History

The year is 2012 A.C, or "After Cataclysm". The Cataclysm, also known as The Great Invasion, started during a period of war between several countries, when one of them summoned a person from another world. This man, known today as "The Demon King of Beasts" had an abnormally high proficiency in summoning beast-type creatures, so much that he conquered the country that had summoned him and moved on to conquer the world.

Eventually, gods intervened, establishing the Sacred Treasure System. From that point onward, everyone praying at certain stone tablets the size of a big man, would receive an item that grants them an increase in certain skills, a unique ability that doesn't quite fit the description of any known skill, or both.

With an army of people equipped with sacred treasures, the war ended within the span of three years, but at a terrible cost: world population had dropped drastically, the floating island of Lathnos (where the Goddess created the first Great Tablet) was overtaken by beasts and the Goddess had no choice but to sink it into the sea... and if all of that wasn't enough, the oracles foresaw the coming of a second Demon King.

To prepare the world for this event, the newly formed Church of the Central Continent, or simply known as The Church,spread the rules left by the Mother Goddess. The first and most important was that every man had the obligation of taking several wives and having as many children as possible. Under the guidance of the Church, every man became of marriageable age by sixteen years old, had the obligation of having at least one wife by the age of eighteen, a second wife by twenty and a third one, or at least two children, before reaching twenty five years. With time, the number of wives one had became a sign of status, and the rules were revised so commoners could only have three wives, and the ranks of Knight, Baron, Duke, Archduke and King (Or every other nation ruler, by that matter) had a limit of five, seven, nine, twelve and fifteen respectively, though successful merchants could prove their status by buying a permit to have more wives from the Church. A permit to have as many wives as a king does not exist, but men who remain unmarried receive several punishments like an increase in their taxes and the prohibition of buying a house in certain places

Thanks to the diaries found among the Demon King's belongings, the world advanced leaps and bounds technologically, using magic profusely to cover what could not be done with the actual technology of the era. As such, things like clean energy, means of transport that don't contaminate, medical advancements and all kind of communication and entertainment became available for the general public.

The exception to this advancement, though, lies in the military field: given that people have skills, magic and sacred treasures, they didn't see the value in firearms. Magic is something that not everyone can use, why make it possible for anyone to wield a weapon that, within certain margins, can rival magic?

Geography

Nowadays, the four great continents are divided into four general groups: all of the western continent, a marginal fraction of the north and a third of the central continent is under the rule of the Bruenor Empire, a militaristic nation under the rule of a tyrannic emperor who spent fifty five of his eighty seven years making war on any country within his reach, with a reason or without it, just to expand his domain and increase his power.

Virtually all of the northern continent, part of the eastern and a third of the central is ruled by the Conglomerate of Free States, a group formed during 1994 A.C thanks to a treaty of mutual non-aggression and protection, as a means of stopping the invasion from the Empire. It seems like the strategy worked, because in these eighteen years, the Empire has not absorbed any territory, though they haven't lost their grasp on the north and the center.

The Eastern continent is mostly under the direction of the Federation of Commerce, a group of economic conglomerates ruling the continent from an absolutely capitalist point of view. They are a big part of the reason why the Empire has stopped making war: with the north and center allied, the Federation could very well decide that their best interest is with the Conglomerate, and the Empire may not be able to stop these two groups together, even more if the Theocracy decides to ally with them as well.

Finally the fraction of the central continent that is not under the rule of the Empire or is a member of the Conglomerate, is ruled by the Theocracy; a nation that serves as the heart of the Church and is governed by the Pope. They don't intervene publicly in anything, but they have temples and priests all over the world, and they try to expand their influence from the shadows. Wherever there is a Great Tablet that grants Sacred Treasures, the Church has a temple-looking fortress built around it. There is one exception, though: in the eastern continent they only have a presence on the land under the rule of The Conglomerate; the Federation has a very strict, and most of the time summary, way of dealing with any priest of the Church trying to convert people within their domain.

Races

Aside from humans, there are several sentient races sharing the world. Since the time of its foundation, the Church had an extremely xenophobic stance, promoting hate against everything that wasn't human. Their posture has softened a lot in the last couple centuries, but even so the non-humans haven't forgotten what they were forced to go through.

Nowadays, non-human races can be found almost anywhere; they are quite common in the Conglomerate and the Empire, and while in the Federation they are more numerous than humans, they aren't seen at all in the Theocracy.

Given their relationship with the Church, non-humans follow their own way of revering the Gods: The Cult of the Sacred Phoenix reveres the Mother Goddess as a creature that burned herself to be reborn as an even more powerful being to save the world from darkness. For obvious reasons, the base of the Cult can be found in the Federation, taking the eradication of any intruder from the Church as one of their sacred duties.

Zoah: a race apparently human on first sight, marked with one or two animal traits. Tails, horns, animal ears or eyes, scales or fur.. each and every one of them is unique. The only exception are wings; for some reason there has never existed a winged Zoah, and that can be a good thing because they could have been mistaken for an Avia. They are more common in the Empire lands, mostly because their instinct for fighting and seeking power makes them feel at home.

Avia: people with wings on their backs, slit pupils and pointy ears. Males of this race have a strange feature: their hair doesn't stop at the back of the neck, but instead it keeps growing along their spines forming a boneless tail at the height of their waist. They love living in high places, so their cities can be found hundreds of meters above ground, supported by immense pillars. They are most frequent inside the Conglomerate, but they were hunted down to the brink of extinction in the Empire when the actual Emperor was around seventeen years old.

Yblis: these underground creatures can be mistaken for living dolls, given their soft skin and their big eyes and their height, barely reaching the waist of an average adult human in the best case. For centuries, Yblis where hunted to be kept as pets for their beauty, or to force them into slave labor because of their astounding skill with any kind of craft, like forge, clothing and armor production, or especially, jewel crafting. In part it was this persecution what led them to live underground. Nowadays they have a law not to invite anyone from another race into their cities, no matter how good of a friend they may be, so nobody really knows how many of them are left and where to find them.

Urdr: an all-female race, they started as a cult of witches who tried to find eternal beauty, and they found it at a terrible cost: their skin became almost translucent and of a pale bluish or greenish tone, their eyes became red, yellow or white... in general, they started showing signs that their vital signs had stopped and they had become undead, forever frozen at the peak of their beauty. They can drink and eat for the pleasure of the flavor, but they can only get sustenance from the raw, bloody flesh of aura beasts, normal animals who have mutated into monsters through an overdose of magical energy. Urdr can get pregnant, but for unknown reasons the baby always turns out to be a girl, so they need males from other races to reproduce.

Pantheon

Mother Goddess: the eldest known deity. Strictly speaking, she didn't create the universe; she was the last surviving servant of even more ancient and powerful beings, and when they got bored of their creation and left to build a new one, she absorbed the remains of the dead servants to gain enough power to take control of all creation around her. With time, she used part of the power she had inherited from old, dead gods to give birth to new gods.

She was the one who created the Master Tablet at the Island of Lathnos, and later her children followed her example, giving way to the belief that Tablets created by certain gods have more chances of granting the desired Treasure, but that is a baseless rumor; and the Sacred Treasure one receives depends solely the individual in question.

Even though there are verified recounts of encounters between mortals and gods, in dreams and through physical godly manifestations, the Mother Goddess is the only one who has not shown her visage infront of mortals, always talking through owls or bears. 

Muhr, God of Balance: probably the god that is the most present in the daily life of mortals, Muhr not only reigns over law and justice, people use to swear on his name for many reasons, knowing that divine punishment will befall those who break the terms of the promise.

Contrary to classic depictions of justice, where she is a blind woman with a balance and a sword, Muhr is depicted as a giant with seventy two eyes distributed across his whole body, and he has nine arms, holding in his hands a sword, an axe, a spear, a shield, a hammer, an abacus, a feather, a scroll, and a painting brush.

Trysha, Goddess of home: Also considered the goddess of love, marriage and maternity. People pray and make offerings to gain her favor during weddings, births and birthdays. It is said that she has a fiery temperament and she hates infidelity deeply. It is said that she beheaded her husband for cheating on her, and that fact has pursued men through history; cheating men tend to develop a dark red mark on their necks, but after the Great Invasion and the need for men to have several wives to save the species she was forced to let go part of her rage, and she only punishes men who become too greedy about laying with women outside marriage.

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Those who have had the luck of being in her presence describe her as a fully naked woman in her forties, always with a motherly smile on her face and curly, blazing red hair that reaches her ankles and shows voluptuous curves despite her apparent age.

Shiyssh, Goddess of death: normally, she only receives prayers during funerals and her name is used a curse the rest of the time, reason why only very few people along history have received a Divine Treasure from her. Contrary to popular belief, she is not a ruthless sadist, but a person who carries her sad duty as a heavy load, trying to guide souls to the other side swiftly and painlessly, but it is mortals and their attachment to the mortal world what makes the trip harder.

Most representations show her as a woman in her early teens, with almost transparent pale skin, deep black hair that covers her eyes and dressed only with a black fur cloak. She lives in permanent cold, evidenced by the bluish tone of her lips and nipples, and the diamonds that seem to ornament the shoulders of her cloak that are in reality the frozen tears of those who have lost a loved one recently. The symbols that make her known are the black iron staff with a candle on top, that she carries in her right hand to guide deceased souls, and the bundle of black chains she carries in her left, to tie and drag those souls who have overstayed their time in the mortal realm.

Economy

Economic trades are mostly safe thanks to the intervention of Muhr, given that deals are sworn on his name and it is really hard to word a trade in a way that benefits only one side and at the same time get him to approve it, not to mention divine punishment in case one of the sides tries to back out or play a trick on their counterpart. Also under His protection, people can claim patents and expect divine intervention during ten years, but after that they have to offer him two thirds of the gains on the product if they want His protection for another ten, or when they want to transfer the patent to another person.

Since the times of the brief world unification that followed the Cataclysm, the only currency in the world is the Ura. There is no paper coin, only metal coins, their value divided by shape and material. There are small coins, big coins and plates; all of them are made with the same amount of material, but the big coins look bigger because of the hole they have in the middle, and the plates are rectangular with rounded corners, or oval in the case of higher values.

The coins and their values go like this: tin for one, ten and fifty cents of Ura, copper for one, ten and fifty, silver for a hundred, five hundred and one thousand, gold for a hundred thousand, half a million and one million, and finally, the currency most people never get to use in their life are the ones made out of Cold Steel, an extremely light and durable white-bluish metal that always feels really cold to the touch. Normally this level of currency is only used in big trades between companies or governments, given that their worth is ten, fifty and a hundred millions respectively.

Justice

Theft, murder, rape, blackmail, fraud, swindle... all of those and more are recorded as punishable crimes in most countries around the world, however, punishment by serving time in prison is not applied anywhere in the world. Since the time of the Cataclysm it has been considered that having a person locked up in a cage doing nothing and absorbing resources in the shape of food and clothes during years is simply a waste.

Minor offenses are settled with fines, economic compensations and/or hours of community service. Most of crimes are payed with years of slavery serving the country or being sold to a private user through intermediaries, and higher crimes can only be payed with life-time slavery. Death penalty is only applied to national traitors or ruthless criminals who have amassed a long list of misdeeds.

That is the norm in the Conglomerate and the Theocracy, but the Empire and the Federation have subtle differences: the Empire is more relaxed and open about dispensing death sentences, and the Federation has a rule where a defendant can challenge their prosecutor to a duel of honor for their freedom. Also, as already mentioned earlier, preaching the religion of The Church in the lands of the Federation is crime that warrants instant death penalty, without chance at a honor duel.

As a general rule, killing a slave is punished with a year of slavery in case of your won slaves, and two years if you kill another person's slave. Crime slaves have to go through medical check-ups every so often to make sure they aren't excessively abused, and fines can be imposed on the owners who go overboard.

During the time of the wars of expansion lead by the Empire, battle slaves became so common that there were full penal companies of enslaved soldiers who had been promised freedom and rewards in exchange for reaching a certain level of achievements and surviving the required number of campaigns. Nowadays there are no open wars, but battle slaves still exist as gladiators in arenas across the whole Empire

Finally, voluntary slavery also exist all around the globe. Those who have fallen into great debt can try to sell themselves in exchange of said debt being cleared, as well as people who live in poverty and hope for a better life even if it is in exchange for most of their freedom. Both debt slaves and willing slaves have a great deal of freedom, all things considered. They can decide to include their sexual freedom in the deal or sell it apart for a higher price, and do the same with the position, be it servant, guard, concubine or even slave-wife. Willing slaves even have the right to reject a prospective master for any reason they see fit.

Stats and skills

Stats: Strength, dexterity, agility, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, awareness and charisma are the basic statistics most creatures in this world have. Instead of displaying them in exact numbers, they are ranked by the number of digits. Creatures like a goblin have an average of two digits per stat, humans and other sentient races have three or four, going up to five in exceptional cases, and great creatures like dragons have seven digits.

Skills: As explained earlier, Divine Treasures can grant an increase on skill levels, new skills among the existing ones, a unique skill or a mix of all the previous ones. Contrary to statistics, skills have no numeric values, but instead they are divided into several grades: newborn is the grade assigned when you actually don't have a grade in a certain skill, from there and up the ranks are apprentice, journeyman, advanced, expert, master, grand master, legend, myth and absolute. Additionally. those who reach the absolute grade in a magical skill receive an “aberration”, a passive sub-skill that allows abnormal uses of the related skill. Unique skills don't have grades, they are considered to have reached the absolute grade since the beginning.

Armor skills

- Robe: armor made of enchanted cloth, mostly used by magic practitioners who need to be nimble on their feet.

- Light Armor: starting with padded clothing, all kinds of cloth and leather-based armors as long as they don't reduce your movement too much and let you move without making too much noise. Prefered by users of long ranged weapons, or those who prefer a stealthy approach.

- Mail Armor: chainmails, scale mails and all of their varieties. Basically, a flexible armor mostly made of small metallic parts.

- Half Plate armor: armor made of solid, rigid metal plates that leave certain areas unprotected on purpose to keep a ceertain degree of maneuverability.

- Full Plate Armor: metal plates covering the user practically from head to toe. Those who train this skill can choose to increase their agility or their resistance.

- Shield: many shapes, sizes and degrees of thickness. At the end of the day, it's a metal plate you strap to your arm and use to block attacks or hit your enemy with.

- Armguard: a smaller kind of shield designed to parry attacks and, at the same time, leave the hand free enough use a secondary weapon or a two handed weapon.

- Sigil: Also known as mageshield, basically a portable barrier generator attached to the arm, for those who can not use barrier magic. 

Physical skills

- Unarmed combat: any kind of martial arts using natural appendages, including claws and/or tails, be it using raw flesh or covering oneself with armed protections.

- Staff: in this world magic practitioners don't use external elements to increase their capabilities, a staff is simply a wooden pole you swing around against your target.

- Straight sword: Common straight swords with a single blade and one or two edges.

- Curved sword: sabers, scimitars, katanas, falcatas... any kind of single edged sword with a curved blade, no matter if it curves back of forward.

- Broad sword: swords with a wide blade, designed for deep cuts and breaking bones. These weapons then to not have a tip because of how hard it is to perform a stab attack with them,

- Rapier: thin swords created for agile and quick, precise stabs.

- Short blades: daggers, hunting or combat knives, short swords, etc.

- Spear: designed for one or two hands, they focus mostly on piercing attacks.

- Pole arms: Any kind of blade attached at the end of a long handle. They need to be used with both hands in a sweeping motion.

- Axe: similar to pole arms, but with lower reach, and depending on the size and weigh, they can be used with one hand.

- Mace: a handle with a ball covered in spikes for piercing attacks, or a geometrical form to cause blunt trauma and breaking bones.

- Bow: long or short, they count as bows.

- Crossbow: More accuracy and penetration than bows, but much longer lapse between shots,

- Throwing blades: throwing knives or any other kind of sharp blade designed to be thrown at the enemy, no matter their shape.

- Warcries: channeling aura through your breathing to scare enemies, raise ally morale, etc.

- Traps: as the name implies, creation and use of smoke bombs, explosives hidden or thrown at the enemy and any other kind of way you can find to hinder and hurt your enemy.

- Stealth: the art of moving unnoticed, getting in your enemy's blind spot and executing them without them (almost) noticing.

Magical skills

- Elemental- Fire: usage of fire or pure heat.

- Elemental- Water: from ice to boiling, controls any amount or temperature of water, within the caster's limit.

- Elemental- Earth: rocks and sand.

- Elemental- Wind: creation and control of wind and thunders.

- Advanced Element- Wood: Creation and manipulation of vegetable life.

- Advanced Element- Metal: conjuring pieces of metal in several shapes.

- Advanced Element- Gravity: the power increase or decrease the force of gravity in a specified area.

- Advanced Element- Space-time: ability to create small pockets that defy the laws of space and time, normally used to transport big weights in a small space without effort, or keeping things like food in a space where it will never spoil.

- Black Magic: curses and non-elemental damage.

- White Magic: healing and support spells.

- Illusion Magic: spells to confuse your target's senses.

- Barrier magic: skill that allows the creation of magical force fields, flats or in several geometrical shapes.

- Transmutation Magic: power to turn a certain material into any other, within limits. With certain risks, the caster can use it on themselves to gain temporal benefits.

- Beast Summoning: creation and control of aura beasts.

- Undead Summoning: creation and control of undead creatures.

- Construct Magic: creation of elementals and golems.

Non-combat Skills

- Foraging: a compendium of mining, collecting herbs, cutting wood and, in general, the harvest of raw materials.

- Farming: all the knowledge and ability needed to grow crops, from planting the seeds to taking care of the growing the plants, harvesting, etc.

- Taming: taking care of domestic animals, cattle, and domestication of wild animals. Not usable on aura beasts.

- Tanning: turning animal furs and skins into leather. It also includes the creation of cloth.

- Metalwork: creation of metal-based weapons and armor, as well as everyday use tools and horseshoes.

- Tailoring: creation of clothes, light armors and magical robes.

- Jewelry: working precious metals and gems into jewels and decorations.

- Alchemy: cooking herbs and other ingredients into potions, medicines and poisons.

- Law: knowledge of laws. The higher the level, the wider the knowledge, allowing to know the laws of other countries and factions.

- Management: what you need to know to manage from a small business to a whole country.

- Politics: how to survive the swamp of rats and vipers that is the political world and getting away with what you want. Most of the time.

- Street Knowledge: like politics, but with people who aren't ashamed to say they are thieves and murderers.

- Intrusion: a compendium of abilities for picking locks and pockets, extract information or people, and to commit crimes in general.