The Prophecy has been realized! The Goddess Suria has sent The Five Pendants of Power to Andora, sparking a war between the peoples of Suria and the Great Nosferatu Houses. Once again the Vampire Lord Dragul stalks Andora, gathering the legendary Hunters of Yeld to restore his dark empire. Now the High Elves of Elderon stand with the Imperial Legions and the free people of Korinath against Draguls Nosferatu armies. You must choose a side in the Battle for Andora. More...
	Your worth as an adventurer hangs on the execution of your actions, actions that hinge greatly on your abilities. As varied as the people who use them, skills will be your mainstay as your wander the world in search of honor, glory, riches, or conquest. The most vital element when venturing forth into the world and expanding your skills and abilities as you gain experience is to create a well rounded character. For even the most powerful warrior will fail if he is unable to talk down a large well armed group who seek to imprison him, and a slippery escape artist or a thief will find it impossible to withstand the forces of magic if his willpower is not high enough. Though people may specialize and in fact become a master of a specific area, it is always a must to supplement those traits with a practical amount of other skills and attributes. Your skills provide a potentially infinite number of possibilities on how to deal with a situation. A silver-tongued agent, can talk his way out of a bind when bloodshed is the only other means, or use his abilities of concealment to hide the object, which his assailants seek. A battlemage can choose to fight in melee combat, blast his way out with powerful spells, or cast invisibility and simply walk out of the room. Though your skills will often be your means to an end, the more important issues are the choices you make. What will you do and where will you go, what situations will you get yourself in and will you have the preplanned skills to back it up? Divided into three types; Normal, Specialty, and Trade specific, you will find skills which vary from your basic understanding of riding a horse, to complex martial arts masteries which are only for select trades. Most skills feed off of your attributes, such as strength for restraint skills, or diplomacy for your tact skill, and so on, while other skills give you an increasingly higher chance of success by rolling percentage dice to determine the outcome. Other skills add extra points to an assortment of bonuses and abilities. Skills are based on a "Degree of Talent" or DOTs which determine how proficient you are at it. This scale of 1 to 5 effects how good you are in relation to others. While you may have low attributes for a skill, some may have higher DOTs, which makes it possible to achieve success more easily. All in all you will find that having well rounded attributes and an assortment of varying skills will be the key you need to surviving and thriving within the world of Rivium. Mechanics The system is entirely point based rather than level up based so that players can be diverse in how they build their characters. No having to stick to a static ladder system when "building up in level". Experience point systems give a more arbitrary method of gauging experience. There is no way to tell weather or not another character can kick your ass by looking at a number. Our skill system is broken down into 4 categories that the trades all fall into one or two of: Combat, Finesse, Arcana, and Eloquence. The skills are either Normal Skills that anyone can attain, Specialty Skills which only trades of one of the four particular categories can buy at normal experience cost (others must pay double), or Trade Specific Skills which are more expensive and only attainable by certain Trades. Each race and each trade also have a specific 'Legacy ability' and 'Art of the Trade' ability, which helps to make that character more unique from other races and trades beyond attributes and appearance. Certain trades and races pair up to provide 'race-trade match up bonuses' humans for instance who are inferior (speaking in attributes) to all other races, are more ingenious and gain bonuses in every trade, while High Elves, Nosferatu, Cat Men and Minotaurs are very powerful in one aspect or another, only specialize and get bonuses in a few certain trades. This helps balancing.