Game Info

[Cintaria]

Unofficial Minimal Specs (Thanks Thetyrant):

OS: Windows XP/2000/me/98se
Internet: 56.6 Kbps or faster Internet connection is required
CPU: 400 MHz or faster (500 MHz or faster recommended)
RAM: 128 MB or more
Hard Drive: 500 mb or more free space
Video: DirectX 9.0 compatible 8 MB video card (32 MB recommended )
Sound: DirectX 9.0 compatible

What is Ashen Empires?
Ashen Empires is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). In Ashen Empires, players must determine their fate in a world balancing on the brink of renewal or destruction. For more information about Iron Will Games or Ashen Empires, please visit www.ironwillgames.com and www.ashenempires.com

What is a MMORPG?
MMORPG is a term describing a genre of games in which you can simultaneously play alongside thousands of players. A MMORPG is set in a persistent world; this means that a game will continue to evolve, regardless of whether a player is logged into it or not.

What was Dransik?
Ashen Empires was called Dransik when it was published by AsylumSoft. The fantasy world that players explore in Ashen Empires is still known as Dransik.

Ashen Empires has two types of servers, each with a different set of rules:

Player versus Player -
A player can harm other players at any time, regardless of whether you are in a town or not.

Non-Player versus Player –
A player is unable to kill another player at any time, in any place.

How do I play?
When you first enter the game world, a Tutor will greet you and show you how to play the game. You may also get Help anytime during the game by pressing the ESC key to bring up the game menu, and selecting Help. Help includes basic gameplay information such as movement, combat, using items, and shortcut keys. Players should also read the Getting Started Tutorial, which details how to create an account, create a new character, and play the game.

What is a guild, and how do I join one?
A guild is a voluntarily-joined group of players that share similar interests and/or pursuits. You can either start your own guild by performing the Guild Quest, or be invited to join an existing Guild. If you are invited into a guild, the guild leader will offer you a deed. Pick up the deed and click on it in your inventory to become a member of that guild.The AE Guild Guide and AE Guild Forums have extensive information about how to start, join, and organize guilds.

Story

The Time of Gold
Long ago, before the thinking races had tamed the horse or built the first cities, the rune-guardians of Ashen Empires mastered the magic of the runes, learned to control animals and plants and perhaps even weather... and then vanished.

Centuries later, the peace they had fashioned still endured. Food was plentiful, customs were calm, and people had no ancient hatreds to blind them. The thinking races — humans, night elves, orcs, and other folk — did not wage war upon one another. Wise rule, hard work, and brisk trade ensured prosperity. Knowledge was shared, dangerous beasts kept outside the frontiers, and all the land was a single nation.

It was a golden age...

But golden ages do not last forever.

The Time of Darkness
No one knows where they came from, the dark warriors. Suddenly they were everywhere, speaking languages not known to the people of Ashen Empires, seizing knowledge of the runes wherever they could find it. They used the runes to create items of terror — weapons, armor, implements of torture, objects that wrenched mind and soul. These runic devices corrupted the spirits of all who used them.

As the armies of Rune Warriors grew, so grew the resolve of the people of Ashen Empires to destroy them. The desire for peace, even the very concept of peace, was abandoned.

Lotor, a nobleman of Krythan — and later king of that region (once Ashen Empires was sundered into warring nations) — was the first great defender against the Rune Warriors. He built armies of his own, made peace among nations that had been founded upon strife, outmaneuvered his enemies, and gave hope to a world that had all but lost it.

And even though the war grew long and Lotor grew old, he found a warrior to succeed him as the hope of Ashen Empires. Talazar, the Sword of Krythan, a noble fighter no Rune Warrior could stand against, led Lotor’s armies to victory again and again.

He was a hero for all the world.

But such heroes do not last forever.

The Time of Ash
In time, the armies of Krythan defeated the Rune Warriors and assembled all their runic artifacts. King Lotor summoned his twelve greatest warriors, Talazar among them, and commanded them to take the artifacts far away — to hide them where the eyes of the thinking races would never find them. The twelve accepted their duty and rode from the capital with these items of evil.

But none ever reached his intended destination.

Each warrior — some after mere days of travel, some after months — succumbed to the corrupting influence of the rune artifacts. One by one their thoughts turned to personal gain, power, lust, revenge. One by one they abandoned paths of humility and self-sacrifice to prey upon the people of Ashen Empires.

Some became bandit-kings, leading armies of raiders into more civilized lands. Some became solitary riders, thundering through the night on missions sane folk would never understand, their names invoked only in whispers, only to frighten children. Some died, only to have their heirs accept their rune artifacts and continue their legacies of pain.

Some disappeared. This was the fate of Talazar, once the greatest of heroes. Those who saw him in the time before his disappearance say he was no longer a man, no longer quite human.

Centuries passed, centuries in which the land did not heal, the nations did not reunite, knowledge did not prosper. Beasts crept into once-civilized lands. Kings fought kings even when the rune artifacts had no part to play in their squabbles.

This was a time of slow, inescapable suffering.

But even times such as this do not last forever.

The Time of Renewal
In recent years, prophecies have hinted that a new era was dawning, a time of change and instability, a time when the ugly balance of the Time of Ash could be lost... for better or for worse.

Sixteen summers ago, in the nation of Krythan, a boy-child of Lotor’s line was born and given the name Lotor. He survived to reach his age of majority and this summer not long ago received the crown of Krythan, taking the royal name of Lotor II.

Not long after, military forces claiming to belong to Talazar began laying waste to towns and cities in the western regions. They claimed not to follow some descendant of the original Talazar, but the corrupted warrior himself, and tales filtering from those distant places say that he is now a demon, a thing of inhuman places and unknowable intent.

Heroes, men and women skilled in fighting, have become more numerous in recent summers, some flocking to the side of Lotor II, some joining the forces of Talazar, others seeking their own way in this increasingly turbulent land.

And you are one of them.

Your skills and courage are enough to make you the master of any little village, the champion of any petty nobleman... but that is not enough. The challenge this new era poses calls to you. You can tip the balance of power — toward Lotor, toward Talazar, toward some fate no one can predict.

This chance waits before you, but you must act soon.

For such opportunities do not last forever...