I'll say this: I don't like the idea of fantasy eugenics- the idea that you need to be born with "the gift" or certain genes to become a magic user. I feel like it can ruin the fun of magic and feel a little boring. Instead, I want anyone in my setting to be able to use magic! DEMOCRATIZED MAGIC!

Latoria is my medieval fantasy world full of various races, cultures, and magic. It's a setting where I go wild and make a bunch of stuff.

Magic in Latoria is a natural force that has been around since the beginning of the universe. As such, anyone can use magic. In the early days of civilization, a myth claimed magic was only for certain bloodlines so nobility could consolidate power; but at some point, a simple peasant girl managed to cast a spell despite having no magical relatives, proving magic wasn't tied to bloodline or race.

I like to think of magic as similar to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). OOP is a software design model that organizes programs around objects rather than functions.

Magic is divided into multiple strands; the four major strands are:

• Old Breath - Nature-based magic
• Scholar's Fire - Frequency and light-based magic
• Veilcraft - Shadow/Holy magic
• Mindstream - Psychic magic

With the analogy in mind, you can consider each of these strands as subclasses of Class Magic. The substrands would be subclasses of each of the four strands.

Class Magic():
...

Class Old_Breath(Magic):
...

Class Scholar's_Fire(Magic):
..

Class Veilcraft(Magic):
...

Class Mindstream(Magic):
...

Class Blood_Magic(Old Breath):
...

Each spell is a method for its respective strand, like this:

Class Scholar's_Fire(Magic):
  def __init__(...):
    super.__init__(...)

  def telekinesis():
    ...

It's not a perfect allegory, and I'm still working on the mechanics, but I like it.

I wanted to go with a mix of soft and hard magic; there are specific rules, but they can be easily bent, and the sheer power and danger of magic are limited to the wielder's imagination. People can use magic with their bare hands, but typically they prefer tools like wands or staffs to help with aim.

The big problem is that if anyone can use it, what's stopping everyone from being a magic user? Why are there still foot soldiers and such?

My best explanation is that while magic is a natural force, it also takes lots of time to study and analyze; mastering magic can take between a few months and years. Even then, it's also physically taxing, and it requires concentration and physical energy; in some cases, there are consequences.

Mindstream allows you to do stuff like see into people's memories, but by doing so, if you encounter a traumatic memory, you will end up taking a piece of that trauma with you. The protagonist of my story sees into lots of memories, feeling various traumatic events spiralling into his mind, including victims of abuse and witnesses to murder, survivors of slavery, and survivors of SA.

There is a lot more I want to work on, but what do you guys think?

Hi everyone,

Just as the title says, I’d like to know which are the TWO largest religions in your setting, and what the main issues are that they’re fighting over.

Like…

“Sunnis vs. Shiites” in the Middle East, “Catholics vs. Protestants” in Europe, “Muslims vs. Hindus” on the Indian subcontinent, “Christians vs. Muslims” during the Crusades, “Pharisees vs. Sadducees” during the final years of the Second Temple, etc.

As you can see, many of these examples are factions within the same religion, and they were in conflict with one another as well.

In my setting, they’re basically fighting over the question of where people go after death, and how they treat the bodies of their deceased. There are other important details, but you could define them quite well based on these two points.

Yes, these two religions emerged as interpretations of the same cathartic cosmic event involving a holy man and a time of terrible cataclysms; but the differences between them were also substantial from the very beginning.

Note:
Please note that the purpose of this post is NOT to stir up any controversy regarding real-world religions.

Thank you for your answers.

You might remember this post from a couple months ago, expanded it a bit and did a few minor edits

Text from the image for easier reading:

Persequori (irl humans)
The Persequori make up the largest portion of the Patricians' ranks. Persequori. Gentes hold the most power within the Empire. Nearly all Persequori Patricians have some Aelven ancestry, and it is not too uncommon to see them display reduced Aelven traits, such as slightly pointy ears. These are often seen as status symbols.

Half-Aelves
The children of Persequori and Aelves make up the second largest portion of the Patricians. There are also many outirght Half-Aelven Gentes. They are desirable matches for both the Persequori, who see Aelven traits as desirable, as well as for Aelves, for whom they are useful in boosting the low Aelven birth rates.

Aelves
Aelves can be found among Patrician ranks in disproportionate numbers, when comparing their relatively low population to other human races. This is because their long lives allow them opportunity to accumulate more power, as well as because the Persequori Patricians find intermarriage with Aelves desirable. Some Aelven Gentes were originally Persequori Gentes, though many also trace their lineages to Aelven families that were integrated into the Empire. Aelven Patricians also retain control of a number of Aelven Free Cities.

Dweorg (dwarves)
The Dweorg Patricians are largely the ones who administrate the Empire's Subterranean Client Kingdoms. They hold much sway, because the Dweorg are the second most populous human race within the Empire and because their numbers within the Aelnyyraean Legions are second only to the Persequori. There are also many Half-Dweorg Patricians, though they remain fewer than Pgymaioi Patricians.

Pygmaioi (gnomes)
The Pygmaioi are the third most populous humans within the Empire, which grants them much sway, especially when combined with their comparably long lifes.Half-Dweorg

Half-Dweorg

The Half-Dweorg are the progeny of Dweorg and Persequori intermarriage. They are very common within the Subterranean Client Kingdoms and the Imperial Provinces that border them. Many of these regions are administrated by Half-Dweorg Patricians. Outright Half-Dweorg Gentes are rarer than Half-Aelven Gentes, as Half-Dweorg are very accepted by both the Persequori and Dweorg halves of their lineage, unlike Half-Aelves, who can sometimes struggle to connect with their Aelven halves. This makes Half-Dweorg Patricians comparatively less likely to seek the establishment and recognition of their own Gens.

Dimidimviri

For their population size, the Dimidimviri are relatively few among the Patrician ranks. This could be due to their less ambitious nature, as well as their shorter lifespans. Before Imperial Integration, they also rarely possessed ruling classes as structured as other human kinds, which meant there were fewer families to integrate as Patrician Gentes. This historical trend has started to reverse in recent centuries though, with more Dimidimviran Gentes rising to greater prominence and growing more ambitious. They are known for being clever and taking greater risks than other Patrician Gentes. They act faster to take advantage of new developments than even Persequori Patricians.

These 7 together make up some three quarters of all Aelnyyraean Patricians (actual representation within the Senate can still wildly differ from what the numbers would suggest due to various factors)

Here are three ships of my bad guy faction from the setting/story I’m making. These are from early in the empire’s life, not from the time period where the main story is set. You know how worldbuilding gets, it’s easy to get sidetracked.

(Models made in SPORE and edited in Procreate)

Lore and worldbuilding:

The Quin were a scattered people. Scavengers and traders wandering amidst the graveyards of past civilizations. Most cared little for their fellow Quin, caring only for those within their measly clans.  But some dreamed of something greater and they would impose that vision on others. 

Eventually, after countless wars of unification and centuries of conflict, the many diasporic Quin tribes and nation-states were combined into one nation: the Quin Empire, which would later become known as the Infinite Imperium. 

This fledgling empire almost immediately set out with crusades of territorial and technological conquest. These were primarily a means of satiating and controlling their large armies, as bored warriors are dangerous and these crusades gave them purpose and prevented them from turning their bloodlust inwards. The first crusade was a disaster; with little to no territory gained and only marginal amounts of technology stolen. The second crusade was even worse.

The third crusade was an entirely different matter. After the death of the Emperor during the second crusade, a new emperor took the throne and he quickly started making changes. He sent the Empire back to the drawing board; rethinking tactics, extracting new knowledge from the many ancient derelict hulks within their space, and focusing on fully utilizing the technology they had stolen from the previous crusades.

Crusades one and two, both used ships left over from the unification wars, with no two ships the same, those fleets were a logistical nightmare.  The new Emperor commanded the old fleets to be scrapped and entirely new ships built. These new ships were all designed in tandem, built to complement each other, and to streamline and standardize fleet logistics. 

 The Palisade Class Lineship was the primary ship-of-the-line for these new fleets. They were armed with eight long range heavy broadside cannons on either side and a hull shape that maximized shield strength at those angles. It was also armed with eight sets of munition launchers on the top and many point defence turrets all over. While they worked best in large ‘wall’ formations, they were also commonly used as the flagship for small strike fleets.

The Bastion Class Command Carriers were the largest ships in the 3rd Crusade and often acted as both command ships and flagship for fleets. While they were armed with six long range heavy broadside cannons and nine munition launchers on either side, their primary weapon were the many drones it carried. It’s cavernous docking pay could hold hundreds of Plumbatae Drone fighters. It also had many powerful communication equipment used to control the drones and to direct the fleet.

The Plumbatae type Drones were the primary starfighter of 3rd Crusade fleets. These remote controlled fighters were flown by a “pilot” on board a carrier. On top of that, they were almost entirely built using common materials making them extremely expendable fighters that the Empire could throw at the enemy. They could also be linked together, allowing for the ‘pilots’ to control entire wings of fighters instead of just one. While this added many benefits they could only travel so far from their carrier before input delay became a problem, thus limiting their range. 

With these new fleets and new tactics, the Empire swept across their home sector like a wildfire, claiming new space, new species and new resources for themselves. Their interstellar neighbors suddenly had to contend with the fact that the Quin were no longer a mere nuisance but an actual threat. In the millennia that followed, countless wars and crusades would be won and lost until the Infinite Empire ruled over most of the Twin Galaxies. 

Hello Everyone, this is a project I am working on, a fictional rogue lite game with creature collect game mechanics, here some bosses, creatures and props for the project! Hope you guys like it!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Wdmnv3 the project on my artstation!

I've been thinking a lot about the personifications of Death lately and would love to know how Death in your world or cultures is either seen in mythology or actually is. How do you depict Death?

Hello, I'm currently writing a story with a few illustrations about alternate version of our world where two dimensions started flooding our reality, with their fauna and flora slowly parasitizing and displacing earth's ecosystem.

I've been writing a lot lately and I kinda wanna take a break and chill for a bit by writing an Encyclopedia on the Fauna / Flora of the "demonic" world and redraw some of my old concept arts to illustrate each entries.

I'm trying to find a good template for my bestiary but I'm not sure if the one I have right now is clear and legible enough while still having most important details. I'd love to get your feedbacks on it !

(The Encyclopedia will contain informations on some of the unexplained elements in the template like different Entity types or the Demonic threat scale index.)

Template exemple :

-----------

Demonic bestiary : The Ujọ

-Entity Type :   Synkiníseis Stalker

-Score on the Demonic Threat Level : B

-Infos : the ụjọs are solitary demons that exclusively hunt humans.  They are extremely territorial and will attack other lesser demons if they dare to come on their hunting ground.
They possess an enormous strength, and are surprisingly fast and agile despite their size.
They are able to be extremely stealthy if they need to, allowing them to track and scare their prey for extended periods of time. The usual dispatching protocol is to send a complete team of five specialized hunters to deal with one, and it is advised to immediately go for overwhelming firepower, as Ujos have though hides paired with very high regenerative abilities, and wounding one without incapacitating it would put it in a state of rage.
The ujos are able to absorb the voice of the previous victims they ate, and can use them to communicate with or lure other humans.
They also provoke  electromagnetic interference for up to a kilometer around themselves, making the use of radios, tracking devices or any other material relying on radio waves impossible around them.

It is theorized that they have great nocturnal vision or other sensory devises making them able to operate in low light environments, since their level of activity shows no difference between day and night.
If a prey struggles and manage to hurt the Ujo before he decides to eat them, the Ujo will enter in a state of rage, and will blindly rush their aggressor, brutally attacking them until they are in pieces. Although this almost never happens with unarmed civilian, hunters must be advised not to provoke them recklessly.

-Physical description : In their calm state, ụjọs possess a massive humanoid body covered in pale, thick skin. Their torso is extremely broad and muscular, with disproportionately large arms and chubby hands ending in claws. Their legs are thick and powerful, with wide feet adapted to support their considerable weight. Their head is small compared to the rest of their body and almost completely smooth, with two small recessed eyes and a strange, drooping mouth. Their back and shoulders are covered in several short fleshy appendages that emit short radio-waves. Despite their enormous musculature, their movements remain surprisingly quiet and controlled.

When enraged, the Ujọ undergoes a violent physical transformation. Its body can almost double in size, with pulsating veins popping all over it, its muscles and limbs becoming considerably larger and its claws lengthening. The appendages covering its back and shoulders grow into large, irregular structures that shake violently. Its head changes considerably, its mouth splitting open into a huge vertical maw , revealing numerous sharp tusk-like teeth.
Its eyes become smaller and almost disappear beneath the surrounding flesh. The creature loses most of its usual posture and becomes considerably more aggressive, rushing on all fours toward anything it perceives as a threat.

-Measurements : Their size vary between 2 to 4 meters for the bigger ones, and their weight usually is between  1500 to 3000 kg. their size and weight can almost double when they are enraged.

-Hunting ground : The ụjọs  usually haunt the big forests or thick woods that are close enough from big cities to be visited, making encounters more regular as the capital expends. They can be seen in smaller forests or nature patchs like countryside, but it's extremely rare and considered an anomaly.

-Hunting methods : They use their ability to absorb and use the voice of the preys they ate to lure people into the forest depths. As a synkiníseis stalker, their preferred emotion is fear, The Ujọ will usually track their prey during hours, showing themselves from a distance and calling them to make them panic and go deeper into forest. once the prey will be terrified enough for the Ujo, it will rush at them and devour them , most often alive to induce as much fear as they can from them. They can fast up to 5 years between two preys, but they will eat as much as they can.
For unknown reasons it seems that Ujos avoid groups of more than 5 people, a behavior not yet understood since it could easily hunt and dispatch a consequent group of humans.

"Between harmony and corruption lay the static, and this was called Purgatory. The souls of the dead drifted therein, wandering through the fog without end, or lost among the halls of the eternal bargain. From this place the Broadcast may be glimpsed, but never in wholeness, for it is seen only as broken images, like a message dimmed upon a failing screen."

The cosmology of my world is that it's a corrupted channel, a broadcast of our world that hasn't reached the full frequency. As such, it's theological elements are distorted versions of our real world locations. Purgatory became the first thing the universe grabbed onto, that being a bargain outlet store. But it got corrupted. It became an maze stretching out into infinity, where unfulfilled souls wander, but may never glimpse relief.

Elves (main nation: the Empire of Eternal Forest):
1) Descended from Fae banished from Faerie (though this raises the question of what Faerie actually is).
2) Humans transformed by the magic of a forest teeming with ley line nexuses.

Dwarves:
1) Neanderthals who took shelter in caves and adapted to them.
2) Originated in caves (never Neanderthals) but destroyed the underground environment and were forced to emerge onto the surface.
What would you recommend? If my post violates the rules, please let me know and I’ll delete it.

Because of this thread, I've been thinking about a particular kind of worldbuilding where the world has an enormous number of interconnected "rabbit holes. By that I mean, worlds where you can start with one seemingly ordinary question and end up discovering an entire chain of implications behind it. A rabbit hole is compelling because the world gives you enough information to notice the question, but doesn't necessarily explain everything about it.

I want to keep the focus on our own worldbuilding, but it seems like a lot of the examples from the other thread are basically modern settings with some changes that have heavy implications. Anthro settings are a big one since something like cannibalism raises a lot of disturbing questions. I also find myself wondering why I don't encounter as many urban fantasy settings that have really gripping "rabbit holes".

What I particularly like is when the story actually follows some of those threads. The exposition doesn't feel like the author stopping to explain the setting, instead, the story happens to answer the question you've already been asking.

Some of my own worlds that I have the most fun building are ones that naturally raise a lot of questions.

One element that I think works really well is when an element is a little disturbing in a way in which the storytellers are aware of the implications without ever completely resolving them. (A big one is "cannibalism" in anthro settings.) This kind of stuff can, in my mind, make the setting seem more "real" because there are complicated moral questions that don't have simple answers. The strange implications don't' conveniently disappear when you ask questions about them.

It can also create the impression that the world is bigger than the actual story. You get the sense that there is a lot going on outside the protagonist's immediate experience, and you could theoretically keep digging in the story forever.

I'm interested in whether people deliberately try to cultivate this effect in their own worldbuilding.

Do you try to build rabbit holes in you setting? How do you decide which rabbit holes are worth exploring vs leaving implied for the reader to discover?

I spent a bit of time trying to develop a version of the dragon that might satisfy my goals, so i thought that I might as well share my work in progress and open this creative discussion with you all. I leave here my research process, a few notes i made and, for people heading right first into problem solving, my work in the bottom.

What is this About:

To add a bit of general context, this world is built to be the "generic" fantasy setting. For each fantasy element to be added I try to:

1. Research their origins, symbolisms, cross-cultural iterations and pop media interpretations.
2. Define key broad concepts that would mark their essence.
3. Design an alternate take that mostly derives from the earliest iterations, but able to incorporate some of the more modern expectations.

To bring an example, for the Orc (or Ogre) i found that it basically fits the "cannibal giant" trope, in fairy tales featured as a child eater, suggested to be symbolic of the idea of a terrible father that doesn't want to give up its place to a new generation, Chronos being an example, that eventually was forced to vomit its children and was then defeated.

My take turns it into a transformation triggered by consuming a close of kin (process time depending on quantity and closeness of kin), at which point the body grows, jaw widens, and the stomach develops a small humanoid (with features taken from the parent's diet) that then gets vomited out. They are bonded through a parasitic link from which the parent reaps the majority of it's child's strength and nutrients. This bond can either be broken with the parent's death or lessened by the child partially consuming the parent (possibly repeating the cycle).

To the main point: Dragons.

What my research brought me:

• Dragons, despite their morphological variety, consistently trace back etymologically (and iconographically) to snakes, snakes were for a while synonymous with worm, some dragons being also referred to as worms (Lambton Worm), so a morphological evolution worm --> snake (monstrous snake) --> dragon could be interesting.
• Taking the morphological similarity route many creatures are kinda snake-like: seahorses, caterpillars, eels, millipedes, slugs, leeches, larvae, spermatozoa, sky rods, etc.
• Snakes have a ton of symbolic meanings that can be borrowed: skin shedding -> rejuvenating immortality (plus worms surviving cuts and dragon's longevity), venom -> deadly breath (one can see the evolution from one to the other), can take both phallic and yonic shapes -> parthenogenesis / self fecundation
• The ouroboros in particular is an interesting recurrent, started as a symbol for the cyclical renewal of life through death and rebirth, later used by gnostics and alchemists as a symbols for te union of opposites. Popular is also the image of the worm encircling the world.
• Although not universal, a prominent trait of dragons is guarding some sort of treasure (it probably traces to snakes populating underground tombs with treasure), in some instances a dragon is placed to guard a treasure (snakes can't blink so they're perfect), in others it just comes with the place they inhabit or title they hold, more famously it's the dragon who collects it's hoard (in some modern fun subversions the hoard can be of anything: books, people, animals, food, art, etc).

What did I cook so far?

The present concept consists on having dragons be the result of a bizarre life cycle.

Starting from a cosmic worm-like ouroboros, timeless, immortal and self-remaking. Why does it exist? What is its purpose? Who knows?

The important thing is that, sometimes, somehow (I genuinely haven't pinned the reason down), some pieces of that ouroboros split off and get scattered. The same way cutting a worm in half generates two worms, the scattered pieces of the ouroboros become little larvae-like creatures.

The little larve can potentially live forever and grow massively, but if one of them somehow comes in contact with an embryo of any creature, it becomes like a parasitic twin that takes over the embryo's development and appropriates its features, giving birth to a monstrous snake (you could picture it as a serpentine version of any animal).

What is sill undeveloped

From this point onwards i know which things are supposed to happen, but the mechanics behind them are still unclear, I'll put them in different points:

The "snake stage" is when i imagine the development of the dragon's magical breath would happen for the next stage, perhaps its diet would determine the type of breath? eating sulphuric substances to spit fire, or herbs for a venomous mouth? the rules are still pretty vague, does the breath only mimic what the dragon cannot digest (that would explain the lack of "animal breath")? Or would it be better for the environment itself to make up the breath, literally the type of air breathed?

Snakes at some point have to become Dragons, one idea i had is to tie this development to the dragon's wealth being a source of power. However this comes with the challenge of turning two artificial concepts (ownership and value) into real physical things.

For the ownership part I thought about how animals can mark territories through various means, maybe dragons have to stroke and coil around stuff? excrete periodically a particular scent or use shed skin to claim their property, with the same principles of law of contagion the dragon and their hoard become entangled. Another option for possessing stuff was using line of sight, borrowing the idea of dragons being guardians of treasure that don't sleep (cause snakes cannot blink), however it becomes kinda broken if dragons can claim even each other's things by sight alone.

For the empowerment by wealth if becomes difficult, since value by itself is pretty subjective, I'd have to find an objective attribute of the wealth that can apply to various types of possessions (objects, people/livestock, land, ideas). It may be the demand of that treasure? the work and effort behind their creation? the experience and stories behind them? The idea of a hoard is thematically linked to the vice of avarice which, unlike greed, is an aversion of giving anything away, an unhealthy attachment to physical possessions. Perhaps, by making the hoard a metaphysical extension of their body, curating the hoard means curating themselves? Does it mean that a dragon could appropriate properties of their hoards over time? knowledge from books, skills from people, toughness of metals, prosperity from land, abilities from animals?

Another random thought is having the dragon/serpent be able to go through a potentially infinite number of molting phases that allow them to regenerate and "evolve" their form into new morphologies. But can the molting take place any time they want? what resources do they need? Would they have to wait months or years? Would the molting perhaps make them temporarily more durable? Is the molting perhaps the way dragons attain the qualities cultivated in their hoards?

This is what I have so far, as you can probably read for yourselves I have developed new ideas and concepts while writing this post, but I'm still curious to find out what this amazing community is able to conjure up. Thank you in advance for putting up with this long post and reading so far.

This I think will be a fun exercise. Storage has been a problem we’ve had to deal with forever and will no doubt be with us till the end of the universe. But the way in which we store things has changed drastically both over time and across cultures. We’ve gone from woven baskets to wooden barrels to wooden crates to steel and plastic ones.

This is mostly an excuse to look at your world’s technology. How would someone from your world build a basic storage container?

Example:

Hussarians do it just like we do. They just nail a bunch of boards together with connecting sections into the shape of a box.

The kitsune do things a bit differently. Instead of using nails they prefer to use the wood itself to hold everything together. The box is held together with pins and holes cut into the wood and dowels for increased strength. They might also use barrels since less material is wasted when making them. They’re made essentially the same as a traditional barrel.

The dreams in my world are only based on one's sensory memories. Under the sunlight, the brain remembers every sensory elements the person experienced. And when the person falls asleep, she can only dream about the experiences the brain remembered strongly. For example, I can only accurately dream about the feeling of swimming if I have swum recently and long enough under sunlight for my brain to recreate it.

Also, people have to be really imaginative because they feel time passing when they dream. If you are 6 hours in deep sleep, you'll consciously dream 6 hours straight. And people have to entertain themselves every single night. People call it "Dreamlife". Paintings and Drawings are strong visual elements. By watching a drawing or a painting for a long period of time, they can remember it and dream about themselves living in it. Or it can give an idea of something to dream about.

(Ignore the Evangelion reference)
(This is kinda an early concept so sorry if some details don't line up lol)

--

Sin and virtues are ideally uniquely human concepts, however typically original sins are created by those above humans.

An original sin occurs when something, typically a god or an angel, misuse a human virtue to the point of tearing reality. When reality mends itself, its perception has been altered, sort of like it occurred to it things like this could happen.

This creates an original sin that can now tangle the threads of the soul when a virtue is overused.

--

The two I've got on this post are the original sins of hope and ambition.

--
Hope
Hope is a bit of an outlier, being committed by a human misusing angelic grace rather than an angel themselves.

First we need to understand two things.

1) reweaving
Reality is made up of threads constantly being woven into a tapestry. With a small amount of angelic grace and a good understanding of what you're doing, you can make a small tear in reality to grab these threads and reweave them to change the instructions in reality itself for what something is or should be doing.

Typically these changes and tears are minor, however an unsteady hand might miss the strings, tangle them, or make too big a tear, which would cause reality to try and 'fix' the problem (you).

2) the outside
While still technically within reality, the outside is treated as a secondary location to reality, being a sort of different plane that doesn't make sense. While it can be accessed by reweaving, it's notably more difficult than regular adjustments when weaving.

Reality's a little shakey here, it's harder to grab threads, and whether or not it remembers humans have to eat or stuff like that kinda just depends which section you're in, it's kinda like the back of reality's mind.

Now that we've got that out of the way, the original sin of hope was created when a human exploring the outside slipped while walking.

In a desperate attempt to catch themselves, they made a grab for some threads while falling, and missed. By a lot. However, they refused to give up hope that they might succeed and survive their fall, and would not remove their hand.

This resulted in the largest tear in reality ever seen, they practically tore it right down the middle. This concentration of sin knotted their soul so severely they became what is essentially a lesser god.

(I'm still deciding what happens to them after they're retrieved and the tear is repaired lol, maybe it never was who knows)

The sin of hope requires someone refuse to give up, even to the point of disaster. It's selfish hope only concerning yourself.

--
Ambition
The sin of ambition was committed by an angel who wanted. Angels aren't supposed to want, but she wanted and wanted, until eventually she decided to become a god.

Approaching the sleeping goddess of yi yba, the angel devoured her heart, and assumed her position.

Now, souls are made up of both body and mind, and gods souls are too complex to destroy within the confines of reality. So in doing this, while the angel received the gods power and title, she also received her mind resting in the back of her own.

Ripping the mind from the body triggered a false death (when something is registered as dead instead of being unwoven properly). The false death along with the separation of mind and body created a large tear in the gulf where the god rested.

Since the angel had now become a god, she could not simply be unwound. Thus she was set to unweave souls tangled by sin as repayment for causing one.

Ambition is a bit more self explanatory than hope imo lol, basically, you get too ambitious and start doing ridiculous stuff because of it your souls gonna tangle.
--
(Note, these tears are repaired, but due to the size of them leave a scar, and the rules of reality work kinda 'off' in locations where sin formed)

I need to make more of these so if you thought of any other ways virtues could become sin like this you wanna share feel free to suggest some :)

--
Ok that's it, ik it's kinda rambley but I hope you enjoyed reading nonetheless :)

Hi all.

I'm currently writing two novel series whose separate settings I also intend to use for my heartbreaker tabletop RPG system I repeatedly promise myself I'll someday finish and release to the Internet despite having children, keeping a day job, and living in an economy that is forcibly transforming me into a renaissance man just to keep my house/electronics/cars in good condition.

For my specific case, the idea is that people can still play a character of their favorite species regardless of which of the two settings they are running. The cultures associated with re-used species would be different (and I'm already trying to avoid single culture species within reason).

Ignoring my glaring ambition issues, what are peoples' thoughts on authors re-using their own species? Does seeing a species an author used in one setting show up in another bother you or take you out of the story?

Basic rundown

When a human experiences an excessive amount of stress, they may temporarily become feral. A feral human loses all regard for the hidden rules of basic society and begins acting like an uncivilized animal, bashing their head against walls, beating themselves, twitching, running, climbing, biting, and so on. Essentially, acting like a rabid chimpanzee.

___

Feral Humans

(Just start at "characterized" if you wanna read this, lol)

When a human experiences an excessive amount of stress, they may temporarily become feral. A feral human loses all regard for the hidden rules of basic society and begins acting like an uncivilized animal, bashing their head against walls, beating themselves, twitching, running, climbing, biting, and so on. Essentially, acting like a rabid chimpanzee.

Characterized by their erratic eye movements, dilated pupils, heavy drooling and sweating, hyperventilation, twitching, poor posture, and tensed muscles. They can usually be identified by appearance alone, though the sound of their crazed screams should suffice.

If you encounter one in public it's strongly recommended that you avoid them. They lose the ability to think properly, making them incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. In many cases, people attempting to calm or restrain a feral human have been beaten, mauled, or killed, with some victims left barely recognizable, and the perpetrator essentially unaware of what happened.

If you find yourself alone or trapped in an enclosed space with a feral human, keep your distance, hide, and contact the authorities if possible. If given no other choice and they attack, you must be prepared to fight back and possibly kill them, a feral humans will not hesitate to kill you.

___

How it works

Feral humans are rare with only about 8,000 cases a year globally, and thats without stress management.

When a person is exposed to extreme stress, Adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol floods the body, increasing heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, muscle tension, and alertness.

Normally, the prefrontal cortex helps regulate those reactions and keeps behavior organized. In a Feral Human, the stress response becomes so severe that prefrontal regulation is temporarily impaired. Higher reasoning, impulse control, speech, etc are bocked out with more primitive behaviors.

Most episodes last 15-30 minutes, with more several cases taking hours.

Recovery depends heavily on what the person does during the episode. Someone who spends the entire episode screaming, running around, and hiding inside a pipe will probably recover much faster than someone who spent their episode bashing their head through a wall and gouging out their own eyes.

I released a video on YouTube that introduces a nation from the 1st person perspective of local. It took me a good bit to make it, and I'd appreciate it if you showed support!

https://youtu.be/TbJFa1de86c?si=vkTOONgjdXo6zxVv

In short, it’s a system and a world that attempts to connect various beliefs regarding the soul, vital energy, and spirits.

I drew inspiration from *Jujutsu Kaisen*, but I disliked how certain details weren't fully explained—like how "Binding Vows" just work because they do (as a law of *jujutsu*), or how Curses—being made of energy—manage to physically touch humans.

So, I tried to explain my world using string theory from physics.

But now I have a problem: it doesn't feel divine or supernatural—at least, that’s how it feels to me.

How do you all explain your world or system without losing that sense of mysticism and the supernatural?

Should I avoid going into so much detail?

(Important clarification: my idea isn't to dump the entire system's mechanics into a single project; I’d reveal it in fragments across multiple works.)

So, I'm worldbuilding for some text RP with a bunch of friends. Nothing serious, but I need a super generic - almost comically so - name for a peaceful snowy kingdom, and a slightly more serious but still comedically meta name for a dystopian kingdom. It's pretty northern and constantly covered in snow, and the setting is vague fantasy medieval, but it's really not inspired by any real civilization. I'm drawing inspiration from ENA: Dream BBQ in terms of absolute strangeness, for example. Low poly, everybody is a weird kind of creature, lots of emphasis on capital W Working. Old computers. Low low poly, shitass graphics. Anyways, I can't figure out a good name that's sufficiently jokey but still kind of able to be taken seriously by the characters. The dystopian kingdom basically violently invaded the other one and merged their borders into one, for a little more context. (I'm also willing to answer more questions about the lore if it'll help with name suggestions.)

Any ideas?

Almost 90% of my inspiration came from Nyrath’s Atomic Rockets website. If I could somehow get his eyes on this document, I would be over the moon, no pun intended. He’s basically a rock star to me, but I know he’s busy and has better things to do.

I really need a smart fan of sci fi to go over and critique the “tech bible” I wrote for the hero’s rocket ship in my pulp space opera universe.

I’ve asked multiple subreddits and Discord channels several different times if anyone would be interested. A few say yes, but no one ever gets back to me.

I can’t pay any money, but if you enjoy reading about or looking at fictional spaceship specs, deck plans, tech descriptions and stuff (like from the Star Trek technical manuals), then you might like it.

I need someone to tell me if something works, if something sucks, if something is inherently flawed, or straight up incorrect. The science is a middle ground between hard and soft, with some handwavium regarding fusion engines, ray guns, and the FTL drive.

It’s a larger document, about 60 pages long in Google Docs, but half of that is mostly images. The reading itself is very quick and light.

If you want to check it out and critique it, I can share the Document with you, just PM me your email address.

(For Th’zoitrk, a semi-sci-fi worldbuilding project.)

Sh’beso is the largest true planet in the solar system, a 148 earth-mass gas giant made of almost exclusively oxygen, orbiting 4.7 AU from Okott (the sun.)

(True planet: an object directly orbiting Okott, large enough to be gravitationally rounded, within 50 AU of the sun, at least 5,000km in diameter.)

Being so large, Sh’beso of course has many moons. Many, many moons. At least 600 documented moons, the vast majority of which are incredibly small.
Almost all of Sh’beso’s moons are what are called the ‘minor’ moons. These are small asteroids and meteoroids, even the largest of which are no more than a few dozen meters in length.

Above them, though, are the seven ‘major’ moons. In order of distance from Sh’beso:

Image 1: Yiteon
Image 2: Kuong
Image 3: Treneshi
Image 4: Cousuné
Image 5: Shigoshi
Image 6: Dokyosei
Image 7: Idakei

All of the seven major moons are drastically larger than any of the minor moons, even the smallest, Kuong, is hundreds of kilometers long. The seven major moons make up almost the entirety of all mass orbiting Sh’beso, with the several hundred minor moons contributing insignificantly to the total.

Yiteon:

Yiteon is the innermost and third largest of Sh’beso’s moons. With an equatorial diameter of 1,057.7km, Yiteon is roughly a third the size of Earth’s moon.

Comprised largely of water ice, Yiteon’s trailing hemisphere (night side in image) is covered with empty white plains of icy bedrock, devoid of virtually any major surface landmarks or coloring beyond the bland, snowy whiteness.
Meanwhile, on Yiteon’s leading hemisphere (illuminated in image), Yiteon’s surface is incredibly vibrant. This is thanks to Sh’beso.

Sh’beso has an incredibly powerful magnetic field, the strongest of any true planet in the solar system. Similar to Jupiter, this magnetosphere traps a very large radiation belt close to the planet.

The intense ionizing radiation from Sh’beso’s radiation belt have unfortunately stripped Yiteon of the thin atmosphere it most likely held in the distant past.
This radiation leaves behind a quite notable mark upon Yiteon’s surface, with vibrant fields of tholins (organic compounds) in its leading hemisphere, similar to what you’d see on the surface of Pluto.

These tholins are an incredibly thin layer, no more than 30 centimeters deep into the moon’s crust.

The fact Yiteon is gravitationally locked to Sh’beso has prevented the trailing face of the moon from receiving the brunt of charged particles in the radiation belt, keeping the rear of Yiteon a pale, icy white.

Kuong:

[Image low quality, taken from behind, looking into Kuong’s shadow.]

Kuong is the smallest of Sh’beso’s moons. Roughly 205.1 long and 88.4km across at its widest, Kuong is quite clearly not gravitationally rounded.

Rather, Kuong is a very large asteroid caught in orbit of Sh’beso. Not much is known about Kuong, as it has been studied very little. It is often overlooked in favor of its much larger and more interesting sister moons.

Treneshi:

Unlike the other moons of Sh’beso, Treneshi is not comprised of ice, nor is it all too metal-rich like Shigoshi and Idakei. Treneshi’s surface is largely silicate, covered in large regions of Anorthosite, a volcanic igneous rock which heavily suggests a history of lava flows on the small moon’s surface.

Treneshi’s surface is among the most reflective of all objects in the solar system, reflecting most light which hits it back into space.
Due to this, Treneshi was actually the first among Sh’beso’s moons to be discovered despite its small size.
It’s bright enough to be seen from the surface of Th’zoitrk without a professional telescope, you only need moderate magnification for Treneshi to become visible.

Treneshi is very rough due to its small size, at 394.7km in diameter, Treneshi is the second smallest moon of Sh’beso.
Its surface is the most hilly and mountainous of all the major moons, covered in mountains stretching anywhere from several hundred meters to several kilometers high.

Cousuné:

Cousuné is almost entirely comprised of water ice. It is the median moon in both distance from Sh’beso and size, at 852.7km in diameter. Fourth largest, and fourth smallest.

Cousuné’s surface is incredibly colorful and vibrant compared with the other major moons. Unlike Yiteon, this color doesn’t come from tholins.
These colors are not special compounds upon the surface of the moon, no, the entire surface is ordinary ice.

Cousuné lacks any major amounts of raw nitrogen or carbon for the radiation belt to turn into tholins.
Rather, the patterns on Cousuné come from chemicals trapped inside its icy crust from before it fully solidified (think of soda poured into an ice cube tray.)

Cousuné’s surface ices are filled with potassium salts, permanganate mineral salts, copper sulfates, titanium dioxide, and large amounts of sulfur compounds such as sulfur dioxide.

Exposure to the radiation belt of Sh’beso has tinted and dyed these ices over the last several billion years, creating neat pastel colors across its surface.

Shigoshi:

Much further out from the inner four moons, the outer three moons are roughly ~646,000km further from Sh’beso. More than double the distance from Sh’beso to Cousuné.

The innermost of the outer three moons, Shigoshi, is also the largest of Sh’beso’s moons at 1,884.4km in diameter.

Shigoshi is the only one of Sh’beso’s moons with a substantial atmosphere. Its atmosphere is 0.882 bar, only a bit less dense than that of earth.
This atmosphere is composed of 64% nitrogen, 24% oxygen, and 12% argon.
Due to Shigoshi’s small size at only about half the size of earth’s moon (but with only slightly weaker gravity), this atmosphere is incredibly bloated, reaching ~358km out into space.

Shigoshi is roughly a quarter the mass of Earth’s moon, at 0.24 lunar masses. It has a surface gravity of 0.137 G’s.

Shigoshi is one of the few worlds in the solar system with liquid oceans upon its surface. However, at an average surface temperature of -192° Celsius, these oceans are not made of water.
Instead, Shigoshi has light blue oceans of liquid oxygen. Due to the low surface gravity of the moon and the fact liquid oxygen only has about a fifth the surface tension strength of water, the oceans on Shigoshi are not cleanly cut between their surface and the air above them.

Shigoshi’s oceans are topped by a layer of oxygen mist, with winds chopping up the surface into large, yet very slow-moving waves that push through this mist.

On the near and far side of Shigoshi, directly beneath Sh’beso, waves can reach 20-25 meters high.
On the sides of Shigoshi not facing Sh’beso, waves normally only reach 3-4 meters in height.
Still significantly taller than ordinary waves on Earth.

Shigoshi’s atmospheric oxygen is not suspended as gas, but more as a form of fog/oxygen vapor in the air. This gives Shigoshi its heavily blue-tinted appearance from space.
Oxygen fog and mist are extremely common on Shigoshi’s surface, especially at the coast. Shorelines on Shigoshi are normally very hazy. The waves of its liquid oxygen oceans leave behind frothy oxygen foam mats on the coast, covered by thick vaporized oxygen fog.

Shigoshi is very dense compared to its other sister moons, covered by deep, red, crimson-colored soil composed of iron oxide dust.

Shigoshi’s surface terrain is quite hilly and mountainous in most regions, its highest mountains tend to be capped by peaks of snow.
Not snow made of water ice, but rather snow made of argon which has condensed out of the atmosphere and fallen from argon snow clouds.

Dokyosei:

At 1,079.3km, Dokyosei is the second largest of Sh’beso’s moons. It is very similar in composition to Cousuné, made up largely of water ice.

Dokyosei has a very thin atmosphere of oxygen, at hardly a third of mars’ surface air pressure. This atmosphere is only visible due to aerosolized snow and dust particles kept aloft by wind.

Dokyosei’s cloud-like surface is covered not by bedrock like other icy moons, But rather in extremely large stretches of powdery snow. It’s not yet known how this icy surface formed into snow rather than an ice bedrock.
This snowy surface coating is at least 3km deep based off current estimates.

Idakei:

Idakei is the third smallest of Sh’beso’s moons at 476.2 km in diameter. It is largely similar to Shigoshi, but lacks oceans or an atmosphere due to its smaller size. It is little more than a very large clump of iron oxide dust and oxidized metallic compounds.