General Information

Mana is an often used and mysterious energy which flows through the athmosphere, objects and every living being.  

It's invisible and can not be detected by any normal means but sensible humans, elves and especially demons can feel it.

They often describe the Mana like a lake or ocean. It's everywhere and only slowly moving. Furthermore its not toally constant. There are areas with a higher denseness of Mana and some with almost no Mana.

Often this is related to the number of lifeforms there. So called magically oversaturated areas even have such a high denseness that the Mana there tends to warp nature slightly which results in small exotic valleys full of unique und often bizare lifeforms.

Mana is the most important resource of mankind. Its the energy-source of most technologies and also necessary for many machines' function, like the airships' levitators. More important is the Mana as source for all kind of magic and its certain that demons' bodies are even made of Mana.

Magic is the common term for manipulating Mana with mental power. People can learn this ability although one needs a certain sensibility for Mana to have success. Unlike elves or demons, the human sensibility is naturally quite low, even in case of very talented people.  Therefore the first magicians have created different spells out of Eden's old language. 

Those spells are meant to support the magician's mind and to focus his will, so he can manipulate larger amounts of Mana without danger. The number of spells that have been created during the last 2500 years is amazing and even today new spells are created from time to time.

The scholars of Kaidalon have organised those spells into different groups and categories.

There are two basic sorts of magic: the physical magic and the psychical magic. Both sorts of magic can be divided into black (destructive) magic and white (helpful) magic. In Addition there are several subgroups of magic e.g. the blue-magic (featuring all kinds of magic with the element water) or the telepathy-magic. There is also a small number of forbidden spells like the necromancy, Marduk's Arnageddon-spell and the dangerous transformation-spells.

Runemagic is the term for filling objects (mostly weapons and clothes) with Mana and thus working magical effects into them. Those techniques are quite seldome and there are only a few rune-magicians, also called rune-smiths, in Assiah. There are special spells which can be bound into objetcs with special runes, ancient Edeni letters. Those rune-magic often creates permanent effects like those of the famous flame-sword whose blade is covered by magical fire. Although magical weapons and armours are very popular among adventurers, most of them are very rare and extremely expensive. Only ones with minor magical effects can be bought for acceptable prices.

Alchemy had once been a magical discipline but has early developed into an independant profession.

Alchemists are able to mix and work with exotic substances, plants and normal herbs to create helpful elixirs and medicaments with all possible effects. Beside the work with natural elements, alchemists also have to learn how to handle magical substances filled with mana like demon-essence, a liquid made of a demon's pseudo-blood or other fluids. The most extreme alchemical serums can totally alter a human's body and add useful modifications. This can reach from a loss of weight up to additional arms or a third eye.

Today alchemical workshops have taken the role of pharmacies in Assiah. Although they often still produce their own substances, most medicaments origin from larger pharma-concerns.

Transformees are people who have physically altered bodies. The reasons for those  alterations vary a lot but most of them are victims of a demon. But there are also some people who used alchemical substances or Mammon's services to transform themselves. Most transformations are rather slight and seldomly a major disadvantage for the person especially in case of willing transformees. People with multiple limbs, horns or other features of an animal are not seldome.

Though not the majority, many demon-victims end up as cripples, their limbs often taken away or transformed into less useful things, sometimes even their minds reduced in some way to make them proper pets.

Due to the long influence of magic and the demons, people got used to transformed people and today there is absolutely no discrimination. There are even special services for those people and many firms sell special ware just for transformees, like accessoires for tails and horns or special furniture for disabled ones. The integration of transformed people goes even this far that there are some erotic magazine who only feature transformed women or men.

Assiah had always been a continent which invited people to go on adventures. Since the fall of Eden young men and women decide to leave the normal life within civilisation to become adventurers. People to seek for ancient treasures and the riddles of Assiah's past. Those people have always been a special part of human civilisation and still are.

Adventurers are often skilled fighters and some even learned a few magical tricks. Usually businessmen and firms hire them for special missions or too seek for Edeni artifacts. Seldomly respected by normal people, adventurers have nevertheless been the source for many legends and stories, no matter if they wander around in a group or as lone wolves. 

Basically there are no religions in Assiah. People do not worship any gods or higher beings, although the love of Freya's people towards their mistress comes quite close to a religion. There are no records if Eden had somesort of religion either.

Instead people have somekind of common believe in spirits and reincarnation. Those believes vary from province to province but they never had a dominant role for people's lifes.  In most towns one can find small soul-shrines, places where people can pray for the souls of the dead, the same counts for graveyards.

During the time of Eden's dominion there was only one language among the slaves,

an extremly warped version of the Edeni language which later became the ancestor of today's magical language which is only used for magic spells. 

After Eden's downfall and the slaves' liberation each area developed it's own dialect. During the centuries many of those dialects slowly became independant languages. At the end of the 10th century an ondorian person would not have been able to understand a person from the Kingdom of Grave. 

After Empyres' invasion and the foundation of the empire, the empyrian king decided to establish one common language for his entire realm. Of course this common language could nothing be except for the empyrian language.

And so the Common Language was brought to the empire. Today the Common Language is the native language of the Empyrian Empire, every child learns it at first and many areas completely forgot their original language or do not teach it anymore. Nevertheless traces of the old languages before the empire ara left everywhere in form of different dialects.

Although the people of Freya's Realm kept their own language with all its dialect, the realm also teaches the Common Language and nearly every person there can speak it fluently.