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.

Royalty features available as an add-on here: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?edit=true&id=3536829465


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 new 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, having poor quality equipment.

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.


- House specific Weapons and Armor
- Heraldic Heavy Hauberk (Heraldic Footman's Armor)
- Zahir Cuirass (Heraldic Heavy armor)
- Faction specific helmets, from light armor options to great helm variants
- Cultural clothing options including Thawbs, desert wrappings and urban vests. Also, turbans, hats and face wrappings of various types.
- (New) Style Category changes to select items that don't fit the atmosphere of the new faction(s) without bloating the item selection in game unnecessarily.

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, has resistances to fire and heat and struggle with cold temperatures but to lesser extents than their Efreet brethren.


Zahir Kebab! - Kebab is a tasty, mood improving meal that is made from meat (no pig meat though) onions and tomatoes over a grill.

Zahir Delights! - A tasty, luxurious treat made from sugar, spices and raw agave. It's very expensive but definitely worth it!

Boza! - A tasty alcoholic drink that's popular with the modest people of House Zahir due to it's low alcohol content and spicy aroma. It's brewed with simple grains like wheat or corn but flavoured with spices to give it the unique flavour it's known for.

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.

- 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 add an ending to the game where you fight 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 it 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. - No longer required to run mod but severely lacking of an experience without them.

Huge Thanks and Credit to SirMashedPotato for the custom code allowing me to define a minimum required Psylink level 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.