Community Profile

On a small planet covered mostly by water, a quintet of islands sits silently amidst a vast ocean. Ruled by a high king and his council, the little archipelago of Aegis seems to paint a perfect picture of peace and prosperity. But beneath the fragile façade of serenity lies a much darker soul that roils and churns like the rough seas that surround the tiny islands. The chasm between the wealthy and the underprivileged is vast and impregnable, and it is the deliberate stratification of this class dichotomy that renders the nation in twain.

To the south lie the flourishing havens of Elysium and Destiny, where life is easy and the streets are paved with gold. Rolling estates crown the spacious hilltops, and the islands' affluent residents are for wont of little. To the north lie the diminutive isles of Naraka and Tartarus, wracked by hardship and starved for change. Antitheses to their southern counterparts, the struggling towns of these two destitute islets are filled with an impoverished and oppressed lower class, and work is hard to come by.

Eight years ago, civil unrest began to stir among the masses. Revolutionary leaders opposed the current oligarchic government and sought to create a republic in which all of Aegis would be equally represented regardless of their assets. After a slew of gruesome assassinations, a full-fledged war broke out between the royalists and the revolutionaries, ripping the nation apart and turning island against island. For three years, the bitter and bloody war waged, but in the end the wealthy conservatives took the ultimate victory, mostly because their financial standing allowed them to charter assistance from the vicious mercenary pirates that preyed the skies over the Aeolean Sea, finally bringing the battle to an end.

That was a year ago. Now, a strict new code of laws has been levied over the northern region, known as Hell's Eyes, where the royals seek to subdue the volatile lower class people in an attempt to prevent further uprisings. The residents of the poverty-stricken islands of Tartarus and Naraka have little choice but to answer to the beck and call of their prosperous neighbors to the south, commuting across rough seas only to return with barely enough money to survive. Discontent runs as thick in the blood of the poor as corruption does in the two-faced existence of the rich, and only the very naïve--or the exceptionally foolish--cannot see that even as the government wields a heavy hand over the nation, the denizens of Aegis are a people on the brink of self-destruction.

Welcome to the Isles of Aegis, where having no name is the best way to stay safe, and having heavy pockets will only drown you in the river of the dead.



...Oh. And did we mention there's a horrible wall of fire that burns across the surface of the sea?