#ironline

Devils: Fae that need souls to keep their power and make deals to get them.

Weirds: Fae that are proficient in illusion and manipulation. Love causing chaos. Only motive is entertainment.

Spriggans: Nature fae. Elemental in nature with the ability to change their “element” depending on the environment.

Hags: Fae witches, always come in groups of 3 as a Coven.

Sprites: Benevolent tiny fairy types. Said to bring good luck. Hard to find because of their natural invisibility.

Nomes: Tiny faceless mushroom-esque creatures who communicate in clicks.

Basically, here’s how my planes work (for now, I’m still workshopping it). There are 3 planes, Terra, Somna, and Patha.

Terra, the Plane of Earth, is where all the shit happens. All the wars, all the farming, all the people. Basically, it is the normal place, it is the plane of action.

Somna, the Plane of Sleep, is where all thought coalesces. You have an idea, it’s somewhere in Somna, might not be super powerful or tangible cause you’re just one person, but its somewhere. Faith takes root here too. Celestial creatures are born here from the faith of the religion that spawned them.

Patha, the Plane of Magic, is where emotion reigns supreme. Much like the Warp in Warhammer, emotion takes its form here. This is where your elementals and your demons and other spirits first form.

These 3 planes aren’t like, separate worlds, they’re all the same world in essence. Terra is like the body of the world. Somna is like the mind of the world. And Patha is like the soul of the world.

At least that’s how it is in Iris. Iron doesn’t have Somna or Patha. Patha sprung a leak from Iris into Fate’s next world over, Iron. This caused Iron to start growing its own Patha, and more slowly, it’s own Somna. Now this caused all the monsters and magic and shit to start appearing in Iron. And it’s only gonna get worse (or better, depends on how you look at it). Because as Iron’s Patha grows, magic (the Rot as they call it) spreads and becomes more potent until eventually, it’ll equalise and be just as magically potent as Iris.

This process is only expedited due to the worldwide war(s) in Iron. Tensions are high, emotions are high, which just build Patha faster. And as Patha gets built, it makes a staging ground for Somna to grow.

This is explained via worldbuilding. Arcana is set in Iris. Ironline is set in Iron.

Iris is your standard medium fantasy world. Monsters abound, fantastical non-human species like elves, dwarves, orcs, and the like. And of course. Magic.

Iron though is basically just a dieselpunk world in constant war (Iris also has a lot of war, its not like super happy funland or anything). You got mechs (called “Walkers” cause I think it sounds cooler), tanks, big robot soldiers running off of turing machine style tape rolls. And most importantly, NO MAGIC.

At least that used to be the case. Cause somehow (meaning I haven’t gotten around to figuring out why) there is a rift in the fabric of magic itself that bleeds between the two worlds, letting magic into Iron, which the people from Iron call “Rot”. This has caused mutations to take place, turning people into Iron’s equivalent of those fantastical races from Iris. Like, people will suddenly start growing scales like the Manasans of Iris. Or horns like the dwarves, orcs, satyrs, or minotaurs. Or maybe they can turn partially invisible like the Cythans. Stuff like that. As you might expect from a very not progressive world where a lot of people are afraid that people from the next country over could be a spy. Racism is rampant. No there is no reason. Yes it’s irrational. That’s how racism is. This also applies to anyone who has been “touched by Rot” too (AKA, mages).

And the final bit of fallout I can remember, monsters have started appearing in Iron too. So now most soldiers are required to carry at least 1 load of silver tipped bullets.

After a few years, units of soldiers called “Fumigator Squads” that are there specifically to hunt and kill monsters started showing up.

(Also I did not make this art, I found it on pinterest from user “Łukasz Płaczkowski”. I tried to reverse image search it but TinEye gave me a bunch of unrelated deviantart collections. If you guys know which artist made this, please tell me, I would like to give them the credit they deserve.)

Magic in Iris is understood more, and a normal part of life. A peasant child could see a mage come to their farm and heal the dying crops and go “oh cool, a mage”. Because they know it exists, and at the very least, it is a normal part of their worldview that magic exists and it is not a malevolent force.

However, magic in Iron is far less understood, and far more feared. People look at magic (what they call “Rot”) as a very bad thing. Something unnatural that should be feared and destroyed. This is not only because new things are scary, but also because of how the Rot has presented itself.

The Rot first came to be known from monsters. Abominations that would tear people limb from limb because they didn’t know how to fight it. These things that would slaughter innocents for seemingly no reason except what the people thought was pure evil. And just as well, some people were gifted with the ability to harness the Rot, but they didn’t know how to control it, nobody is there to teach them.

So these mages, called “Rotters” end up causing a lot of damage because they didn’t know how to control the magic. Because magic is very emotion based, when these rotters are placed in high stress situations, and they can’t control their magic, their attempts to defend themselves backfire, violently.

When you have the curse of lycanthropy, you are basically inflicted by a living magical parasite that will try and take over you to act on its own animalistic intentions. This creature living inside of you has its own personality and mind and thoughts completely separate from your own.

Think of Venom from their solo movies. Eddie Brock is infected by the symbiote. He has these internal conversations with it, and has to reel it back in anytime it pops out or tries to do something on its own.

That is what these lycanthropes are like. Depending on the creature’s form, you might be tangling with some big as wolf thing popping out of your shoulder area and trying to eat your boss. Or a rat head biting your ear cause it didn’t like the food you’re about to pick. Stuff like that.

The weak-willed might be unable to control the beast and have it overtake them. While the strong-willed might be able to have a symbiotic relationship with the thing where it can pop out to attack people around them or help them with the dishes.

Now, you might be wondering “How do people become lycanthropes?” Well there’s a few ways.

Be cursed by some bitch ass wizard or something

Be infected by an existing lycanthrope through bite.

Go berzerk

Going berzerk is basically when someone becomes so bloodlusted and so wrathful that all that anger and hate and bloodshed merges with their essence and manifests as “the beast inside” so to speak.

This beast varies from person to person. Some people might end up being a wererat, or a werebear, or a werehorse. There’s a lot of possibilities.

It’s also possible for existing lycanthropes to go berzerk. At which point, the parasite takes control and basically goes into overdrive. You know, harder better faster stronger, all the daft punk shit.

If I keep that number up, I'm never gonna finish these projects to any kind of doneness I'd be happy with.

So I thought it out and realised that if I stuck with that goal, a large number of abilities would probably be dumb, half baked ideas that I put in because its all I had. So instead of filling my projects with bloat to achieve an artificial number, I'm cutting down to 6 abilities per weapon and magic skill.

This cuts the number from 170 to 102. Still a lot, yes, but a lot more feasible seeing as I have already made 68 of them for a playtest (that never happened sadly).

In the previous iteration, every other level, you'd get an ability in the skill, to a maximum of 10 abilities at level 20. In this new iteration, it is still like that, every other level, you'll get an ability. BUT NOW, after Level 12, you get no new abilities in that skill, but your bonus will still increase to a max of +10.