Another feature borrowed from the Warlords Battlecry series involves the creation of a persistent warlord. This allows you to place your own avatar in the game, though you're limited to a fairly short series of representational images. There's one warlord per side, each with a profession determined by one major and minor ability apiece selected from Combat, Divine Magic, Rune Magic Nature Magic, Summoning and Necromancy. Thus, a major ability of Combat and a minor ability of Summoning yields a Flameknight. A character of this sort has four pre-set skills (two per ability) that can gradually advance as the warlord gains level with each win. Returning to our Flameknight, she has basic skills in Morale, Weaponmaster, Archmage and Summoning. By judiciously spending advancement points on just one or two of these over a long period, a given warlord can become a powerful force, affecting many aspects of gameplay. (Note that since the warlord is supposed to represent you and grow in levels, the same warlord can't be saved in two different on-going games.) I've worked a warlord up to level 22. The game comes with several pre-configured Warlords grouped at levels 10, 15 and 20.