"Coal, copper, and the Aether." London.

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◈──◈ | Welcome to Aetheria | ◈──◈

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The year is 1890. The British Empire stands at the height of its power — and magic has never been more ordinary, or more dangerous.

This is not a world of chosen ones and prophecies. Aetheria is a world where magic is a measurable force, industrialized and commodified, taught in schools, burned in engines, and fired from the barrels of spell-etched muskets. The ancient and the modern do not merely coexist — they are inseparable.

London breathes coal smoke and Aetheric discharge in equal measure. Factory-covens run day and night. Battle-mages drill on Woolwich Common. A Sorcerer born in the East End has more in common with a dockworker than with a lord — and yet doors open for them that never would otherwise.

And YOU are someone in this world. What that means is yours to decide.

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◈─◈─◈ | Features | ◈─◈─◈

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◈ Victorian-era magical world with full internal consistency — no chosen ones, no prophecy, just a world that works and people living inside it

◈ Five-tier Aetheric Proficiency system — every character has a defined magical level from Ambient to Exceptional, giving instant context without a stat sheet

◈ Nine-level Worldview Cognition system — characters don't just have personalities, they have operating philosophies that shape how they process the world

◈ Four fully realized academic institutions — Industrial, Military, Design, and Medical — each with campus culture, faculty, students, and history

◈ Real historical figures given magical-era rewrites — Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Florence Nightingale and more, all present in 1890 London

◈ Active factions with competing interests — from the Imperial Arcane Bureau to the Aetheric Reform League to the Whitechapel Syndicate

◈ Magic treated as science, not spectacle — grounded in Einstein's Theory of Aetheric Relativity, with real formula derivations taught in schools

◈ No elves, no dwarves — humanity only, with Aether-touched beasts filling the wilderness and Sorcerers occupying an unspoken social tier

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◈─◈ | The Four Schools | ◈─◈

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Faculty of Industrial Arcanics

The backbone of the Empire's physical infrastructure. Engineers, constructors, artificers. The schools that build what everyone else uses — and ask fewer questions about who deserves to be there than any other faculty. Home of the UUMC on the Thames.

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School of Battle Magic

Britain's military arcanists. Where discipline is a curriculum and rank is a language. The schools that turn talented casters into commissioned officers — and occasionally into something the Empire quietly files under strategic assets. Home of RAMA in Woolwich, next to the Royal Arsenal.

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School of Artifacts & Design

The Empire's designers, architects, and communication engineers. Where work has your name on it and the annual exhibition can make or end a career in an evening. Home of the Royal Institute of Arcane Design in South Kensington, heir to the Great Exhibition.

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Faculty of Vital Sciences

Medicine, surgery, bio-arcanics, and the legally recognized study of Residual Bio-Kinetics. The longest qualification, the highest attrition rate, and the schools most likely to put their graduates in a courtroom as much as a hospital. Home of RCAVS in Smithfield, functionally inseparable from St. Bartholomew's Hospital next door.

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◈─◈ | Factions & Figures | ◈─◈

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• The Royal Sorcerer House of Windsor — The monarchy is not merely political. The Windsor bloodline carries one of the highest documented Sorcerer concentrations in Europe. Queen Victoria's Aetheric presence is still measurable in rooms she enters.

• The Imperial Arcane Bureau — Issues licenses, investigates unlicensed usage, maintains the classification registry. Publicly neutral. Privately an instrument of the establishment it claims to oversee.

• The Aetheric Reform League — Factory-coven workers, burned-out industrial mages, radical academics. Pushing for fair wages and legal protections. Led in part by Annie Besant. Currently being monitored by the Bureau.

• The Whitechapel Syndicate — East London's organized criminal network. Unlicensed enchantment, stolen elemental components, black-market necromantic materials. Not a single organization — a loose agreement with one shared interest: keeping the Bureau out.

• The Suffrage and Arcane Equality Union — Campaigning simultaneously for voting rights and equal access to all levels of arcane licensing. The dual mandate is their greatest strength and their most contested internal argument.

• The Convictionist Assembly — Senior Clerics, Monks, and Paladins arguing for institutional recognition of Willpower Manifestation as a distinct arcane category. Not a church. Functions like one in every practical sense.

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• Queen Victoria — Reigning monarch. Matriarch of the Windsor Sorcerer line. Seventy years old, diminished in output, but her ambient Aetheric presence remains measurable. The Empire does not question its magic. Neither does she.

• Arthur Conan Doyle — Physician, writer, Level 2 Applied diagnostician. Recently published a detective novel whose protagonist applies forensic arcane reasoning to crime. People keep asking if he's describing someone real. He keeps not answering.

• Oscar Wilde — Playwright, wit, confirmed Level 3 Harmonizer. His social influence over a room is almost certainly not purely natural. He has never confirmed this. He considers the ambiguity part of the work.

• Florence Nightingale — Pioneer of arcanically assisted nursing. Now in her seventies. Her wartime documentation of Aetheric infection rates became foundational reading in every Vital Sciences curriculum. Her correspondence with the War Office remains, by all accounts, relentless.

• The Whitechapel Killer — Active 1888. Forensic evidence confirmed Aetheric residue consistent with a Level 3 practitioner minimum. Case officially unsolved. Three separate parties claim to know who it was. All three are waiting for a better moment to say so.

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◈─◈─◈ | Intros | ◈─◈─◈

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There are 6 intros, each offering a different entry point into 1890 London. Some drop you into the institutions, some into the streets. But all of them let you be whoever you want.

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Intro 1

Loose open intro, setting the world without any specific location.

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Intro 2

UUMC

The Unannounced Structure Students return from summer to find a partial structure going up on the eastern end of campus that wasn't there when they left. No official announcement, no explanation posted. Hefton is suspiciously cheerful about it. Warne is vocally skeptical to anyone within earshot. First-years are arriving into the middle of an ongoing argument that everyone seems to already have opinions about.

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Intro 3

RAMA

The Unsigned Challenge Before the first day of classes formally begins, a Challenge Duel notice appears on the ranking board, two returning cadets, names posted, no faculty signature authorizing it. Technically irregular. Nobody has taken it down. Ashcroft is present and has said nothing. New intake cadets are watching the board and reading the room very carefully.

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Intro 4

RIAD

The Missing Piece The new cohort gets the traditional first-day walk through the Great Gallery to see last year's best exhibition work. One plinth is empty, a piece that won commendation last year has been removed over summer. No label, no explanation. Drummond then announces this year's exhibition theme. Allcott is late to the address because he got distracted in his research rooms. Neither of them mentions the empty plinth.

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Intro 5

RCAVS

The Careful Address First-year orientation week coincides with a high-profile forensic necromancy court case in which college staff gave testimony still being reported in the papers. Ashworth delivers the traditional welcome address, warm, precise, unhurried, but experienced students notice the careful way certain words are chosen. The Preservation Vault walkthrough happens the same afternoon, as scheduled.

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Intro 6

Your intro — write your own first message and step into Aetheria however you like.

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Aetheria, Muskets and Sorcery, Victorian magic, 1890, London RP, industrial magic, battle mage, arcane, sorcerer, steampunk fantasy, historical fantasy, magic school, UUMC, RAMA, RIAD, RCAVS, necromancy, artificer, wizard, cleric, paladin, bard, druid, ranger, Victorian England, British Empire, Napoleonic, Einstein, aether, elemental, enchantment, factory coven, combat magic, healing magic, design, artifacts, medical arcanics, Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Florence Nightingale, Annie Besant, Whitechapel, East London, Woolwich, South Kensington, Smithfield, worldbuilding, original setting, multi character, RPG, roleplay, rp

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Creators note

A bot that i think people will have fun, will probably do a few character bots based on this world. This setting is nice and has potential to be expanded upon.

I like the images i managed to create, hope you guys like them too.
Have fun!

Somfi <3