Ashes Of The End [Discussion]

In the first moment, there was Darkness.

When the world was born, it was born unfinished, a vast expanse of mud and sea and stone cloaked in endless shadow. Faceless and formless creatures writhed across its surface and beneath its skin, blind and unseeing, knowing only emptiness, devouring the world from the very moment of its birth, consuming even themselves in their frenzy.

In the next moment, there was Flame.

Deep in the dark, far below the false sky, the nameless dead discovered the spark. Fire, the essence of life, burned into their breasts, there to dwell, and the nameless dead were thus called:

Lastivan, Queen, First of the Thousand.
Arvess the Beast.
Nuramore, the One Below.
Glainfel of Fered-Ar and his Disciples.

With fire came hunger; with hunger came purpose. With the light burning within them, the Named rose to the surface and drove out the crawling, festering sin. Arvess tore the great worms asunder with teeth and claws of flashing silver; fire dripped from Glainfel's tongue as he spoke words of power to scorch them from the inside out. Nuramore trapped the beasts inside their own rotting corpses. And Lastivan, their leader, raised her hand to the sky and drew down the sun and the stars, bringing light to the surface and allowing the world to be fully born. Thus it was that the Age of Fire began.

Born of the fires of life within the Named, mankind remade the world in his image. From mud was raised fields and forests, villages and towns; from stone was made grand citadels and walls to keep the people safe and to proclaim the glory of the Named. Mankind traveled the world, built great kingdoms and empires, and traversed the sea to lands unknown. In the land of Haelwyd, home of the Named, the Flame burned bright and steady; and in the light and warmth of the Flame, humanity thrived.

But all that was many years ago.

Now, the ancient land of Haelwyd has been long silent, its great gates shut tight. The seas are grey and dead, swallowing all who once loved them, and the land breeds poison underground. The great kingdoms of man have begun to crumble, lost to the sword or the plague. The light of the Flame flickers... And even as hardship draws those who yet survive together, the men and women among the survivors who bear the Brand – the cursed mark of the swallowing Darkness – are cast out as tainted. No longer living, yet unable to truly die, many go mad... but some, a brave few, find themselves called to the land of Haelwyd, over the towering walls, to the rotting village of Gaerlwyn in the west, where a young woman with hair like spun gold awaits. Even now, time enough remains for them to lose their way, or just maybe...

In the first moment, there was Darkness. In the next moment, there was Flame.

What will there be in the last moment?

The Theocracy of Era is based in a cold land far to the north of Haelwyd and the Wall. People there traditionally worship the Flame and the Named, particularly Queen Lastivan in a form of sun worship, given how rare it is to see the sun except in summer. The Church of Era is actually the result of an ancient schism that rejects the divinity of Lastivan's Thousand, holding that as the stars give no life to the earth, putting them in the same category as the Queen is disrespectful.

When Haelwyd closed its gates and the earth began to rot, this was taken as proof by the Erans that the faith practiced by the other lands was false. For a long time, the Church had tolerated the acknowledgement of the role the other Named had played in ending the Age of Darkness, but with the light starting to fade, murmurs of discontent began to arise. The Thousand born of Lastivan were bad enough, but the Silvered Beast? The Filth? Blasphemy. Heresy.

Soon, the murmurs swelled into a chorus, guided largely by the hand of an upstart young preacher named Lannan from the secluded Monastery of Ilwaedg. Charismatic and possessed of great and mysterious powers that seemed to prove his claims to the Sun Queen's favor, he quickly re-established the failing power of the Theocracy by deposing the aging Pope and installing himself as the head of the newly formed Grand Inquisition. Within ten years, the fractured pieces of Era were reunited stronger than ever - her ragged wounds cut clean with the gilded blade, cauterized, and washed with the blood of heretics.

By the present day, the Inquisition has been the dominant power in Era and much of the surrounding lands for nearly thirty years. The Inquisition does not host missions of mercy; their Knights are missionaries and executioners, often at the same time. The Scripture of Era reads that the Flame will rekindle when every unbeliever and Branded One is dead and their bones fed to the fire.

In terms of spell flavor, you'll want to look at mostly the basic Soul stuff - things like Soul Arrow, Soul Spear, the Homing Soulmass spells - and the Pestilent Mercury spell. Sorcery in this world draws on silvery mercury as its focus element the same way sorcery in Dark Souls uses crystal.

The basics of the art are the same - there's a lot of reading scrolls and stuff, and it's generally pretty intellectual. Most sorcerers use staffs that hold a tempered-glass core of mercury surrounded by wood as their catalyst, and it's done by focusing one's will into the mercury and casting from that. The more mercury, the more power, but also the harder it is to control, that sort of thing. Traditional sorcerers are very strict about discipline and self-control, because the more control you have the more intricate spells you can perform. The one University of sorcery in the land is in the rocky and stormy coastal land of Mellta, a harsh environment for many people who live there. The sorcerers of the University use their collected knowledge, not just of magic but of agriculture, construction, and other disciplines, to maintain a fairly lush and comfortable lifestyle behind the high, magically reinforced walls and gates. The University is an oasis of knowledge not just for Mellta, but for all of the lands of the Flame... or at least, that was the intention.

With the light of the flame fading, the current headmasters of the University have begun to refuse entry to most people, accepting even fewer students than before and turning away most envoys from the Melltan government and other kingdoms. The road to the University has grown very dangerous; not only have the thunderstorms along the coastal roads increased, but the hopefuls and beggars turned away, many of whom had been clinging to acceptance as their last resort, have turned to banditry or simple madness. Some are Branded, but others are simply desperate. Either way, even meager sorceries are often more than a match for simple armor and weapons.

There is a sect of sorcerers living in the hills and crags of Mellta that decry both the bandits and the University, though. The first few were cast out as heretics, but they survived, and eventually gained a following from among the failed applicants and bandits. These heretics say that the restraint and self-restriction practiced by University scholars destroys the true power of sorcery - the power drawn from the Silvered Beast, Arvess. These heretics use sorcery in close combat, taking trophies from the beasts of the wild to manifest the silvery claws, teeth, spines and even wings of Arvess in a brutal, bestial whirlwind. They tend to forsake the more complex ranged sorceries.