Venture into the realm of Aetolia using the Nexus Client, now accessible on Android and iOS. Spark your adventure from wherever you are.
What is Aetolia?
Aetolia is a multiplayer RPG (role-playing game) set in a dark fantasy world.
The difference between Aetolia and other games is that Aetolia is played entirely in text with minimal graphics. This genre of games is called MUDs or Multi-User Dungeons.
Characters in Aetolia talk, trade, fight, plot and even kill and eat each other. They roam the continents and explore dungeons, killing (or helping) foul creatures, gather gold and treasure while increasing in power and prestige.
Unlike other fantasy settings, Aetolia enables you to play characters of all alignments and creeds, and it's entirely in the hands of the player whether to become a hated villain, vaunted hero, or anything in between.
Siderealist Tweaks
Lottery and raffle winners!
Happy New Year! January promotion
NYE and raffle reminder
Celesmas collections
Ironbeard returns!
Events & Communications: Part II
The Grand Duel arrives!
It’s an Iron Realms Celesmas
December promotion
How Can I Play?
Aetolia is a free-to-play game that can be played on several different platforms. To play directly in your browser, you can click this link, or the play button above.
If you're coming from another MUD and already have a MUD client of choice, you can connect to Aetolia at aetolia.com, port 23.
You can also play on mobile with the Iron Realms Entertainment Nexus app.
Intricate
Player vs Player Combat
Aetolia has some of the most detailed and intense PvP ever created.
In addition to traditional RP initiated combat, Aetolia has numerous systems to encourage and reward its most skilled and bloodthirsty:
- Open PK areas with world altering effects for those brave enough to enter
- The Sect of Blades, a ranked system of organized combat
- Twice monthly contests for the Orrery, a powerful location that boosts the faction of the team with the best showing
- The power of Ylem regularly tears into Sapience, leading to clashes to control these Foci, for personal and organizational gain
Of course, PvP isn't just PK. We also have elected city positions to backstab your way into, rankings of everything from most powerful merchant to best minipet collector, and even racetracks for said pets to earn their owner winnings!
Unique
Character Classes and Skills
We take our skill system seriously, and want every class or talent to feel unique and different. Whether you are an assassin leaping from the shadows to abduct your foe, a powerful knight slashing enemies with your flaming blades, or a monk utilizing your self control to heal wounds and devastate foes, all classes have their own unique mechanisms and abilities.
- 15+ Unique Classes
- 12 Guilds
- 2000+ Different Abilities
- 80+ Skillsets of Crafting/PvE/PvP
- 60+ Race skills
Our skillsets each include 30+ skills, varying between general skills, crafting, and class based. Every guild has its own class with unique abilities, modified by a core of abilities common to everyone. And of course, add to that our mercantile, tradeskills, and talents... you get hundreds of possible combinations!
What is a Mud?
They're the original massively multiplayer real-time online games. Before there was World of Warcraft, there were MUDs.
They aren't single-player text adventures like Zork or choose-your-own-adventure games. They're very much real-time and multiplayer.
Ultimately, you can think of MUDs vs. graphical games as books vs. movies in some respects. Just as many people feel books are more immersive than a movie, many people feel MUDs are more immersive than graphical games.
Are you one of those people? Only one way to find out. Try out our game world right now!
Storytelling
The World and Your Place In It
Aetolia is an entirely unique, ever growing world and storyline. For over 17 years our realm has worked through a player driven storyline, and it has seen some changes no other setting could imagine. Almost 20,000 rooms are explorable to players, and 13,000 more are just waiting for the story to catch up...
The drive for this? Roleplaying. Aetolia has a true player-driven storytelling with depths yet unseen. Regular events keep the story moving, while the Administration supports when our players unseat it all and take the reins! Our stories are crafted from the intricate RP of our players, with a vast overarching plot decades in scope... and all without a cutscene showing some NPC swooping in to steal the show.
Your World
Crafting, Building, Leading
Aetolia is built to let players create and lead. Our organizations are designed with player-led positions, and our crafting skills mean that the clothes you wear, the swords you stab with, even the healing potion you drink from are all player designed and created.
- 20+ Crafting skillsets
- Over 100,000 player made designs
- Castles and Havens for your character's private home
- 4 Completely player run City/Council/Empires
- 12 Player led guilds
- Player run packs of shapeshifters
Our crafting is complex and wide reaching. Cities expand their buildings when their leadership decides to. Characters earn their own Haven and design it themself. And again, everything is player designed and crafted. Start your mercantile empire, then run the Imperial Dominion, build a castle, and corner the market in fancy hats, everything is possible!
No Download Needed
An Online Dark Fantasy Game
Prepare to enter the dark fantasy-horror world of Aetolia, an RPG text-based game from Iron Realms Entertainment! Terror and dark forces abound across the land, vying for dominance over Aetolia and its vast, varied geography. If you want to survive in this fantastic world, you have two choices: stand against the tide or join the fray! Every decision you make has consequences, each threatening to change not only your own destiny, but the world around you. The world is a massive construction of over 20,000 'rooms' - submerse yourself in both the extensive writing and the dynamic lore.
Aetolia is a multiplayer online RPG with no download necessary. As a text-based game graphics are minimal leaving you to fill in the gaps with your imagination! The story is written in blood and violence within a world that is unique and player-driven. Each character has a plethora of different abilities and skills, allowing for extensive control over player direction in the game itself - a myriad of combinations that leaves no two players the same.
A Horror-Inspired Vampire MUD
True Dark Fantasy RPG Elements
Sapience is the main continent of Aetolia, where players are born and heroes or villains are made! For hundreds of years, Sapience has had its own problems where squabbles over resources like ylem, dominion over geography, the forces of darkness and light, or life versus death all play a role. Now, the discovery of potentially hostile external continents like Vorostra or Albedos drive the overarching threat of constant invasion or the potential for world-spanning alliances.
There are many different skills in Aetolia that can be utilized, encapsulated by the varied abilities in the game. While there are basic skills available to all players, there are hundreds of other skills that vary by class or subrace letting you define how you play! In addition to general and class skills, there are mini-skills to protect you; mercantile and agricultural skills to generate the necessities of life in the world; various trades and hobby skills; and practical skills to help you survive and thrive. A litany of talents await your eager education to provide even further customization to your character. Pick up a lute or learn to speak the many tongues of Aetolia in order to develop yourself how you envision!
Beyond the typical races available, you may also deal with, or become, an undead, a sylvan Fae, or a member of the spirit-infused Akkari Host. Vampires stalk the land seeking blood and domination, while the light counters the unnatural with duamvi symbiotes brought from other planes to empower the worthy few, or with the sylvan forces from the Fae courts. Choose your side or live on in tepid anonymity!
