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Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue is a 2022 RPG Maker MZ game developed by Sounding Stone and and co-developed with MaouCat Studio. This is a reboot of the early parts of Dark Lord: Peacemaker and is part of the Peacemaker Series.

The Cerulean Land plans on conquering the Dark Realm and enacting genocide on all of its denizens, and the Dark Ones are ill-prepared to fight back due to their incompetent Dark Lord, Spidergland. The Dark Lord's sister, Spiderweb, seeks to curry favor with all the factions within the realm so that she can overthrow her sister and defeat the Cerulean Kingdom, but she only has four days to do so before the enemy forces begin their assault.

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This game contains examples of:

  • 0% Approval Rating: Dark Lord Spidergland is a dark elf supremacist who discriminates against the goblinoid, humans, and wood elves in her realm, and those groups likewise have no respect for her. Even the dark elf NPCs consider her a terrible ruler for causing internal tension and ignoring the reality of the Cerulean Land's bad faith diplomacy. When Spiderweb starts a coup against Spidergland with the help of the other factions, even Spidergland's personal guard abandon her because they don't think she's worth dying for.
  • Abusive Parents: Dark Lord Spidergland fears that her daughter, Spidervenom, will usurp her place as the ruler of the Dark Realm, so she locked the latter in a room for years. When the Cerulean Land kidnaps the princess, Spidergland is happy that her daughter is gone.
  • All-Loving Heroine: Played with. The Dark Mother's texts claim that uniting all the races of the Dark Realm is necessary to protect the land from invaders and that the bridging the divide between people will bring eternal peace. This comes off as a combination of pragmatism and idealism, since the former reason pertains to stabilizing a country while the latter paints the Dark Mother as someone who truly wants world peace. Unfortunately, the current Dark Lord, Spidergland, is a dark elf supremacist.
  • Ambiguously Evil: In the ending, Sanguine proposes unsealing the Dark Mother so that the Dark Realm gains an advantage against the human nations. Spiderweb notes that Sanguine must have her own motive for this goal, but this has yet to be revealed.
  • Big Bad: The Hero King of the Cerulean Land plans on invading the Dark Realm and slaughtering all the Dark Ones. The party has only four days to organize the realm in order to defeat the Cerulean army.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Sanguine considers humans to be prone to hypocrisy and deceit, despite being a human witch. In her inner monologue, she shows her contempt for Dark Lord Spidergland by stating that the latter is more human than the former.
  • The Caligula: Dark Lord Spidergland treats all non-dark elves in the Dark Realm poorly and clearly has no idea how to prevent the human nations from invading her nation. She also cares more about making a new palace for her concubines than properly managing the country. Even dark elves aren't exempt from her mistreatment, since she threatens to execute Spiderweb's subordinates if the latter doesn't surrender to the Cerulean Inquisitor. As a result, the Cerulean King has been slowly taking over her lands knowing that she's too inept of a ruler to respond.
  • The Chosen One: The Azoth sword will glow if the Dark Mother approves of someone leading the Dark Realm, but it never glowed for Spidergland. After Spiderweb unites the races of the Dark Realm and kills Spidergland, the sword glows for her, granting her legitimacy for the throne. Ironically or fittingly, she couldn't care less about the Dark Mother's approval and believes she should take the throne because she's more competent than her sister in defending the realm.
  • Due to the Dead: The human nations consider the Dark Realm barbaric for eating the hearts of the dead and feeding their corpses to wildlife. Spiderweb states that she finds this practice no different from the human custom of burying corpses, since those corpses will be decomposed and eaten by underground wildlife anyways. The Dark Ones also consider it respectful to eat another's heart, since it's their way of having the deceased live through the eater.
  • Even Evil Can Be Loved: When the party opens up Princess Spidervenom's prison, the latter admits that she held out hope that her mother would have a change of heart and save her. Unfortunately, Dark Lord Spidergland is a selfish ruler who has no intention of saving her daughter, since she has the potential to take the throne.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Cerulean King is a genocidal warmonger, but he cares about his son and despises Spiderweb and Sanguine in particular for turning the prince into a zombie. Sanguine takes advantage of this by restoring his son's consciousness, causing the king to hesitate in his suicide attack.
  • Faking the Dead: When Spidervenom refuses to be a pawn in Spidergland and Spiderweb's political rivalry, Spiderweb takes Spidervenom's Mark of the Crown Princess and pretends the Cerulean Land tortured her to death. This allows Spiderweb to use the princess's supposed death to make her an Inspirational Martyr, giving the former a chance to rise to the throne. Spidervenom uses her newfound freedom to become the main antagonist of Peacemaker: Glorious Princess.
  • False Flag Operation: In the ending, Spiderweb plans on staging a false flap operation to justify a war against the two remaining human countries. She drops this plan when a messenger of the Light Spirit religion declares war on her anyways, giving her the justification she needs.
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • The religion of the Light Spirit preaches the genocide of the Dark Ones.
    • Dark Lord Spidergland treats the nilbogs, kobolds, orcs, and human witches as second class citizens who are expected to slave away for the dark elves.
  • Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: A dark elf NPC points out that Dark Lord Spidergland discriminates against non-dark elves due to a rebellion from the goblinoids. However, Spiderweb still declares her sister to be in the wrong for being fixated in the past and using the past as an excuse for racism.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • Spiderweb is the main physical attacker of the party and starts the game with an AOE skill, but her defense and HP are low.
    • Sanguine, as a Squishy Wizard, has more HP and less defense than Spiderweb, but can deal massive single-target fire damage.
  • Good Powers, Bad People: Besides tanking skills, the Hero Prince can also use recovery and defensive magic. However, he's a racist and sexist Evil Prince who wants to conquer the Dark Realm.
  • Heel–Face Brainwashing: The Cerulean Hero Prince starts the game trying to kill the current Dark Lord on behalf of his warmongering father. Sanguine turns the prince into a zombie minion to act as the party's tank. The prince initially tries to resist, but she then adds a spell that completely removes his free will.
  • Honey Trap: Spiderweb disguises herself as a human in order to join the Hero Prince's inner circle and get in his good graces. He develops a crush on her, right up until she kills him to prevent him from killing her sister.
  • Hypocrite: Dark Lord Spidergland claims non-dark elf races can't be trusted and therefore deserve to be treated as second-class citizens. Spiderweb points out that she's trying to maintain peace with the assumption that the human nations will keep their word, showing that Spidergland is willing to twist the concept of trust to justify the oppression of her citizens.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: Played with. Spidergland isn't as outright genocidal as the Cerulean Land, but she's also willing to allow the latter to slaughter non-dark elf races in her domain to save her own skin. Additionally, while the Cerulean King has a good relationship with his son, Spidergland treats her sister and daughter as nuisances that she would rather be rid of, making her more villainous in some ways.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Leaders of the non-dark elf factions in the Dark Realm support Spiderweb's planned coup against Spidergland because the latter treats them as second-class citizens.
  • New Game Plus: After beating the game, the player is allowed to start a new playthrough at level 1, but with all of their equipment and items sold so that they start with more money. Gear sets will be available sooner and legendary-tier gear will be unlocked at the end of the game.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dark Lord Spidergland claims that she needs to subjugate non-dark elves because other races are untrustworthy and is willing to sell out non-dark elf citizens to avoid war with the Cerulean Land. However, she imprisons her daughter out of fear that the Azoth sword will deem the latter a more worthy ruler, showing that she's nothing more than a paranoiac trying to hold onto her own power, even at the cost of her citizens and family.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: While Spiderweb, the assassins, and the dark-aligned mages use polymorph magic to infiltrate the Cerulean Land, Sanguine just swaps out her witch's brooch for a cat brooch while changing no other part of her outfit, such as her skull-adorned staff. Somehow, no one in the castle suspects a thing.
  • The Paranoiac: Dark Lord Spidergland is a paranoid tyrant who only cares about maintaining her hold over the Dark Realm. Due to a previous rebellion from the goblinoids, Spidergland believes they and other non-dark elf races will attempt to overthrow her again, so she treats them all as second class citizens who are expected to slave away for her pet projects without being rewarded. Since she wasn't approved by Dark Mother's Azoth sword, Spidergland extends her suspicions to her own daughter Spidervenom, who she imprisoned and eventually sold out to the Cerulean Land, all because the latter could potentially earn the approval of the sword and steal her authority. Strangely, she doesn't extend her suspicion to the Cerulean Kingdom, but she still allows them to take her land and slaughter non-dark elves out of the belief that they will spare her, showing how selfish she really is behind her talk of maintaining peace. Even when her sister Spiderweb corners her and calls her out on failing her responsibilities, Spidergland refuses to admit that her terrible treatment of her people led to them rebelling against her for the second time.
  • Play-Along Prisoner: Spiderweb goads the Cerulean Land's inquisitor into imprisoning her at the capital, giving her the perfect opportunity to free Princess Spidervenom.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain:
    • The Cerulean Land not only shows Fantastic Racism towards the denizens of the Dark Realm (and in a way that condemns skin color), they also have sexist views and scoff at the idea of women in leadership positions because of their state religion. The creation myth of the Light Spirit condemns women because the Dark Ones were born after some women ate spirit flesh and convinced some men to do so as well.
    • In addition to hating the goblinoids, Dark Lord Spidergland holds anti-immigrant views and has no trust towards the human mages who defected to the Dark Realm. She's all too eager to sell out the realm's humans to the Cerulean Kingdom, knowing that they will be tortured and killed.
  • Pragmatic Hero: Spiderweb sees her allies as pawns to maintain the Dark Realm's stability, but she is also pragmatic enough to know that she should treat her allies well in order to maintain their loyalty. However, it's implied she believes in racial harmony beyond mere pragmatism, since she is upset at all the harm the Dark Ones went through under her sister. In the ending, she's willing to stage a false flag operation near the Dark Realm's borders to justify a war against the Silver Kingdom and Scarlet Empire, but scraps that plan once the enemy declares war on her first. Another of her plans is to instigate Bloody Duke Spinel to start a civil war in the Scarlet Empire and weaken them from within, leading to the plot of the next entry, Peacemaker: Bloody Emperor.
  • Puppet King: Defied. Spiderweb intends on having her niece Spidervenom take the throne in order to rule the Dark Realm by proxy. When Spidervenom refuses to take the throne, Spiderweb instead takes Spidervenom's crest in order to ascend to the throne herself while helping Spidervenom fake her death.
  • Stone Wall: The Hero Prince has high defense and HP along with several defensive skills, but he has the lowest damage potential of the party.
  • Straw Hypocrite: Sanguine believes that the Light Spirit's clergy and the ruling class of each country stoke hatred against the dark ones not because they truly believe in their scripture, but because they want to redirect the commoners' resentment towards convenient scapegoats.
  • Tautological Templar: The doctrine of the Light Spirit preaches that all problems the human nations suffer can be traced to the Dark Ones and that humans are justified in committing atrocities against them. The rank-and-file Cerulean knights truly believe themselves to be heroes fighting against Always Chaotic Evil Dark Ones, though it's implied the king only preaches these ideals to maintain his own power.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Spiderweb wants to conquer the world and unseal the Dark Mother to prevent the Light Spirit-aligned countries from committing genocide on the Dark Ones.
  • Witch Hunt: In the Cerulean Land, any citizen who questions the government's policies are accused of witchcraft. Actual witchcraft practitioners have little choice but to seek asylum in the Dark Realm, which accepts humans as long as they swear loyalty to the Dark Mother.
  • Written by the Winners: The Cerulean King states that history will judge Spiderweb as a villain, but she points out that if the Dark Realm wins the war against the other countries, the Dark Ones will write history in their favor.

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