What would the world look like, if Rome had never fallen? What happens if all the gods of antiquity had been real, and forceful presences in the lives of their people? What if in that world, magic and science co-existed?

 

That's the basic premise of Edda-Earth. In this universe, Julius Caesar escaped his assassins, and his son by Cleopatra, who had the blood of Mars, Aphrodite, Isis, and Osiris in his veins, became known as Caesarion the God-Born. (Cousin Octavian never did have much of a chance at Rome's throne with this young man being acknowledged as Caesar's heir.)

 

Caesarion and his descendants didn't have the infighting or the corruption of the early historical Empire to deal with. They consolidated their power, and instituted religious reforms that allowed subject provinces like Judea to worship their own gods with impunity. So long as they either also gave a nod to Rome's gods, or at least didn't disrupt Roman religious practices in their lands. And of course, for so long as they paid their taxes.

 

Taxes are somewhat important.

 

With active gods like Jupiter and Odin and Taranis around, the original faiths of each region continued unabated and untempered, except by the Roman injunction against human sacrifice. With a notable lack of the fall of the Empire and no medieval period, one might expect science to have leaped along much more quickly, but since magic exists in this world, sometimes people choose to do the easier thing, and have magic accomplish a task. And thus, sometimes science lags its counterpart developments in real history.

 

Magic is divided into several different spheres, but most of these spheres have underpinnings in science, or 'natural philosophy.' A modern sorcerer, or technomancer, laughs at the notion of an 18th-century 'fireball' spell as a cherished antiquity that was grossly inaccurate, had variable and uncontrolled energy yields, and betrayed that scientists and sorcerers of the time period did not understand fire as the liberation of energy from matter, but rather thought of it in terms of Aristotelian elements!

 

Sorcerers use their considerable will-power, and the energy ambient in the environment around them, to control and shape matter and its states, and energy and its flows. A modern sorcerer, or technomancer, carries batteries to help create an initial charge, or as a storage place for energies pulled out of a spell structure that might otherwise leave the sorcerer burned and bleeding.

 

Ley-mages use the power of cosmic strings, as they touch the earth itself. They leech energy from these constructs that hold the universe together, and use that energy to reshape the world around them.

 

Summoners open the way to the Veil, an aentropic universe "next door" to our own, in which time does not exist. They bargain with and bind spirits that come from that world to do services here in this one.

 

God-born are the descendants of those loved by, or sired by the gods themselves. They partake of the powers of their godly ancestors. . . but pay  a heavy price for this power.

 

Our story begins in 1954 AC, one thousand, nine hundred and fifty-four years after the ascent of Caesar. And all is not well in this world.