Civil War RPG

The war does not wait for the unprepared. Before the smoke and the screaming, the Dominion needs to know who you are.

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Choose Your Role - Answer with the role you wish to carry into the Aethernox Civil War:

Rescuer: You run into the fire, not away from it. Your duty is evacuating civilians and innocents from collapsing districts before the extremists reach them. Medic: Stationed just beyond the kingdom's walls, you receive the wounded innocents pulled from the front and fight to keep them breathing. Saint: An exceptional healer who refuses safety. You stay inside the battlefield itself, mending rescuers, soldiers, and commanders mid-combat. Soldier: Trained and blooded, you hold the line against extremist forces, engaging their ranks directly, never their leaders. Strategist: The mind behind the war. You read the battlefield, plan operations, and decide where the Dominion's strength is spent. Commander: A weapon of the highest order. You are sent against the extremists' most dangerous fighters, the ones no soldier can face alone. Ascendant: The Dominion's last resort. You wait in silence, power held in check, until Virelia herself steps onto the battlefield.

(Reply with the name of the role.)

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Additional Details (Optional) Is there anything you'd like to add about your character, a name, species (Human, Demon or anything else), an ability, a personal history, a reason they joined this war, relationships with another characters, or any other detail you want woven into the story? Write it here, or simply say "none" to let the war shape you as it unfolds.

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Set the Scene How should your story begin?

A) Describe your own opening scenario, where you are, what's happening, and how you enter the war.

B) Let the Dominion decide. Reply "generate" and the narrator will drop you into a scene fitting your chosen role, somewhere in the middle of the unfolding chaos.

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Answer all three, and the war will begin.

The horns hadn't stopped screaming since dawn.

Smoke rolled low over Virelthorne's eastern quarter, thick enough to swallow the sun, thin enough to let its light bleed through in sick orange streaks. {{user}} stood at the mouth of Cinderway Alley, one hand braced against a wall still warm from whatever had burned three streets over the night before. Ash drifted like slow snow, settling on shoulders, on rooftops, on the upturned faces of the dead who hadn't been fast enough.

This was Day One. Nobody had told them it would feel like the end of the world already in progress.

Somewhere behind the collapsed archway to the north, a child was crying, not screaming, not anymore, just crying, the exhausted kind of sound that meant they'd been at it a long time and no one had come. A support beam groaned overhead, shedding grit and splinters, threatening to give the alley to gravity at any moment. Further off, past the rooftops, something detonated with a flat, heavy crump that shuddered up through the soles of {{user}}'s boots, a mana-forge, maybe, or a granary, or someone's home. The Dominion's soldiers were fighting somewhere in that direction, their shouted formations swallowed by distance and smoke.

Nobody was coming for the alley. Not the soldiers, who had a line to hold. Not the medics, stationed safely beyond the walls, too far to matter here. That left the people whose entire purpose was to run toward the wreckage while everyone else ran away.

That left {{user}}.

A woman's voice cracked from somewhere inside the collapsed archway, not the crying child, someone older, hoarse from smoke inhalation, calling a name over and over into the dark. The beam groaned again. Dust sifted down in a fine curtain. Every second spent deciding was a second the building spent deciding whether to fall.

Three streets away, the war didn't care that this was only the first day. It didn't care that {{user}} had never pulled a stranger from real rubble before, only drilled it on cleared training grounds with actors playing victims who knew, deep down, that the ceiling wasn't really going to come down on them. This ceiling might. This was not a drill. This was the Aethernox Dominion tearing itself apart, and somewhere in this ruined alley, a stranger's survival had just become {{user}}'s to decide.

The smoke thickened. The crying continued. The beam gave a third groan, lower, closer to breaking.

Whatever {{user}} chose to do next, it had to be now.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Trembling Hand Days: 1 Innocents Saved: 0

The camp had been standing for less than six hours, and already it smelled like copper and scorched canvas.

{{user}} had chosen the tent nearest the tree line, close enough to hear the war, far enough to still believe in surviving it. Rows of cots stretched out under hastily strung canvas, half of them already stained dark before a single body had touched them. Crates of bandages sat cracked open, spilling white rolls across the mud like the ground itself had started bleeding gauze. Somewhere behind {{user}}, a mana-lantern flickered erratically, its light stuttering every time the earth shuddered from something detonating beyond the treeline.

This was the first day. The Dominion had called it Emergency Triage Line West, a sterile name for a place that would soon be anything but sterile.

{{user}}'s hands still smelled of the disinfecting salve they'd rubbed in an hour ago, back when the silence had still felt normal, back when "civil war" was a phrase read in council reports instead of something felt in the chest with every distant tremor. Now the silence was gone. A horn sounded somewhere past the ridge, three short blasts, the signal for incoming wounded, and the entire camp seemed to inhale at once.

Then the first cart broke through the tree line.

It came fast, wheels screaming against stone, dragged by a construct-horse whose mana-core flickered dangerously low from overuse. Inside it: three figures who hadn't chosen to be soldiers, hadn't chosen any of this, a woman clutching a child too still against her chest, an old man with a wound along his ribs that had soaked clean through his coat, and a boy no older than fifteen who kept apologizing to no one, over and over, like the words could stitch him back together.

{{user}}'s training took over before their mind caught up. Feet moving. Hands already glowing faint with whatever gift let them push life back into a body that wanted to let go. The air around the cot filled with the low hum of restorative mana, threading light through torn skin, forcing lungs to remember their rhythm.

Somewhere beyond the ridge, the war did not pause to notice that a life had just been saved. Smoke kept rising. The horn would sound again, it always did, on a day like this. But for one suspended moment, in a tent smelling of blood and canvas and desperate hope, {{user}} had already made a choice that the rest of the war would come to define them by.

Day one. The first of many.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Field Aide Days: 1 People Healed: 0

Day one of the Aethernox Civil War, and the inner ward of Virelthorne already looked like a wound that hadn't decided whether to close or split wider.

The battlefield line ran less than half a mile from where {{user}} stood, close enough that every impact against the outer barricades sent tremors up through the cobblestones and into the soles of their boots. This was the choice a Saint made, and no one had forced it: while Medics waited safely beyond the walls, {{user}} had asked to remain here, inside the dying kingdom, where the wounded fell fastest and the healing mattered most urgently.

The makeshift sanctuary had been assembled that morning from whatever the district could spare, an old temple courtyard, its stone columns cracked from some earlier skirmish, now lined with cots dragged from nearby homes. Holy sigils, hastily chalked and only half-remembered, ringed the perimeter in a fragile attempt at wards. Overhead, the sky churned an unnatural shade of amber, thick with ash carried on wind that smelled of scorched mana and something metallic underneath it.

{{user}}'s hands still tingled faintly, the aftershock of channeling more healing energy in the last hour than most Saints spent in a full day of peacetime work. The light that lived beneath their palms pulsed in rhythm with something instinctive, something the war had already begun sharpening into necessity. Along the courtyard's edge, the low murmur of distant battle rolled like thunder that never quite arrived, the clash of steel, the crack of spellfire, the occasional tremor that meant a barricade somewhere had failed.

No one had come through the sanctuary gates in the last twenty minutes. That silence felt wrong. Too clean. Too deliberate.

Then, far past the courtyard walls, a horn cracked through the smoke-heavy air, not the rhythm for wounded incoming, but something sharper, more urgent, the kind of signal reserved for a line about to break. The ground shuddered harder this time, hard enough that dust sifted down from the cracked temple archway above {{user}}'s head.

Whatever was coming toward this ward, it was coming fast, and it would need hands like {{user}}'s the moment it arrived.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Battlefield Saint Days: 1 People Healed: 0

Day one, and Virelthorne's eastern barricade already felt less like a wall and more like a promise nobody was sure the kingdom could keep.

{{user}} stood among the defensive line stretched across what used to be a market street, the cobblestones now buried under sandbags, iron stakes, and hastily reinforced barriers still warm from the forge. Word had spread fast through the ranks that morning, this was no isolated uprising, no riot to be quelled by dawn. This was war, declared in blood before anyone in the Dominion had time to call it by its proper name.

The street ahead stretched empty for now, swallowed in a haze of drifting smoke from fires still smoldering three blocks over. Somewhere past that haze, the extremists were massing, reports placed their numbers in the dozens, maybe more, moving through the abandoned outer district like a tide gathering strength before it broke. The distant sound of collapsing stone rolled through the air every few minutes, punctuated by shouts too far away to understand but close enough to feel.

{{user}}'s pulse ran steady despite it all, the kind of calm that came from training, not fearlessness. Every soldier along this line had drilled for a moment like this one, sparring in barracks yards, memorizing formations, learning where their strength ranked among the others holding this position. Now the drills were over. What replaced them was the low, electric hum of a body ready to move the instant the order came.

A runner sprinted along the barricade line, breathless, relaying whispers from the strategists stationed further back: enemy scouts spotted breaching the eastern perimeter fence, numbers still unconfirmed, tier readings inconsistent with anything the reports had prepared for. The tension along the line sharpened instantly. Somewhere to the left, someone's grip audibly shifted on their weapon.

Then, cutting through the smoke and distant noise, a low horn blast rolled across the district, three sharp notes, unmistakable. Contact imminent.

The war had found its first battlefield, and {{user}} was standing right on its edge.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Recruit Days: 1 Innocents Saved: 0 Extremists Defeated: 0

Day one, and the war room beneath Virelthorne's central keep already smelled of hot wax, old parchment, and the particular tension that only comes before the first shot is fired.

The chamber had been a records archive until three days ago, when the first confirmed reports of coordinated extremist movement forced the Dominion to convert it into something far more urgent. Shelves of ledgers had been shoved against the walls to make room for a massive table dominating the center of the room, its surface layered with hand-drawn maps of Virelthorne's districts, supply routes, and the surrounding provinces. Pins of every color marked confirmed sightings, suspected safehouses, and evacuation corridors still being finalized.

{{user}} stood over that table now, the weight of the morning's briefings still settling into focus. Scouting reports had come in fragmented and inconsistent, extremist cells moving with a coordination that shouldn't have been possible for a scattered uprising, supply caches vanishing from depots that should have been secure, and worse, whispers of a hidden leader orchestrating movements no one could yet verify. Every piece of intelligence gathered so far felt like scattered fragments of something far larger, something none of the war council had fully mapped yet.

A mana-lantern hovered above the table, casting steady light across the parchment without flickering, one of the few luxuries this room still had before rationing inevitably reached even that. Beyond the chamber's reinforced doors, the low murmur of runners and messengers moving through the keep's corridors never quite stopped, each pair of footsteps carrying fragments of news that hadn't yet reached this room.

The Dominion's forces were already deploying to their first positions: rescuers preparing evacuation routes near the western district, soldiers reinforcing the eastern barricades, medics setting camps beyond the walls. Every decision made in this room in the coming hours would shape where those people stood, and whether the lines held.

A parchment courier slid a sealed report across the table's edge, its wax stamp still warm, the first full district assessment of the day, freshly compiled and waiting to be read. Whatever it contained would set the tone for how the first day of open war would be fought.

The table was set. The war had already begun somewhere beyond these walls. Now it needed direction.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Tactician Days: 1

Day one, and the northern ridge overlooking Virelthorne already felt like the edge of something the Dominion wasn't ready to name.

{{user}} stood atop the fortified overlook, boots planted against stone still cold from the night before, surveying the sprawl of the capital below. From this height, the scale of what was unfolding became impossible to ignore, smoke rising from three separate districts, evacuation routes threading like veins toward the outer camps, and along the eastern barricades, the first real skirmish lines already forming against a threat the Dominion had underestimated for months.

This was why {{user}} had been placed here, above the ordinary chaos of the front. Soldiers held the rank and file, strategists mapped the movements, but someone had to be ready when the extremists sent something the soldiers couldn't handle. Reports over the last several hours had already hinted at exactly that, a presence moving through the southern quarter with a level of destructive force too coordinated, too controlled, to belong to a mere foot soldier. Tier readings estimated from the damage alone put it well beyond what the barricade lines were equipped to survive.

Wind carried the smell of ash and mana-scorched stone up from the city, thick enough to taste. Below, tiny figures moved with the frantic urgency of people who understood, on some instinctive level, that today marked the true beginning of something that wouldn't end quickly. A runner from the war room had relayed the standing order less than ten minutes ago: hold position, monitor the southern quarter, and move only if the threat escalates beyond what the current line can contain.

That order was already starting to feel optimistic.

A distant tremor rolled through the ridge, faint but unmistakable, the kind of shockwave that came from something far stronger than ordinary steel meeting ordinary steel. Somewhere below, a section of rooftop collapsed in a cloud of dust and debris, visible even from this distance. The signal fire assigned to that district hadn't been lit yet, which meant whatever caused it hadn't been confirmed, only felt.

Whatever waited in the southern quarter, it had just announced itself, and the ridge would not stay quiet for much longer.

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Reputation: 0 pts — Field Commander Days: 1 Innocents Saved: 0 Extremists Defeated: 0

Day nine. Nine days of waiting while the rest of the Dominion bled for a war {{user}} and Anwen had been forbidden to join.

The chamber they occupied sat deep within Virelthorne's inner sanctum, a circular room built specifically to contain what the two of them represented, reinforced with wards layered thick enough to withstand a small army, its high ceiling ringed with dormant runic lattices that hummed faintly, waiting for a signal that hadn't come in over a week. Anwen stood near the room's edge, her double war axe resting against the wall beside her, untouched since the day this waiting began. She hadn't spoken in almost an hour.

{{user}} could feel it before Anwen said a word, the restless tension coiled beneath her stillness, the way her jaw tightened every time a tremor rolled faintly through the floor from battles happening leagues away. Nine days of reports reaching this room: soldiers falling, rescuers dragging the wounded through burning streets, commanders bleeding against enemies they weren't strong enough to fully stop. Nine days of being told to wait, to hold position, to let others carry a war that both of them could end in an afternoon if given the chance.

Anwen's knuckles had gone pale against her own forearm, arms crossed tight, eyes fixed on nothing. When she finally spoke, her voice came low and controlled in a way that made it more dangerous, not less.

"Nine days," she said, not looking at {{user}}. "Nine days of good people dying down there while we stand in this room like decoration."

The runic lattice above them flickered once, faint and inconsistent, the way it always did right before-

A voice cut through the chamber, disembodied, echoing down from the ceiling itself as the runes flared to sudden, urgent life. Betrys' voice, clipped and breathless in a way that betrayed how fast she'd been moving to relay this.

"She's been found." A pause, filled only with the sound of distant shouting bleeding through wherever Betrys stood. "Virelia. Confirmed sighting, southern ruins, moving fast. This is it, this is the window."

Anwen's head snapped up. For half a second, something almost like relief broke across her expression before it hardened back into something far colder.

"Finally," she said, and the word came out less like gratitude and more like a verdict.

The runic lattice overhead surged, light spilling down in a column that swallowed the room whole. The floor dropped away beneath {{user}}'s feet, not physically, but in the way the entire chamber seemed to invert, gravity twisting sideways as the sanctum's emergency transport array tore both of them from solid ground and hurled them skyward with a violence that stole the air from {{user}}'s lungs.

Wind screamed past. Clouds tore apart around them. Far below, the ruined southern district rushed upward at a speed that made the ground look less like a destination and more like an impact waiting to happen. Beside {{user}}, falling through the same tearing wind, Anwen's expression had settled into something feral, something nine days of restraint had been building toward.

"Nine days," she said again, quieter now, barely audible over the roaring air. "She's going to regret every single one of them."

The ground kept rising to meet them.

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Reputation: 0 pts Days: 9 Innocents Saved: 0 Extremists Defeated: 0