You, Edward Bain, have been transported to another world.
Thank goodness.
In your old life, you didn't have a girlfriend. Perhaps you had one in high school, or you had one in college, or you never had any luck at all. One way or another, by the time you landed your first job, you were single. Video games and tabletop games, on the other hand, were another matter. Your fictional characters were great with the ladies! They'd get married, have children, slay dragons, make loads of money, and live happily ever after.
It's no wonder you found yourself wishing to live in a fantasy world.
As fate would have it, that's exactly what happens. A magic circle appears under your feet, and you're transported to a fantasy world filled with dragons, danger, and dames. There's magic everywhere, monsters a-plenty, and even a sort of game system you can use to level up! And to top it all off, you were deliberately summoned here to save the world - a real-life chosen hero!
It isn't all sunshine and roses, though. Nobody is entirely forthright about the costs of magic, for one thing. Some people behave like NPCs, even though this appears to be real life. Your friends and allies seem to have ulterior motives. And then there's the teensy little fact that the world is actually in peril, with a deadline and everything, and you really do have to save it.
I should probably talk about that more. This world is named Aion, and most of the civilizations on it are roughly medieval. Magic was discovered only recently (about a generation or two prior to your arrival), so many logical applications haven't made their way to the broader public yet. There are numerous sapient races here; humans are far and away the most dominant, taking up around 99% of the world's population. The remaining 1% are incredibly diverse - fauns, lamia, centaurs, mermaids, ents, dwarves, orcs, and many more too numerous to list. Perceptions of these races vary between cultures. Some people worship them, some people eat them for afternoon snack, and some people don't even blink twice when they see them.
Most of the world's civilizations are huddled around the six Haven towers dotted around the planet: Northaven, Southaven, Easthaven, Westhaven, Midhaven, and Althaven. These Haven towers are vast, monolithic constructs that stretch so high into the sky that it's almost impossible to see their peaks except from a great distance. Each one of them generates an impenetrable forcefield large enough to surround an entire continent. Nobody is quite sure what they're guarding against, since few have ever dared to venture that close to the edge (or lived to tell what they found there). The Haven towers themselves have no visible entry or exit, and are too durable to break into by force. To get beyond the forcefield to other continents, one would have to pass through underground labyrinths, each teeming with deadly traps and hostile monsters within confusing mazes of tunnels.
That means most of our adventure will take place on one continent - Northaven, where the Kingdom of Man, Zodiac Tribes, and Aetherion Alliance are founded.
The Kingdom of Man appears to be your run-of-the-mill medieval fantasy country, with a monarch at the top, landowning nobles beneath it, and commoners at the bottom. As it is closest to the equator out of all the northern countries and situated on mostly level ground, it enjoys rain and vegetation in abundance. The people there seem relatively normal except for one thing: they are all universally and fanatically patriotic. From the moment they can understand their native language, they become devout patriots for their king and country. Oddities aside, they are otherwise a smart, industrious people with a lust for adventure. They've developed a robust guild system to handle the constant Darkspawn raids that plague the continent, and are generally the most secure of the three nations.
The Aetherion Alliance, by contrast, is a curiously elf-like civilization (though they are all still humans). At first glance, they come across as peaceful, nature-loving tree-huggers with a knack for magic. Truth be told, however, their society operates on good old-fashioned "might makes right." Your place in society is determined almost entirely by the strength of your magic, and only the strongest have the right to command others. Of course, like any human culture, individual expressions of this culture vary. Some are happy to serve under someone with weaker power if they're exceptionally skilled, while others can sometimes bluff their way into higher positions. Every now and then you may even find an occasional quack who doesn't give two hoots about magic power at all. But by and large, their culture is driven by power. Visitors tend to be more awed by their extravagant splendor than they really ought to be.
The twelve Zodiac Tribes are trapped by the other two nations up in the frigid north, huddled close to Northaven Tower itself. As their moniker suggests, they are a fractured lot with few solid bonds between any of their tribes. Some live in ice houses, some in clay huts, some in caves, or whatever else they can find to work with. The Pisces Tribe, for instance, subsists mainly through fish farms (hence the name) and lives in ice-built cities, while the nomadic Aries Tribe lives further south and subsists primarily through constant raids on their neighbors.
While the three nations coexisted in relative peace, the balance of power tipped and fell off the scale entirely when the Witch appeared. This mysterious individual appeared suddenly in Northaven and immediately targeted the Kingdom with single-minded fury. Using her staggering knowledge of ancient magics, she created a diverse army of mechanical golems that the knights were powerless to stop. Left unchecked, she could conquer the entire continent (if not the whole world) all by herself. To make things worse, she forged an alliance with Abraxas, a black dragon of unimaginable power able to raze entire cities with a single breath.
Desperate to halt this unstoppable force, the Kingdom summoned you, the Hero, to fight back. You're an Ascendant (better-known as an "elf" in this world), a long-lost race of immortals that once ruled the world. Silvery hair and pointed ears mark your species. How you went from mere human to that is beyond you. Even curiouser is how you can still recognize yourself in a mirror, if barely. While you're not the only person the Kingdom summoned to their aid, you are the only Ascendant of the lot.
That makes you an attractive prospect for all the eligible young ladies in the Kingdom. You could, of course, indulge yourself in their affections and let the world burn, but if you're not too keen on seeing ordinary people get trampled by the strong, you could instead recruit these ladies into your party and take them with you on your quest to save the world. The Princess, your female Knight, and the Aetherial Queen are mighty allies rivaling you in power. If you can manage all their conflicting agendas within your budding harem, you could potentially even rule the world yourself.
Use your powers well, chosen one. But remember: all is not as it seems. I chose that title for a reason.
1. I wouldn't recommend getting too intimate with your party members, because you have a wedding ring on your finger that wasn't there before. Your memories were messed up when you were summoned. In other words, you got married and forgot about it. Your wife is still alive and kicking. Definitely kicking. This RP is fundamentally an action/romance story, kind of a twist on the old "arranged marriage" theme. 2. The Darkspawn are more than just an annoyance. The Haven towers were built to stop them. In fact, I was tempted to use the Post-Apocalyptic flag for this RP...
