A century ago, the sun was swallowed by a war that should have ended in a season but metastasized into a grotesque ritual. This is Earth, but not the one that ever made it into our history books. Mana seeped up through the crust like groundwater; alchemists weaponized it before philosophers could even argue about ethics.

The first shells screamed through the sky in 1914. The sky hasn’t been seen since 1928.

Magically-enhanced mustard gas, “Mirewind,” turned the surface into a shimmering golden death fog. Birds dropped out of the air, oceans hissed like boiling kettles, forests wilted into lacquered bone. Anyone aboveground suffocated, hallucinated, or rotted alive.

Humanity burrowed.

What followed was the Age of Tunnels. Not trenches. Not foxholes. A full planetary anthill war.

---

THE TWO TITANS

The Old Empire

Gas masks brittle. Ammunition nearly lore. Ventilation systems coughing like dying lungs. Morale a threadbare quilt of duty, superstition, and desperate pride.

Once glorious, now draped in soot and hunger.

Aesthetic

Medieval-futuristic scraps. Plate cuirasses reinforced by bolted boiler plates. Spears tipped with repurposed bayonets. Helmets etched with faded sigils meant to ward off magic poisoning.

Magic Access

Weak, flickering. Their mages have largely died or defected. Rely on “death magic” — scavenged residues, rituals meant to stabilize structures, fortify bodies, or make blades bite through armor.

Condition

Living quarters cramped to the point of madness. Children grow pale and long-boned from underground life. Water tastes like rust and fungus. Ventilation systems groan constantly, cycling in just enough air to avoid suffocating.

Roles Unique to Old Empire

1. Lanternbearers

Children or teens with mild magical sensitivity who can “sense” gas pockets, structural weaknesses, or enemy tunneling through psychic vibrations. They carry whale-oil lamps and wear bone necklaces that rattle at certain frequencies.

Half revered, half pitied.

2. Rotwardens

Sanitation knights. Their job: stop disease from wiping out entire cavern towns. They wield hooked staves, cleaning charms, and fire spells to burn filth. Also the ones who cremate the fallen.

3. Ironskalds

Tunnel bards. They coordinate formations with resonant chants that magically strengthen morale and steel. The magic only works underground. They fight with short picks.

4. Gloom Riders

Mounted units on enormous burrowing lizards bred to withstand the toxic haze in deeper caverns. Used for rapid response or raids.

5. Nightforgers

Blacksmiths who shape steel in constant darkness using fungi-fire, bio-luminescent forges, and runic molds. Their armor is ugly but nearly indestructible.

---

The King’s Faction

Tyrannical, iron-controlled, but frighteningly stable. Their propaganda paints them as saviors of order in a chaotic, collapsing world. Their citizens get actual food. Ventilation flows clean. They have lights that don’t flicker.

Aesthetic

World War I modernity fused with magical industrialism. Steel masks with glowing slits. Long coats reinforced with magical fiber. Rifles bound with mana-channels to reduce recoil or improve accuracy.

Magic Access

Rich, regulated, industrialized. They use alchemical reactors to convert mana into power, ammunition, even artificial daylight.

Their Main Units

Infantrymen

Rifles with bayonets and short swords. Standard issue rune shields. Well-trained and fed.

Sappers

Diggers of death. They carve new labyrinths or strike into enemy tunnels. Close-range fighters with spiked shovels and demolition charges.

Otis Jones Commando Group

Named after their commander, Jones, a phantom in the tunnels. Silent running boots, short-barrel repeaters, and “shadow cloaks” that bend dim light.

Kingsmen

Brutal elite troopers. Heavy magical armor that hums. Light machine guns with mana-fed “everbelts” that produce endless ammo until the mana cell burns out.

Extra King's Faction Roles

1. Tunnel Artificers

Engineer-mages who project hard-light bridges or barriers to stabilize crumbling tunnels. They can weaponize it too.

2. Mirewind Alchemists

Creators and controllers of the toxic gas above. They refine it into grenades or defensive fog walls.

3. Palisade Walkers

Walking tank suits. Not quite mecha, but towering armored exoskeletons with rotary mana cannons.

4. Cinder Clerics

Priests who channel magic into healing or painful flame. Their doctrine praises the King as destiny incarnate.

---

THE WORLD ITSELF

Infrastructure of the Underwar

1. Spiral Rails

Rail lines carved in descending corkscrews. Their trains are armored worms of steel, each car pressurized to keep the gas out. Losing a rail line is like losing half an army’s mobility.

2. Rail-Mounted Siege Cannons

“Brontocannons.” Huge mana-fed guns that can collapse entire tunnel networks in one shot.

3. Reservoir Cities

Massive underground caverns containing fungal farms, artificial lakes, and ventilation towers. Constantly invaded, sabotaged, or starved.

4. Echo Towers

Magical listening posts. They detect enemies through tremors and mana ripples.

5. Burial Rivers

Slow streams polluted by centuries of war, glowing faintly from magical runoff. Corpses drift endlessly in them.

---

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND MAGICAL EQUIPMENT

1. Ember Shields

Metal plates infused with salamander-essence. Heat up when struck, burning enemy blades.

2. Frost Munitions

Bullets that explode into cold fog, freezing moisture in lungs.

3. Heartroot Armor

Plant-grown armor used by the Old Empire. Reacts to the wearer’s heartbeat, stiffening during danger and softening during exhaustion.

4. Lantern Bombs

Shatter and release swarms of light-sprites that blind, burn, or confuse.

5. Bound Spirits

Some tunnels have guardian spirits sealed to serve one side or the other. They glow like ghostly soldiers but are more force than flesh.

---

CIVILIANS

The true victims.

Some have lived their entire lives without seeing the sky. They tell stories about the sun the same way we talk about dragons. They grow mushrooms in soot-gardens. Many have lung scars before age seven.

Old Empire civilians risk starvation, collapses, disease.

King’s civilians risk oppression, forced conscription, or being “relocated” to deeper sectors.

In both nations, entire families disappear in collapses or gas breaches.

---

THE TONE OF THE WORLD

A strange mix of iron, myth, soot, and almost-forgotten magic.

A place where rifles fire in pitch-black tunnels and knights wear gas-scarred plate armor.

A war where the surface is a shimmering golden graveyard.

A world still fighting long after the reason is lost.

And everyone whispers the same line:

If we ever see the sun again, it will be without us.

(Heavily inspired by grave/digger on roblox)