⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.9
Released 28 Oct 2026
Release Build
KingsBlade speaks nine languages, archers pick their range, and duels go where CK3 puts them.
🌍 Languages
KingsBlade has its own language under OPTIONS → LANGUAGES, beside CK3's and Bannerlord's: English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese. It follows CK3 until you pick one, and the eight translations are first drafts.
🏹 Archers
Under the sergeants, archers come in to medium range while their own foot covers them, and stay at long range when horse is coming, they're outnumbered or nothing stands in front of them.
⚔️ Duels
A duel between two men who rule nothing is fought where CK3 sets it, with its place, its weather and, in Japan, ShōgunsBlade's ground.
Minor fixes to duel start placements
🚩 Names and banners
Landless adventurers get CK3's own titles (Captain, Boss, Leader, Master or Mistress) instead of Duke, and a lowborn man flies CK3's plain undyed lowborn banner.
🎌 ShōgunsBlade
Champions and commanders wear masked helmets, samurai shoulders, shin guards and a horo, with no doubled sleeves. ShōgunsBlade's book asks to be built again once for it. Any fight in Japan shows ShōgunsBlade's loading screen again.
📖 The book
The loading screen now covers the trip back to CK3, so Custom Battle never flashes up. Larivière's Battle of Montgisard is the sixth painting, the Prologue says first which module it found, late culture packs are one switch, and Realistic Battle Sounds is credited to Cephas.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.8
Internal test build · 26 Oct 2026
Release Candidate
Late-medieval armies, every body kept on the field, and an app that finds its module wherever it lives.
🛡️ Late armour
From 1168 the Western cavalry ride under horse covers in their realm's colours. 1259 brings surcoats over reinforced mail, 1380 covered plate.
It's optional: install XIIIc Armory and Ben's Ultimate Armory, then press Prepare late culture packs on the Prologue.
🧹 Minor fixes
🚩 Allies in their own colours
Each allied realm on a side now fields its own culture's men, not the bigger realm's. Matches horse covers and armour from 1168.with pack
⚰️ Bodies stay
After Dissmemberment+ rework "keep throughout the battle" the bodies stay now.
The engine only drew 1,021 and quietly dropped the oldest; it draws up to 32,000 when started from the app.
🔧 No more crash on quit
Quitting Bannerlord after a battle with Ben's Armory loaded no longer crashes it. Start Bannerlord from KingsBlade so the fix is in place.
🧩 Getting ready for the Steam Workshop
The app can now find the module when Steam installs it, and tells you if the module and the app aren't the same version.
release prep
📖 The book
The centre fold's tab now turns through the five paintings in battle order. No more light line down the spine mid-turn, and the loading screen's name band lets the painting show through.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.7
Internal test build · 25 Oct 2026
Release Candidate
Five battle paintings, every unit in the chronicle, sergeants on a switch.
🧹 Minor fixes & tweaks
🖼️ Paintings in turn
The loading screens and the book's centre fold now take five historical battle paintings in turn: Ascalon, Stamford Bridge, Grunwald, Granada and San Romano, each with its battle, date and painter beneath. Every one gets its turn before the round is shuffled again, and the place is kept across restarts. ShōgunsBlade keeps its Sekigahara screen for now.
📜 The chronicle
Each battle now lists every unit both sides brought, with its men and how many died, and the rows add up to the side's losses. Battles from before keep their old two lines. The chapter title's c and h, and its two t's, no longer run into each other.
🗣️ Sergeants on a switch
Battle Settings → Commander Speeches has a new tick box, Sergeants take command after a positive speech, on by default. Untick it and your groups stay yours after any speech. The morale and health sliders now just read 100% or Off.
⚡ Lighter monitoring
The extra monitoring from the FPS performance hunt is gone now the first-clash freeze is fixed: hits are no longer timed in every battle, the frame recorder costs a few timestamps a frame, and the app no longer pauses Bannerlord to take a snapshot in a stall.
📖 The book
The name at the window's top left is now KingsBlade in the cover's blackletter.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.6
Internal test build · 24 Oct 2026
Battles are fought in CK3's weather at an hour of the day, and the first clash doesn't drop FPS any more even with 6k units.
❄️ CK3's weather
Where CK3 has winter, the battle is fought in falling snow, a blizzard in a harsh one. CK3's rainy seasons rain, and the wet months of Europe, the steppe and Japan may.
🗺️ The ground follows CK3's map
Where CK3's map is white at the battle, the ground is snow even with nothing falling. Where it's green, the ground follows CK3's season.
🕰️ Time and weather
A new TIME AND WEATHER section in Battle Settings: random time of day in fair rounds, night, weather harshness, rain frequency and seasonal ground optional.
Duels and bouts get the weather and the hour too.
🏳️ The country on the intro
The intro's title card names the country the battle is in, and the chronicle gives each battle's country and weather.
📣 Sergeants after a good speech & How a speech scores
Each commander's speech is scored from his Martial and traits, the same for both armies.
Martial & Traits
A good result also needs Minimum Martial for a positive speech (15 by default), and the impact sliders in battle settings scale it.
After a positive speech the sergeants take command of all your groups; give a group an order to take it back.
The speech's bonus line shown at the top.
🗡️ Head cuts
Dismemberment (Plus) takes the heads again, it was another problem rather than dismemberment+ and it needing cache.
Options for this mod now on KingsBlade's Bannerlord screen.
⚡ The first clash
Due to patching Bannerlord the expanded engine was silently running on Windows' debug heap; it's set to no debug now, and the first-clash FPS dips are gone. The CPU relief no longer switches off mid-battle, due to stuck thread. Sounds, hit effects and AI code cache under the loading screen.
🧹 Minor fixes
📜 KB loading screen
It stays up until the battle is ready to be seen, with no mouse pointer, and ShōgunsBlade's name band lies over the fold.
🎚️ Experimental capacity
Unticking Experimental engine capacity unticks every large-battle choice with it.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.5
Internal test build · 23 Oct 2026
🏰 Sieges
A commander's speech was pushing the battle clock minutes ahead, so ladders stayed down, ram crews stood still and defenders hung back in the courtyard. Fixed. Realistic Battle Sounds was also breaking siege actions (catapult loaders, arrow boxes, ram crews), and that's fixed too. The castle now mans every wall on the approach, the ladders go up once the ram is a quarter of the way, and groups on ladders keep climbing when the gate falls, with at most half heading for the door.
🛡️ The keep defense
"Prepare to attack the keep!" or "Prepare to defend the keep!" comes as the walls fall. Holding your own keep, F at the door takes you straight in, you start at the back with your champions and guard, every man inside is yours to command, and the besiegers throw in everything they have left. On your own walls your champions and guard keep their own groups.
📣 Speeches
Speeches are now short battle rallies, scored on the commander's Martial, Diplomacy and traits. The hand-over to the battle is prepared under the loading screen, and you stay in the group you deployed in, with your champions.
Still needs alot of rework. Alot of work done to the transition to battle.
🪓 Head cuts and frame rate
KingsBlade takes the heads itself, with Dismemberment Plus's pieces made under the loading screen, so a cut no longer builds its meshes mid-blow. Its settings are under KingsBlade on Bannerlord's main menu.
🎌 ShōgunsBlade
Japanese castles keep their own archer posts, gates and furniture, the two ambush maps no longer start the armies on top of each other, and the 1259 and 1380 profiles bring Japan to 60 troops. Rebuild ShōgunsBlade once from its Prologue.
🚩 Armies
Levies from 1168 on are armoured as they should be. Only kings carry royal weapons now: rebuild them once on the Prologue's ROYAL WEAPONS. An army of nothing but horse can start its battle, and allies deploy on their own half of the field.
🎬 Battle intro
More of the cards in the book's own lettering, with Bannerlord's crisp text shadow, and RTS Camera stays quiet over the intro.
📖 The app
The Fight button follows CK3's battle panel almost at once, and greys out instead of vanishing.
🧹 Minor fixes
CPU relief overhead cut, optimised
Battle clock work from speech integration
Camera cut scene transition smoothing
Dismemberment+ mesh, swing, hit, weapon caching
Real battle sounds cache
Deployment stage cache
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8.2 — Hotfix
Internal test build · 21 Oct 2026
CK3 1.20.1.2 Support
Clean up battle from Intro, speech hooks
Clean up from dismemberment+ mesh work and blood stain recovery.
🏰 CK3 1.20.1.2
Steam's update of 21 October works, and 1.20.1 and 1.20.1.1 still do.
🔧 Intros and speeches stop costing you frames
A battle intro and a commander's speech each installed nine callbacks of their own in Bannerlord and left them in place once the shot was handed back, so they kept running in every later fight of that session.
🧹 Minor fixes
🛡️ A second line of foot comes on with the line, not with the horse
A regiment the battle plan doesn't command keeps its place by the plan's foot now.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.8
Internal test build · 21 Oct 2026
Your commander speaks before the battle,
sieges go all the way to the keep
battles as large as CK3s
🧪 Experimental
BATTLE SETTINGS → EXPERIMENTAL lets Bannerlord hold up to 6,000 men in the field and 3,000 at a siege, with CPU relief. Off by default.
📣 Commander speeches
After Deploy and Ready, every army's commander gives an address in a recorded voice with subtitles, riding his line if his Tactics allow. His Martial and his Brave or Craven trait move his men's morale and health. It starts off: turn it on under BATTLE SETTINGS → COMMANDER SPEECHES. Any fresh click or key skips it, the armies hold still while he speaks.
🏰 Siege assault polish
Above Martial 10 an assault starts at its objectives: levy at the ram, men-at-arms at the ladders, archers at the cover, in shield walls and battle lines. Your groups are yours at Ready, your commander stands with his guard behind the centre, and your charge takes the gate once it is down.
🗝️ The keep
Storm a lord's capital while he is home and he falls back to his keep, and you fight him for it. Take it and whoever you knocked out there is taken prisoner.
Defending, you can fall back to your own keep and hold it. The lord on the walls, his champions and a garrison that beats you back now all take their losses in CK3.
🧠 AI Tweaks and Choice
BATTLE SETTINGS → BATTLE AI picks KingsBlade's, Bannerlord's or RBM's. Under Bannerlord's attack an AI army now comes on as one line, horse on its wings.
👑 KingsArms - Royal weapons
Kings, emperors and their champions can carry royal weapons from court grandeur 9 or prowess 40. KingsArms (the TaleWorlds crafting contest winners) is built in the Prologue, and Japan's realms get four weapons from your Shokuho. Switch them on under BATTLE SETTINGS → KINGSARMS.
🛡️ Armour and the field
Armour balance pass follows each garment's real coverage, so sleeves and skirts protect again, and high prowess grows more gently.
A field battle in Europe is fought on a map of its own region, duels in Japan use ShōgunsBlade's duel grounds,
City Guard Commander wears your realm's kit.
Adding a group on the deployment screen takes men from the biggest regiment of its class.
📜 The Prologue and the intro - installer
KingsBlade now opens on a setup Prologue that finds your games, walks you through the Workshop mods and builds your banners. The battle intro's cards are lettered like their book: blackletter for KingsBlade, Shojumaru for ShōgunsBlade.
🎌 ShōgunsBlade
Built again once after updating: open its book and press Rebuild ShōgunsBlade from Shokuho.
🧹 Minor fixes
📖 The book
The books show their leather edge, BATTLE SETTINGS is balanced across both columns, Bannerlord is minimised before it is frozen, Realistic Battle Sounds' friendly-fire switch is shown, plus engine groundwork and release test checks. The module zip is now ~91 MB for the speech recordings.
📣 Speeches
Ending or skipping a speech cuts straight to a view behind your commander while the enemy is set down. Sliders for speech morale and health impact (0–200%) and the minimum Martial for a positive speech show the real change at each setting.
🏰 Sieges
A big levy takes the group of a regiment with nobody on the field, so a split levy fills groups 1 and 2. Regiments deploy as lines of at most eight ranks instead of packed squares, and siege archers hold the barricades in reach of the walls. A stalled ram recruits nearby foot to pull it, and a keep fight brings ten more men for a side whose guard goes in. New slider: Siege Keep % chance to take/taken champions prisoner.
🎯 Deployment
With more than 1,000 men in a field battle the deployment screen opens closer, framing your groups. The screen says when the levy limit can't fit in eight groups, and regiments stay separate when you change sliders or classes.
⚔️ Damage and eras
New setting: DAMAGE YOU RECEIVE, Bannerlord's own player damage reduction (0, 50 or 75%). Culture packs move to dated equipment profiles (867, 1050, 1168), with old saved requests still working.
🗺️ Maps and intros
Takor Castle's defence intro now looks at the fort from the attackers' approach, not into the cliff. Japanese tournament bouts use ShōgunsBlade's two arenas.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.7.5 — ShōgunsBlade
Internal test build · 18 Oct 2026
🎌 ShōgunsBlade, built in the app
ShōgunsBlade isn't a download any more. Subscribe to Shokuho on the Steam Workshop, open ShōgunsBlade's book and press Build on its Prologue: the app makes Japan's troops, battle maps and castles from your own Shokuho in a couple of seconds.
🏰 Sieges
A big levy now deploys as even groups, with two new sliders in BATTLE SETTINGS (800 for battles, 600 for sieges).
A king's standard actually flies in a siege, after being mounted and your commander starts the deployment screen with his champions instead of the levy.
Commanders above Martial 10 try a siege deployment of their own.
🧹 Minor fixes
⚔️ Battles end properly
Once a beaten army has run, its last stragglers break with it, so you're no longer hunting one levy for a minute and a half before the win.
🎵 Music
No more main menu music playing into a fight.
Your culture's battle theme carries through the whole intro and deployment, and KingsBlade's own intro track is gone.
🎬 Intros and bouts
The battle's opening shot rolls forward over your army or cranes up from it, never across a flank, and tournament bouts start in the middle of the ring again.
📖 The book
Books close back onto the shelf, maximising no longer flashes two books, and ABOUT is spaced out and now credits the Shokuho team.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.7.2
Internal test build · 17 Oct 2026
🛡️ Allies back you up Part II
An allied army with a decent commander now fights with a plan of its own. It holds its place beside your line, moves when you move, and goes in on real contact instead of charging off alone. Its archers keep their range, its knights ride with their own foot.
A realm's standard-bearer rides with its mounted knights.
🔊 Realistic Battle Sounds, built in
Hits on mail, plate and flesh, bow releases, coughs and insults, as part of KingsBlade's module.
It's on by default under OPTIONS → ADD-ONS, and it's sounds only: nothing about who wins a fight changes.
Start Bannerlord from KingsBlade so it picks them up.
🏆 "You have won the battle!" is back
When KingsBlade started Bannerlord, a fight could begin before the main menu that shows Bannerlord's messages had ever loaded, so the victory line never showed. Fights now wait for it.
🏰 Sides the way CK3 shows them
Each side's card, and its shield on the Tab scoreboard, is now the realm whose battle it is, joined by the rest, even when you're the one who joined them.
📜 The chronicle
Every intro card and the end scoreboard are pictured under each battle; click one to see it big. Battles are grouped by dynasty and ruler, with both sides' arms beside each name. Each side lists every realm under its own small shield with the men it brought, then who commanded it, and the war line says when you joined someone else's war. Duel cards show the whole character sheet.
⚖️ The war card
CK3's war score total now shows as a bar between the war's name and its sides.
🧹 Polish & fixes
Commander speech library added for a later feature, and more checks on the book's rendering.
📖 The book
It opens itself when the app starts (OPTIONS → STARTING UP). The loading screen between the games is an open book on a wooden table, Ctrl+0 opens the chapter painting across both pages, and the first opening now plays its whole swing. No gold rim, no spine down the left, no stray diamonds, softer cover lettering, and the mouse wheel scrolls LOG.
🎨 The paintings
The window paintings are redone: the hands and the royal swords put right, and the French crossbow fixed.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.7 — Chronicles of War
Internal test build · 16 Oct 2026
Every battle you fight is now kept in a chronicle, and your Bannerlord battles finally show up in CK3's war score.
🛠️ CK3 1.20.1.1
Steam's silent update of 15 Oct is supported, and 1.20.1 still works. No banner refresh needed.
📜 The battle chronicle
BATTLES lists every battle, siege, duel and tournament bout you fight, newest first, under your campaign's totals. Click one for where it was fought, both sides, what each lost, the most kills and every champion's fate. The old BATTLES page is now LOG.
⚖️ Battles count in their war
A Bannerlord battle now adds to the war's Battle Losses and contribution, just like one CK3 fights itself, and its record shows what it put on the war.
A field battle's war score comes on CK3's next day, just like some kills from a battle.
🏰 Siege assaults count as battles
An assault goes into its war as a battle: both sides' dead in Battle Losses, a line in the war's battles, and war score for the winner. A won assault still takes the holding.
🗡️ The battle story
Your losses are now counted against the men you brought, and it says how many were still standing.
📚 Two books on a shelf
KingsBlade now comes up as a shelf of gothic leather books, with its theme playing. Open one, or close or minimise the window, and KingsBlade starts watching.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.6.1
Internal test build · 14 Oct 2026
CK3 1.20.1, and battle intro tweaks.
🏰 CK3 1.20.1
KingsBlade now runs on CK3 1.20.1. Stay on v0.9.6 for 1.20.0.3 or 1.20.0.4.
After updating, press Generate / refresh realm banners once, with Bannerlord closed.
🔧 Fixes
🎥 Battle intros under the sky
No more shots of the ground: every shot looks at your men with the sky above them. There are now eight intros: a roll from either flank, a forward roll or a crane, dealt in turn so no two battles running look alike. In a siege you attack, half of them show the fort.
🎵 Intro music
Bannerlord's battle theme for your culture now plays over the intro by default. It carries on through deployment and fades out a few seconds into the battle. The menu music no longer plays under the intro.
🛡️ The enemy fights as one army
AI regiments outside Bannerlord's battle plan now fight alongside it instead of charging in alone.
Reinforcements arrive in proper waves, for every side.
🏯 Sieges
Every army storming a siege starts drawn up in its camp, not piled on the spawn points. An assault left standing at a broken outer gate now goes on to the inner gate. Sieges get their own slider: Soldiers at a siege at once.
📜 The war card 0.2
It shows what CK3's war window shows: each side's war score by its parts, vassals under their liege, and every realm's contribution and losses.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.6 — Heralds of War
Internal test build · 13 Oct 2026
Every battle now opens like a herald's call.
📜 Battle intros
Before deployment the camera rolls over both armies to music: the battle named as CK3 names it, CK3's own date, the war with every realm's arms, each side's realms, champions and regiments, then the muster. Click to skip; the switches are under BATTLE INTROS.
🤺 Duels & bouts
They open on the two men: arms, name, realm, age, prowess, martial and traits, and the terms of the fight.
📋 Scoreboard
Tab shows the fight's name and CK3's date in every fight, and keeps it there at the end.
🏰 Hold the walls - Defensive Sieges
A siege against you now lights the Fight button. The garrison, your stationed men-at-arms, and you and your champions at home hold the walls, and it all goes back into CK3.
🛡️ Assaults
Every army storming a wall keeps its regiments.
🏹 Archers & Welsh Longbowmen
Archers keep their range and fall back when rushed. CK3's crossbowmen are real crossbowmen now (they were garrison militia, more than half without a crossbow), and Welsh and Pictish archers carry the longbow before 1050.
🚩 Arms
Arms you redesign in CK3 fully fly in Bannerlord.
Fixes previous setting that stopped some banners being replaced.
🐎 Royal Guard
A mounted guard set to follow you now keeps to you instead of riding off.
💀 Beheadings
With Dismemberment (Plus), a beheaded champion dies of CK3's own "head ripped off".
🔧 Fixes
With two battles on the go, Fight takes the one on CK3's panel. Follow RBM reads the running game, and Freeze leaves a loading Bannerlord alone.
🧹 Minor fixes
The debug log has its one lost detail back, the release tools catch a comment strip that never ran, the troop-pack tests can't pass on nothing.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.5.6 — Drawn Up for War
Internal test build · 9 Oct 2026
Armies take the field drawn up for war, and keep their regiments whole while they fight.
🏰 Battle array
A commander with martial 10+ draws his army up properly: levies in front, archers behind them, men-at-arms as a second line, Royal Guard and knights behind the centre, cavalry on the wings. Below that, an army lines up as it arrived. Every army does it, and the enemy is no longer merged into big blobs before the deployment screen opens.
🛡️ Regiments stay whole
Every regiment is its own group from deployment to the end. A side with more than eight regiments is grouped by kind first, so no more tiny groups and one mixed blob.
🤝 Allies back you up
An ally starts ahead of you in its war, and on your flank or behind you in yours. Below martial 10 it charges, its champions keeping with its foot. From 10 it copies your orders, and from 25 it picks its own moment too.
👑 Royal Guard
New switch: your guard follows you as your bodyguard. Off, it's its own group, put back together if the deployment screen mixes it up. It rides from grandeur 6 and comes to your sieges.
🏹 Fire at will
Archers no longer sit on a hold-fire order the sergeants left behind.
🐎 Cavalry wings
A cavalry group of 20+ handed to its sergeants splits into two wings, one per flank, under a martial 10+ general.
🪖 First wave
Every army's first wave is a cross-section of it, so nobody opens with archers alone. The men-at-arms weight now favours heavy infantry and pikemen only.
🚩 Bannermen
A bannerman in a group shared by several regiments goes to the back of the group he's in.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.5.1 — Hotfix
Internal test build · 8 Oct 2026
Four fixes for field battles with several realms on a side.
🛡️ No fought battle thrown away
A battle fought to the end could be thrown away instead of written back when a small allied band's champions never reached the field. Now every realm's champions take the field first, and one who never comes on is written back unharmed, so the battle always goes in.
⚖️ Every force on the field
A band of a few men used to lose every rounding to the big realms, so its men never came on. Now every realm stands within a man of its share from the opening wave, a realm with men always sends at least one, and reinforcements keep everyone in their share.
🚩 Banners
A fallen banner picked up by a man of another realm turned into his arms. Now only the banner's own realm goes for it, and it goes back up in the arms it fell with.
🪖 Early-era Germans
In the tribal era the Swabians, Germans, Bavarians, Franconians, Dutch and Frisians wore Norse kit. They now field the Western set, the way CK3 draws them.
⚔️ KingsBlade v0.9.5 — Duels & Tournaments
Internal test build · 8 Oct 2026
CK3's duels and the tournament's duel contest are now fought in Bannerlord.
🗡️ Duels
When CK3 opens a duel for you, a trial by combat or a single combat, the KingsBlade button appears over its duel window. Fight it in Bannerlord and the winner goes back into CK3's own duel, which decides what losing costs, death included. Northmen may fight shirtless, if they are in CK3s duel window.
🏟️ Tournament bouts
Each of your bouts in the duel contest can be fought in a Bannerlord arena picked by the county's culture. The host's arms fly on great battle standards round the ring, and the stands are packed with townsfolk in his colours. It's real weapons and armour by default (blunt sparring kit is a tick-box in BATTLE SETTINGS), whoever goes down loses, and CK3 rolls the wounds itself.
🛡️ Every man under his own banner
Contestants fight for their realm just like in a battle: a ruler under his own arms, a knight under his lord's, a noble at nobody's court under his house's, and a lowborn stranger under his culture's banner.
⏳ Coming soon
Only the duel contest goes to Bannerlord in this release. The group melee, the joust, wrestling and archery stay in CK3 for now, and are coming soon.
🚩 Banners
The realm's standard no longer leaves its cloth stretched to the ground after deployment, and you can take up a fallen banner of your own side yourself.
🔧 Updating
Install the Host and the module together.
🧪 Testing
Every realm its own tournament arena, colours and banners
Thanks to azzzard, maty743 and maegfaer, now credited on ABOUT.