The Shattering of Aethelgard · Game
The Shattering of Aethelgard: Silent Years
A peaceful fantasy life-sim set across the Silent Years of Aethelgard.
Silent Years is currently in development. The official Silent Years Steam page will be linked here when it becomes available.
About Silent Years
Silent Years is a peaceful fantasy life-sim about inhabiting Aethelgard rather than standing outside it. Its focus is ordinary life in an extraordinary world, set during the quieter years between world-changing conflicts.
Play your way
Settle into Aethelgard at your own pace, or share the same world with one other player. Co-op is another way to inhabit the world together while keeping the game's peaceful life-sim focus.
A life in Aethelgard
Build a life through the routines, choices and places that make the Silent Years feel inhabited rather than observed from a distance.
Build a daily rhythm around home, rest, wellbeing and the routines of ordinary life inside an extraordinary world.
Choose from eight playable peoples and nine starting cities, with identity shaping traits, lifespan, magic access and where your story can begin.
Take jobs and contracts, earn and exchange local currencies, trade through city economies and build a place in communities with distinct costs and opportunities.
Gather resources, craft useful goods, cook, work with tools and materials, and shape the spaces you call home.
Move between distinctive communities with their own economies, services, rules, resources and recurring local events.
Develop skills and traits, train through institutions and follow lineage-shaped paths into practical magic where your character can access it.
Eight playable peoples
Your choice shapes traits, lifespan, magic access, starting-city eligibility and the rhythm of the opening years.
A flexible non-magical beginning, with a rare later path toward First Tier magic.
Begins with First Tier magic and broad access to practical magical branches.
A non-magical life with the distinctive isolated start of Goliath's Stand.
Non-magical, with a natural fit for craft, tools, industry and trade.
Begins with First Tier magic, with rare higher progression available later.
A non-magical beginning with starts centred on Grolmar or Aetheria's Misery district.
Begins with a powerful Second Tier lineage and a Draconia-only start.
Begins with First Tier magic, especially Aeromancy, and starts in Skyreach.
Nine starting cities
Economy, cost of living, resources, services, local rules and species eligibility all change the shape of a start. Aetheria goes further, offering two sharply different openings within the same city.
A stable forest-and-farm start for eligible peoples, with a gentler opening rhythm.
One city, two sharply different starts: Radiant is wealthy and costly; Misery is cheaper, rougher and more constrained.
An arcane centre with a strong magic-and-research identity and higher living costs.
An ore-focused Dragonkin start shaped by a specialised local economy.
An isolated, rule-bound Gigant start built around a very different local rhythm.
A low-cost industrial start with salvage strength and weaker farm-and-forest access.
A balanced all-round opening with flexible resources and a broad everyday-life rhythm.
A mining, quarrying and engineering-focused start with a strong craft identity.
A high-cost Aerie Folk start shaped by elevation, transit and mining.
Generational continuity
A character can eventually die, but the world does not have to end with them. Continue in the same world with a new adult character while the broader history and progress you shaped remain part of what comes next.
Gameplay
Gameplay previews are being held back while Silent Years is in development. Representative captures will appear here if and when they are ready for public release.
When it takes place
Silent Years begins at Cycle II · Edict 3400. The main novel storyline begins later, at Cycle II · Edict 3601. The game inhabits the quieter years between those points rather than presenting the later crisis as its starting premise.
Across the Living Archive
Silent Years belongs to the same chronology, magic and published world as the rest of Aethelgard. These paths add context without turning the game page into an index of the entire archive.
Chronology
Place Cycle II · Edict 3400 within the wider chronology of reconstruction, memory and the years that follow.
Open the TimelineThe fiction
Follow Aethelgard into the later story era through its completed books, without treating the game as an adaptation of the novels.
Browse the booksMagic
Read the larger magical framework behind everyday Nature’s Craft and the rarer powers that exist elsewhere in Aethelgard.
Explore the Five TiersDevelopment
Most core gameplay systems are already established, while substantial work remains on interface and usability refinement, character presentation, music and audio, final visual assets, balancing, testing and release-quality polish.
The preferred target is for both Aethelgard games to release in Q2 2027. If the releases are staggered, one is currently planned around Q1 2027 and the other around Q3 2027; the order remains open. These are development targets, not confirmed release dates. The official Silent Years Steam page will be linked here when it becomes available.
Steam
Steam page coming soon
The official Silent Years Steam page will be linked here when it becomes available.
Creator
Silent Years grew from H.J. Arcanum's desire to build an Aethelgard that could be inhabited, not merely observed — a place where ordinary routines, work, travel and quiet choices can carry stories of their own.
Continue browsing
Explore the wider Games section while Silent Years continues to develop.
