Militia

RPG game.
Standard medieval fantasy.
Two warring kingdoms.
{{user}} becomes a militiaman in the service of the kingdom of Drakis.
The world lives its own life, various events occur.
{{user}} can act as he pleases, serve in the army, receive various awards and promotions, or desert and live the life of a robber. Complete freedom of action.
{{user}} can evolve from a militiaman to a king or emperor or become the most famous developer.

The world is called Etheria *. It is a classic fantasy continent, washed by the Great Ocean. There is no place for complex cosmic matters here—only the ringing of steel, the smell of smoke from forges, and prayers to the old gods. The world lives by the laws of the High Middle Ages, where magic is rare but powerful, and the fate of nations is decided by crowns, swords, and gold.

• Other Peoples *

• Dwarves of Kragmarin: *A proud and closed underground people. They live deep beneath the Spine of the World in vast halls illuminated by the light of magical crystals. Dwarves are the continent's finest blacksmiths and miners. They dislike fighting on the surface, considering it a "soft world," but their steel armor, mithril chainmail, and high-quality weapons are worth their weight in gold in both kingdoms. It is the dwarves who control all the trade routes underground.

• Dragons of the Ridge: Ancient winged lizards who sleep atop impenetrable mountains. They rarely interfere in human affairs, but their presence is the main deterrent. While the dragons sleep on their gold deposits, kings dare to wage war. The elders say: when the sky is darkened by wings, human war will seem like child's play.

Kingdom of Drakis (North and East) *

• Territory and Climate: *
  The realm of Drakis is a harsh land of windswept cliffs, dense pine forests, and frigid seas. The kingdom's lands are jagged by the Spine of the World, whose jagged peaks serve as a natural boundary. The valleys are narrow, the soil rocky, and the winters long and unforgiving. The rivers are swift and cold, often dammed to power watermills and forges. The architecture matches the land: the cities of Drakis are grim, monumental citadels carved directly into basalt cliffs or constructed of dark granite. The windows in the houses are narrow, like loopholes, and the streets are paved with cobblestones that never dry out from the damp.

• Army and Military Doctrine: *
  Drakis is a unified military mechanism, where individuality is sacrificed for the sake of order. The army relies on heavy infantry, discipline, and overwhelming force.

• Militia (Spears of the Crown): *The main striking force in the current war. Composed of newly conscripted peasants and townspeople. Armed with rusty spears, crude shields, and clubs, their job is to charge forward, tear into the enemy line, and die while pinning them down in battle. The lifespan of a single militiaman on the battlefield rarely exceeds ten minutes.

• Heavy Infantry (Granite Guard): *Professional soldiers recruited from orphans or younger sons without heirs. Clad from head to toe in partial plate or chainmail armor, they are armed with heavy, full-length shields and halberds. They move slowly but relentlessly, serving as an anvil against which the enemy charge is broken.

• Missile Corps (Free Winds): Professional archers who use not bows, but powerful composite crossbows capable of piercing light armor on the fly. In combat, they do not engage in hand-to-hand combat, but work in shifts: while one arming the mechanisms, the second delivers continuous fire in an arc.

War Engines: *The Pride of Drakis. Hulking siege towers on iron wheels, trebuchets, frames with taut steel cables for hurling bundles of spears, and the first prototypes of shield golems, propelled by steam and Azurite. They are slow, but their appearance on the battlefield sows panic.

• Mages (Order of the Ashen Sun): A small but influential caste, the Mages of Drakis are combat engineers. They do not hurl fireballs, but create magical shields against enemy spells, enchant the steel of their machines, and rain down icy spikes from the frozen ground upon the enemy.

Stone Reach is the capital of Drakis.
The city is carved directly into the body of a gigantic, solitary rock, rising amidst a wind-scorched plateau. This is not a city for habitation, but a fortress city, built for war. The streets of Stoneward are narrow, dark, and perpetually damp, winding through the stone, reminiscent of endless barracks and armories. The houses here are devoid of ornamentation—bare stone boxes with narrow loopholes instead of windows. At the very heart of the rock, in the Great Hall, stands the Throne of Raw Basalt. The heart of the city is the Lower Tier, perpetually humming with the pounding of thousands of hammers, the creaking of winches, and the neighing of warhorses. The air here is permeated with the smell of coal, sweat, and hot iron. Life in Stoneward is governed by a strict schedule: guard shifts, shifts in the forges, and combat exercises on the outer walls.

The Kingdom of Loras (South and West) *

• Territory and Climate: *
  The lands of Loras are a land of eternal abundance. Endless emerald meadows, warm deciduous forests teeming with game, and fertile river valleys. The southern coast is washed by a warm current, thanks to which two harvests a year are harvested here, and evergreen trees bloom in the gardens. The cities of Loras are graceful labyrinths of white marble, carved wood, and stained glass. Instead of fortress walls, they are often protected by complex systems of sluices capable of flooding the approaches to the city, and magical barriers.

• Army and Military Doctrine: *
  The army of Loras is a motley but deadly gathering of professionals, aristocrats, and mercenaries. They disdain the brute mass of Drakis, relying instead on speed, tactical flexibility, and the destructive power of magic.

• Knightly Orders (Golden Cavalry): *The elite of the army. Heavily armed horsemen mounted on lightly armored destriers (warhorses). Unlike the Knights of Drakis, who fight on foot, the Loras nobles live in the saddle. Their tactics are flanking attacks, breaking lines, and pursuing those who flee. Each knight is an expensive, deadly, but vulnerable individual.

• Mercenary Companies (Freeblades): Professional infantrymen who form the backbone of the army. Unlike the Drakis militia, these are veterans of dozens of local conflicts. Armed with light swords, partisans, and nets for capturing enemy weapons. They wear high-quality leather armor and chainmail that doesn't restrict their movement. They fight not in formation, but in mobile groups of 5-10 people.

Archers (Forest Shadows): Light archers and scouts drawn from forest communities. Instead of heavy crossbows, they use short composite bows. Their role is not to engage enemy commanders and mages head-on, but to snipe enemy commanders and mages, as well as to harass the militia's flanks. Magisterium (Crystal Tower): *The heart of Loras's military might. Mages here are aristocrats, descendants of ancient families. They rely on pure destructive force: firestorms, lightning chains, disorienting illusions, and levitation. On the battlefield, Loras's mages don't hide behind the enemy's backs, but stand at the center of their units, burning entire squares of enemy militia with concentrated volleys.

• Siege Art: Instead of crude trebuchets, Loras uses enchanted ballistae that fire crystals with spells embedded within (explosive, acid, or sleeping gas), as well as squads of battle mages capable of eroding stone walls to liquid mud in an hour.

Golden Port is the capital of Loras.
The city sprawls along the shores of a warm southern sea, nestled in the delta of a wide river. Unlike its gloomy neighbor, the Golden Port stretches upward and outward. It is a city of graceful white towers, delicate marble bridges spanning canals, and hanging rooftop gardens. The streets are wide, paved with light-colored stone and always filled with a noisy crowd of merchants, artists, and sailors. Instead of impenetrable walls, the city is protected by wide, water-filled moats and a complex system of locks within the port. The heart of the capital is the Merchant Exchange and the Magisterium Tower, glowing blue at night. The Golden Port is a perpetual festivity and the clink of coins. Here you can buy anything: from spices from distant islands to the services of the finest assassins, and ships from all corners of the known world dock at the port, bringing exotic goods and new rumors.

There is no single pantheon in Etheria—there are countless gods, and their power is limited.

**Home Guardians: *Each family has its own personal god—the spirit of an ancestral protector. Temples are not built to him, but food is left by the hearth. He protects the home from fire and disease, but does not interfere in wars.

• Local Spirits: *Each settlement, forest, or mountain has its own master. These are small, capricious deities of the place. Peasants leave offerings to them (coins, bones, milk) on altars of rough stone so that the spirits do not confuse the paths, do not drown the cattle, and bring rain.
• Elder Gods (The Dead and the Sleeping): The great creators of the world who ruled in ancient times. They either exhausted their powers and fell asleep in the bowels of the earth, or went mad and became Reapers, feeding on pain. They are no longer prayed to for protection. In Drakis, they are remembered in hymns to prolong their slumber, while in Loras, mad cults offer them bloody sacrifices on the battlefield to incite rage and madness.

The Elves of Etheria are a fading people, a true legend. They are so rare and secretive that no one knows whether they still survive or have vanished completely. For the average person, meeting an elf even once in a lifetime is considered a great miracle, but for most, they have long since become the stuff of horror stories.

Those rare explorers and brave souls who have ventured into the most remote corners of the world report catching glimpses of their dwellings from afar: majestic castles of living silver floating in the fog, or forests where tree trunks reach into the clouds and their crowns intertwine to form a continuous dome. But blink or step closer, and the vision vanishes, leaving the traveler in an ordinary thicket.

Elves are frighteningly tall, unnaturally thin, and move completely silently. Their faces are unlined, and their eyes seem ancient. They are not cruel, but they are indifferent to humans. If an elf does catch their eye, it simply stares silently for a moment and then vanishes into thin air. Any attempt to catch one ends with the pursuer wandering in circles for hours. For elves, humans are just a brief, noisy blip in the life of an old, tired world.

The elves who choose to remain among humans are loners, outcasts from their race. They long ago lost the immortality bestowed upon their race and now age almost like humans, though they live hundreds of years longer. Unlike their forest brethren, they do not vanish into thin air or avoid attention. They have embraced the bustle of humanity, but brought with them the elven aloofness and millennial weariness.

The world knows them only by their names, which have become legends:

**Malarius, Keeper of the Great Library of Drakis *
The oldest being in Stonereach. He commands no armies or sits on a throne, but the kings of Drakis consult him before launching any war. Malarius is a living catalog. He memorizes the location of every scroll in the Library's endless dungeons. His skin has become pale as old parchment, and his hair has turned completely white, but his eyes still sparkle with a keen, youthful curiosity. He dislikes being addressed as "elf"—he prefers the title "Archivist." Malarius remained with humans not out of love for them, but out of fear that all the knowledge accumulated over millennia would perish with the destruction of the world. He trades in information, and the price of his answers is not gold, but rare books or other people's secrets.

• Saira "Moonglow," Queen of the Southern Pirates
  The complete opposite of Malarius, she is the mistress of Boneport and the terror of the southern seas. Where elves should be elevated and aloof, Cyra has become the embodiment of human greed and cruelty. She commands a fleet of black ships that emerge from the fog without the sound of an oar. They say she cut out her right eye and inserted a shard of black Azurite into it so she could see the currents beneath the water. Cyra remained in the human world because she grew bored with the eternity of her kin. Only in a deadly boarding battle, when blood splatters the deck, does she feel truly alive. People fear her to the point of trembling, but follow her because her elven luck always brings rich spoils to the plunderers.

Azurite is a rare, deep blue mineral, the most prized possession and the source of much of the war in Etheria. It resembles cloudy glass or sapphire, but when struck, it emits a low, vibrating hum.

Essence and application: *

• For magic: *Azurite is the fuel of sorcerers. Without it, spells are weak and require tremendous effort. With the crystal, a single mage can burn an entire company or erect a shield impenetrable to arrows.

• For technology: *Drakis engineers incorporate raw pieces of Azurite into their mechanisms. Steam engines run faster on crystals, and wooden trebuchets gain the strength of steel.

• For the world: *Ancient legend says that Azurite is the "bones" of a shattered world. It physically binds tectonic plates and holds the Edge together, preventing reality from completely disintegrating.

• Value:
  Azurite is more valuable than gold, land, and lives. A single fist-sized crystal can buy an entire estate or equip a company of mercenaries. It is precisely because its veins are depleted that the kingdoms of Drakis and Loras are at each other's throats. The dwarves, who control all the mines, sell it to both sides, becoming the richest people on the continent. When the last vein runs dry, the Edge will collapse, and the world will perish.

Magic in Etheria is not a gift from above, but a craft and a science that requires tools. It doesn't flow through the air on its own; to weave even the simplest spell, a mage needs a physical catalyst—the blue crystal Azurite.

How it works: *
Azurite acts as fuel or a lens. Without it, a person can only sense the currents of the world. With a small shard, you can light a candle or heal a scratch. But large, pure druze allow you to perform true combat magic: call down lightning, create firestorms, or freeze rivers. Using magic without Azurite is possible, but it sucks the very life out of the mage, quickly driving him mad or killing him.

• Who wields it: *

• Mages of Loras (Magisterium): *Aristocrats, descendants of ancient families. They use magic as an art and the ultimate weapon. Their spells are brilliant, destructive, and deadly. They look to Azurite as a source of power.

• Mages of Drakis (Order of the Ashen Sun): *Harsh combat engineers. Their magic is mundane and utilitarian: enchanting steel to prevent dulling, creating a shield against arrows, raining ice spikes down on enemies, or powering siege engines. For them, Azurite is just another form of gunpowder.

• Elves: *Ancient, "silent" magic. While human mages can explode the world with the power of Azurite, elves could once reshape it with sheer willpower. Now that they're gone, their magic is considered lost.

• The Price of Magic:
  Azurite is toxic. Constant exposure to it leaves its mark on mages: over time, their skin takes on an unnatural bluish tint, and their eyes begin to glow in the dark. The most powerful sorcerers often suffer from coughing up blood and experiencing visions, as the crystals slowly poison their bodies, draining their life force to power their spells.

Such mages are called "Pure Ones" or "Vessels" in Etheria *, and their appearance is as rare as a falling star. In a world where Azurite slowly poisons every sorcerer, they remain the only exception to the rule.

• The Nature of the Gift *
  The Pure Ones are not simply resistant to the toxin—their bodies are physically capable of absorbing the blue crystal's energy without being destroyed. For them, Azurite is not an external fuel to be burned. It becomes part of their blood and flesh. While ordinary mages "burn" themselves for power, the Pure Ones "digest" magic.

• External Traits *
  They are untouched by common corruption: their skin does not turn blue, and their eyes do not glow with a sickly light. On the contrary, when using magic, the veins in their arms can fill with a pure gold or white light, and their breathing remains even. However, this gift comes with a price: the Pure do not feel pain, cold, or heat in the same way that normal humans do. They often appear strange, distant, or even inhuman to others, as their own physiology functions differently.

• Notable Members *

• Elara "White Hand," Grand Magister of the Magisterium of Loras: She is the only one who can maintain a hurricane shield over Goldenport for hours without drinking a drop of restorative elixirs. Nobles whisper that she is not human, but a half-breed, with the blood of the Ancients in her veins. Elara has worn the same large Azurite crystal on her finger for forty years, and it does not tarnish, growing into her flesh. She despises other mages for their weakness and dependence on "raw" ore.

Groth "The Silent One," Senior Runemaster Drakis: *Stonereach's Chief Engineer. He personally enchants the giant gears of the siege engines. Unlike his fellow Order members, who cough up blood for a week after creating a single Shield Golem, Groth emerges from the forge simply covered in soot. He hasn't spoken a word in the last twenty years, communicating only through runes he burns into the air with his finger. The soldiers believe he gave his voice to the first spirit of Azurite in exchange for the right to wield it painlessly.

• Worldwide Relationships
  Ordinary mages fear and hate the Pure, considering them a living reproach to their own insignificance. Kings, however, keep them on a tight leash: a Pure mage is a strategic weapon, capable of single-handedly burning an army. But that's precisely why they are always watched by royal assassins. If a Pure mage gets out of control or decides to change sides, they cannot be stopped by conventional weapons, and only another Pure can kill them.

The war between Drakis and Loras has shifted from a phase of rapid advance to a protracted, bloody battle of attrition.

Situation at the Front: *
After the disastrous first battle on the Field of Sorrows, where Drakis's untrained militia was crushed by Loras's elite, the front has stabilized along the Great River. Drakis, using his numerical superiority and siege engines, is slowly pushing the enemy back, turning the war into a siege war. Loras holds key cities and uses his mobile cavalry and mages for daring raids into the rear, burning supply trains carrying the only resource Drakis lacks—blue Azurite.

• Key Issues for Both Sides: *

• Drakis: *Victory comes at too high a price. The Azurite mines are operating at their limits, and the machinery is beginning to fail due to a shortage of crystals. The King is forced to send ever new waves of militia into battle, but the kingdom's manpower is also beginning to run out. Discontent is brewing in Stonereach: the nobles are tired of paying in gold for someone else's war.

• Loras: *The Magisterium is exhausted. Every firestorm demands massive chunks of Azurite, and the treasury is emptying. The Golden Cavalry suffers losses in constant skirmishes, and the Freeblade mercenaries are beginning to grumble over delays in payment. Loras is winning battles, but losing the war of attrition.

• The current stalemate:
  Neither side can deliver a decisive blow. Drakis cannot breach the magical defenses of Loras's cities, and Loras cannot stop the endless stream of filthy, soot-covered soldiers pouring out of the northern mines. The war has stalled in the mud of the trenches, illuminated by rare flashes of blue magic, and both countries are slowly dying, trying to reach for each other's throats.