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<blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 2522798" data-attributes="member: 23012"><p>Mystara had a 'Roman Empire' called Thyatis. Many of the usual 'Roman' elements were in Thyatis: a huge capital city with an arena, decadent Machiavellian nobles, conquered lands with 'barbarians', etc. Thyatis also had an airborn military order -- i.e. a bunch of warriors who fought on pegasi, griffons, etc. I believe its acronym was R.A.F. (no, I'm not joking; Mystara was full of stuff like that).</p><p></p><p>Thyatis's rival was the Empire of Alphatia, which was somewhat chaotic in terms of its political organization, and was ruled by magic-users. Alphatia had airships, cities lit my continual light spells, long-lived uber-mages (kept young through their regular consumption of potions of longevity), mad wizard laboratories hidden in dark wild lands, and so forth.</p><p></p><p>Both empires are described in Aaron Alston's excellent <em>Dawn of the Emperors</em> box set (from 1989 iirc).</p><p></p><p>The whole 'magic-as-technology' thing was, to a great extent, part of Mystara, as developed for the Basic/Expert D&D rules during the 1980s and early 1990s (parts of Mystara were published in the <em>Rules Cyclopedia</em>.) </p><p></p><p>For some reason, while I normally hate the 'magic-as-technology' approach to fantasy, I have a real soft spot for Mystara. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool :cool:" data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Akrasia, post: 2522798, member: 23012"] Mystara had a 'Roman Empire' called Thyatis. Many of the usual 'Roman' elements were in Thyatis: a huge capital city with an arena, decadent Machiavellian nobles, conquered lands with 'barbarians', etc. Thyatis also had an airborn military order -- i.e. a bunch of warriors who fought on pegasi, griffons, etc. I believe its acronym was R.A.F. (no, I'm not joking; Mystara was full of stuff like that). Thyatis's rival was the Empire of Alphatia, which was somewhat chaotic in terms of its political organization, and was ruled by magic-users. Alphatia had airships, cities lit my continual light spells, long-lived uber-mages (kept young through their regular consumption of potions of longevity), mad wizard laboratories hidden in dark wild lands, and so forth. Both empires are described in Aaron Alston's excellent [i]Dawn of the Emperors[/i] box set (from 1989 iirc). The whole 'magic-as-technology' thing was, to a great extent, part of Mystara, as developed for the Basic/Expert D&D rules during the 1980s and early 1990s (parts of Mystara were published in the [i]Rules Cyclopedia[/i].) For some reason, while I normally hate the 'magic-as-technology' approach to fantasy, I have a real soft spot for Mystara. :cool: [/QUOTE]
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