/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

>They are biologically far removed from humans with an unexplained origin, and the first intelligent race to walk the land, before humans surviving on massive herds that have been wiped out.
This got messed up somehow

They are biologically far removed from humans with an unexplained origin, and the first intelligent race to walk the land, before humans they survived on massive herds that have been wiped out.

Snails.
Their shells are incredibly light, so they are pretty fast.
Also once a month it can shoot a dart with the force of a canon.

11 nations too many for a fantasy setting the size of the continental United States?

It depends how many you're using. I have over 70 nations but most are background lore to expand the world and they haven't been fleshed out at all.

not really. depends on what you want out of your nations

Whumps.
Sort of a cross between a mule and a camel with twice the endurance and stamina.

On the downside, they're stubborn as all hell so a trained one tends to cost an arm and a leg.

United States are pretty big. I think it would fit just fine. Probably to few, actually.

I have a bunch of ideas for a setting but don't know what to do to start putting everything down. what do i do guys?

Just put them down and try to justify them and see how it goes. I discovered some of more interesting ideas for myself in trying to justify my original ideas.

I use a map. I'm keen to my own hints and symbolism that other people can't really read, I can record the culture and safety of a location on a map by its shape and biome colors as well as the town names. When I have a decent idea I alter or add a spot on the map with subtleties that contain the idea, from there I slowly develop the region more and more turning it from a shallow placeholder to something full.

I constantly add and cut things to condense it to something that contains the best ideas while those that don't work are clipped off.

>11 nations too many for a fantasy setting the size of the continental United States?
It depends a bit on the how much your fantastical magic/tech enables travel and communication... but for typical, low-tech fantasy worlds, 11 nations in an area the size of the US is probably on the light side.

Just look at Europe for most of its recorded history... It's a comparable land area, and today, Europe's got about 45-ish countries (there's a few grey areas), plus a handful of other "city state" level entities like the Vatican, Monaco and San Marino. There were historical periods where a major empire managed to capture the lion's share of that, but in other periods there were many, many more sovereign nations, with a lot of the large countries like France, Britain and Germany cut up into four or more pieces.

Number of countries you're likely to have comes down to a combination of geography and technology (or magic). Large empires around the Mediterranean were possible because sea travel enabled comparatively fast travel and communication. Technology (e.g. trains) allowed the US to effectively govern a large area. By the same token, separate populations are more likely to create effective borders at natural barriers to travel, like mountains and rivers.

>separate populations are more likely to create effective borders at natural barriers to travel, like mountains and rivers

The map of native american tribes is a perfect example of this, but population is also a factor. It's easier to govern a sparsely populated area than a densely populated one. Populations tend to flourish in the fertile coastal areas, and in the US those regions are also mountainous, leading to lots and lots of small nations. In the plains, a nomadic lifestyle was the norm (and travel uninhibited) so groups like the Crow and Ute were able to control large areas.

Giants are just big humans, user. Big, intelligent gorillas would just be as contrived.

Go look up filename. He's done a couple similar paintings for his 'giant slaves' idea

>is there a non-magic justification for their existance?

All kinds of megafauna have existed before. Most likely justifiable as an evolutionary trait, assuming there is large enough game for them to hunt.

No, considering nation-states have existed and the Holy Roman Empire was made out of 60-something states that were states but were part of the empire and somesuchshit.

If anything, it is too few.

> Giants!
Big things DO need a lot of food, but it's certainly possible for a typical ecosystem to support at least some megafauna. Most fantasy giants don't have significantly larger mass than a modern elephant, and of course many known dinosaurs were many times that size. Energy consumption is a consideration, certainly, but I don't see it as a major limitation. Thinking about large animals on earth, there are really two things you need to think about:

1) Body Type - in an earth-like environment, without a magic loophole, simply "scaling up" human anatomy is not plausible. The relative sizes of body parts do not scale linearly with size (what's known as the "square-cube law"). A mosquito isn't built like a cat, a cat isn't built like a horse, and a horse isn't built like an elephant. For starters, the limbs and torso on a giant should be proportionately much thicker than on a human.

2) Competition - humans tend to be alpha hunters in every ecosystem they enter (and exploit). Historically, this includes using their technological superiority to hunt competing species to extinction, including (maybe especially) those that are physically superior. How do your giants manage to compete successfully with humans for resources?

the giants in my setting are a mix between the celtic britons of antiquity and the vikings of late antiquity and earlier middle ages.

They live on a large Island(that's pretty much the british isles mixed with the nordic countries.) called Fathalahm.

In the north of Fathalahm it is mountainous and cold, even in the summer temperatures can be quite cool in the mountains. to the south, it is more hilly, slowly transitioning into rolling grassland(like bumpy prairies, I guess). there it is much warmer.

many of the things foreigners say about Fathalahm is that the forests are beautiful and the weather is wetter than a drunken uncle. This is because(much like real life britain) the rainy season is cool and rainy, and the summer season is sunny, fluctuating between warm and cool. in the first half of fall, the weather is nice. warm and sunny, short days and pretty colorful leaves. the second have is shite though. wet, wet, wet. the first half of winter is rainy in the morning, frosty in the after noon. second half is a blanket of thin snow(think five to eight centimeters in our measurements for most of the island, and twelve to twenty in the mountains.)

Also, the giants are only about three meters tall. Compared to the average human who is just a smidge under two meters tall, they're quite sizable.

Also, when I was done with writing some stuff in my setting's antiquity(fantasy version of the Persian Wars, fantasy version of Alexander's Conquests, fantasy version of Roma empire, ect) i was going to write a whole thing about Fathalhi Raiders(think vikings), coming to loot the coasts of the mainland. Then, their would be a holy war declared on the giants and a few nations would join into a pact to defeat them. But everyting falls apart as soon as the humans invade Fathalahm.

would you like to know more?

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
You can become a Vampire or an Android, both are bad choices in the long run as you become either a slave to a god or a controller.
>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?

Actual, naturally born magicians are nearly extinct. They presumably once had increadle power but it's left intentionally ambiguous as to how powerful they actually were.
>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
The deities don't really bother with mortal concerns. The earth spirits are the ones who make sure the world isn't destroyed.
>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
No, tearing a hole in reality like that never ends well for the average person.

I'm still debating on whether I want to use vulture-like terror birds or giant hyenas in my desert setting. Maybe I'll use some kinda dune-surfing boats instead.

That aren't machines?
Koatl Lizards and Elephants.

>Most fantasy giants don't have significantly larger mass than a modern elephant, and of course many known dinosaurs were many times that size.

Most of the large ones were either herbivores, or adapted to hunt said herbivores, though. Polar bears/sabertooth tigers are probably the largest carnivores. Of course, if the giants are omnivores with a significant part of their diet being from plants, or there is other megafauna for them to hunt, it should work out. Of course, if they are smart enough to farm/herd/domesticate animals, more or less a moot point.

>How do your giants manage to compete successfully with humans for resources?

Just make all humans lactose-intolerant and the giants not.

>would you like to know more?
no, and truth be told i already know more than I would like.
If you have to say the name of your setting, you've already lost the war with conservation of detail

That's actually north america after colonization (by groups originally from China)

...

that's not the name of the setting, that's the name of the island(sub-continent, whatever. It's big, anyhow)

>not name of setting
>it's the name of a place

What's the executive summary/elevator pitch for your world?

>sino-celt collapsing empire discovers soldier-versus-warrior clash of ideals

>Bunch of human nations we-wuzing as fantasy races fighting WWI with magic and unethical science

Merchant princes from Venice have to deal with racial tension against Mongolian working class. There's also people who killed and ate their god.

>Nuclear Apocalypse after Atom Bomb invented in WWI

world war 1, except in space

>WW1 three times in a row

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
There are a couple; it's a Noble Bright world of heroes and demi-gods.
The better a spellcaster you are, the slower you age. If you reach the peak of magical ability you've reached magical immortality, and all it'll take is some top-grade healing magic to reverse the aging process.
There's also ways that don't involve spellcasting, like becoming Undead, having your soul stuffed in an Automaton's soulstone, or transcending to "Outsider" status.

>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
The strongest Wizard in history can perform some limited reality warping, but it's all ritualized and consumes an enormous amount of life-force and ambient magic. As for a "Wish", a similarly powerful spellcaster can put in a request to the Creator to intervene in some way, with obvious limitations.

>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
Plenty of demi-gods already exist, one of which is a self-righteous Wizard who calls himself the Warden.

>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
It's almost required for most demi-gods to have some manner of personal plane, usually as a secret base. Pieter Volans in particular hasn't left his plane in centuries.

Pic related, demi-god chillin' in a personal plane.

>Giants, vampirism, "magic" alchemical items affect humanity's development greatly from the beginning rather than just being accessories. Architecture develops MUCH faster due to giants, vampires quickly get a stranglehold over society, wild vampires ruin rural life and push farming into defended/walled rural communities where the vampire overlords collect blood taxes, which causes people to start hating vampires and overthrow the royals which fucks everything up and effectively creates medieval post-apocalypse, also an extremely limited amount of WW1 technology fluked into the world to go through lots of abuse by the people trying to use it

Hey, it's a fascinating subject. Lots of things you can do with it.

Dwarves are subterranean psychos worshipping volcanoes and setting them to erupt intentionally.

that sounds like a neat plot

>>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
Yes. You need to kill your god and steal his power. Your form will change a bit (Like you become bald and unhealthily pale) but you won't wittle or anything.
>>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
Stealing from god would give you some major reality-altering powers, but even gods themselves can't alter the very fabric. Regular magic users are however pretty low on power scale.
>>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
After the first god-killing incident they mostly went into hiding. They also aren't very smart or aware, despite being powerful and their powers can not directly target those who don't worship them. God-eaters are smarter, more aware and have more agency, even if they are weaker.
>>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
Nobody gets to create any kind of planes.

BC WWII's been abused to shit.

We need to write out some definite rules for worldbuilding.

>1: Unless given an insurmountable reason not to, intelligent species will live EVERYWHERE.
>2: Rivers *merge* while flowing downstream towards the sea, and only split to form a delta.
>3: If your setting cannot withstand Karl Pilkington existing within it, your setting cannot exist.
>etc.

WWI Atom bomb guy here.

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
Only one guy in the setting could be functionally immortal, and that required him to be permanently trapped in an iron lung wheelchair. The guy is utterly miserable, in constant pain, and desperately wants to die already but his family keeps him around because he's the only one smart enough to keep old tech working and the family business running.
>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
The only trace of magic is oraclery and vision-quests, and it's left up to imagination whether that's real magic or esoteric bullshit.
>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
N/A but some people are convinced the Sun is the eye of whatever created the world and at the end of every day it resets the world again with minor alterations.

>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
N/A

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
The pre-vampire and his first generation live forever, vampires below that die from the transformation but they live long depending on their generation.
Wizards can prolong their lives. What makes a wizard a wizard is their best-kept secret, however they slowly lose interest and intentionally suppress their powers, think like using cheat codes. It ruins the game.

>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
They haven't done anything cool in the real world for a long time, mostly just personal miracles and pretty lights. All of the significant magic goes on in other realms that wizards created (where magic is stronger), they occasionally have turf wars but most just isolate themselves on their territory, hopefully with a few friends. During the Wayward Ages when magic was at its strongest and Earth ran on a parallel timeline to the outer realms, wizards created most of the "magic" stuff on Earth like monsters. Most of what they did has been buried or became natural, so it's hard to tell how powerful they really were.

>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
Not anymore, the most powerful wizard (completely uncontested) hasn't stood up from his chair or used any magic in millennia and he doesn't have any goals or agenda. He killed the other god-wizards long ago. The second strongest made a huge cave on Earth one time and created vampires but that was about it, he can't even control the vampires anymore.

>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
As previously stated, 99% wizards are chilling and quarreling in other planes and most can't go back to Earth anymore because their life-suspending magic would weaken and kill them.

>2: Rivers *merge* while flowing downstream towards the sea, and only split to form a delta.

Bifurcation also happens outside deltas. See Divide Creek, Nkusi and Nerodimka. It's just extremely rare.

I'm trying to make a sensible, but diverse planet for the setting I'm working out, but I don't know how to begin. Anyone have ideas, especially with how to simulate stuff like plate tectonics? I don't want to just have a random smattering of crap on the map; I seriously want it to have some integrity.

Am I terrible for wanting that? Or is this a normal thing for settings to have stuff like this baked into the background?

Dorf Fortress?

It's rather small. Best solution to avoid having to paint ten billion principalties like in the HRE is to have de-centralized macro entities that you can refer to ("the Celts") instead of a billion tribes to keep track of (the Aedui, the Arverni, the Casse, the Belgae, ect.). To help offer a realistic sense of pre-modern pre-nation state decentralization, let's imagine a tiered system:

>Stage 1: Continental (European, Asian, Middle Eastern referring to West Asian and Egyptian).
For our template example - European.

>Stage 2: Regional (Iberian, Slavic, Germanic, Romance-Latins, Italians, Nordic, Semitic, Iranian in the ethnic sense from Azeris to Tajiks and Pashtuns). Modern day is your region or ethnic group.
For our template example - Italian.

>Stage 3: National or Pseudo-national (Persian, Median, Arab, Pashtuns, Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Aragonese, Portuguese, Dorian or Ionian Greek, Ghassanid or Lakhmid). Modern day is your country.
For our template example - Latin (at the time of the Roman republic)

Stage 4: Sub-national (Athenian, Spartan, tribal confederacies like the Ghassanids/Lakhmids, the Durrani and Ghilzai Pashtuns). Modern day is your region within a country, your state for us burgers.
For our template example - Roman (at the time of the Roman republic)

Stage 5: Tribal (the specific tribes, the city they belong to). Usually the city or county for modern day.
For our template example - Cornelia.

So we've got a character, Marcus Cornelius Avitus. He's a European, Italian, Latin, Roman of the Cornelia family.

You don't have to plan for all five for all your characters. Nor do you need all five for even a main character. Post limit so lemme continue.

A general rule seeks to define, like, >90% of circumstances. It's still a good rule for worldbuilding.

Orc tribe finds ancient Dwarf city in the desert, stop being nomadic and settle near it. Have to fight whatever's inside the ruins for cool shit as well as anyone else that wants the cool shit, be they other tribes, those industry-craved not-Helghast Elves, or [whatever else].

>They have a vast and reliable source of food (you'll need to explain why humans don't use it)

What is "the giants", Alex?

>How difficult is it to ascend to omnipotence in your setting, /wbg/?
Probably impossible as the sun likely wouldn't enjoy the competition. Divinity? Yeah sure, takes a rather long time though.

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
Reliable? Not so much, but paths do exist. The Aedda, a race that on average lives 24 years, speak of the wisest elders living 10 fold that. Technically the treeple, who really need a better name, cannot die of old age alone by default.
>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
It is a pretty high magic setting, though that comes more from accessibility and quantity than from power. Technically once the treeple grow into just plain ole trees, they begin to bend reality around themselves to their will in their endless dreams.
>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
It's largely all local, but yes. The landfall was caused by a godly smack down.
>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
Nope, the only other plane of reality (unless you call my world planes which some have) was discovered via teleportation magic. You generally avoid it if you can, never travel without a group. Do not be lead astray by the eyes.

I'm probably not working on the doodle tonight, so I'll throw that in if anyone has suggestions or questions (or I won't, fucking hell I had one job).

Is it even possible to make bug humanoids that don't look creepy and gross as fuck?

Moths don't count.

>Smei-generic fantasy world gets invaded by aliens

>tons of/huge eyes
>giant mandibles
>insect appendages in general

g-good luck

I don't think you can avoid the gross angle, but maybe you can go for the "Ugly but also kind of cute" way.

Dinosaurs of all sorts are used as assorted mounts and beasts of burden by pseudo-nomadic elves.

Collapse of the Roman Empire in the early middle ages, except with dinosaurs, elves, and kung-fu lizardmen that live on the bottom of the sea.

It's hard to actually map spheres if you don';t have a globe to do it on. Try doing it with just one or two continents at a time-ish. For tectonic plates, scribble some psuedo-random shapes and decide which ones will be continenetal and which ones will be oceanic. Figure out which way the paltes are moving, and whether they're subducting or what have you. go from there.

Currently my races are;
>Hobgoblins
>Flock (Sheep People)
>Humans
>Ogre/Oni

Is this enough races? i don't know if it feels 'balanced' enough yet, I don't want too many redundant races but at the same time I want the setting to feel diverse.

It really depends, I think it's better to have an idea of what niches you want filled, and then fit races to that rather than throwing in ideas you like with no place to put them.

Describe what role each of these races fill user, also, does race=culture in your setting? Do the races intermingle at all?

Base them on caterpillars.
Hutt-like body structure, but the tail doesn't taper to a point and remains stubby and rounded.

humanity was originally on all 4 inner worlds, which at first orbited saturn.

shapeshifters from jupiter invaded and caused the aliens that lived on saturn to throw the 4 inner worlds into their current orbit.

I want all the 'main' niches to be filled. Big strong guys, little sneaky guys, I guess the nerdy/bookish types. (Probably humans, in this case).

The Hobgoblins are mean little imperialists, but their sights are not set on any of the other 'big folk'. Literally created by Heaven itself to stem the tide of goblins, the hobgoblins are slavers. Morality in this world is literally that enslaving goblins is a good thing, they are literally happier when enslaved, and its the only way for the goblins to get into the afterlife. Otherwise they don't even have a 'soul'. The hobgoblins compared to other races though are small and compact, big enough to dominate goblins but small enough to chase them into their burrows.

The flock are the pastoral, friendly and amicable beings in the setting. The idea here is animal sheep do not exist, but the flock do, and therefore all the cloth produced in the setting is made in no small part by the flock themselves. Not quite as cowardly as real sheep but easily swayed by friends and family.

The Ogres I have less material on but I'd like to imagine something a bit more noble or at least thoughtful then generic big dumb orc brutes.

Humans as I said are always a bit generic, but I really like the idea of making them the more magically inclined, scholarly race. All about books; Sharp eyes to read text, slender fingers to write it, and a appetite for knowledge to fill them.

Could go the Shrek direction with Ogres.

Solitary, ill-tempered, and crass, but will genuinely try their best to do the right thing and make loyal friends or companions.

They tend to live by themselves widely spaced out because their own stubbornness tends to make long-term ogre communities fall apart.

>Lewis and Clark colonize the Not!Underdark

This unironically sounds really great.

Do they get a Drow Sacagawea?

TY friend!

To be honest, Shrek Ogres had some badass powers back when it was a kids' book.
>Stare of death
>Poison breath
>Deadly toxic even to poison snakes

Utter badasses

Drow don't exist actually, basic premise is X apocalyptic event happens on the surface and makes it inhospitable. So it forces the survivors underground where they discover the "Great below", and the players are part of expedition teams to scout out the new territory. There will be Moth people though.

The personality is fine, but I'll try to skip on the memes, thanks.

I'm sure that's what they were intending, I doubt they're asking you to add literal fedora tipping ogres into your world.

Where can I indulge in collaborative worldbuilding outside of Veeky Forums?

This interests me as well

Reddit

...

Nice oni friend. Here's mine

Eh. Maybe a nod to 'em here and there for the lulz, but I didn't mean full on memeage.

YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO NERD

But yeah pic was not related.

Moth Sacagawea?

r/worldbuilding

This ded?

Fluffy moths, user.

More of a rotting corpse held up by a few strings and someone's hand jammed up it like a grisly puppet show, but yeah.

>Moths don't count
B8?

Also Spiderwick has some good shit

Lovely image op.

Shame, I never got to talk at length about my own shitty project

Just trying to convince user to rethink his position on moth-folk.

I mean not talking about it isn't going to liven things up any.

Eh what the hell.
You want the abridged version or the full fluff?

If you toss out the abridged people could ask more questions.

Roighto.

The world as we know it is covered in sprawling desert rife with bandits, beasts, and horrors beyond description. In this harshest of environments, only small pockets of civilization can sustain themselves, the largest of which are lumped together colloquially as “The Three Cities”; three fervently isolationist urban bastions. Together, their refuse feeds the trade of the outer Wasteland.

Arabia?

(cont.)
The history of the world has been lost, forgotten and neglected, both from the eroding sands of time and indifference of a people most concerned with survival, yet a few scraps of forgotten history remain stowed away in ruins and darkened rooms. With the exception of the Firstfolk, all residents of the Desert are actually descendants of colonists from a land across the seas. Originally, much of the coastland was fertile and green, but increased demand for food to feed the explosive population of their mother countries led to the colonies overfarming, literally turning the land to dust. On top of this, a conflict written of only as the Great War broke out between the nations of the Old World, who threw their teeming populations at one another with little regard for lives lost, effectively putting a meat grinder to the masses. Eventually, the war came to a great standstill, with the advent of trenches and mechanized infantry creating a war of attrition that slowly ebbed away at these once proud nations.
When an experimental weapon was developed with the promise of putting a swift and bloody end of the conflict, war-weary governments put it into action without question. No one can say for sure what the nature of this terrible weapon was, but mere days after its deployment all contact between the Old World and its colonies was cut abruptly off. Whatever messengers were sent to spread news of the fate of the Old World did not make it through the journey, or else were laughed off as raving madmen and died in obscurity.
Now, hundreds of years later, after the descendants of colonies have forgotten their origins completely, echoes of the Old World rise ominously in volume. Strange things have occurred around the continent’s coastline, rumours of seaborne monsters and horrid plagues that strike without warning in the night spread like wildfire throughout the desert. Something big is coming; whatever killed the Old World is creeping its way across the seas…

HRE map for reference

Omnipotence is pretty much out of the question.

>Are there reliable paths to immortality? Will you whittle away down to nothing over a long time, or is your form easily maintained?
Immortality is difficult/impossible to achieve, depending on how you define it. There have been a few people throughout history in Saddath-Leng (not!Orient) who have been able to slow or stop aging through alchemical means, but they still die from violence and since this process is basically a more extreme version of Mithridatism, most of the people who attempt it succumb to the poisons they ingest and end up dying.

You've also got the prince of the Machine State and his inner circle of nobles, but their mode of "immortality" is more like biomechanical undeath, and even the Prince doesn't know the extent of their resilience to injury.

>On what scale is your strongest magic? Could the world's strongest Wizard make a wish and alter the fabric of reality?
Pretty weak, desu senpai. There is nothing like wish magic or any other magic where a single spell could have worldwide effects. The spookiest stuff you'll get with magic is mind reading and semi-accurate prophesy.

>Are there already reasonably powerful deities to keep a newly empowered in check?
Not really, no. The gods in this world are basically just memetic constructs with only minimal influence over the material world, and only in connection with their believers.

>Would it be easier just to create a personal demi-plane to rule over?
There's no way to create a new plane, and the only plane other than the normal material world is fundamentally incapable of supporting habitation due to a lack of natural light and organic materials.

Now that is giving me a hell of a nausicaa vibe to it. Which I like given I'm trying to give my current setting a pretty heavy Ghibli vibe to it.

Now about these beasts and horrors?

I know you said moths don't count, but you can still borrow elements from moths and use them in a different way. Namely, the fur - you can cover up a lot of the little gross details of bugs by hiding them under fluff and fur.

You can also go with this kind of idea and have them very simple and smooth with a kind of stylized face where colour markings make their faces look cuter than they are.

Monsters are currently being developed, but I would prefer to keep them mysterious and rare, with traces of the weapon's effects on the wildlife.

For example; Skindogs
A recent phenomenon amongst the desert's wild dog population is a disturbing and hideous birth defect occurring with worrying regularity.

Once in a blue moon a litter of pups is born hairless and with patches of skin missing from their twisted bodies. The pain, of course, is hideous, and drives them to vicious madness that often leads them to turn upon their mother in the first moments of their life.

These monstrosities are short lived, lasting only a month or so before succumbing to the failure of its underdeveloped organs, but they somehow manage to thrive despite this.
For one, the Skindogs undergo puberty only days after their birth, reaching adulthood within the week. Another odd feature of this bastard species is an uncanny resilience to damage. Their pain-addled minds are so clouded that the beasts will continue to snap and leap at their prey long after a normal dog's body would have given out. Additionally, any wounds incurred will heal rapidly, whole chunks of missing flesh filled in with seemingly benign tumours and growths.

So yeah.
Not very friendly.

And then there's The Stranger...

this is just my taste, but i find when settings have only a single anthromorphic animal type race and no others it feels kind of... unfinished i guess. why are only sheep sapient enough to be a major race? what happened to other intelligent animals like raccoons and stuff?

if it's just that you like sheep and thought they'd make a cool race, that's totally fine, but for me it feels like there is an underlying logic i'm searching for but can't find.

You don't even need moths for this.

Just model the bug-people off of the orchid mantis. It's basically the K-Pop star of the insect world.