Idea for a game

The world is changing. It had persisted in a similar state for what seemed almost untold years, going back to the great days of antiquity. But then they changed it, the mad geniuses.

Orin Al-Hamar invented the greatest breakthrough in alchemy for many a century. Far from the work to build a stone to make one prince or philosopher immortal, he instead made the breakthrough to create blasting powder, a recipe so simple and requiring so little power, that even an apprentice could spend a day making it in decent quantities.

Tammuz IV, also known as the conqueror, finally overcame the spires of the City of the World’s Dreams, and in so doing forged himself a mighty empire and destroyed the ancient society of the wise. Those sorcerers who had attracted many of the truly powerful over the last thousand years disappeared from this mortal realm ahead of the conquering army, and the lesser apprentices and journeymen who served them fled west, bringing magical theory and crafts to a society ready to experiment and innovate with the knowledge.

  Alanna Dry-Stone began her life as a wizard, but ended it the mother of modern etheric engineering. For centuries wizards had been forced to accumulate what little power they could hold in their own bodies and in carefully prepared and enchanted spell crystals. First she saw much of the theory coming from those who fled the destruction in the east. Then she invented a way to create arrays of lower powered and easier to make crystals, and how to harness life force more easily for magic, she began the magical revolution. While she would later regret what she had done, she had set a path in motion.

Erin McClanamor was a prodigy from when she was born. She studied the mystic circles of power, which dotted the landscape of her ancient home and allowed them to make magical effects when the ley lines channeled power in just the right way. Reading the works of DryStone, she was able to find a way to work and miniaturise the Druid’s ancient works and techniques. Now, under the right powers, it is possible to inscribe small runic circles, which will produce a simple magical effect when the life force of magic flows through them. While only the simplest effects can be produced this way, magic starts to move from the preserve of a secret and skilled few, to something which can be fueled and used by the masses.

On the continent’s heart land, the Empire tears itself apart. Its unity, long a thing of fiction and law rather than truth, degenerates even further when the monarchs and princes declare allegiance to new gods or old. The holy war and witch hunting raged for decades, tore an empire apart and killed a third of the men and women of the biggest power in the continent.

On the battlefields, the noble knight, long the monarch of warfare has met a match in hundreds of peasants with simple muskets and rifles. When Sir Humphrey Du Teyenne, champion of the emperor and considered the finest living example of chivalry was cast down in a volley of fire from a hastily trained militia, it became apparent to many that the old order must change.  Ancient castles, long the seats of kings can now be reduced by blastpowder cannons, and war has changed in a way that none predicted.

Far overseas, the new magic and advances make it possible for the great air and seaships to go to new continents and find new people. Without industrial magic or blastpowder cannons the locals are fighting a difficult rearguard against colonialists who seek to enslave, exterminate or subjugate them. Some princes keep enormous areas as personal fiefs where the natives are exploited mercilessly.

In the heart of the cities, though, a resistance is forming. Some people have looked at the suffering of the common folk and said it is too much. Some have looked on the arrogance of the great nobles, as they attempt to ascend to godhood, and declared that their tyranny on earth cannot be extended to heaven. Some have seen what is happening in far off lands, and realise that whole peoples are being destroyed as even genocide becomes industrial.

The resistance looks on the great soul mills which power the modern miracles and they know that more is being taken from the labourers than is needed for their work. They see the sick and discarded, weak from their life force being harvested and know the promise that the great and the powerful would take only what could be naturally restored is a lie. They see the mass graves of the battlefields fought for a haughty noble’s pride and know the princes do not care for their people, giving a lie to old promises. They see the world and know they can make it better.

Welcome to the resistance. An alliance of rebels, from the old world and new come together to stop the dark future we fear. We can turn the ambitious of the greedy and the proud aside. We will save the world from those who view everything before them as something to command and despoil. We will free humanity from its shackles and usher in a bright new dawn. Or we'll die trying.