Peacemakers: Horrors of War fascinates me. This is my third visit to Sami Laakso’s Daimyria, a world not dissimilar to ours but populated by countless species of fur and scale and feather. Like humans, as we saw in Dale of Merchants, these creatures engage in mercantile exchange. In Lands of Galzyr, they wander off on continent-spanning adventures. And in Peacemakers: Horrors of War, they expend a great deal of energy on killing one another.

But not all of them. Horrors of War is a second stab at the system Laakso introduced in Dawn of Peacemakers, which cast characters not only as negotiators and mediators determined to cease hostilities between neighboring belligerents, but also sometimes as manipulators and poisoners. The art of peace, Peacemakers argues, is as fraught as battle itself. As a result, it walks multiple fine lines, both ludically and morally.

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I have a soft spot for Sami Laakso’s Daimyria, the shared setting for Dale of Merchants, Lands of Galzyr, and Peacemakers. It’s the specificity that does it. Other games about anthropomorphic animals feature, I dunno, turtles. Daimyria doesn’t settle for such broadness. Instead, it’s populated with fennec foxes and short-beaked echidnas and giant pangolins. Each species is an entire identity unto itself. Medieval courtiers in fursuits need not apply.

The forthcoming Peacemakers: Horrors of War is a reimagining of Laakso’s Dawn of Peacemakers. The early version of the game only includes two scenarios, but those were enough to get me excited for more.

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