Total+War+Shades+of+War

**Stats **

 * Military ** - Your soldiers, walkers, and moving fortresses. On the attack and on the defense this stands between your enemies and the rest of your more vulnerable assets. Is also the only stat capable of directly seizing a mine.

 **Espionage** - Your spies and agents. What you use for infiltrating enemy countries and stealing their secrets. Less useful for stealing actual physical goods, but still capable of it. Can temporarily shut down or divert a portion of the production of a mine.

 **Morale** - How loyal and hardworking your people are. The higher this is the more resistant your country is to infiltration. Your people can also be directed to focus on a single project or endeavor through the use of ample propaganda. Doing so will grant a bonus based on how high you morale is.

 **Research** - Your alchemists and engineers diligently work to make your country stronger. Research is a measure of how effective they are. It could just be a few brilliant alchemists, or a whole lab full of mediocre technicians. Research can grant both general advancements in technology which help your other areas, or more specific traits which grant unique bonuses in certain fields.

 **World Opinion** - World opinion is how other countries feel about you. It is also somewhat unique in that it is tracked individually between each country. But only the aggregate is shown on the stats. World Opinion cannot be used directly, but will measure how likely a country is to respond to your overtures.

 **Hades Pits** - Deep scars that penetrate into the depths of the earth. Mostly full of treacherous slip falls and winding tunnels, but in the deepest regions can be found shards of oblivion. Pitch black these crystals burned with an unseen fire, and for centuries fueled the hungry steam forges of the known world. But then at the turn of the century a master alchemist was able to do what no other alchemist before him had been able to. He broke an oblivion shard into its component elements. When he opened the cooling crucible he found five different materials which reshaped the workings of the world.

 Every turn each Hades Pit will produce enough elements to give an additional + of stats to its controller.

 **The Elements of Oblivion**

 * Lethium **- The substance of shadows. It bends the light of the world around itself, and hides itself from all who would observe it.

- Warps lights around itself. Most countries have their alchemists use Lethium to create shadow plating which hides the vehicles to which it is attached.

 **Styxium** - The substance of hate. Nothing can touch it, nothing can harm it. Only through the other oblivion elements can manipulate this floating substance.

- Styxium repels all normal elements. Alchemists have found that the strength of this repelling is determined by the amount and power levels of the Styxium. Small quantities can be embedded in armor to deflect bullets and swords. Large quantities can be built into engines to lift vehicles and allow for easier movement. A few experimental Styxium/Kokytium engines were used to produce flying machines during the Great War.

 **Acherium** - The substance of sorrow. Woe be to the unwary alchemist that touches this foul substance as it can suck the very life out of all living things. Unfortunately it is also the only substance that can bind with non-oblivion materials. And as such handling it is an ever present and unavoidable risk for every alchemist.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">- Contact with living material will slowly drain the subject of life. It is not fatal or even irreversible unless handled excessively, but it will cause the subject to become lethargic and begin wasting away as if suffering from illness. It is unique in that it can be welded and forged with normal materials like iron. As such the majority of machines that use the elements have layers of Acherium somewhere inside and carefully sealed from human touch. As a rather major consequence destroyed vehicles tend to scatter Acherium across the land poisoning it. Many Great War battlefields have become wastelands because of this.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> **Kokytium** - The substance of lamentations. Viewed by most as an unholy substance Kokytium screams with the souls of the dead which it can absorb from any of the dying or recently dead. Only Kokytium can restore the other elements to their unholy glory once their powers dim. Prolonged exposure to Kokytium has been known to cause insanity.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">- When newly created Kokytium appears inert, a simple shard of black metal not unlike the oblivion shards which all elements are processed from. However it has been shown that exposure to dying humans, and to a lesser extent animals, imbues the Kokytium with something. No is entirely sure what, but the Kokytium begins exhibit what appear to be veins of glowing blue fluid beneath the surface. Alchemists who work with charged Kokytium report that they can almost hear voices. By itself Kokytium is of limited use, but by bringing charged Kokytium into contact with another element the strength of the other element can be greatly enhanced or restored if the element has been depleted. To a lesser extent Kokytium can also be charged by exposure to the already dead. As such graveyards have become centers of a rather dark industry.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> **Phlegethium** - The substance of fire. Pure flame in solid form. Where once the shards of oblivion fueled the forges of the world now Phlegethium powers them to even greater heights.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">- Glowing bright red Phlegethium is extremely hot. No normal substance burns as hot as a shard of Phlegethium or for as long. As such many factories and steam engines have been modified to run on the element. Some experimental weapons have been developed to try and take advantage of its properties as well, but so far nothing has come of it. At least not publicly.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">**Note:** All the elements of oblivion will over time discharge and become inert. With the notable exception of Kokytium which can restore other elements at the cost of draining its own charge.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Also note that these are only the discovered properties. As the elements have only been known for a few decades, additional research could reveal further properties.

**Traits**
Each trait will have certain well defined parameters.

First off, every trait will only benefit 6 stat points per coverage level. This is to prevent high stat levels making a trait considerably more powerful than was intended.

Second each trait will have different effects depending on what it does. A general trait covering everything pertaining to a particular stat will actually be the tech level. It will be addressed differently.

Slightly less general traits, such as one which applies only on the defense or only on the attack, will provide a bonus of 25%.

Specific traits that can only be applied in one area will provide a 50% bonus.