Optional rules in effect: http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/ORD:_Sub_Job_system http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/ORD:_Limit_Break_System http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/Jobs (with GM approval) For starting weapons, if you don't want the default list: http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/Custom_Armor_Crafting http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/Custom_Weapon_Crafting Some weapon-only/armor-only abilities may be usable on armor/weapons as well (example: Sensor on head gear, and Gil+ on weapons). The Kingdom of Refuge passed one million people within the past decade. Of this, about 200,000 reside in Refuge, about 50,000 reside in each of the four regional capitols, and the remaining 600,000 are scattered across numerous towns and villages throughout the land. It is wide enough that it would take someone roughly two weeks to cross by foot, or a long day (up at first light, ride until nightfall with few rest breaks) on a fast chocobo. The land has been reshaped by magic, in large part to support the expanding population, but also to make travel easier. There were once proposals for iron machines that would ride rails, to ship people and goods from one end of the kingdom to the other; with the rivers rearranged, this can now be done well enough by steamship - or by chocobo, to destinations that do not lie along the rivers. Rough ASCII map: ^ - mountains # - forest _ - plains : - shore * - river M/F/S/P/R - major city (see below) T - mithra Temple (honoring where the mithra came ashore) . - sea ? - Here Be Dragons (unknown) ??????????????? ??????^^^?????? ???^^^^M^^^^??? ??^##*****__^?? .^##*##*__*__^. .^#*###*___*_^. .T#F***R***P_T. .:#*###*___*_:. .:##*##*__*__:. ..:##*****__:.. ...::::S::::... ............... Major cities: Mountainsburg - only about a third of this city lies upon the hilly terrain outside. The rest is carved into the mountain, formed from the abandoned mineshaft the dwarves and elves came to this land through. There has been some progress chipping away the hardened lava that plugs the way down, but quite a bit of the city goes up. There are rumors of shafts that go all the way to the peak; the only ones that the city elders will admit to end well short of this goal, on a nearly sheer cliff face that makes further progress impossible. More than one poet has written about the frustration of being able to clearly see the top yet not reach it. Mountainsburg also hosts the kingdom's main electrical power plant, a giant hydroelectric facility that also channels mountain runoff into the source of the rivers. Forestburg - just as Mountainsburg is mostly one giant connected artificial cave, so Forestburg can be described as one giant treehouse, with very little of it on ground level. Even the least magically gifted can sense something different when approaching Forestburg; what they sense is the enhanced mana flows of Forestburg's answer to Mountainburg's electrical plant: a magical power plant that can be said to power the entire forest. It is because of this facility, and smaller ones scattered throughout the woods, that the forest has grown fast enough to keep from thinning out despite steadily more intense harvesting of its products. This is also home to the Practical Magic Academy - basically a vocational school for mages, as compared to the College of Magic within Refuge's Royal University. Because PMA is located close to the magical power plant - indeed, its students form a large part of the labor force responsible for maintaining said facility - academy faculty sometimes joke that prospective students are drawn to it as if to a beacon. Seaburg - one would expect lots of beachfront property from a major city on the shore. But most of the action happens underwater. For a species that does not like to actually get wet, the mithra have proven to have an excellent trove of marine engineering knowledge. At least half of Seaburg's inhabited buildings are a hive of underwater structures - each one water-tight and, as visitors cognisant of the legends often seem to note, very defensible against invasion from almost any point in the city: the structures would force any such invasion into choke point after choke point, unless the invaders could breathe water and had no qualms about flooding the city. Seaburg is the main home of the fishing fleet, as well as the main center for maritime industries - most notably salt farming from evaporated seawater, but recently there have been submersibles dispatched to investigate exploiting mineral deposits on the sea floor. This city also has the honor of hosting the Officer Training Instutition - "OTI" to its faculty and alumni; "the Institute" to most others - which trains the kingdom's military force, as well as offering a self-defense training program open to anyone and widely acknowledged as unsurpassed within the kingdom. Plainsburg - there is no good reason why this city should not be as flat as the terrain it lies upon. Unless, that is, you're a moogle with a love for complicated three dimensional architecture for its own sake, and you chip in on the handwaving about not using up fertile farmland. Since many moogles live here and construct this city's buildings, up it went, until today it resembles nothing more than a giant childrens' jungle gym, at least ten floors tall - depending on exactly what you count as a "floor", and where you measure - and barely wide enough to keep from being top-heavy. Inside this structure resides the kingdom's second largest power plant - a series of windmills, which alternately generate electrical power or drive massive grinders to turn wheat into flour, depending on the grain harvest schedules. Also within the maze is the simply named Tech School, a vocational school for engineers and other non-magical but skilled professionals. It runs a friendly rivalry with the Practical Magic Academy, although their most spectacular results - often surpassing even the Royal University - come from collaborative efforts with the PMA, for instance many recent experiments in magitek-enabled mechanized agriculture. It is said that an unofficial part of the qualification examination for TS is simply finding it in the first place. Refuge - when the four non-human races fled to this land, the human king renamed his city as a token of his hospitality. The name stuck when the extra inhabitants provided him with the manpower to properly survey and claim the whole of the modern-day Kingdom of Refuge. These days, given the growing population pressures, people joke about taking refuge from Refuge, yet the city keeps growing. When the rivers were reshaped, they originally formed a moat around the walled city; these days, the walls have been knocked down and replaced with harbors, and the city has expanded onto the deltas beyond its original limits. It is the rarely disputed heart of the kingdom in geographic, cultural, economic, and all other senses. The royal castle sits in the center of the central island; by decree, outward expansion of the city is kept more or less constant in all directions so as to keep the middle of the city from drifting away. Royal University, the foremost institution of learning in the entire kingdom and the source of many important magitek inventions, is also located here, as are most of the kingdom's major religious centers, factories, guild halls, and trade offices - although the latter have only dealt with other portions of the kingdom, ever since the Cataclysm cut off all contact with and trade from the outside world. Note on Refuge's military: with no external enemies at the moment, Refuge has a single force to deal with police, military, fire, and search & rescue duties. The exact strength is an official secret, but it is widely known to be somewhere in the tens of thousands. The king leads the military by birthright. Below him are five Generals, one from each race and mostly concerned with one fifth of the kingdom; usually but not always, the moogle general represents the forces in the plains, the mithra general represents the forces near the shore (including the small navy), et cetera. Below General comes Major, then Captain, then Lieutenant, then Grunt, then Junior Grunt. These last two ranks are usually specialized by type of duty (i.e., Detective/Junior Detective for criminal investigators, Firefighter/Junior Firefighter for those who put out fires, and so forth), but are called Grunt or Junior Grunt when lumped together or when dealing with someone of known rank but unknown duties. Lieutenants and above are usually more concerned with command and administration than the duties they tended to before promotion (so as to allow them to lead, e.g., both Detectives and Firefighters), but it is not unheard of for some in these ranks to lead by example - often becoming the most skilled practitioners in the kingom, through long experience. (Which means that your average bandit will know, or at least suspect, that a beat cop can call in cavalry and heavy artillery if absolutely necessary, among other tidbits of knowledge useful in the banditry profession.) Tech level: industrial magitek. The world was right at the start of its own Industrial Revolution, when tragedy struck. The Kingdom of Refuge has been cut off from the world for a century; with less than a million souls, technological progress stagnated and even went backwards in some cases - there exist ancient texts from all four of the immigrant races that describe various lost arts, said arts having been simply impractical at small scales. At the same time, the increasing population in a relatively small area has lead to advances in certain areas - agriculture and medicine in particular. So, in some areas, general knowledge is up to the level on Earth circa 2000 (for instance, most people know about genes and inheritance*), while in other areas Earth circa 1850 is more comparable (for instance, there are no trains or automobiles - other than the occasional prototype - although there are steamships). *Example: there are genetic tests to determine one's ancestry. Although any given person will only have one dominant species type - for instance, a child of a pure dwarf and a pure elf will either be dwarf or elf, not somewhere in between - the person does carry genes from both parents. So a human daughter of a mithra and a human, and a moogle son of a mithra and a moogle, could have mithra children if they got together even though neither one was a mithra. There was a bit of a controversy about 20 years ago, when the then-prince (now king) broke off his relationship with his fiancee when she tested at only 25% human. Note that magic is essentially technology, for the purpose of tech level. Although less than ten percent of the population actually practice magic, and only a rare few practice high levels (the military's highest ranking sage is known to cast Whirlwind to deflect any hurricanes that might threaten the land), practically everyone knows that magic exists and the basics of how it works. Indeed, in small farming towns which might have only one spellcaster, it is not uncommon for people to let the spellcaster "steal" their mana to fuel spells to enhance the crops - they'll regenerate it within a day, and in the mean time they would not make much use of it. Most people call it "magic", although academics often refer to it as "mana manipulation" (for applications - i.e., spells) or "thaumaturgy" (for research and other abstract study).