Company Captain: Westashes

You are not the hero of Westashes. Nobody is. Company Captain: Westashes is a tactical RPG about leading a mercenary company through a medieval world that does not revolve around you. Factions wage wars you didn't start. Rival companies take the contracts you hesitated on. Bandits starve, grow desperate, and get bolder. The world moves — with you or without you. Your job: keep your people fed, paid, and alive long enough to become a company worth remembering. A World That Plays Itself Every band on the map — knights, bandits, caravans, militias, rival free companies — pursues its own goals under the same rules you play by. - Rival companies patrol, hunt contracts, guard caravans and collect tolls — whether you're there or not. - Bands negotiate with each other: they demand blood-money, pay for passage, back down, or fight. You can stumble into the aftermath. - Bandits turn cowardly when weak and bold when strong. Raiders break camp and vanish when they draw too much attention. Militias garrison their homes at night. - Wipe a company off the map and the world won't respawn it — eventually a new one, with a new name and a new captain, rises to fill the vacuum. Enemy Captains Are Built Exactly Like You One rule drives the whole game: anything that applies to you applies to them. - Every captain has a background, a personality, a motivation and a memory. A Monk captain heals his wounded faster — yours and theirs alike. A Hunter sees farther across the map. So do you. - They remember every meeting: the tribute you paid, the parley you broke, the prisoner you executed. Grudges harden into vendettas, and vendettas come looking for you. - They win battles, take scars, gain renown and evolve. The enemy you spare today may return next season stronger — and still angry. Rumors Are Your Quest Log There is no chosen-one questline. There are taverns, and people talk. - "The Crows are starving" isn't flavor text — that band's food actually ran out, and desperate bands do desperate things. - Act on a rumor, ignore it, or arrive too late: threads resolve without you, or rot into something worse. - Which rumors you chase is who your company becomes. Brutal Tactical Combat Turn-based hex battles decided by more than hit points. - Positioning, terrain, equipment weight, fatigue and morale all matter. Soldiers panic, rout, and drag others down with them. - Enemy leaders fight with real battle plans — ambushes on your route, terror campaigns, personal vendettas — and shout orders that reshape their line mid-fight. - Wounds take days to heal. Scars are forever. Death is permanent. Your veterans' scars are your company's true history. Men Are Expensive. Losing Them Is Worse. - Recruit in taverns, where every settlement seats its own crowd — desperate idle hands going cheap, and professionals worth saving up for. Poor villages breed more idle hands than rich cities. - Every recruit has a background, a personality and hidden potential. The cheap farmhand may be a late bloomer; the expensive veteran arrives already scarred. - His hiring price you pay once. His wage bites at every single dawn — and your captain draws none, because the company is his. - Rival companies drink in the same taverns. The man you spent a week saving up for may already be marching under someone else's banner. Honor Is Not Fame Reputation runs on two axes: what you're known for, and how loudly. - Slaughter caravans and knights will hunt you while outlaws step aside. Guard the roads and lords pay premium — while bandits mark you as a threat. - Grow infamous enough and a price lands on your head. Other companies will gladly take that contract. - Earn an ally instead and they'll share intel, split contract rewards — and their deserters may ask to join your banner. The Road Remembers Too The land between battles is not empty. - Trade a scar to the witch. Share a meal with the hermit. Read the warning left beside the hanged man. - Watchtowers are held by whoever takes them — clear one out, or walk into one held against you. Mountain passes hide ambushes with real tactical teeth. - When the traveling fair arrives, even enemies drink under the same truce. Breaking it has a price. Emergent Stories None of this is scripted. In one campaign, a captain whose toll we refused at a mountain pass nursed the grudge for a month, rebuilt his warband, and caught us in that same pass — with the high ground. Three veterans didn't come home. Nobody wrote that story. It just happened, and the company chronicle kept the receipt. If this sounds like your kind of game, wishlist it — for a solo dev it genuinely moves the needle. And come argue about balance in the Discord; Early Access is going to be built on those arguments.