Thirty years ago, a great war erupted between the many races on planet Asteria. A bloody battle on both sides that was dragged out for a few years before an almost immediate peace happened overnight. The cause was a massive blast of black magical energy from the north. A necromancer who refers to herself as Lady Vivian unleashed a primal and forbidden magic that ripped the magic from all beings over almost the entire continent to power a curse of monumental proportions. Those with low magical abilities would lose their magic completely and become cursed by the lingering magic, others would find the magic had very jarring side effects. To make things worse, the power was used to raise a massive army of undead, enough to threaten all of civilization with seemingly every intent to destroy it. From this day on, every body would raise as undead within 48 hours.

Thirty years later, the truce remains and a valiant effort of all races has pushed back the undead to a more manageable state, the heaviest undead activity now in the north. 2 Cities have fallen (North of course) and have been converted into massive undead fortresses. Most races now live together in guarded settlements in an uneasy peace. 

---

Stronger races, such as dragons have been hit hard. Being heavily magical, their very form has been sapped, shrinking the largest of dragons down to the size of a horse and greatly weakening them. In order to survive now, they must depend on other races. The are however one of the few races left with any real magical abilities, however culture and once powerful forms never gave their race much experience in war tactics or working together against foes. Also, as a race, dragons have never really had the population to fight an army at their new size. However, they still retain their natural armor-like scales, natural fire breath (Very effective against undead I will add), and have a moderate amount of magical ability left.

Humans are in a rather interesting state. Being able to take a dragon in a one on one fight is quite nice, but they now have to live without magic. Fortunately, their large numbers, standing army, and tactical war knowledge have allowed them to keep their cities under control while many other races have been forced to become refugees in them. Humans are well know for being very adaptable and inventive, so of course without magic and all these races to pull knowledge from their whole civilization has been advancing quite quickly. Powerful new weaponry for combating undead has already been developed. With a magical races help these can also be enchanted. Experimental firearms that use black powder are also starting to make rare appearances on the field.

Since it's 30 years, there are still many war veterans that don't exactly get along with eachother, but there's also a generation from each race that has been born and raised in the mixed society.

Plot:
Characters will be a member of a magic research squad, a mix of races hired to assist in research for new methods of circumventing the curse’s anti-magic properties. Due to a couple unfortunate explosions all further tests are to be performed outside the protected walls of civilization. Both the circle of mages and the government are deeply interested though and of course have sent members of their circles.

[hider=Character Sheet]
(Required)
[b]Name[/b]: 
[b]Race[/b]: (Any fantasy race allowed, but all races are affected by the curse in a different way.)
[b]Age[/b]:
[b]Appearance[/b]:
[b]Equipment[/b]:
[b]Abilities (Physical / Magical)[/b]:
(Optional)
[b]Curse Effects[/b]: If not currently listed.
[b]Affiliation[/b]:
[b]Personality[/b]:
[/hider]
[hider=Curse effects on races]
[b]General[/b]:
-Winged creatures find it extremely difficult to fly for extended periods of time.
-The dead rise within 24 hours of death.
-All spells, minus divine magic, take significantly more power to cast, divine magic is instead significantly weakened.
-Magical plague that can spread between certain races that can drive them insane. Currently affects the undead and races completely stripped of magic, with very rare cases of occurrences in still magical races.

[b]Humans[/b]: 
-Magic has been fully stripped from all humans affected

[b]Dragons[/b]:
-Magic heavily reduced (Low level spells)
-Shrunk in size (Large car sized)

[b]Vampires[/b]:
-Dangerously susceptible to the madness plague. Blood can carry the plague with no symptoms  so they must be very careful about their sources of foods.
-Will actually recover from above plague over time.
-Weakened magic and abilites.

[b]Free willed undead (Pre curse)[/b]:
-Must constantly resist vivian’s control or fall victim to it.
-Magical ability removed, but immune to plague.
[/hider]

[hider=Factions]
[b]The Arcane Eye[/b]: A group of highly respected mages that have united under the cause of defeating the anti-magic effects of the curse or finding workarounds to bring magic back to magicless races.

[b]United Alliance[/b]: Initially the pact that ended the fighting between humans and dragons, it has been expanded to the point of including other races to the point of being the unofficial governing body of the lands. However, their primary concern is the elimination of Vivian and the undead threat.

[b]Worshippers of Vivian[/b]: A cult that worship's Vivian as a god. While not directly under her command they act in her best interests, trying to sabotage whom they view as the resistance. Vivian prevents the undead from attacking them.

[b]The Enchanter Guild[/b]: A mix of traders, smiths, and enchanters working together to create new incredible and experimental enchanted weaponry and tools to replace magic.

[b]The divine order[/b]: An influential group of paladins and clerics with a great interest in removing the undead threat for good. They are researching a cleansing ritual that could theoretically cleanse the curse and disenchant all undead in a similar manner to Vivian's curse.

[b]Order of Katheris[/b]:
Most demons would probably make pacts for souls and such, keeping themselves away from this now cursed mortal plane, but a few demons would rather control their subjects directly. By binding themselves to the mortal plane, they can control the functions of those they make pacts with to an extent. Through this, the demon is susceptible to the curse, but is able to act on their own wim, while only partially relying on a puppet. The demon becomes bound as an artifact of some sort, and is kept on the person of the one who the pact was made with.

These demons brought their power together under the demon Katheris, who sent many into other factions to seize power, and to help destroy Vivian and take the world for Katheris. These possessed underlings of Katheris are not easily spotted, since they do easily blend in with others.
[/hider]
[hider=Optional info about what's found in Vivian’s army]
The undead:
Grunts: Skeletons, shambling zombies, ancient/generally useless corpses that are risen. The are fodder alone, but can be dangerous in massive numbers.

Fresh: Undead that recently died before or after the curse. Much of their body remains intact, and their skills reflect those from before they died. They are generally mindless soldiers though.

Bone dragons: Large skeletal dragons that died before the curse. Since this was before the curse their strength and size make them extremely dangerous.

Risen Dragons: Freshly killed dragons right before the curse, they rose as they originally had been, massive magical beasts of destruction. They can easily take on 40-50 of the living at once, and are essentially the tanks/supersoldiers of the undead army. Fortunately there are very few of them and most of them guard lady vivian.

Generals: Key figures from history and battle that lady vivian has carefully made the effort to restore them back to their full bodies through dark magics. They are of course loyal to her as undead, but have the ability to command undead. However, they seem to have free will, so the generals are usually other dark characters from the past that would be willing to align themselves with the undead queen.

Lady Vivian: The undead are lead by lady vivian, a once human wizard now lich that was toying with ancient magics and found quite a terrifying use for it. She leads the undead in a quest for domination of the entire world. 
[/hider]