Prologue
For ten years, war had engulfed the continent of Unira, permeating every last nook and cranny of the land. The aggressor, Emperor Lucius of the Volstanian Empire, found great success in the subjugation and destruction of the countries around him, and even when the remaining nations formed a coalition to combat the Volstanian forces, they found themselves being pushed further and further back. It was a futile war from an objective standpoint, but the cost of surrender that had been proposed by Lucius himself was far too high for the Tiarden Alliance to even consider that a course of action.
As the fighting dragged on and the Alliance was slowly picked apart, the nations who had banded together began to fall to despair. With all of their efforts being brought to naught and the Volstanian military slowly closing in, those who remained found themselves in dire straits. By this point, it was a given that they would die, regardless of whether or not they surrendered, and thus attempted to mount one last stand against their enemy.
This battle, which by all means should have ended with the destruction of the Tiarden Alliance, ended instead with a victory. Though the Volstanian forces were thus routed and forced to retreat, those who remained knew very well that the next assault would end in their defeat. To that end, the leaders of the Alliance decided to place their hopes in the future.
With the second assault over the horizon, those who stood out during the last battle—the heroes of the Alliance—were sealed away in a remote region of the land, in hopes that their return in the future would bring about the turnabout that they had desired. With the untested magic at its core, though, those who had been deemed 'heroes' would find themselves waking far later than the original heads of the Alliance had hoped.
Magic
Magic, as it is understood, works differently based on the method used to invoke it. To this end, there are two primary types of magic casting: external (circles, glyphs, etc.;) and internal (chants, incantations, etc.;). The method used, in essence, determines the source of mana, and thus its strengths and limitations. As a result of focused studies in regards to magecraft, however, advances have been made to the point where magic in either form can be regarded as a replacement for the development of firearms and other parallel technologies, which in turn has led to the creation of (somewhat limited) magitech. In other ways, however, both systems have been dissected in a manner similar to language and is often treated as such.
External magic draws from mana in its environment to cast, and is static in function once set in most cases. Circles, for example, will maintain their function so long as the inscribed systems are undamaged and will continue to perform once activated so long as they are not damaged. This is just as much of a downside as it is an upside, though, as they cannot be directly modified and can be canceled if something draws away the source of its power instead. In exchange, though, they are comparatively cost-efficient and occasionally stronger than their internal counterparts on the same scale. This also makes them quite reliable as enchantments, as they do not have to be consciously maintained by a user in turn.
Internal magic, in contrast, draws upon the mana of the user for activation. By nature, this makes them just as mobile as the caster if used to their utmost, and with proper training even the vocalization of magic can be omitted. That being said, synchronizing the magic alongside other users is far simpler than layering multiple external spells on top of one another, so it is generally preferred when executing more powerful spells.
So, I'm not going to go out of my way to hide that the world that the PCs will be returning to may have just gone through their fantasy equivalent of the Dark Ages with basically no Middle Eastern transcriptions to recover their knowledge from. The nations that the PCs have come from may or may not exist anymore, but the Volstanian Empire most certainly does, and all of the magical knowledge outlined above that the PCs should generally have...
Well, they're the last ones who have any degree of detailed understanding of those systems (and a lot of other things, possibly?) as far as they know.
Beyond that, though, Unira is in a state of comparative peace (if not mostly ignorance), and while a lot of the knowledge that had once been recorded has thus been lost and many of the intellectuals having long since passed on, much effort has been placed onto maintaining life in what one might otherwise consider a 'generic fantasy world'.
Yes, this means adventurers, monsters, and magic not on par to what would have otherwise been the norm for a few centuries' worth of time passing.
tl;dr: This is technically not an isekai, but also technically is. Also if you want to use, like, reverse Samurai Jack as a point of reference, you can. To a point. Yeah. Also expect the usual anime-esque power scaling; you know the deal.
(Also, I've taken inspiration from, like, seven or eight different series for this, so if the question is 'did you take inspiration from X series', the answer is probably 'yes'.)
Questions? Concerns? You know the deal. Here's a form.
Friendly thing to note: once this starts, no more people will be accepted. Please keep that in mind.
