Subscribe to download
Medieval Overhaul: House Zahir

House Zahir adds two new factions of Islamic/Ottoman inspiration, like all Rimworld or Medieval Overhaul factions they are not based on any specific culture, people or land but is instead my take on an Islamic/ottoman inspired culture that should fit right in with Rimworld's world building and themes.


The titular 'House Zahir' is a Sultanate that rules the deserts through trade, knowledge and faith. They worship psychic powers and view it as gifts from God himself. Converting to their unique ideology can grant you powerful boons to your psy-casters.

They are ruled by the 'Efreet' a playable xenotype of fire spewing, psychic hulks. They are exceedingly rare and have long intermarried with Baseliners creating the primary xenotype inhabiting the Sultanate called 'Zahir Baseliners', they are close to Baseliners but have resistances to heat and fire, increased psychic sensitivity but are weak to cold temperatures and somewhat sluggish outside direct sunlight.

House Zahir relies on their powerful, advanced ranged weapons to pick apart their enemies at range. They employ Jezzails, a long range musket to snipe their enemies from afar but this leaves them vulnerable to well armed melee attackers. They have powerful portable artillery cannons, Grenades meant to sap castle walls and curved swords. They are ahead of the curve technologically as they historically have been invaded many times under the pretext of 'crusades' and 'holy wars', forcing them to adapt and evolve to survive.

House Zahir is a united culture of both desert nomads and urban traders and scholars, they will sometimes attack you not as an advanced force of musketeers and cannoneers but as a mixed, low tech and fast moving horde of neolithic desert tribals. If you're unlucky the Sultan may send his finest, his elite Efreet warriors and their Mamluk retinues of armoured desert knights.

House Zahir is a neutral, easily allied faction that favours trade and makes for great friends and a terrible enemy. They are very strong but not invincible by any means. They are a great faction to purchase exotic goods from like high tech textiles, spices, sugar and gunpowder along with other goods.

The inverse to the peaceful and trade oriented House Zahir you find the corsairs, slavers and plunderers under the banner of House Barbary. They are initially hostile to the player but can, through persistent effort become a neutral or allied faction. They will trade you similar goods to House Zahir but stand out in that they primarily will have a lot of slaves available to buy. They are pirates and slavers after all.

House Barbary are more disorganised than House Zahir, having poor quality yet more varied equipment. They employ similar strategies to House Zahir but will be generally more vulnerable to melee charges and close quarters combat in most situations.

House Barbary is a 'rough' faction that is meant to mirror but not be identical to House Zahir. It is not as distinct, meant as a raider equivalent that you could ally should you want access to a steady supply of slaves or rare exotic trade goods. They should provide a healthy, varied challenge to a medieval playthrough should you choose to not anger House Zahir, besides the fact pirates are awesome.

The mod also adds some thematically appropriate equipment like weapons, apparel etc. Cultural garbs like Thawbs, Tubans, Hijabs and Desert robes among others have been added to spice up both the faction but also a desert playthrough in general. Weapons like Scimitars, Tulwars even a Kopesh give some 'sauce' to their equipment pool, setting them apart from the European inspired factions of Medieval Overhaul. Focus was not on making a specific culture but rather inspiration was taken from all over the Islamic world and a healthy dose of 'Arabian Nights' inspired aesthetics. The goal was in a limited sense to make two factions that provide the same function of a generic Islamic faction to what European cultures already have in MO with it's 'Houses'.

The mod adds 2 new xenotypes. The 'Efreet' and 'Zahir'.

Efreet are hulking, fire-breathing psychics that are exceedingly rare and vulnerable to cold temperatures.

The 'Zahir' / 'Zahir Baseliner' a hybrid of the Efreet and Baseliners, created through generations of co-habitation with the other. They are psychically sensitive, have resistances to fire and heat and struggle with cold temperatures but to lesser extents than their Efreet brethren.

The mod adds new food and drinks, Kebabs will provide a filling, tasty meal worthy of nobility and commoner alike. Delights are a tasty treat, a luxury recreational snack that is quite expensive. Then there's Boza, a weak alcoholic drink that's quite tasty. these consumables are meant to be interesting challenges to reliably stock, some harder than others. they are not re-skins and they provide ample boosts should you be able to reliably acquire them or produce them.

The Factions have unique memes, roles and precepts that are not attainable without converting to their ideology.

- Psychic Sufi, a minor moral guide that can boost psychic recovery and sensitivity of other pawns.

- Psychic Dervish, a Melee/Psychic hybrid specialist that has heightened psychic sensitivity and a melee trance ability similar to the normal melee specialist.

- Piracy Specialist, a ranged melee hybrid specialist. This one is meant to be reworked at some point with a custom ability.

To avoid bloat the mod has made some items style change rather than actually add new items. The selection is limited at the moment an the plan is to release a complete Islamic style pack in the future.

- Unique and carefully placed backstories creating believable pawns.

- Large, varied name generators for pawns, settlements and ideology concepts.

Honestly no clue, I want to continue making the style pack more varied and extensive, I also want to attempt to implement an Aladdin style Genie mechanic to the game with wishes that may or may not help you and the like. I will probably balance this a lot in the future as I'm not good at this and haven't had time to fully playtest everything yet. I want to make House Zahir itself a royalty faction at some point, giving it royalty titles and the like. The goal being that it allows you to end the game fighting off a crusade as a kind of ending scenario or destroying the faction as said crusaders. I am not skilled enough or have free time enough to feel comfortable saying that will come, but I want to make it.

- Should be compatible with most things, no not CE.
- Specific patches to integrate it exists for most Vanilla expanded mods or 'Alpha' series of mods that would be relevant.
- Spawn biomes have been patched for every relevant biome mod I could find.
- Various patches for equipment and the like exists
- Requires Ideology, biotech and Royalty at least but I can't say for certain as I use all DLC and don't plan on supporting non-dlc versions.

Huge Thanks and Credit to SirMashedPotato for the custom code allowing me to define a minimum required Psylevel to have an Ideological role.

I also want to thank the excellent people on the Medieval Overhaul Discord server for their input and help.

And thanks to my friend and 'cultural expert' who will remain anonymous but gave invaluable input as a Turkish person on the mod.