The Setting

The year is 509 BC. The last king of Rome has fallen. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus — the Proud — has been cast out, and in his place, something new and fragile stirs to life. The Roman Republic is born. No more kings. No more tyrants. From this day forward, Rome belongs to its people and its Senate.

But from this night forward, Rome belongs to its vampiric overlords. In a stroke as audacious as it was precise, the two youngest childer of the Ventrue Antediluvian moved against their elder brother and seized the city — not through open war bleeding the city across centuries, but through cunning. In the aftermath, the pair chose something rarer among their kind: compromise. They would rule together as co-Consuls, each the check upon the other’s ambition — a moonlit reflection of the Republic being born in the sun. And to secure their hold on the mortal machinery of power, they extended an offer to Rome’s elite patrician families — each Ventrue, each ravenous — granting them Senatorial standing so that their voices, and their loyalty, might be counted.

To the north, the Gallic tribes are a force untamed — fierce, proud, and bound by warrior traditions older than Rome itself. Their chieftains command through strength and loyalty, and their lands stretch from the Alpine foothills to the mist-shrouded coasts beyond. Rome eyes their territory with hunger; the Gauls eye Rome with contempt. It is only a matter of time before these two worlds collide.

Across the Adriatic, the Greek world burns with a different kind of brilliance. City-states like Athens and Sparta have already shaped the course of civilization — their philosophers, warriors, and statesmen casting long shadows over the Mediterranean. Greece is a land of ideas and rivalries, of democracy and tyranny existing side by side. Its influence seeps into Roman culture even as its own golden age begins to fracture. Whether as allies, rivals, or conquerors, Rome and Greece are bound by a thread that neither can sever.

The Game

The Price of Power is a text-based multiplayer roleplaying game beginning in the early Roman Republic. Built on a heavily modified World of Darkness 20th Anniversary Edition toolset and a customized UrsaMU game platform designed to feel like RhostMUSH, we seek to modernize the gaming experience while respecting the fact that gamers don't appreciate change.