The Blood of Dawnwalker: Smoke and Ash| Features Unlocked & Who are Medieval Soldiers?

2026年9月7日2026年9月9日

The Blood of Dawnwalker

This post is also available in: 日本語 (Japanese)

!! FULL SPOILERS AHEAD — READ AT YOUR OWN RISK !!

This article covers the route I personally chose and the outcomes I was able to confirm. Branches resulting from other choices are still being tested.

TOC [ close ]

Overview of [Smoke and Ashes]

After being defeated by Brencis, Coen awakens to find that Anca has been tending to his wounds.

Coen and Anca rush out to find out what happened to Laslea and Coen’s family, only to find ruins and corpses.

In search of information about his family, Coen is guided by Anca and gains the power of Witchcraft.

Using the Witchcraft ability Compel Soul, he questions the corpse of a soldier and learns that his family has been taken captive by Brencis and will be killed at his coronation in 30 days.

Having resolved to stand against Brencis’s forces, Coen’s 30 days and 30 nights begin.

Requirements and Starting Location

Starts automatically after completing Bad Blood.

Time Limit and Time Cost

Consumes a total of 9 Time Segments.

Breakdown:

1 during the opening event
1 during the event where Coen learns Witchcraft
1 during the event where Coen extracts information from the soldier using Compel Soul
6 during the event where Coen clears the rubble from the gate of Laslea

[Smoke and Ashes] Rewards

150 XP

[Smoke and Ashes] Walkthrough

Wake up in Anca’s house. (Consumes 1 Time Segment)
Go to Laslea with Anca.
Go to Coen’s house.
Interact with everything you can find inside the house and investigate the place thoroughly.
Go outside.
Watch the event where Anca carves a Witchcraft rune into Coen’s arm. (Consumes 1 Time Segment)
Use Compel Soul on the dead soldier.
Search for items associated with the soldier to extract more information from him. I found the following three:
1. Brencis’s Banner
2. Trampled Apple
3. Drinking Gourd
Use Compel Soul on the soldier’s corpse again to extract more information.
Bury the soldier and watch the event where Anca gives Coen advice on how to use his remaining 30 days.
Follow Anca.
Interact with the gate of Laslea and clear away the rubble blocking it. (Consumes 6 Time Segments)
Complete the quest. [Echoes of Silenced Bells] starts automatically.

Step 3 is actually a bit of a pain.

Some of the objects you need to interact with are tiny and difficult to target, but the real enemy here is the camera.

You have to move in and out of some very cramped interiors, which makes the camera swing around all over the place.

And holy hell, it can cause some serious motion sickness.

If you’re prone to motion sickness, watch out. Seriously.

As far as actually clearing the quest goes, using Focus Mode during Steps 3 and 8 makes things easier, since you basically just need to investigate whatever is highlighted in yellow.

…Though Focus Mode makes the camera move around even more.

Features Unique to [Smoke and Ashes]

During this quest, you cannot use Shrines to learn skills or fast travel.

Features Unlocked in [Smoke and Ashes]

The Court menu, accessible from the main menu
The Witchcraft abilities Compel Soul, Astral Communion, and Burning Blood
The Witchcraft and Vampirism skill trees

The Court menu gives you a small preview of the path ahead: defeating the Vrakhiri serving under Brencis and eventually bringing down Brencis himself.

After completing this quest, you can also begin spending Skill Points at Shrines to learn and upgrade skills in the Witchcraft and Vampirism skill trees.

Witchcraft Skills List | Effects & Unlock Requirements – Kaburanai Games

The Dead Brencis Soldier Was Actually a Pretty Decent Guy

If you bring objects connected to him when using Compel Soul, you can learn quite a bit about the dead soldier.

Apparently, this Brencis soldier could not bring himself to kill innocent villagers. He pleaded with Brencis to show them mercy — and was killed for it.

The event also reveals that he gave the captive Lunka an apple, hoping that it would at least put something in her stomach.

Brencis himself may be an enemy worthy of hatred, but that does not necessarily mean every soldier serving under him is a cold-blooded killer.

Will Coen still pursue his revenge even if it means stepping over the bodies of soldiers like this one?

It is a remarkably evocative little event that plays with the blurred line between good and evil — something The Blood of Dawnwalker does particularly well.

Medieval Soldiers = Powerless Peasants Forced to Fight for Their Lords?

When we hear the words “medieval soldier,” it is easy to imagine peasants being ordered around by feudal lords and forced to fight without pay.

Current scholarship, however, suggests that the reality was not quite so simple.

In England, for example, feudal obligations, unpaid military service, and paid troops all coexisted in the late 13th century, but by the first half of the 14th century, armies deployed on expeditions had shifted toward being almost entirely paid forces.

One method used at the time was the indenture, in which a captain entered into a contract with the Crown and recruited the soldiers required to form his force.

During the 14th-century Hundred Years’ War — the century-spanning conflict between England and France that is also occasionally mentioned in books found within the game — forces consisting of men-at-arms and mounted archers were raised through arrangements of this kind.

In other words, some scholarship suggests that the 14th century was a transitional period — at least in somewhat distant England — from

“warriors serving their lords” → “warriors who still maintained personal ties to their lords, but also served for monetary compensation.”

Research into the military organization of 14th-century Hungary paints an equally interesting picture.

Depending on the campaign, Hungarian armies could combine forces raised by local nobles, knights of the royal court, Cuman light cavalry, Székely cavalry, Vlach troops, large numbers of lightly equipped infantry, and paid foreign mercenaries.

During expeditions into Italy in particular, there were even semi-permanent paid forces receiving regular wages, supported by relatively sophisticated systems of logistics and military accounting.

In other words, the armies of medieval Eastern Europe — one of the major historical inspirations behind the world of this game — may have looked something like this:

“Light infantry standing alongside mounted local nobles and their retainers, while beside them rode ethnic minority light cavalry and foreign soldiers fighting for pay.”

They were, in other words, remarkably mixed forces whose soldiers could differ in social status, ethnic background, military role, and even in the reasons why they had come to fight.