Archaelund is a roleplaying game with deep classic roots but also exciting innovations to bring you the ultimate adventure. Exploration as you remember it: you can play Archaelund your own way. Take your party of adventurers through a vast open world and explore as you wish, find awesome secrets and run into unexpected trouble, get involved in conflicts or just pursue your own goals and discover what lies beyond the horizon. Unique dual perspective: just as the best classics did, you'll be able to explore the world of Archaelund in immersive first-person, wondering what lies behind each corner of the dungeon. When combat starts, the view seamlessly changes to top-down perspective, and you'll issue orders to your party, placing them over a battle grid to face your enemies in a deeply strategic turn-based combat. Deep and engaging character progression: a career-based system will have your characters start out as street ruffians, squires, hunters or even beggars; later on you can move into new career, including advanced ones like Knight, Loreseeker, Assassin or Battlemage. A character might leave behind its humble origins, but those days might bring in unique talents to your advantage! Deadly battles with a focus on strategy: a non-inflationist, bounded system will ensure that every battle matters, and every opponent is scary. When your characters advance in levels, you'll gain new tactical options to defeat your enemies, not just increased numbers. An expansive world, handcrafted in detail: Archaelund is big enough to lose yourself in; yet everywhere you go you'll meet people to talk to, unique quests to complete, mysteries to solve and, of course, battles to fight and treasures to loot. Background: the Fall and the Exile The Andorian Empire united the whole human race under the same proud banner for millenia, until a magical cataclysm brought the Horrors from another world. The Empire and most of the human race was annihilated in just a few days; only a few hundred ships could escape to the savage island of Varannar, a distant imperial colony beyond the western ocean. The refugees endured the hardships and tried to rebuild their old civilization, but never again stood united under the Imperial banner. The newly founded Exiled Kingdoms bore the scars of the Fall, each of them in a different way. Varsilia, the mightiest and noblest of the Kingdoms, became grotesquely obsessed over Imperial history and preserving its traditions. Ilmarans turned into fanatical zealots of a new faith, while in Thuram, the remnants of the Imperial Wizards established a magocracy that disregards all matters except the arcane, and quickly declined into endogamy. On the west, the Kingdom of Mercia had emerged from the surviving Imperial Legions, establishing a nightmarish rule based on slavery and arbitrary discipline. The four Kingdoms held irreconcilable views and ambitions, and locked together in a small and hostile land as they were, they often plotted against each ot