FiveEonsSetting

Five Eons

The world is in the middle of its fifth apocalypse.  The vibrant colors that used to exist have been replaced subdued colors.  Rather than a bright sun and moonlit nights, the sky is perpetually grey, with the only knowledge of what days and nights are being the clocks from pre-apocalyptic times.  The multitude of small towns that dotted the landscape have coalesced into just a few mega-cities.  Demons (beings that have only started appearing to herald the apocalypse) roam the land.  Food is scarce and is perhaps even better guarded than the citizens of these towns.  And this is the world into which the characters have been summoned.

The characters are citizens, heroes, and adventurers from the other Eons that had their lives cut short by the demons.  By means that they do not know at the start of the game, they have been brought to the Fifth Eon carrying nothing but what they had on their person at the time of their death for vengeance and to be a savior for this dying Eon.  How/if they will do this is up to them.

The previous for Eons are as follows, as well as example reasons why a player might want to play someone from that age:

The First Eon: Idyllic World
The First Eon is characterized by being a world of peace and no problems.  Food is plentiful and can be plucked from trees with no trouble.  The wild animals don't attack villages.  Monsters, as the other Eons would call them, don't exist.  Wars don't happen.  Overall, it is an Eon of little in the way of excitement and trouble.  When the Demons came, the people were unprepared and swiftly wiped out.

Why to play someone from the First Eon: You want to play someone who does not know violence or trouble that has been thrust against his or her will into a dark world.
Downside: Characters from this Eon can't have any offensive abilities at chargen.

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The Second Eon: Classic Fantasy
The Second Eon is your classic sword and sorcery world, with high adventure, excitement, danger, and all that.  While this Eon is unremarkable, from a player standpoint, it also allows the most freedom in concepts, as most anything is allowed.

Why to play someone from the Second Eon: You want complete freedom for character concept.  Anything and everything is allowed here, so little is required in justification.  It also allows for the most varied concepts, from a generic adventurer to a fairy tale princess to an archmage with a mystic tower to the world's strongest sailor.  Most anything is allowed here.
Downside: With little in the way of built in hooks, you have to create why your character is special.

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The Third Eon: Technology Rising
The Third Eon is the longest surviving Eon up to that point in the history of the world, and possibly the longest surviving Eon overall.  The Third Eon, plagued by adversity from the start by monsters that roamed the land, developed into a defenstively strong Eon.  The first megacities were developed in this age (even if they were only used in this Eon and in the Fifth Eon), but other similarly fortified villages also exist.
While Summoning has existed in all ages, this is the first age where the summoning of Demons was discovered.  Due to this, a nigh-universal crackdown on casting magic was enforced by all governments (unless you work for the government, of course), as spell casters were seen as highly dangerous.  As a consequence, this is the Eon where the more technological gear (firearms and such) were invented as well as the weird weapons found in the Dominus Exxet book (such as gunblades, musical instruments, and combat marionettes).

Why to play someone from the Third Eon: You want to play someone from the most oppressive Eon, where magic is not allowed and governments have the most power to force their will on the citizens (because of course they have their own wizards), either to fight against the power or to try and survive as best as they can under these terrible circumstances.
Downside: Unless the character has connections to the government, the character can have limited knowledge in arcane skills and few spells at character generation.

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The Fourth Eon: World at Conflict
The Fourth Eon is seen as the most unstable Eon, at least from a historical perspective, due to one overly aggressive, large nation and a whole bunch of smaller nations.  While the borders of the nations would fluctuate regularly due to this, no one could really told the territory of other nations for prolonged periods of time.  The overly aggressive nation used relics dug up from the past to bolster their armies with technological power as well with their magical strength (limited though it might be), so their war pushes were more dependent on how quickly they could find the things than anything else.  Citizens that didn't live near the borders generally didn't experience any of this war stuff, leading to annoyance for them having to help fund a war effort that they never saw.
Unlike characters from the other Eons, characters from this Eon did not die at the hands/claws/swords of demons.  This age came to a mysterious close that none of the returned know the reason for.

Why to play someone from the Fourth Age: You think magitek from Final Fantasy is pretty cool, or you want to play a professional soldier perpetually at war.
Downside: No real downsides here other than things to be revealed as the game progresses.

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The Fifth Eon: The Dead World
As stated above, this Eon is the one that the players are summoned into, a dying Eon with little hope in the way of recovery.  The party will have to overcome severe disadvantages to save the Eon and maybe even themselves.
As an aside, this is the only Eon where Necromancers are seen in a positive light due to their ability to use the plentiful number of corpses to make disposable forces to fight back the demons as long as they don't bring their undead into any towns.  Playing Weekend at Bernie's is still frowned upon, though.