14,094 pages of primary sources. 29 historical texts. 500 years of
witch trials, forbidden magic, and the collision between faith and fear.
Every system in Hammer of Order is built on real history.
Most games invent their lore. We didn't have to. The real history of witch trials, demonic summoning, alchemical medicine, and inquisitorial procedure in the Holy Roman Empire is stranger, darker, and more compelling than anything we could fabricate.
Hammer of Order is set in 1526 — the year the first formal witch-hunting manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, was in wide circulation, the Reformation was tearing Europe apart, and ordinary people were being dragged before tribunals for crimes that existed only in the imaginations of their accusers.
Every spell in the game comes from a real grimoire. Every trial follows real inquisitorial procedure. Every alchemical recipe uses ingredients documented in period herbals and pharmacopeias. Every demon has a name, rank, and weakness catalogued by real scholars who believed absolutely in their existence.
What follows is a detailed account of the sources we used, what we extracted from each, and how they power the game you play.
We began with 29 primary texts totaling 14,094 pages, spanning from 1229 to 1626. These are not modern fantasy novels — they are the actual manuals, treatises, trial records, herbals, and grimoires that the people of 15th and 16th century Europe wrote, read, argued over, and sometimes died because of.
Each text was translated, analyzed, and systematically extracted by specialized AI pipelines. Six extraction passes — Dialogue, Trial, Ritual, Demon, Sermon, and Lore — pulled structured game content from every page. A separate alchemy pipeline processed 16 pharmaceutical and herbal texts across 6,440 individual extraction requests.
The result: 29,900 deduplicated content items that populate the game world. Not generated from nothing — extracted from the words of the people who lived it.
The trial system is the heart of Hammer of Order. It is not an abstraction — it follows the actual procedures laid down by the Inquisition, using the same graduated classifications of suspicion, the same evidentiary standards, and the same terrible logic that sent thousands to the pyre.
The Malleus is the backbone of the Hammer faction's worldview. Written by the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer after his humiliating failure to prosecute alleged witches in Innsbruck, it is a systematic manual for identifying, prosecuting, and executing practitioners of maleficium.
Part I argues that witchcraft is real and that denying it is itself heresy. Part II catalogues every form of maleficium — from causing impotence to raising hailstorms to transforming into animals — and explains the demonic mechanics behind each. Part III lays out the legal procedure: how to initiate a case, what constitutes valid evidence, when torture is permitted, and how to sentence the convicted.
In the game, the Malleus feeds the trial quest framework. When a player is accused of witchcraft — or accuses another — the tribunal follows Kramer's own "Twenty-Nine Questions of Suspicion." Evidence is classified into his graduated tiers: light suspicion, vehement suspicion, and violent suspicion. The NPC inquisitors quote his arguments. The legal procedures are his procedures.
We extracted 5,697 trial templates from the Malleus and related trial sources — depositions, confessions, witness testimony, legal arguments, sentencing rationales. These populate the game's tribunals, giving each trial a historical texture that no procedurally generated system could match.
Where the Malleus provides the theory, Hansen provides the reality. His collection contains the actual court documents from witch trials across the Holy Roman Empire — depositions in the accusers' own words, confessions extracted under duress, witness testimony full of neighborhood grudges and superstitious fear, and the cold bureaucratic language of sentencing.
From Hansen we built the game's NPC trial characters: Meister Jorg Abriel, an executioner who carries out sentences with professional detachment; judges who wrestle with doubt; accusers driven by personal vendettas disguised as piety. These are not archetypes — they are composites of real people documented in real court records.
If the Malleus is the philosophical justification, the Directorium is the operations manual. It details exactly how an inquisitor should conduct an investigation: how to select witnesses, what questions to ask, when silence constitutes admission, how to evaluate contradictory testimony, and what legal forms to file at each stage.
This feeds the game's interrogation mechanics. When Hammer-faction players conduct investigations, the dialogue options, evidence evaluation logic, and procedural gates all derive from Eymeric's systematic framework.
Nider's "Anthill" is older than the Malleus and in some ways more revealing. Written as a dialogue, it records actual folk beliefs about witchcraft from the Swiss cantons — sabbath descriptions, folk remedies, confessions about flying ointments and pacts with the devil. Unlike Kramer's systematic theology, Nider preserves the messy, contradictory beliefs of ordinary people.
From the Formicarius we extracted folk belief content that flavors the Maleficium faction's worldview: the ingredients rural cunning folk actually used, the rituals they actually performed, and the beliefs they actually held — which are often stranger and more specific than anything an inquisitor could invent.
6,650 ingredients. 4,063 recipes. Every one extracted from real 15th and 16th century herbals, pharmacopeias, cookbooks, and medical texts. The alchemy system in Hammer of Order is the largest historically-sourced crafting system ever built for a game.
The Tacuinum is a health handbook based on the work of the 11th-century Iraqi physician Ibn Butlan, adapted for European audiences with lavish illustrations. What makes it invaluable for the game is its explicit humoral degree system.
Every substance in the Tacuinum is classified on four axes: hot/cold and wet/dry, each rated from degree 0 to degree 4. Ginger is hot in the third degree and dry in the first. Lettuce is cold in the second degree and wet in the second. This is not flavor text — it is a complete, internally consistent pharmacological theory that governed European medicine for centuries.
In the game, these humoral degrees are the core mechanic of alchemy. Crafting a potion means balancing hot against cold, wet against dry. A fever cure needs cold-dominant ingredients. A stimulant needs hot-dominant ingredients. The system is learnable, deep, and entirely historical.
Published the same year as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Gart der Gesundheit ("Garden of Health") catalogues over 400 plants, animals, and minerals with their medicinal properties. Each entry includes the substance's humoral qualities, preparation methods, therapeutic uses, and dangers.
This is the core ingredient database for the alchemy system. When you gather herbs in a forest zone, the plants you find — their names, properties, and uses — come from this 1487 herbal. The gathering zones are mapped to the habitats described in the original text.
Platina's "On Right Pleasure and Good Health" combines recipes from the papal cook Martino de' Rossi with Galenic dietary theory. Every dish is analyzed for its humoral effects — a roast capon is hot and dry, good for cold temperaments; a dish of lettuce is cold and wet, prescribed for those with excess bile.
From Platina we built the game's food and cooking system: tavern menus, vendor recipes, and the food crafting branch of alchemy. Beer, wine, mead, bread, pottage, hippocras, posset — each with period-accurate ingredients and humoral properties.
While the medical herbals document legitimate medicine, the Antipalus documents its shadow: the forbidden recipes. Flying ointments made from belladonna, henbane, and wolfsbane. Hallucinogenic salves that convinced their users they had attended sabbaths. Love potions, cursing powders, and the pharmacology of maleficium.
In the game, these are the Maleficium-faction alchemy recipes — powerful but dangerous, flagged as suspicious by the trial system. Crafting a flying ointment grants real mechanical benefits, but if witnesses see you gathering the ingredients, it generates evidence that can be used against you in a tribunal.
The alchemy system draws from 16 texts in total: Pseudo-Albertus Magnus (364 pages) contributes occult herb properties — plants that grant invisibility, prophecy, or protection from demons. The Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum (182 pages) provides verse remedies from the Salerno medical school. Ruralia Commoda by Crescenzi (392 pages) adds agricultural knowledge — fermentation, dairy processing, preservation. The Ottoman pharmaceutical glossary Edviye-i Mufrede (868 pages) brings Islamic medical traditions into the game's trade routes, with Arabic drug names and preparation methods that represent the vibrant exchange between Eastern and Western medicine in the period.
378 demon profiles. A complete taxonomy of six demonic orders. Every demon in Hammer of Order has a name, rank, appearance, powers, weaknesses, and summoning conditions drawn from texts that their authors believed to be genuinely dangerous to write.
The Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellus produced the most systematic taxonomy of demons in pre-modern literature. He categorized all demons into six orders based on their elemental nature:
This six-order system is the mob classification framework for all demonic creatures in the game. Each order has distinct combat behaviors, elemental resistances, and weaknesses. Fiery demons resist fire but are vulnerable to water-aspected attacks. Light-fleeing demons are devastating in underground zones but weakened in daylit areas. The taxonomy is not cosmetic — it determines combat mechanics.
Psellus also provides the framework for the Demonic Possession system — his detailed descriptions of how demons influence, obsess, and ultimately possess their victims informed the five-stage progression from Temptation to Full Possession.
The Grimorium Verum ("True Grimoire") is one of the most notorious texts in the Western magical tradition. Unlike the philosophical demonologies, it is purely practical: it names specific demons, describes their appearances, lists their powers, and provides step-by-step instructions for summoning and binding them.
From the Grimorium we extracted 44 named demons, each with a unique profile: appearance, rank within the infernal hierarchy, specific powers they can grant to a summoner, offerings they demand, and — crucially — their weaknesses and the conditions under which a binding can fail.
In the game, these named demons appear as summonable entities for the Diabolist and Hexenmeister classes. Each summoning requires specific materials documented in the original text — particular inks, specific animal sacrifices, circles drawn at prescribed planetary hours. The game's crafting system for summoning components feeds directly from the Grimorium's material requirements.
Guazzo's Compendium is the most comprehensive single source on demonic interaction with the mortal world. Richly illustrated with woodcuts of sabbaths, demonic pacts, shape-shifting, and possession, it catalogues every form of maleficium the Inquisition believed possible.
The Compendium provides the game's possession case studies and demonic pact quest lines. Its detailed descriptions of sabbath ceremonies — the renunciation of faith, the obscene kiss, the backwards recitation of prayers — inform the Maleficium faction's initiation rituals. Its possession accounts, describing the progressive symptoms from subtle temptation to violent bodily control, directly shaped the five-stage Demonic Possession system.
1,320 ritual templates extracted from five grimoires and magical treatises. Every ritual in the game has real steps, real timing requirements, and real material components.
Agrippa's masterwork is the theoretical foundation of Renaissance magic. It systematizes the relationships between planets, metals, herbs, stones, animals, angels, and demons into a coherent framework of correspondences. Mars governs iron, nettles, wolves, and the angel Camael. Venus governs copper, roses, doves, and the angel Haniel.
This correspondence system is the backbone of the ritual crafting engine. When a ritual requires "an herb of Mars gathered on a Tuesday during the first planetary hour," the game is checking Agrippa's tables. The planetary hour system — where each hour of each day is governed by a different planet — creates natural time-gating for advanced crafting that is entirely period-authentic.
Agrippa also feeds the game's ability effect system. Many class abilities for the Cunning Woman and Hexenmeister classes are tied to celestial events — abilities that strengthen during favorable planetary hours, or rituals that can only be completed when the moon is in the correct phase.
Originally written in Arabic and translated into Latin at the court of Alfonso X of Castile, the Picatrix is an encyclopedic manual of image magic, talismanic construction, and planetary invocations. It contains hundreds of recipes for ritual incenses, fumigations, and talismans, each tied to specific planetary configurations.
From the Picatrix we extracted the game's talisman crafting system and ritual incense recipes. Each talisman requires specific metals engraved with specific symbols during specific planetary hours — all drawn from the original text. The fumigation recipes (burning specific substances to attract or repel specific spiritual entities) feed both the alchemy system and the ritual quest objectives.
The Key of Solomon provides the game's summoning circle mechanics. Its detailed instructions for constructing protective circles, inscribing pentacles, consecrating tools, and preparing magical inks translate directly into in-game crafting steps. A Diabolist preparing to summon a named demon must craft the correct ink (from specific ingredients), inscribe the correct pentacle, and perform the summoning during the correct planetary hour — all as specified in the Clavicula.
The Heptameron organizes magic by the seven days of the week, assigning each day its ruling angel, planetary governor, associated colors, incenses, and metals. It also contains one of the most complete descriptions of geomantic divination in the period literature: 16 geomantic figures, each with interpretations across 12 astrological houses.
This directly powers the game's Geomantic Divination system. When a player visits a fortune-teller NPC, the reading they receive uses the Heptameron's 16 figures and 12 houses — but mapped to the player's actual game state. An active accusation draws Cauda Draconis ("the Dragon's Tail") in the seventh house of enemies. High faction reputation draws Fortuna Major in the tenth house of authority. The system reads your situation through a genuinely period-accurate occult lens.
576 divination reading templates cover every combination of figure, house, and faction alignment — ensuring that every reading is both mechanically meaningful and historically grounded.
The sources don't just populate the game's systems — they give voice to its people. Every NPC conversation, town crier announcement, tavern ballad, and lore book draws from the way real people in the 15th and 16th centuries actually spoke, argued, prayed, and gossiped.
Erasmus wrote his Colloquia as Latin teaching dialogues, but they became a bestselling portrait of 16th-century daily life. Merchants haggle. Soldiers boast. Inn-keepers complain about guests. Students debate their tutors. Wives argue with husbands. Priests navigate the impossible gap between doctrine and reality.
This is the primary source for NPC dialogue. When you talk to a merchant, a guard, a tavern-keeper, or a traveling scholar, the rhythms, concerns, and vocabulary of their speech derive from Erasmus's dialogues. The game's NPCs don't speak in modern English with medieval wallpaper — they speak with the cadences and preoccupations of people who actually lived in the period.
Written by ten young Florentines sheltering from the plague, the Decameron's hundred stories cover every aspect of medieval life: love, betrayal, wit, greed, faith, and the endlessly creative ways people navigate impossible situations.
From Boccaccio we extracted tavern conversation templates and NPC relationship dynamics. The stories' embedded dialogues — characters negotiating, deceiving, confessing, and debating — provide the emotional texture for the game's social interactions.
Bernardino was the most famous preacher of the 15th century. His sermons, delivered in the piazzas of Italian cities, mixed hellfire theology with earthy humor, vivid anecdotes, and a showman's instinct for holding a crowd. He thundered against vanity, gambling, sodomy, and witchcraft with equal fervor.
These sermons feed the game's priest NPC speech and moral choice dialogues. When a Hammer-faction priest delivers a sermon in the town square, the arguments, anecdotes, and rhetorical structure come from Bernardino. When a quest presents a moral dilemma, the theological framing draws from his preaching tradition.
The game contains 11,920 lore book items — scrolls, tomes, letters, and manuscripts that players can find and read throughout the world. Every lore book is a real passage extracted from the corpus: a page from the Codex Gigas ("Devil's Bible," 1229), an entry from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), a traveler's account from Mandeville's Travels, a fool's portrait from Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (1497), or a prayer from the Ars Notoria.
These are not summaries. They are the actual words, translated from Latin, German, Italian, and Arabic, placed in the game world where they make contextual sense. A lore book about demons found in a Hexenmeister's study. A herbal recipe discovered in a cunning woman's hut. A trial record uncovered in the Inquisition's archives.
These sources don't exist in isolation. They form an interlocking web where every game system feeds into every other.
Craft a flying ointment using ingredients from the Antipalus Maleficiorum. If a witness sees you gathering belladonna, it generates a rumor. Rumors accumulate into evidence. Evidence triggers a tribunal following Malleus procedures. The ointment that gave you the power to fly may be the same evidence that sends you to the pyre.
Summon a demon using the Grimorium Verum's procedures. Fail the binding, and Psellus's possession stages begin: temptation, obsession, infestation. Visit a fortune-teller, and the Heptameron's geomantic system reads your possession state: Cauda Draconis in the twelfth house of hidden enemies. The game knows what's happening to you and tells you through a period-accurate occult lens.
Agrippa's planetary correspondence system requires specific herbs gathered at specific times. The herbs come from the Gart der Gesundheit. Their humoral properties come from the Tacuinum Sanitatis. Selling your alchemical products at market uses the same commercial language Erasmus documented in his Colloquia. The economy and the magic share the same source layer.
Survive a tribunal and your reputation shifts. NPCs begin to quote Bernardino's sermons about redemption — or about the danger of relapsed heretics. Town criers announce your verdict. Bards compose ballads about your trial. The Malleus's doctrine of relapse means a second accusation is far more dangerous than the first. Every system remembers.
| Text | Author | Date | Pages | Game Systems Fed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malleus Maleficarum | Kramer | 1487 | 296 | Trials, abilities, NPC inquisitors, evidence system |
| Quellen und Untersuchungen | Hansen | Various | 719 | Trial records, NPC characters, tribunal dialogue |
| Directorium Inquisitorum | Eymeric | 1376 | 942 | Interrogation mechanics, evidence evaluation, legal procedure |
| Formicarius | Nider | 1435 | 272 | Folk beliefs, witch confessions, sabbath descriptions |
| De Occulta Philosophia | Agrippa | 1531 | 388 | Planetary correspondences, ritual timing, ability effects |
| Picatrix | Anonymous | c. 1256 | 426 | Talismans, fumigations, astral magic, ritual incense |
| Clavicula Salomonis | Anonymous | Various | 246 | Summoning circles, pentacles, magical ink, consecration |
| Heptameron | Pseudo-d'Abano | 1496 | 252 | Geomantic divination, planetary hours, angel invocations |
| Grimorium Verum | Anonymous | c. 1517 | 129 | 44 named demons, summoning conditions, pact mechanics |
| De Operatione Daemonum | Psellus | 11th c. | 381 | Demon taxonomy (6 orders), possession stages, combat types |
| Compendium Maleficarum | Guazzo | 1626 | 814 | Possession cases, sabbath rituals, demonic pacts |
| Tacuinum Sanitatis | Ibn Butlan | c. 1450 | 232 | Humoral degree system, ingredient properties, alchemy core |
| Gart der Gesundheit | Wonnecke | 1487 | 522 | 400+ plant ingredients, gathering zones, herbal remedies |
| De Honesta Voluptate | Platina | 1475 | 192 | Food recipes, cooking system, tavern menus |
| Antipalus Maleficiorum | Trithemius | 1605 | 155 | Forbidden recipes, flying ointments, witch alchemy |
| Pseudo-Albertus Magnus | Anonymous | Various | 364 | Occult herb/stone/beast properties, magical ingredients |
| Edviye-i Mufrede | Ottoman | Various | 868 | Islamic pharmaceutical traditions, trade goods, drug names |
| Ruralia Commoda | Crescenzi | 1486 | 392 | Agriculture, fermentation, dairy, food preservation |
| Regimen Sanitatis | Salerno | Various | 182 | Verse remedies, medical quest dialogue, healing recipes |
| Colloquia Familiaria | Erasmus | 1518 | 586 | NPC dialogue, merchant speech, daily life conversations |
| Decameron | Boccaccio | 1353 | 672 | Tavern conversations, relationship dynamics, feast scenes |
| Sermons (Opera Omnia) | Bernardino | 15th c. | 1,192 | Priest NPC speech, moral choice dialogues, sermon events |
| De Lamiis | Molitor | 1489 | — | Debate dialogues, witch-capability arguments, moral nuance |
| Strix | Pico della Mirandola | 1523 | — | Philosophical dialogues, intellectual NPC arguments |
| Codex Gigas | Herman the Recluse | 1229 | — | Lore books, exorcisms, demon bestiary entries |
| Nuremberg Chronicle | Schedel | 1493 | — | Zone atmosphere, city descriptions, historical lore |
| Mandeville's Travels | Anonymous | 14th c. | — | High-level zone flavor, exotic realm lore, traveler NPCs |
| Stultifera Navis | Brant | 1497 | — | 113 fool archetypes, NPC character types, social satire |
| Ars Notoria | Anonymous | Various | — | Prayer-magic, scholarly quest chains, knowledge rituals |