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Medaevum is a setting. It has many worlds in it, but the one most often touched on is Ayaria. Medaevum is used as a setting mostly for roleplaying games, like the one hosted on the Medaevum Minecraft server, or play by post games over Discord.

It began as a hexmap in worldographer, and then it became an experiment in how many different genres and settings could be fused together before the whole thing fell apart or no longer felt internally consistent. So far, it incorporates fantasy, scifi, westerns, and post-apoc.

By its nature, not all of the genres can necessarily exist in the same place or at the same time to work. This is where different eras come into play, where the actions of players participating in one era mold the history of future eras on Ayaria.

Where to start

First of all, join the discord if you haven't already. https://discord.gg/s6TpGFGsKb

If you haven't yet, consider looking at the page on character creation: Player Characters.

And after that, just look for roleplay and start doing your own thing. This wiki exists as something to reference, not something mandatory to read.

Introduction

The stars above are strange tonight. One shoots across the sky, but slowly and without leaving a trail. A few hours later, it moves across again at the same speed, as if it were spinning around the world. A small cluster of stars, fainter than most, blink slowly like the many eyes of some skyward god looking down at the world below. The gods descended from those same heavens, but there were more stars then. The void between stars grows larger every year, with some stars blinking out of the sky entirely. How long until that darkness comes for this sun?

Ayaria is the world on which Medaevum is set. Medaevum is the game, Ayaria is the setting. In the game of Medaevum, you are playing a character who has their own goals, ambitions, and sense of self-preservation. It is presumed that your character both wants to live, and has goals beyond just the simple preservation of their life that they want to fulfil. If your character is not at least a little self-directed, you probably won’t have as much fun on here as you would in a more structured environment.

Ayaria is named for a long dead god. The first beings who came to this world, known as the Hours, came from the stars. These deities, who were said to resemble humans, were in some way trapped on Ayaria and forced to make the world their home. It is the nature of their magic that it is not without sacrifice, and they were forced to choose one of their own to be that sacrifice, willing or no. It is thus that they slew one of their number, Ayaria, and named the world after her. Her essence is infused into the world, and the source of their magic.

The Hours used their mastery over time, flesh, and the shaping of worlds to make an idyllic home for themselves, and eventually for their creations. Which of their creations were made in their image is something debated by the canons of various religions, but it is largely undisputed that humans were made first and the Valleymen were made last before the Forge of Hours was lost. Whether because the Hours intertwined themselves with reality or because of their overuse of the magic, after they all grew mad and died reality itself began to unravel at the seams.

Time

Time does not flow at the same pace for everyone. Time is measured at a grand scale by the number of seasons, and personally by one’s own reckoning of how much time they believe has passed. To say one has had a “long summer” is not an idiom in this world, but could very well be a literal statement of fact. One person may leave their family behind to travel to a faraway land, and from their perspective they have been gone a year while the season has remained autumnal throughout. Only to return and find that for his family only six months had passed, or perhaps ten years.

Elsewhere

Not only time has broken in the absence of the high gods, but so too has physical reality begun to relax and become less stable than one might hope. There is a term in Ayaria, to say that someone is “from elsewhere.” Elsewhere is a broad term for other worlds, other realities, some near and some far. A person in this world might take the wrong bend down a forested road, and emerge in another reality altogether. Perhaps the differences would be subtle, the historic list of kings being in a different order, or it might be extremely dramatic. Encountering a world where it has been overrun by monsters, for example. Sometimes traveling between realities, walking along the Isthmus of Many Worlds, is deliberate. More often, such conjunctions are seemingly random and finding a way back into one’s own reality is a difficult trial most fail to overcome.

Present Day

The game is currently set on the continent of Nostrum. Nostrum is ruled by a king, but only around one third of the continent is under his control at all times. Much of the continent is made up of rugged, largely uninhabited terrain. There are two major cities: Redwine and Luten-Augusburg.

Nostrum is in a period of flux. A tremendous cultural and technological upheaval is underway. If one were to force a knight to take up arms in this age, they could not be sure if the knight will first draw his pistol or his sword. While Nostrum is largely in the late medieval period, whether it may revert back to its previous level of development following catastrophe or continue to to grow to rival its neighbors is unclear.

The Iron Blight

For far longer than living memory, iron and especially steel have been exceedingly rare to find in the world. And when new deposits are found, they are jealously guarded. This is because it can be easily infested by a sort of inorganic disease, a blight that spreads between metallic objects like a blight spreads through crops. It will destroy iron and steel, and it will gradually unmeld bronze into its constituent parts, requiring reforging.

For this reason, iron has been rare on Nostrum for millenia. However, within living memory several deposits of precious, untainted iron have been found on the continent. With the newly discovered iron mines, and an artisan district in the city of Redwine, iron and steel have gone from being costly enough to bankrupt kingdoms, to expensive but not unaffordable for wealthy mercenaries.

The Elven Diaspora

Once there was a mighty realm made up mainly of elves in the far north, but for some reason it has collapsed. Over the last century, thousands of elven refugees have come to live in Nostrum to integrate with the people there. Elves have been incriminated in a number of strange conspiracies and power struggles within their communities have bled over into larger society. They are naturally infertile and require a rare fruit to reproduce, whose origins are unknown to the world at large. It has been outlawed in Nostrum, and so any elf who wants to make a family has been forced to themselves become a criminal, making tensions rise even higher.

The Return of the Gods

Nostrum was once known as the land of a thousand gods, before all but one were taken away. Stolen from them by the Empyrean Empire which once dominated nearly the whole world. Now, four of the gods have finally returned, established their new priesthoods, and then bid their priests destroy their material forms so they may return once more to the immaterial. Now once again there are all manner of cults and churches and priests across the land.

Neighbors

Nostrum enjoys a few neighbors, from which people may originate if they don't want to be a native to Nostrum itself.

Westfal

To the west of Nostrum is the land of the Empyreans, or at least who once were Empyreans. Founded many generations ago by that vast empire, after the fall of the imperial heartland the colony they left behind is all that’s left of their imperial legacy. They, like Nostrum, have a strong martial tradition. Unlike Nostrum, they mostly fight amongst themselves as they have no major rivals on their borders. While once they were atheistic as the Empyreans were, they have within living memory become dominated by a single religion in devotion to the Heiress.

The Kingdom of Two Valleys

Marauding slavers, whose power far eclipses the land of Nostrum. While one could expect a slave raid several times a season from that hateful place, for some reason the continent has gone nearly an entire generation without a single incursion from there. Still, it is a place spoken of in fear. It has strange technology, stranger magic, and the immortal Valleymen are hated and feared.

The Narrows

A pitiable client kingdom of the Valleymen. On the thin strip of shore between the coast and the mountains, stretching for a few hundred miles north to south, are over a dozen large cities where all the inhabitant live in opulent splendor. That is, except for a single tax paid every generation by each city: thousands of people stolen from their homes and forced into bondage.

Suzer

A city-state on the edge of endless desert, Suzer is south and to the west of Nostrum, a few weeks away by sail. It is a rich and mercantile land, protected by its high walls, the inhospitable desert, and the vast fleet that the Lord of the Sands maintains for civil defence.

Turia

A small peninsula on the same coast as the Narrows, a colony founded by Westfalians. It is ruled by a grand duke, who nominally answers to the emperor but given the vast distance in their borders is largely independent. Despite its small size and proximity to the Narrows, it has avoided conquest by the Valleymen.

Vizar

Likewise the even smaller city-state of Vizar, also off the coast of the Narrows. Where Turia has defended itself from military aggression with force of arms, Vizar has done so through a mix of treaty, submission, and occasionally naval power. That it is built largely onto a lagoon and so difficult to invade, as well as an overt willingness to work with Valleymen despite their unsavory culture, has kept Vizar independent and its merchants especially privileged to sell the exotic goods of the east to Nostrum, Westfal and Suzer.