Banner Kings: Cultures Expanded

BKCE is the official world interpretation of the Banner Kings team. Its core principle is to be "what the game should have been". Because a lot of gaps exist, interpretations need to be made that could be made wildly different when made by different people. As such we gather here the key principles behind our choices to creating the world we did in BKCE.

Franchise Friendliness

Being a mod made for Bannerlord, this is the mod's primary source concerning what the game world should look like. Nevertheless, we take inspiration from other games within the franchise - and set in Calradia - and consider them lore accurate. Specifically, Warband is the main source of information outside of Bannerlord itself.
But how? You may ask, because this obviously means conflicts. For example:

1. Warband and Bannerlord geography are significantly different;
2. Because of difference in scope, Bannerlord specifically has a lot of content that does not exist in Warband in any way;~
3. Sometimes connections between related parts of both games are not obvious: where are the Nords in Bannerlord?

Naturally, this means that interpreting content from both games as one continuous world requires flexibility and common sense. For one, we need to understand Warband was a game limited in scope and ability to provide a massive world. Which means Bannerlord is necessarily a retconning of the world. Since the mod is for Bannerlord and it provides us more lore, Bannerlord lore takes priority, and is then supplemented by Warband and other M&B versions.

An example of interpreting both contents is how we modified the Vlandia region. Being the core of Warband, Warband has a lot to tell us concerning its towns and geography. However, a lot of it does not match with Bannerlord:

1. The geography and position of existing towns that match is quite different;
2. Pravend, unlike Warband, is not a coastal city;
3. Towns like Dhirim and Suno are nowhere to be seen;
4. The fact towns are named incorrectly and TW recognizes it, yet won't fix it: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/why-did-veluca-become-sargot.398104/;

Continue to the next principle to see how we address such issues.

Plausible Interpretation

Within BKCE, we have addressed all of these problems. Missing towns were added, and what was incorrect was fixed:

1. Pravend was moved to the coast. Its position is still significantly different to Warband, considering both maps have a relatively similar Pravend region. However, this was done because a more accurate position would put it too close to other towns, and leave unused space still unused, and we would rather make good use of otherwise useless space;
2. Sunor was added, its name based on cut content within TW's XMLs, with a tiny bit of backstory even. It is clearly the old version of Warband's Suno;
3. Dhirim was added, as Dyrring. We must consider Warband names are Turkified, and so Dyrring was a reasonable estimation of what the real name should have been, considering Vlandia's original theme of Anglo-Saxons;
4. Sargot was moved to its closest match in relation to Warband geography. Sargot developer notes mention it is related to "Whale bay", which also matches the position it should always have been: the Bay of Varcheg, north of Vlandia and Battanians, which would later be conquered and settled by Nords (Warband);
5. Velucad was added in Sargot's place.

As you can see, the final result is a good compromise between both games: a more accurate and involving world, plausible continuity with Warband, a more complex web of stories, cultures and how they correlate over time, and lastly more content for players to play with.