadly sea serpents.
*The Hesparan world spell Reality Warp - available at Knowledge of the Ether - draws on the last vestiges of the mighty spell that brought them to this dimension to give them the power to bend space-time to their will for a short while. For 10 turns, all Hesparan cities gain a Dimensional Gate and all Hesparan units gain the ability to teleport up to 4 tiles.
