The year is 1560 AP ('Apocalypsis Post' - After Revelations).
For sixty years the continent of Orbis has been wracked by a massive religious war, creatively named the 'Sixty Years' War' - normally nothing new to the continent, after all the Church of Sabaoth - the faith followed (at least officially, anyway) by every single person on the continent - was established by a three-hundred-year rebellion (29-336 AP) against the ancient Faustian Empire. What is new about this conflict is the sheer scale and brutality of it; the Edenite old believers, those who remain loyal to the Holy Father and Messiah in the holy city of Eden, and the 'New Believers' who see the entire established Church of Sabaoth as a physical manifestation of the Dark Lord Belial and who obviously refuse to recognize the Messiah's authority, are both equally savage in their dealings towards one another. As a man put it, 'Chivalry is definitely dead' - both sides do not hesitate to massacre prisoners and purge areas under their control of followers of the other faith as violently as possible, and it is estimated that an entire 30% of the continent's population has died so far.
The Church of Sabaoth, having already splintered into the Edenite and Ephesian branches in 1050 AP, has been further divided starting in 1500 AP due to the actions of one Ernst von Beust. A Swabian petty noble who claimed to have had visions of Sabaoth, the Peerless One Who Stands Above All Things and the Father of All Creation, and the first Messiah Emmanuel I, His one and only child, von Beust turned over his estates to his brother and became a heretical preacher; he railed against the established Church of Sabaoth in Eden, headed by the Holy Fathers claiming succession from Emmanuel I's right-hand man Paul of Aquilonia, accusing it of corruption and 'every vice known to man, and some known to demons' and claiming that Holy Father Asariel III was in fact a manifestation of the Dark Lord Belial, the Evil Flame who leads Sabaoth's enemies and seeks to consume the world in his black fires. While von Beust was promptly arrested, drawn and quartered by the authorities, his radical message was seized upon by many petty Swabian lords who sought to break from the increasing authority of the once-derelict Kaisers in Hohenfall, and the rest of the war unfolded from there.
One of the biggest players in the Sixty Years' War is easily the Patrimony of Saint Paul or 'Patrimonium Sancti Paulus', the lands directly controlled by the Holy Fathers from Eden (formerly the city of Faustia, capital of the (rather obviously) Faustian capital) and nominally governed by the Edenite Messiahs, the main line of the 'Blood of the Lamb' - direct descendants of the first Messiah, Emmanuel I, and by extension Sabaoth Himself, who have the thousand-year-old paperwork to prove their claims and who have been pawns of the Holy Fathers since the days of Gamaliel III (430-448 AP). The present Messiah, Arael V, has turned out to be a zealot who doesn't even need to be ordered by Holy Father Palthiel VII to eradicate the New Believer heresy with the Patrimony's armies of crusaders.
Patrimonial coat of arms:
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The Kingdom of Albion collapsed into civil war in 1543 AP. Originally dominated by the New Believers since King John VIII's decision to adopt that faith and so get an easy way to get rid of his old wife, the Kingdom was torn apart since the headstrong and moderate Richard IV took power. He refused to allow fanatical New Believers to conduct further witch-hunts against Edenites, opposed Parliament (coincidentally dominated by said fanatical New Believers) at every turn and attempted to force through several decrees of religious tolerance, leading many to question his faith if not outright accuse him of being an Edenite himself. Finally, in the fall of 1543 AP, Parliament declared him an illegitimate ruler who 'sold Sabaoth for Belial' and almost unanimously voted to remove him from power, but as he had no intention of going quietly the Albionese Civil War promptly erupted.
Royalist coat of arms:
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Parliamentarian coat of arms:
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In Swabia - the birthplace of the Sixty Years' War - the Loyalists, who wish to increase the Kaiser's authority and remain loyal to Eden, and New Believer League of Bremerhaven, which obviously opposes the Church of Sabaoth and wishes to decentralize power, are still fighting. Both warring factions have raised massive armies of mercenaries who gleefully burn, rape and plunder their way through the other side's lands, and it is suspected that one of the biggest reasons both Kaiser Karl II and the League's heads are still fighting is to avoid paying the mercenaries (technically, any loot they take counts as payment).
Loyalist coat of arms:
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League of Bremerhaven coat of arms:
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The Dual Monarchy of Neustria and Austrasia has also fallen into a religious civil war. A faction of moderates, led by King Philip VIII, attempted to contain the fanatical Edenites (championed by the Duc de Lyon) and radical New Believers (led by the Duc de Muret) - to no avail, as both forces grew too powerful and the royal army itself collapsed along religious lines. King Philip was assassinated by an Edenite monk after news of him negotiating with the New Believers was leaked, and while the moderate faction has completely disintegrated the Neustrian-based Edenite League of Lyon and Austrasian-based New Believer League of Muret have put forth their own candidates for the contested throne of both kingdoms; the Neustrians support Philip's legitimate son Charles, while the Austrasians are backing his older bastard son Francis.
Neustrian coat of arms:
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Austrasian coat of arms:
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In addition, two stable powers have thrown their hat into the ring - the Kingdom of Cantabria and the Kingdom of Lade, on the Edenite and New Believer sides respectively. The two powers are still fighting for control of the island of Lacrima, and both see the Sixty Years' War as an opportunity to both purge Orbis of heretics/infernalists and to secure support for their Lacrimese expeditions.
Cantabrian coat of arms:
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Ladish coat of arms:
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Lastly, outside of the Sixty Years' War, the ancient Elesian Empire is threatened once more by civil war. Having survived the bloody demise of its Faustian parent empire by the timely conversion of co-Emperor Nicephorus Ducas of Adytum to the Church of Sabaoth in 330 AP, the Elesians nevertheless took the side of the Ephesians in the Great Schism of 1050 that has divided the Church to this day - a move that led to several centuries of war between the Patrimony and the Empire, and finally resulted in the redirection of the Sixth Crusade against the Yarmukers towards Adytum and the stealing of the Elesian-held remnants of the Great Cross. The Elesians have recovered from that disaster in the five centuries following it, but are now under the control of the nine-year-old boy-emperor Nikephoros XII; while the emperor is preoccupied with childish games, his mother the Regent & Empress-Dowager Anna Doukaina-Angelina is playing politics with the Grand Domestic of the Empire, Ioannes Amiroutzes. While the crisis has not yet broken into open civil war, it is apparent that an armed confrontation is inevitable, and furthermore the infighting between the two camps has paralyzed the government - giving brigands and petty lords free reign in the empire's grossly neglected countryside. It has always been said that the Elesians could only really be threatened by simultaneous civil war and foreign invasion; at this point, the former is inevitable, and the latter is still somewhat possible despite the raging Sixty Years' War.
Elesian coat of arms:
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I think I will be killing the WEF 1914 IH for this one, which will be an RP-focused, character-driven game like TLW & 1866. Basically, WEF only now your character is going to have to actually fight a lot Rules are coming up, I'm also waiting for Dan to get the map ready and then we can get this thing rolling.