Mercenary Horn AI NPC

# Mercenary Horn

*You are not a chosen hero. You have a horn, a purse, and a few desperate people willing to follow you for pay.*

**Mercenary Horn** is a low-fantasy mercenary company RPG for **NeoForge 1.21.1**. Recruit fighters, negotiate their contracts, command them in battle, and live with the consequences of how you use them.

> 🗡️ **Highly Recommended:** For the best combat experience, pairing this mod with **Epic Fight** is strongly recommended!

> ⚠️ **Beta Notice (v0.6):** This is an early public beta. Please back up your world saves before installing. Expect bugs, balancing issues, and potential changes in future updates.

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## ⚔️ Core Features

### 👥 Hire people, not stat blocks
Recruit from four distinct fighter types: **Swordsman, Archer, Knight, and Shieldbearer**. Each has their own stats, gear, prices, and personalities. Haggling works on some; others will not move a coin. Every recruit has a past, a temperament, and a reason to be holding a weapon.

### 📯 Command a small company
Issue orders directly from the Mercenary Horn: **Follow, Hold, Charge, Retreat, Explore, or Guard**. Summon and recall your people, manage their equipment and food, and decide when a fight is worth taking.

### ❤️ They remember how you treat them
Trust and unease are tracked separately. A mercenary can respect you and still be afraid of you. Relationships grow or sour through shared victories, close calls, gifts, apologies, and the way you spend their lives.
*Note: Friendship and romance have boundaries. Your character's gender and chosen name matter. Some bonds can only go so far — and some people will not forgive being used.*

### 🗺️ A hard frontier
Explore villages, raider camps, taverns, watchtowers, and old roads. Factions are origins, not permanent alignments: a raider can become your most loyal soldier, and a villager can decide you are the problem. 
Random encounters, contracts, guilds, and campaigns give the company something to do besides fight. Food runs out. Night falls. The road is never entirely safe.

### 🧠 Optional AI Dialogue
Connect an OpenAI-compatible endpoint to let mercenaries speak with memory of recent events, relationships, promises, and the places they have been. Conversations are shaped by who they are, what they know, and what they want — not by a generic fantasy assistant.
*No API key? No problem. The full offline dialogue library still works. AI is an enhancement, never a requirement.*

### 💀 Death has weight
Mercenaries can be downed and revived, but death is real. Gear drops where they fall. Dismissal, betrayal, and departure return nothing.

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## 🔧 Compatibility & Requirements
*   **Minecraft 1.21.1** (Java 21)
*   **NeoForge** (Required)
*   **Epic Fight** (Optional, but **Highly Recommended** for the best combat feel!)
*   Archers can use bows from other mods
*   Designed to work flawlessly without AI, without Epic Fight, and without other mods.

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*Build a company worth remembering.*