Paradox Interactive’s announcement on June 16th 2026 regarding landless adventurers being added to the base game of CK3 has given me the enthusiasm to bring up a couple adventurers we have in Lux Renata that were not designed as such in Lux Invicta, an earlier choice I went back on because I feel like landless characters at least need an intro event to give context to the player to influence their roleplaying, and even though dlc related crashes are our biggest technical hurdle with the mod, we do want everyone to enjoy it with any possible DLC combination, even if adventurers and admin government was what spurred me to take on this project in the first place. More on that later in the sister dev diary, Dev Diary 1 this will be released with. Here’s a sneak peak of it:

I wanted to say a few words to the discord server and other readers about Lux Renata’s lineage. My own personal background with Crusader Kings, and LR’s predecessor mod Lux Invicta for Crusader Kings II as we prepare for Lux Renata’s appearance at ModCon 2026 next month. I felt it necessary as the community has gotten a lot bigger since our Song of Gaul update thanks to the team’s hard work and Soul Tomato’s covering of the mod on his youtube channel.

We will have a much bigger presence than when I announced my solo project “Lux Renatus” at last year’s event. Shout out to the Strategy Game YouTuber Tarkusarkusar for hosting my segment and voicing the original announcement trailer I threw together in Canva in a rushed and nervous evening and for the YouTuber The Historian’s Craft for pinning my comment about my little alt history mod project that featured the hellenistic world on his video for Greco-Bactria where someone in the comment chain mentioned the latin of the title was incorrect.

I have played Crusader Kings since early in Crusader Kings 2. I bought it in July 2012, and with some birthday money from my 20th birthday in December, some dlc. If you think Paradox is crazy with the DLC now, from the time the game came out to when I bought the legacy of rome dlc in december, there were 11 pieces of DLC because Paradox split things like army graphics, music, and things like character and dynastic customization into separate DLC. Insane. I loved the vanilla game, I only really got “into history” a year prior when I took a generalist college course on the history of Rome, I enjoyed history growing up but only in the realm of tv and movies,  if my dad would throw on Gladiator when I was way too young to be watching it. But I did not read things like history books until after I took this course, I went out and got the audiobooks for Edward Gibbon’s The decline and fall of the roman empire. It’s still a beautiful work of English but as a byzaboo I have my issues with its conclusions but I am glad I started my reading of history  with such an excellent example of narrative history that didn’t pretend to be subjective.

I loved CK2, it was like taking gameplay elements I sorta enjoyed from games of other genres and going all in on it the closest to playing a GSG game prior to CK2 for me was some Civ 4 and the Mount and Blade .808 beta some years prior, and an aunt buying the OG medieval total war for me, but if I was any younger if you told me my favorite game of all time was going to be “just the boring map parts of mount and blade and Total War” I would have called you crazy. But CK2 didn’t feel like a strategy game to me in the negative sense I had of that term at that time, it felt like a roleplaying simulation. Sometimes I would just observe AI games and jump into characters to make adjustments.

However it wasn’t until the Old Gods expansion the following year, due to PC Gamer writing an article about the game of thrones mod in June 2013, that I was in deep with the game, playing and soon after looking for other Total Conversion mods like the post apocalyptic america mod After the End soon after in 2014 (Not yet Fanfork, it only had the East Coast!) the space opera epic Crisis of the Confederation, and of course the classical age Battle Royale mod Lux Invicta.

Except for my love of the Eastern Roman Empire, I am not much of a medievalist. so Lux Invicta felt like it was tailor made for my interests at the time. Where the fantasy universe of George R.R Martin’s universe feels designed in lab to be supported by the Feudalism model as seen in Crusader Kings 2, Lux Invicta felt like its focus was on the things in the game that were on its way out, or on the periphery in CK2 or even things the game kinda struggled simulating, with a complex religion system focused on polytheism that tied it with government types at a time where government types were very rigid, you couldn’t exactly just write a couple triggers and make “feudalism with the merchant prince estates of the republic dlc.” 

I might have played AtE and CotC for their scope and played CK2Plus and Historical Immersion Project for their depth but as the years went on I kept going back to Lux Invicta world in chaos with its overly complicated religion and building system (On my honor as a man, Lux Renata will someday be even more complicated, I would have sacrificed a goat for some of things were getting in By God Alone in September) and as CK2 got older, wish it had versions for other games:

With mods like After the End and AGOT getting CK3 versions, and excellent new mods like Godherja and LOTR: Realm in Exile and Fallen Eagle I was surprised CK3 never got a Lux Invicta II. I kept waiting. I wasn’t really the kind of guy who had the confidence, and honestly the work ethic to take on a big project like this on myself.

But then in late 2024, Roads to Power came out, and Landless Play really shocked my system. I thought the idea of gameplay not being tied to land opened up the game’s various total conversions so much. “Adventurers in Lord of the Rings, even Elder Kings 2! Maybe After the End will probably use them for republics! Maybe Batman’s family will come back🥹”

I began thinking, Admin’s roman style governors are going to make every rome mod that much better. Ck2’s Legacy of Rome DLC added an “Imperial Government” that added viceroyalties for Byzantium and other titles with the right law. Lux Invicta called the government absolutist, more of an end game thing. Nice to have, but having titles get sent back to you all the time got a little tedious:

Check out this June 2025 build of Lux Renatus! It was considered it a solo project at this time but I consider that a half truth because me getting permission to use the Polytheism Reborn Lite mod during this period when it was scoped to be “just a little port of Lux Invicta” is what let me get the ball rolling up until the project’s public announcement at Modcon 2025!