First thing's first. 35 CP, 25 SP, you're either an elf or a human. Use the Mideval Fantasy skillset. If you're an elf, you're either one from the local Empire of Elnohfey, or from the Shardae Dominion. If you're a human, you're from either one of those or one of the "Eastern Kingdoms", which are all populated entirely by humans. For a map of the known world, go to http://ardweden.com/chibi/aoc/pics/padomaymap.jpg If you're a human from the Empire, you've been oppressed your whole life. If you're a human at all, you're gonna have to come up with a *real* good excuse to know magic. And no, no half-elves. Elves and humans would be incapable of producing a child together, even if they decided to try. For the record, elves would consider such a thing bestiality. Elves in the Empire are raised to believe that humans are wholly inferior, which is why they're slaves and third-class citizens. The Empire is the largest, most heavily populated, and easily the most powerful of the known political entities in this part of the world. It is made up mostly of elves, since Humans would generally rather live anywhere else. The Eastern kingdoms are entirely populated by humans. Many of them are isolated enough and far enough from the rest of the world to think that elves are things out of fiction. For all intents and purposes, the Eastern Kingdoms are a lot like mideval Europe. On the border between them and the Empire is the Ironwall Chain, which is a very tall and difficult range of mountains. It's said that the Gods put the Ironwall there because they didn't want the Elves to slaughter the humans wholesale. The Shardae Dominion used to be part of the Empire until it's leader, Xivilai, threw a hissy-cow and went to war. The elves and humans there are much more tolerant of each other, for various reasons. Elves tend to be an average of seven feet tall, and depite being of a very lanky-looking build are usually stronger than humans. And have magic more prevelantly And generally kick Human Butt. Bingo. So how have the humans survived so far? Mostly, Humans tend to be more tenacious, as well as surprisingly resilient. They also tend to think up clever and daring things more often, and lastly they get things done a lot faster, largely because they don't live as long as Elves. Elves live two to three thousand years, see, so they're in no hurry to get anything done, most of the time. Elves tend to use much larger and heavier swords than Humans. No sword jokes, please. They also have a different style of swordfighting that is better suited for having such massive blades. Mind, a skilled and agile human fencer can take advantage of this, especially since the Elven fencing pose is full-forward, which makes a nice big target of their heart. Armor is not very popular, since a few thousand years ago a mage found out that he could do horrible things to people wearing a lot of metal on them. Some people wear wooden or leather armor, and some wear very small amounts of metal (like a vambrace or gauntlet). There are also instances of people wearing slices of carapace from the enormous insect-like Siltstrider as armor, but due to the difficulty of killing one of these creatures, this sort of armor is rare. Every now and then there's a war in which the military arm of the Empire gets restless and invades someone. Sometimes generals will compete against each other for land or whatever, but historically they've tended to troop over to one of the Eastern Kingdoms and invade. Typically, the elves invade in force, conquer part of a human kingdom, and then the humans rally to the cause and kick them out again. Happens every three thousand years or so. **********Magic:************ Magic requires not only buying the ability to use it, but buying levels of skill to uset he ability with. While the first two levels of Dynamic Sorcery are half-price, Magic has usual costs. Dynamic Sorcery represents little things like using a spell to chill a drink or get rid of a small headache. Magic, on the other hand, is attack spells and other larger workings. The Magic skill costs 4 SP per level, and has the following specialties; Destruction, Mysticism, Necromancy, Thaumaturgy, and Restoration. *Destruction should be obvious. This is how to break things, harm people, and blow stuff up. *Mysticism is things like levitating, changing someone into a newt, teleporting, stuff like that. *Thaumaturgy deals with summoning, as well as binding magic to an item, or using a magic item. *Necromancy is the manipulation and cheating of death. *Restoration is Healing wounds, mostly. Mind you, there's more to magic than that, but I'm not going to type it all out here. If you're going to play a magic-using character, tell me and I'll tell you what they'll need to know.