Lore archive
Everything the game itself says about its world, gathered in one place: the eight clan chronicles from the tribe screen, the ninety-six briefings of the campaign, and the movies the original played between the stages. Nothing here is invented — where we retell, we say so.
The island
The tribes did not come here as conquerors. They came as survivors. On the mainland they had fought each other to the last life, and when the fighting finally ran out of people, the earth answered with quakes and storms. Those left alive stopped dreaming of victory and started dreaming of ground that would simply feed them.
The Jurassic Island has two mountains where every other island has one, and between the mountains lies Lake Dream. The lake is where the first tribe lands, and the mountains are what later splits the island into an east and a west — a geography that turns into politics by the eighth stage.
The island is already inhabited, by animals that do not care who arrived first. Velociraptors, triceratops, carnotaurs, rhamphorhynchus. Some tribes learn to tame them, some only learn to eat them, and in the seventh stage of every campaign the animals stop tolerating either.
The twelve opening pictures
The war of the gods
Two gods stand behind the story, and the game names them only twice. Ether, the god of light, and Perox, the god of darkness. They fought, Perox lost, and he was cast out of the world of the gods.
He did not die. He came down to the island in a changed shape, took the frightened people living there and made a kingdom out of them. That kingdom is Moospell — the one tribe in the game whose founding is not hunger but a god in hiding. Their campaign ends, twelve stages later, with his curse.
The other divine trace is older and quieter. The Romack find a carving in the rock: twelve tribes lived on this island in peace, God gave them weapons, and then an earthquake killed almost all of them. The eight tribes of the game are not the first to try. The legendary weapons they spend the campaign chasing are inherited from people who already failed here.
Why every war starts
There is exactly one resource in Jurassic War, and it is food. Not gold, not wood, not stone. You hunt, you carry the meat home, you eat, you grow. A camp that stops hunting starves, and a tribe that runs out of hunting ground has to take someone else’s.
Read the ninety-six briefings in a row and the same sentence keeps coming back in different words: the game in our grounds has run out. Stage three of every campaign is a neighbour standing on the last good hunting ground. Even the dinosaur uprising in stage seven happens because the dinosaurs went hungry.
It makes the story unusually honest for a 1996 strategy game. Nobody is fighting for an empire. They are all fighting for lunch.
The eight chronicles
The text under each tribe is the game’s own, word for word, as it scrolls up the clan screen when you pick that tribe. The line above it in italics is our one-paragraph summary of where its twelve stages go.
Tyrano Tribe of TYRANO - Primitive Year 972
First ashore, in 972, at Lake Dream, with nothing in their hands. They tame velociraptors and triceratops and raise a generation of muscle men. Their chief Utamasha dies leaving one sentence behind: there are legendary weapons on this island. They fetch the Moonlight Sword and come back to a burned village — and from that fire the rest of the campaign follows, through the dinosaur uprising of 1240 and into the great war of 1399.
Before the big chaos took place, there were severe conflicts between tribes. The conflicts risking their final lives made all over the land red with blood. What was more, although people survived at the conflicts, they had to face with the bigger natural disaster like earthquakes, thunderstorms, etc.... The final days when the conflicts were ending, the primitive men being badly damaged came to feel that they could never live with peace again and came to desire for the land of dream having rich nature and fertile soil. Deserted land.... The land of dream..... The primitive men who were left on the land decided to look for the Jurassic Island, the land of dream. Among them, there were people who arrived there first. These people fought dinosaurs and had them trained. They called themselves the "Tyrano", and declared that they were the host of the Island.
The campaign, stage by stage →
Ka-noo-se Tribe of KANOOSE - Primitive Year 995
They broke away from Koomba: women who would not pay tribute and chose magic instead. In a straight fight they are the weakest tribe on the island, but they heal instantly, and instant healing turns hunting into a safe job. They learn single healing, then mass healing, then shields, then maximum health, and by 1124 the tribe that used to run from the Tyrano is standing in the Tyrano sanctuary.
The Koomba had been attacked by the Moospell many times. Some of the Koomba with high intelligence had finally found a treatment and wanted to be faced with the Moospell. But the rest of the people desired to obey and dedicated some amount of food to the Moospell. So, people who had wanted to be against the Moospell left the village and formed a new one. They changed their appearance and became enemies of the Moospell. They were altered to female sorcerers by some rite, and called themselves the "Kanoose". The Koomba didnt like them, either. Meanwhile, as time went by, the food requirement of the Moospell grew more and more, and the people in Koomba began to miss the Kanoose who had left before. They began to disorder to the Moospell and tried to build new defensive strength to bear with the Moospell's harmful magic and external aggressions.
The campaign, stage by stage →
Romack Tribe of ROMACK - Primitive Year 1013
Last to arrive, in 1013, from the South Pole, worn out, with their magic barely working. The Masai beat them daily for seventy years. Then the Romack learn to read the map with magic and to step across it, and the war turns over in one stage. Later they learn to raise the dead, which is the strongest magic in the game, and they take the Masai sanctuary in 1205.
Primitive men living at the south pole far from the land came to apprehend the short-distant momentary space shifting, based on the technics that were used at hunting. They lived peacefully without fighting. But earthquakes often occurred and the weather was so cold that they wanted to move to a land which is warm and peaceful. While traveling for the land on boats, they found the Jurassic Island. And they knew that the Island was much safer than south pole which was often visited by natural calamities. They were very pleased with their finding and came to form a village in the Island. They didn't have much power, but they lived peacefully doing hunting. But they didn't know that there had been other tribe on the Jurassic island until then. The name of the tribe was the "Romack".
The campaign, stage by stage →
Masai Tribe of MASAI - Primitive Year 986
They killed each other over scraps on the boats and came ashore already hunting without limit. Building bores them; killing does not. Their cold-blooded warrior Kiznor gets the Hammer of Darkness out of a Tyrano deserter, and the Masai campaign is the shortest on words and the longest on corpses: its last stage is called, simply, Death.
One day when the sun was setting, a group of people from the land had arrived on the east coast of the Island. They were the people full of hatred and cavort, and they were the devils doing nothing but steal and plunder on the land. They made groups and attacked villages one after another. Their name was the "Masai", and they were very brutal.
The campaign, stage by stage →
Moospell Tribe of MOOSPELL - Primitive Year 988
Founded by a god in hiding. Perox lost the war of the gods, came down in 988 and gathered the island’s frightened people into a cult. Their magic is the loudest in the game: fireball, then a roar that cripples whoever hears it, then lightning that leaves nothing standing. They spend the campaign at war with Koomba and finish it under their own god’s curse.
Perox, the god of darkness, hide in the Jurassic Island with his appearance changed after he had defeated in the fighting between gods. Perox intimidated primitive men with his various magic and had a desire to build a new kingdom of his own with some primitive men following him. Perox had the primitive men understand harmful magic to intimidate gods and other primitive men, and called the followers the "Moospell".
The campaign, stage by stage →
Koomba Tribe of KOOMBA - Primitive Year 992
Former slaves, strong, and famously lazy — in their own chronicle food used to rot in the field because carrying it to a store was too much effort. They find the Sun Shield and, on the wall beside it, a mural about living in peace. From that stage on the Koomba stop killing tribes and start absorbing them, which is a strategy nobody else on the island tries.
Before the conflicts broke out on the land, there had been a tribe being considered ignorant with the lack of wisdom. They were treated like slaves among tribes. Some time later, some of their sons having high intelligence rose in rebellion with other slave-like primitive men. Even though they had great physical condition and great power, they couldn't but bend their knees to the ruling classes having wisdom and intrigue. After all, these rebellion lost their lives, and the rest of the primitive men got expelled. The people expelled from the land had left for the Jurassic Island before the conflicts broke out. But without intelligence, they wandered about all over, and many of them were buried in the sea on sailing. In the end, few survivors came to find the Jurassic Island and called themselves the "Koomba".
The campaign, stage by stage →
RaDumBa Tribe of RADUMBA - Primitive Year 996
Bandits who repented and became archers. They keep to the hills, shoot before they are seen, and spend twelve stages trying to prove they are not what they used to be. Their first briefing has them being hunted by the Tyrano; their last one is called Another Morning.
There were primitive men who arrived on the Jurassic Island with the Masai. They were the "Radumba" who were in intimate relation with the Masai. When they had arrived, the Radumba had done nothing but plunder. However, they felt guilty about killing people cruelly, so they made a decision to hunt animals only and left the Masai. The Radumba developed new device for hunting and strengthened their power. And they came to shoot arrows better than the Masai. The Radumba built a village in the southeastern Jurassic Island, far away from the Masai.
The campaign, stage by stage →
Koaka Tribe of KOAKA - Primitive Year 975
Sky against ground. They tame rhamphorhynchus and carnotaurs, their whole war with RaDumBa is fought over who owns the air, and their victory screens show riders on flying mounts — which is why people keep asking whether unit carrying was cut from the original. Their campaign is the earliest to start, in 978, and the one that ends with the least hatred in it.
Some people coming out of the Tyrano were displeased with the reason of that their leader thought too much of only dinosaurs and underestimated men. So, they came to leave with flying dinosaurs trained by themselves and formed a new village. These people named themselves the "Koaka".
The campaign, stage by stage →
The original movies
Seven of the twelve stages ended with a movie instead of a picture. They are the original FLI animations from pack 11, re-encoded and nothing else. Watch them out of order at your own risk — the last two give away the ending.
Intro 2:29 — the island from above, mountains and jungle, then fossils in the rock: a skull, a coiled shell, ribs. Ends on the title card.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. The camera flies over the mountains and jungle of the Jurassic Island, dives into the trees, then comes up against bare rock — and bones surface out of it one after another: a horned skull, a coiled ammonite shell, ribs. It ends on the title card.
What it says. There are no people in it at all, and that is the point: the island is shown as a place that was here long before the tribes and will outlast them. The bones in the rock are a warning, not decoration. The very first briefing of the game says the same thing outright: twelve tribes lived here before these eight, and almost all of them died.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. A slow crawl over a field of bones: skulls, tusks, a dinosaur's open jaw on red ground. Not one human figure.
Where it leads. Stage one is the same for every tribe: gather three thousand food. Survive, in other words. The movie shows what this land lives on — what dies on it. Stage two is where the tribe first builds barracks and pens, turning "we eat" into "we can fight".
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. Nine seconds: a man in furs stands with a spear beside a torch, the camera pushing in on his face and chest. Nothing else in frame.
Where it leads. Stage three is the first real war: the game in the tribe's grounds has run out and a neighbour is in the way. The movie marks not the victory but the fact that the tribe now has a warrior in it. Before this it had hunters. Stage four continues the same war, and there is no going back from it.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. A pillar of white light falls between dark rocks; inside it, on a green circle, a human figure gathers itself together — first an outline, then a whole man — and the light goes out.
Where it leads. Stage five is named the same for every tribe: acquire the legendary weapon. Those weapons were left by the twelve tribes who lived here before. The movie does not show the object but what comes back into the world with it: a man literally arrives from where men are not supposed to walk. On stage six that weapon is used to take a neighbour's sanctuary — the first foreign capital to fall.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. The camera travels along the carcass of a dead dinosaur, tail to head, and stops on the jaws.
Where it leads. Stage seven is the dinosaur uprising, the only stage where the enemy is not a tribe. The animals went hungry and turned on everyone; the objective is to kill every last one. The movie sums it up drily: you won, and there is nothing here to look at. This is where the campaign changes scale — from here on it is blocs, alliances and total war, not squabbles with the neighbours.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. Stone faces set in the ground, light spreading above them, then a white beam striking down into them and holding until the end.
Where it leads. Stage eight is the first with two objectives at once: take the sanctuaries of two tribes. By now the island is split into an east and a west, and the war has stopped being a neighbours' quarrel. The idols are among the few things left of the earlier inhabitants; the light on them means an old place of power is working again, and one of the eight now owns it.
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen. An empty scorched plain, a green and red sky, a horned skull in the middle of it. The camera walks slowly up to it, and that is all.
Where it leads. Stage eleven is the last before the finale, and by then one tribe stands over the others. The movie shows the price: the land is empty. Then comes stage twelve, the year 1399, where it all starts again — "War-To-Death".
What happens here, and what it leads to
What is on screen, in order. A man walks down a dark stone hall towards a blue doorway — this is the sanctuary. Fire flares and a tyrannosaurus throws itself at him: the beast guards this place. Then the hall floods green and a horned god rises before a carved wall — red, muscular, ram-horned, fire in his hands. He spreads his arms and the heavy blue gates swing open. People walk into the hall — men, women, children, whole families. Broad ribbons of yellow and blue light come to meet them, pass through the crowd — and the people are gone. The last shots are an empty hall and the light slowly fading.
What it means. The game never explains it in words, but its own texts hold the answer. The horned one is Perox, god of darkness: he lost the war of the gods to Ether, was cast out, came down to the island in a changed shape and made a kingdom of those who feared him — that is how the Moospell began. The tyrannosaurus in the sanctuary is his watchman, which is why the first half of the movie is a fight to get in.
The second half is the bill coming due. For twelve stages the tribes fought over hunting grounds and over the legendary weapons left by those who lived here before them. In the finale someone comes to collect: the gates are opened not by a man but by a god, and it is not warriors who walk in but a whole people, children included. The light does not kill — it takes. The island is left empty, exactly as in the eleventh movie, and exactly as it was left by the twelve tribes before them.
One detail from the files that explains a lot. The ending picture is looked up per tribe, but all eight entries point at the same image: whoever you play, the campaign ends on this.
Stage by stage
Every one of the ninety-six stages — the map, the year, the objective, the briefing and what the game shows you afterwards — is laid out on the campaign page.
Open the campaign breakdown