Veeky Forums builds a world

the catgirls enjoy carving mega structures out of the giant ice plains just for stuff to do

the kaiju arent going to be very big if all the residents are so small

>implying mini Kaiju aren't amazing

ooh, that age-old-race's desperate attempt to keep their thinning atmosphere from fucking off into space Mars-style went tits up when the civil war broke out. Or maybe the air draining off was one of the causes of the war?

Left to run off the rails (or perhaps tampered with), the vast machinery involved went a bit overboard, clogging the atmosphere with all sorts of technological gubbins and freezing over the surface.

The cities are kept flying by tapping the seemingly-limitless energy of what are considered wild spirits of the elements. Airships are powered by lesser spirits of the same sort.

Wait, since the catgirls seem to not be affected by the Kaijus while they're carving their megastructures...

What if they are the Kaijus? Makes sense if the other races are small, and the catgirls are of normal human size.

>attack of the 50 foot tall catgirl
dear god user

the setting is, in fact, The Rim

Every magic spell needs a focus. Foci are almost always are really heavy and really unwieldy, like a 35 kg boulder or such.

the setting is comedic

The roving Palace-Cities seem like the kind of thing that would have strict authorities in charge of it. When the whole population depends on the skills of the captain, he who drives the city rules. Or is part of the ruling class, or very well paid by them, or whatever.

Point is, having people's lives in your hands gives you a lot of power over them.

So while the hereditary captain-generals, merchant houses, or any sort of elite ruling the castle-city (citadel?) in question, they're less often seen down with the schmucks deployed 'below' the city. The ones fanning out before the coming of the city proper, clearing the path and gathering anything they get their hands on to sell in the markets or use as building material. Maybe there's a cloud of airships, sub-castles, and various specialized structures buzzing around the city itself, serving its needs

Buzzing may or may not be literal, considering the 'musical' aspect to the magic.

Not a boulder. A concert piano, an organ, a drum set can work.

I was thinking they were semi-nomadic clans that carve shit out of the jagged ice mountains dotting the frozen lands they call home. And not just to look cool either, they've developed a keen ear for acoustics, and those carvings carry magical chants and yodels across the empty plains. Keeping with OP's Magic music thing.

As you can imagine, that sort of massive magical firepower keeps the Kaiju out pretty well.

The power of a fully operational orchestra is a terrible sight to witness, indeed.

That means that the militaries are basically marching bands.

>whynotboth.jpeg
There are two kinds of catgirl-folk in the setting. There are those that is as small as the other inhabitants, who has keen ear for acoustics and carve dwellings in the ice plains, their acoustic architecture keeping out Kaijus.
Then there are the Kaiju-sized catgirls which are more feral, and act like giants to the small catgirls, sometimes helping the small catgirls in making their architecture. They're the only Kaiju-kind not repelled by the ice plains architecture.

This setting was great until the catgirls got involved.

i saw it heading right to where endless legend took it after auriga went full frozen wasteland. the cat girls was my attempt to rectify it

Naw, getting a full orchestra together is tricky business, not least of all because wrangling that much magic through that many instruments leaves a lot of room for error, especially on the more complex prices. Takes a lot of engineering to get the facilities right to maximize the effects, too. They're more used to keep cities moving and that sort of thing.

Militaries have pic related kind of guys scattered throughout the ranks, with instruments varying based on culture and materials at hand.

Just give them good enough worldbuilding to stand on their own without being someone's fetish, and we should be good. Also keep them from inexplicably only being Catgirls. If they're a species, there's going to be Catmen to go with the Catwomen.

>Just give them good enough worldbuilding to stand on their own without being someone's fetish,

Why not both?

Niggers are a disease.

>catgirls
>Veeky Forums still isn't tired of this crusty ass trope of catgirls being the best thing in a setting

This thread is now about musical Dryads, who whistle through grass and plant harmonical ibstruments, and slap hollow gourds to drum up beats hear throughout the valleys.

What is the likelihood of there being Dryad girls who use harmonic instruments made of grass and plantlife, and drum up beats by growing hollow gourds to make music with?

>Island Dryads drum up Hawaiian rhythms and sing up entire storms of petals throughout the islands
This is the world I wish.

¬_¬
user...

it's just Veeky Forums inserting its magical realm like the shit the oldfags cry about every day. Nothing new, and there are plenty of worse stuff on /qst/ now that the faglord trolls have somewhere better to shitpost.

I'm not sure how that fits in with a frozen world of lost wonders and rolling cities powered by melodies, but I'm sure we can salvage something out of it.

Maybe a grove of the things are forcing a small sector on the ice to blaze like the sun through sheer force of musical will and maybe access to the ancient tech. A small oasis wreathed in flame and volcanism, barely beating back the cold night and often subject to bandits, military expeditions, and worst of allTOURISTS!

This saved a madfag's ravings and turned it into gold.

10/10 would visit survivalist dryads.

Also who's to say there aren't lichen dryads that infest floating cities?
Hell, to make it even more surreal, have some dryads be clearly derived from seaweed. Nobody has any idea where they came from and how they survive, but they do.

Fungal Dryads that survive by absorbing ambient energy from generators/bacteria in the air.

They secretly keep energy levels in check, and any attempt to purge them results in the power sources quickly going out of control. When you hear the haunting songs and see a glowing Dryad with a dress of soft plant matter, do not attack. They sing for your safety.

Below the permafrost layer lies a series of huge caverns, filled with plant life, which stay far warmer then the surface due to their close proximity to the planets molten core and the insulation provided by the Ice layer. This is where the Kaiju thrive

It's also home to a large number of decaying cities filled with warring tribes of techno barbarians. Make of that what you will

What if the Kaiju were the descendants of biotitans that went feral? The technobarbarians and the small folks and both kinds of catgirls are the result of biopunk gone wrong?

Or was it only the Kaijus and the catgirls, while the technobarbarians and the smallfolk came into being later?

I reckon It's the first one. Maybe catfolk of both types were there to control/monitor stuff on the surface (the giants for the Kaiju, the "normal" sized ones for the other small-folk) but eventually they forgot the reasons for their actions and ceased to do so, after which things started going downhill very quickly

we talking Howl's moving castle or something like a city that also happens to be a tank

each floating city has a giant dungeon like engine room, complete with archaic mapping systems, mystery, and plenty of monsters. no one knows what exactly is at the heart of the engine powering everything, as no one has ever returned from the engine room

>Ancient Civilization makes use of bioengineered servants and HUEG beasts meant for construction and such
>the big ones are biologically unstable, and need to be kept within range of large towers that broadcast some technomagical shit that keeps them from deteriorating
>The civil war rolls around, one or more sides pulls the production of the civilian stuff meant for the climate control effort, starts making war beasts and soldiers to supplant mounting losses
>the facilities keep pumping them out, even after the war ends, until they break down
>without those broadcasts from the decaying tower networks, the formerly humanoid Giants start degenerating into horrid Kaiju shit
>The Cat people are descended from a bioengineered technician class, meant to work on the towers. It's why they have an ear for the stuff
>the remaining giants stick near them, because the chants resonating through the icy spires keeps them mostly stable

Y/N?

Depends on the city in question.

all magic is not music based.

so close friend

bretty gud user, I like the idea of the frequency being an old melody the lost race had, and some catfolk can still remember enough bits and pieces of it to at least get the kaiju to fuck off

and perhaps there are some catfolk who travel around trying to piece together the entire melody, so that they can retake control of the Kaiju save the surface from them

and of course some dickhead cult like the Sect of Silence or something that's dedicated to eradicating the melody entirely so that the Kaiju may be entirely unchecked and make all the catfolk get rekt

Maybe they think the tattered remnants of the melody are all that's keeping the Kaiju from decaying into bits of viscera. That if they just get the Catfolk to stop yowling into the night, the constant attacks will stop, because the attacker fell apart on the way there.

Whether or not it's true, it's an explanation that seems mighty tempting to the people of the Cities.

Jolly good

>be me, moving castle citizen
>just got off work
>dinners finally ready
>tundra turnips, kaiju steak, and a tall glass of frostbrew
>awwwyis.wav
>about to set down and dig in
>mfw those dirty ass cat hippies won't shut up
>join up with the sect of silence
>slay all those fucking cat hippies
>finally eat my dinner
>shit was cash

Maybe there's some more extreme versions of this that view that the magical songs are the problem and seek to eradicate magic entirely by eradicating these songs. Feel like these more extreme cults would probably be called "Censors"

Sure, the world's frozen, but it's not all transparent blue ice and blankets of snow!

Sometimes there's tundra, or cold deserts, or a yawning chasm formed from a glacier collapsing into the underground caves, or an old battlefield long picked clean but still choking under trapped clouds of noxious gases, or an aurora-lashed hellhole, and any number of horrible frozen biomes!

I mean, yeah, most of it is ice and snow.

Some of the moving cities have broken down over the years and their sedentary wrecks often end up as breeding grounds for bandits and other undesirables. As such the nomads are not particularly found of those within the fallen cities

Maybe we should elaborate on some of the walking cities.

There roams the City Elkksange, which distincts itself with branched minarets and colorful pennants dangling from them.

The city of Baroque is built around an immense pipe organ. This instrument was designed as a doomsday weapon, but the cities inhabitants have no idea where the keyboard is located.

Many have braved the unknown depths of the cities engineering section in the hopes of finding it, but none have succeeded.

let's talk pantheons. The gods of the land sang the universe into existence with divine music. quite literally, the universe is practically one giant cosmic sheet of music, with each deity having a part in the melody. The chief amongst them vocalized the world into existence, and his brother and sisters as well, who in turn created a diving version of an instrument, and began to add their own touches onto the world. some scholars have dedicated their lives to discovering bits and pieces of this ephemeral song, and have managed to replicate some of the musical notes used. Paladins in this setting mark their armor with the divine notes played by their patron, and are almost always somewhat versed in the instrument their deity is the patron of

Grand Kavran still limps along after a near-devastating Kaiju attack tore a gash straight through her vaunted halls, shredding much of the city. With no time or way to make the required parts to repair it, the Captain-General of Kavran lurches his charge towards a fallen city to the southeast, fleet and foot fanning out before it like so many desperate hunters.

which, you know, they kind of are.

Although rare, cities do cross paths with each other on their routes around the world, age old paths walked over and over again, ever avoiding the ice storms. when two cities do converge, the usual response is a giant festival, where two unique cultures intermingle and celebrate yet another successful transglobal voyage, although in some infamous cases, the meeting of two cities has ended in bloodshed and ruin.

If they can't turn or slow down easily, the bloodshed and ruin could be entirely accidental.

That's one hell of a fender bender.

speaking of, how do these cities work? is the mayor/king/whatever also in charge of steering? is it archeotech the residents can't understand?

In recent years rumors have started to spread about an abandon city that moves in an erratic pattern, other cities that have come close to it have reporter a friendly greeting. Only a few sent to investigate have returned. They are all from diffrent cities yet hum the same tune.
(Does this fit?)

I think how well it fits depends on a couple things that haven't really been decided yet. first, how xenophobic is the average city? personally I would say anything weird usually equates to deadly on this little ice world of theirs, so probably very much so, making a city that seems weird a very organic plot hook. second, how common is it for individual citizens to set out to travel between cities? from what's written it seems that there is obviously distinct paths for each city, but I doubt the documentation is entirely trustworthy. I love the idea of guilds in each city that make their money running goods between cities at extreme peril, and it also helps solidify why any adventurers would be dumb enough to brave the ice and the Kaiju

Seems like a bit of both, from In that there might be some kind of steering system that the leaders of each City can use, yet the exact mechanics and/or manufacture of the massive engines that drive these Cities have been lost to time.
So the leaders know turning that wheel right/pushing this button/hum this note/tug this tendril moves the City thataway, but not how doing that makes the City move. Well maybe on some Cities they do know, but no two Cities are the exact same.

Unless you're talking about the Sister-Cities of Silfargo and Auramaz.

this leads to another relevant question I suppose, just how many cities are there? from and there's obviously slight hints of this being a post post apocalypse type scenario. I like the flavor of each city being massive in size, with a very few amount of them still in operating condition

I mean we have:
as something to go off of.

I personally like the idea that the City Cores themselves are tech lost to time, but airships and smaller 'suburbs' that follow the city are well understood.

Probably leading to wayward clans of airships and such that form when a city finally sputters out.

thanks user, I actually didn't see that, but I love the idea it presents

Well now we know what's in the middle, at least for the few flying cities. Not many of those left, considering how a failure for a groundbound city means you need some repairs on the double, but for a flying one everyone just dies as the whole thing crashes to earth.

But yeah, huge confusing technomagical bindings holding in those things sounds like a pretty compelling reason to set traps and a confusing layout. Can't have any random fuck wandering in there, after all.

Not sure what the nature of those spirits should be. Leaning towards 'semi-sapient tangle of magical/musical energies given form and shape by those predecessor fucks to aid in their climate control effort, and later bound to their massive citadels once the civil war demanded all resources be brought to bear'. Maybe they're even given structure by those bindings. The 'tangle' of energies might fall apart like water outside of a container if not constantly held in place by the incredibly complex mechanisms around it.

Probably why Airship-'spirits' are all modern civilization can muster, if we go with this explanation. They've got the general idea down, but it takes more than the basics to do something on that scale.

maybe there's also a rule kind of like the one in "Water world".

Like the cities have to at least offer trade to one another if they meet. some of these one time deals have been solidified into treaties over time, which the guilds take responsibility for

as in they oversee them, not that they go around saying that every one of the city's trade deals was down to their actions or some shit like that.

Direct military conflict between the cities is fairly rare. No one wants to put their home and people at stake in some duel between mobile metropoli.

No, conflict is mainly near the scouting and harvesting forces, denying the enemy valuable materials and salvage, attacking deployed infrastructure so far from the City's defenses. It's a constant back-and-forth between mobile forces ferried around by airship fleets over scarce resources.

The Cities proper just wheel around the region trying to outmaneuver each other until they get out of range.

I could see unfriendly cities snubbing each other by giving each other paltry gifts. Just enough to squeak by the traditions, but an insult to be sure.

Hell, I could see Guilds and such getting around chilly relations by giving 'gifts'.

>We didn't trade with Three Spire, no!
>We just showed our generosity!
>And they, entirely coincidentally and independently, decided to do the same!

I reckon that the churches of these pantheons would probably view the Censors as heretics, seeing as they want to end all the musical magic - including the Holy songs once sung by the Gods.

>tales/parables/whatever of a trickster god that offers fragments of a divine song to the desperate and the greedy
>the unfortunate schmucks have their being suffused with the sweet sounds of the
Vuvuzela

I like the idea that scientists or natural philosophers or whatever are trying to puzzle of the sheet music of (the) god(s), it's neat.

Would each city have a patron god Greek City-State style, or would they have their own religious traditions?

Personally I'm not a huge fan of 100% objective religions in this sort of thing, kind of cuts off the ways cultures interpret and adapt the spiritual, and all the conflict that goes with it.

if the songs (or at least echoes of them) are what's held to make up reality, then they'see the Censors as maniacs who want to destroy everything.

Which I guess makes them sorta Gnostic at the higher levels? Wanting to stop the wailing that makes up this illusory reality and escape to do weird transcendental shit.

The Censor leadership probably doesn't bring that up in recruitment meetings.

Auroras are a considerably deadlier event on this world, but no less beautiful. Charged with rampant energies roiling in the skies, they lash down towards the ground in vast yet simple tones. Entire regions have been scoured.

Of course, some have made lemonade out of the situation, by rapidly searching out, harvesting, and selling earth and rock affected by these events. Makes great materials for working with magic/music, and occasional fertilizer for the stranger plants out there.

my idea of the pantheon is like a symphony honestly, just one giant collection of celestial beings who alone could only create small aspects of the world, or planes infused with their divine essence, like the god of smithing banging his celestial percussion could make a fiery plane suffused with the echoes of his banging, but along with the other gods and goddesses, you get the complex and lively world they created. I think the main theological differences could stem from different interpretations of how best to honor and mimic the gods, like one city thinking music is sacred and refusing to allow just anyone to practice it, while another might see the hallowed status of music to be a gift shared with every man and child

alright, yeah, I can see that being fairly compelling. Would Choirs of Angels be a thing, or is that too low-hanging a fruit to grab at?

Cripes, the ancient guys must've been stepping on a lot of divine toes with all that magical/musical engineering and messing with the climate.

hell man, I hadn't thought of the whole heavenly choir angle, but that sounds cool as hell to me and there's probably a ton of room to put a cool spin on it, and I'd like to think that the climate changing and environmental affecting stuff is akin to dubstep in a weird way, a mechincal way of "remixing" the diving song into something more preferable

Next time jerk off BEFORE coming on Veeky Forums, you sad, lonely basement dweller.

Are these cities crashed moving cities or precursor-ey goodness?

Precursory goodness. Filled with treasure, adventure, angry barbarians, and nerdy scholars trying to figure out what the fuck and how the fuck everything is.

Rolling for dubs to replace catgirls with ubermensch

>so close to trips
Rolling for this.

... so now we have ubermensch with cat ears

I can work with that.

Territorial clans of Catfolk smug in their 'obvious superiority' of being personally designed by the Ancients and fulfilling their 'sacred duties' by carving out pale reflections of their intended purpose sounds fairly good.

Doubly so if they demand tolls and tributes from the moving cities desperately chasing untapped resources and wildlife through their lands, lest they dispatch some of their pet Kaiju to smack the citadels up a bit.

Interesting... what if fallen Auroras 'enchant' the things they fell on with a single note? So those who make magical instruments see Auroras as both a bane and a blessing. Bane, because Auroras falling on their wares meant that guitar can now only make C sharps, while being a blessing because Auroras can hit sheets of metal with a single note, and these could be shaped into instrument parts.

Do note, though, that biological living things that get caught in a fallen Aurora do not submit to the same rules. People still speak in more than one note... although exceptions exist.

Yeah, being one of the unlucky chumps to have your being reduced to a literal one note personality out of the song that is a whole person does sound pretty bad. But advantageous for the less scrupulous, as people locked into one emotional/mental state make great pawns and/or slave labor depending on what they're locked into.

Fortunately such things are rare, as people tend to avoid the massive glowing doom you can see from miles away, and even then it usually just ends up mildly unbalancing someone towards a certain instrument or trait. Not exactly a death sentence, and very occasionally a blessing. Many a great artist or craftsman produced their best work after an unfortunate encounter with an Aurora sent them into a frenzy about an object or concept.

Everyone lives in buildings 200 storeys tall

on the sea

yeah, the castles are probably that big, and there's probably a sea somewhere under the sheets of ice, snow, and rock.

If nothing else those aggressively tropical dryads have scorched a hole in the ice sheets big enough to be charitably called a sea, even if it's more like the Aral or Caspian than an ocean.

What if the sea also moves around?
It's like some sort of very wide and unviscous slime.

Or was it some kind of moving portal to the ocean world this one is a moon of?
Maybe could be linked to the Auroras in some weird way.

>>some kind of moving portal to the ocean world this one is a moon of
>constantly unleashing VERY high pressure water, ravaging the landscape and playing havoc with the weather
>the water eventually freezes, creating some very interesting ice formations over a destroyed region, complete with frozen invasive species if the ocean world has life

yeah, that could be good. not sure what could cause that exactly. Maybe the location of the portal and the location on the ocean world have been forced to have the same 'frequency', to the point that reality has trouble telling the two points apart. Possibly an Ancient project, possibly due to a freakishly well placed Aurora, possibly some other third thing. The ambiguity makes it good.

so the thing rolls around a small region, possibly some kind of basin carved out by the erosion involved. Sounds like a cool location to throw in there. Probably not too well populated, though.

Well I was thinking the portal just makes it so there's a 'flat' body of water on an otherwise frozen surface, but with the storms happening it could very well be a riotous body of water.

or maybe the similarity of frequency has something to do with the Aurora? Like, the aurora touches two points on the moon and on the planet and simplifies them in the same way

oh

that works pretty cool. a semi-placid body of water pouring out from an odd little point in reality that's two places at once.

okay. based on my poor understanding of reality, real auroras are when solar wind slams into the magnetosphere, causing the stuff there get agitated and start glowing.

I guess here the things could be caused by the notes given off by celestial objects, Harmony-of-the-Spheres style, doing much the same and forcing areas they get near to become akin to those notes. Maybe one of them got lucky and hit both the planet and the moon at once?

The pantheons split into two halves: the Old Gods and the New Gods. The Old Gods are in charge of general areas whilst the new gods are in charge of specifics. For example, Kestrel is the Goddess of the Sky and an Old God, meanwhile Skearth is the God of lightning and a New God. Skearth serves Kestrel because lighting is a thing of the sky's making and thus its subordinate ,so Skearth is a thing of Kestrel's making and thus her subordinate.

Kaiju fanatics/occultists are assmebled across 60% the walking cities. Most fanatics are in small sects in most cities, except for the city of Dalphae, the Bed of Beasts. Most cities despise trading with this bandit city but they have no choice: Either the Dalphites raid the city themselves, or finally "summon" their Gods after so many years of threats. Whether they know the frequency to do so is a mystery since no cat guardian will ever tell them.

These are the basic grunts scattered across the world for adventurers to defeat.

I'm guessing the Old'ns have their hands tied singing into existence entire building blocks of reality, while the rest have considerably lower range but more flexibility. The Higher up, the more important it is that they keep singing and the more powerful they are, and vice versa, til' you reach the bottom and the choirs of angelic beings.

Most of the Occultists have been thankfully kept in check by their rivals in the Sect and the Censors. In some cases it's a full blown shadow war, in others it's barely background radiation against normal corruption, crime, and local religions.

is Dalphae one of the fallen cities or a still functioning but 'rogue' one?

Could be that, long ago, they were having their asses handed to them in a war over the last food supplies in the region thanks to particularly bad series of storms. During this smackdown, a buncha' Kaiju stormed out from beneath the surface, took down the enemy city while their forces were mopping up Dalphae's, and fucked off into the storm.

The war and famine would have changed the city's culture anyways, and that's without having their salvation come from the mad beasts. And so they turned their worship towards the things, and the rest is history.

What kind of difference do you think there would be between the interpretations of each city of the whole Pantheon thing?

I could see a few cities springing for Patron Gods, or using the Hierarchical nature of the deities to justify a strict class/caste system, or maybe venerating the spirit what powers a flying city as a lower angelic being, or a more primitive worship of the lower but more directly involved beings springing up in a fallen city, and that sort of thing.

bump

Probably lots. Common theme for all of them is that there was a great war/disagreement/calamity that happened in the distant past, but whether it's between gods, caused by natural forces, or some other stuff is up in the air.
The city Elkksange mostly worships a nature deity, Altaneya, who they believe created the city as a sanctuary. But a jealous deity smote her, turning the rest of the landscape into blasted wastes of ice - yet Altaneya survived, although weakened. Rumors say that her heart is kept inside the labyrinthine engine of the city, beating as her body disperses into the landscape, creating pockets of life that would sustain the inhabitants of the City.

the orphaned forces of the City smote by the Kaiju, Broadwall, scattered to the winds, unable to face down a full city without their own behind them.

And while most of the groups perished in the storms or to raids, the group which included one of the earliest 'suburbs', a fairly large shipyard and port around it, managed to limp along with what's left of the airship fleet to the city of Titherus. Swearing service to the leaders of that City, it now pumps out ships and acts as a trade hub.

...It's not a great place to go if you plan on recruiting for the Cult.