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.
April promotion
Glossary
Echoes of Power, Part V: Dark Depths
Echoes of Power, Part IV: New Purpose
Echoes of Power, Part III: Dark Designs
Echoes of Power, Part II: Awakened Potential
Echoes of Power, Part I: Minor Conjunction
Classleads February 2025 – part 6 (end)
Classleads February 2025 – part 5
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
Online Dark Fantasy MUD Game
Be ready for the dark fantasy horror world of Aetolia, which is an RPG text game of Iron Realms Entertainment. Terror, dark forces and vampires are everywhere in the land of Aetolia. If you want to survive in the fantastic world, you will have two chances; fight back or join! Every decision that you will make affects your destiny in the world of Aetolia. When you make a decision in the land of Aetolia, you will have to deal with the consequences. You can discover more than 20,000 rooms in Aetolia, the world is massive!
Aetolia is a multiplayer online RPG with no download necessary. The MUD game Aetolia does not rely on graphics because it is an RPG text game and can be played with minimal or no graphics. Its story in the dark fantasy horror world is unique and player-driven. Characters have many different abilities and skills in Aetolia, giving you great control over the game itself.
Fantasy Vampire MUD
Horror RPG
Sapience is the continent of the everyday Aetolian world. For hundreds of years, Sapience has had its own problems until flying death machines filled the skies and led to the discovery of an antagonistic other continents. Now squabbles over resources, Dark and Light, land, and life vs death play besides an overarching worry of invasion from eldritch abomination Gods from the continent of Albedos.
There are many different abilities on Aetolia encapsulated by your skills in the game. Besides the basic skills everyone shares, hundreds of other skills vary by class, and how you play is your choice. In addition to class, there are mini skills to passively protect you, mercantile skills to generate life's necessities, hobby skills, agricultural skills, practical skills, and trade skills that you will be able to learn through varying methods in the game. You can have many different talents that you can increase, separate from level, all to help you survive and thrive.
In Aetolia, you might deal with, or even become, an undead. Vampires also walk the lands, seeking blood and domination. Light counters these unnatural beasts with Duamvi symbiotes brought from higher planes to empower the select worthy few. Help either side, or neither, your choice is free.
