Editing 7th Sea (section)

===Eisen===
Germany during and after the Thirty Years' War, here fought between the Vaticine and the Objectionists, and with more monster infestations than whole Witcher universe. Ravaged and war-torn, the people of Eisen are hardened and violent. While one nation or another might have better specialists, no nation in Theah can match Eisen for sheer military might.  Unfortunately, as Voltaire once famously declared, this disunited place is neither holy, Roman, nor an Empire right now, torn between squabbling factions even when it's ''not'' in the midst of outright civil war.

Die Kreuzritter is the main secret society of Eisen, an order of knights believed destroyed centuries ago that greatly influence the continent from the shadows. Only now they are trying to stop otherworldly monsters from raping everyone and everything, at the cost of their own lives and lots of others if necessary.  They are ''secret'' secret, having let the rest of the continent think they got wiped out centuries ago to better defend the world from the shadows.

Eisen keeps a sort of record among two editions for magic flavors. They ''kind of'' have four, three if you are unnecessarily picky. Its racial magic, Zerstrong, based on decay and destruction, is (probably) truly extinct, but they have a super-metal called Drachen-Eisen to make up for it. In the "vanilla" 1st ed it is the best "magic" of them all, because even a starting character can have enough to be nearly immune to everything but firearms, and that's more than other mages can muster at their peak, though he will not be able to afford much else. They mostly lost it in second edition (it's still around, but it's rare and mostly only useful for fighting monsters). In exchange they learned how to make magical potions from dead bodies.

And finally, for the fourth entry, aforementioned Die Kreutzritter have their own brand of "shadow" magic - walking in the literal shadow world and killing with immaterial shadow stilettos.  It lacks the versatility of "true" sorcery, but it's much more straightforward mechanically, doesn't require further investment to master once you've bought it, has a lot of obvious benefits without requiring lots of pushing from both player and GM to be worth its points, and synergizes ''really'' well with their internal sword school and assassination methods.  The major balancing factor is that it's ''top secret'' and requires you to murder anyone who sees you use it unless you get clearance from the organization's head honcho, so you at least have to think of ways to make yourself come off like a ninja master rather than a mage lest you have to engage in a ''lot'' of party-killing.

And the best part: they have frau Fauner Posen 10 years before Brienne Tart was even a thing, and said frau is not a mere knight but an Eisenfurst, one of regional lords.

Home to several unique schools based around the "panzerhand," a huge metal gauntlet built to parry or grab enemy blades as well as punch, plus the obligatory zweihander school, which is even more in-depth than the others, incorporating [[Legend of the Five Rings| a system of stances which shift by degrees from defensive-but--makes-it-hard-to-attack to easy-to-fuck-up-enemies-with-but-leaves-you-wide-open]].  They also have several non-combat (well, non-personal combat) schools for leading and commanding troops, and one (Gelingen) for studying and exploiting the weaknesses of monsters.