/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

Monster Edition

/wbg/ discord:
discord.gg/ArcSegv

On designing cultures:
frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir's_Ethnographical_Questionnaire

Mapmaking tutorials:
cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48
www.inkarnate.com

Random Magic Resources/Possible Inspiration:
darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html
buddhas-online.com/mudras.html
sacred-texts.com/index.htm
mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

Conlanging:
zompist.com/resources/

Sci-fi related links:
futurewarstories.blogspot.ca/
projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
military-sf.com/

Fantasy world tools:
fantasynamegenerators.com/
donjon.bin.sh/

Historical diaries:
eyewitnesstohistory.com/index.html

A collection of worldbuilding resources:
kennethjorgensen.com/worldbuilding/resources

List of books for historians:
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/

Compilation of medieval bestiaries:
bestiary.ca/

Middle ages worldbuilding tools:
www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
qzil.com/kingdom/
lucidphoenix.com/dnd/demo/kingdom.asp
mathemagician.net/Town.html

Starter question:
>What sort of wildlife inhabits your world?
>Are any of them sapient?
>What is your world's equivalent to a Leviathan?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people#Social_stratification
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Does anyone have any industrial-era settings?

How does "Dys" sound as a magical particle discovered via science?

Comes from the Latin prefix dis

What do you mean by industrial era?

Anything that might resemble our world from around 1870-1945. Widespread pre-information age industrialized technology.

Not him, but I LOVE this sort of setting. If I wasn't revamping an older, Early Modern Planeshift War setting, I'd be down for some Not!-WWI shenanigans.

Jesus, I just described WWI as "shenanigans".

What does "dis" mean in latin?

Well then I guess I have that in my post apocalypse setting. No internet, nothing like that.

Hell my federal remnants out of the PNW are pretty much 40's america only well... the year is about 2030.

I'm pretty sure both "dis" and "dys" both mean "bad" in Latin.

So we're talking about Evil/Black Magic? But also scientifically discernible?

I like it.

Not fully formed in my head yet, but I kind of like the idea of titans/giants waking up from the earth every X years

Is it supposed to be named after a circle of Hell?

...

I'm not Latin expert, but dictionary says nothing of the sort. It's mostly known for being a negation prefix in both Latin and English.

Original user here. Went to eat

No, but it's a happy little accident. Magic is a field of science that people /really/ shouldn't be tinkering into but they do anyways because of their overwhelming curiosity

Where do humans come from in your fantasy worlds?

I had a pretty expansive Freemind thing set up with the details of a WWI-Inspired setting. It was kind of all pointless though, there wasn't any room for character individuality really since it was all centered around a non-human race with very few emotions and such.

Yeah, that doesn't sound too conducive to player input.

I like thinking of such things though, even if just for the sake of it. I should come up with something a bit more subtle.

The sunken continent of Atlantis.

I admit it's fun, but then you got a setting no one wants to play. ;_;

Truth be told, I've always been more interested in dreaming this stuff up than actually playing anything.

Well then you be you. And never let the downers here tell you otherwise.

Tell us of your setting user. I got to get to sleep, but I can see it later.

Like all intelligent creatures, they emerged from primordial chaos and eventually transistioned to physical plane along with Caowe.

Evolved from elves, as a result of the magical fallout from a not!Nuke

>>What sort of wildlife inhabits your world?
All kinds of animals, however since the world is covered in bodies of dead gods, large worms, parasites and carrion eaters are the norm.
>>Are any of them sapient?
The great beasts with magical powers usually posses a measure of intelligence.
>>What is your world's equivalent to a Leviathan?
You mean giant scary sea monster that breathes fire or just a creature with awe inspiring power?
They were created by the god of thunder near the southmost seashore before the Second war of the Forefathers.

Made from some manner of earth like all the terran races
Humans came from dirt
Halflings from clay
Dwarves from deep stone
Goliath from high rock


On another note: I need advice on creating a social structure for my goliath. I want them to be pastoral nomads, but I also want to involve their skin markings, which they believe tells their fate, as central to their culture. I was thinking to make a caste system based on what kind of markings they have, so are there any examples of caste structures among nomads I could draw from? My google-fu is weak and I'm getting surprisingly few examples

Are these skin markings genetic or are they random? What if a child with the skin markings of a higher caste is born in a lower caste family

Ah, looked it up, sorry. "dys" can mean "bad" but it's Greek. "dis" is Latin, but it doesn't have the meaning I thought it did. I was fooled by false cognates.

>>What sort of wildlife inhabits your world?
>>Are any of them sapient?
How precisely can you have sapient wildlife?

Inheritable, though I am open to suggestions. Mainly I'd like to understand how a caste society would play out among nomads and then adjust as appropriate

continent?

How much is too much in making your world alien in Worldbuilding?

I am making a setting that is post apocalyptic but the apocalypse happened to a cyberpunk world (yes the punks caused it). This means that the apocalypse has fragments of cyberspace and robots as ruins and some hanging around. However as I started building I felt increasingly restricted by Geography (either europe or North America) and I would rather just make an entirely new world, so I can make my geography and places without any restrictions.

At that point am I putting too much in my setting? The setting idea is hard enough to convey, so saying its in a fictional world is pushing the weirdness. Most post apocalypse usually restrict itself to Earth to not be too alien.

What's the exact issue with Earth geography you're dealing with?

Mostly, that I designed factions first before geography (I usually build fantasy worlds) so when I looked on the map for where those factions would fit, I found that the geography did not fit, ie. The factions I meant to be next to each other and at conflict instead had several others inbetween them. I guess I could twist some geography, but at that point I asked myself what's the point with even keeping Earth Geography.

What programs do you guys use to collate your worldbuilding information? Mines just a loose collection of .txt files, poorly drawn .jpg maps and a boatload of inspiration fodder

Not him, but just say that it's far enough ahead that people have either gone to other planets or made large space stations to live in, like ringworlds.

>How precisely can you have sapient wildlife?
Theoretically (at least within the realms of fantasy) you can think of non-social sapient creatures: creatures that possess human-like mental capacity and perspectives, but do not form civilization or use tools. From an evolutionary perspective, it may not make sense, but from a symbolic or mythological point of view it's fairly common.
Think of the speaking animals from various stories, like the wolfs, boars and monkeys from Princess Mononoke. Sapient dragons are a common trope too.

>Mainly I'd like to understand how a caste society would play out among nomads
If real world is anything to go by, then not very well. Non-settled life does not play very well into social stratification and perhaps more importantly - institutional role distinction. To put it bluntly: it's much more difficult to separate people by wealth when you can only own shit you can carry around yourself (of course, size of your herd is indication of your wealth, but it's not quite as big of a social startificator as say, the size of your house). And more importantly, when on the road, you need a solid degree of versatility: everyone kinda needs to furfill any possible role, because your social group is never going to be quite large enough to afford reliable number of specialized workers. Everyone needs to be an animal herder. You can't have a chef or a blacksmith or specialized priest if you are a member of a 50+ tribe consistently on a road, constantly having to tackle your restless herd and rarely staying at any one place for more than a few days.

Nomadic societies tend to be fairly socially and culturally uniform. Ethic bounds between individual tribes and families exist, but not castes: those require a more complex social hierarchies, more differenciated occupation roles, and those need higher population density and more settled lifestyle.
At least that is the theory here in real world, anyway.

That's a really good idea. It would actually totally fit with the general tone of the world I am trying to build.

>To put it bluntly: it's much more difficult to separate people by wealth when you can only own shit you can carry around yourself (of course, size of your herd is indication of your wealth, but it's not quite as big of a social startificator as say, the size of your house).
From what I understand most pastoral nomads weren't truly nomadic, but had seasonal settlements they'd migrate to and from as cattle grazing required, so there'd be opportunity to splurge on opulent homes and other more stationary commodities. Probably not all that much since they're not gonna live there half the time, but it's something

This would just go back to my original problem however. I am really stacking a lot of premises on top of each other, and that might get wa too confusing.

Castes are usually insular, so an entire "tribe" may simply be of a single caste. Maybe the different castes travel separately most of the time, only getting together for political/trade reasons.

One idea could be that the different castes specialize in husbandry for a particular kind of herd animal, and get together to trade for what's needed - get dairy/meat from the cow herder caste, wool and such from the sheepherder caste, riding beasts from the...whatever can carry a goliath caste, etc. Perhaps there's a caste just for the people who go between the different herds. Dunno how all that would interact with the birthmarks though.

It's like an island, but bigger.

>From what I understand most pastoral nomads weren't truly nomadic,
Most pastoral nomads were fully nomadic. Seasonal camps don't make you not-nomadic, and even though you might stop in your tracks for longer (few weeks, upwards of a month or so), the defining characteristic of nomadic people was that they did NOT build permanent settlement. Even their seasonal camps would usually not be at the exact same spot. They would not build permanent structures there either.
You don't build an expensive fucking house to leave it rotting, free for anyone to loot it or take it over just so you could go there once in a year for a month.
Nomadic people carry their homes with them. That is the definition of being a nomad.

All of that requires A) reliable infrastructure and B) reliable centralized government. Nomads generally lack both. Again: you are a nomad. On the move 90% of the time. Spread very thinly across huge open landscapes.

You can't specialize. You can't rely on other tribes to raise food: you are going to be wandering around on a MASSIVE territory without being sure that you'll even fucking run into anyone else for months. Much less being sure that the one you run into is going to be a fucking diary caste nomad.

Again: you can do anything you want in fantasy, but from a real world anthropology perspective, this makes ZERO sense. Imagine having to rely on baker and a butcher shops that move in random direction upwards of 40 kilometers EVERY FUCKING DAY. Not a good idea.
Nomadic tribes need to be self-sufficient because nomadic lifestyle means you inevitably going to be relying on yourself and only yourself for absolute majority of the year.
And that is why significant social and economic specialization makes little sense for nomads.

I mean, the folk in this thread seem to get what you're going for. I know it seems contrary to logic, reason, and Almighty God, but have faith in your players.

Hey I'm just going by the wiki pages
>Nomadic pastoralism is a form of pastoralism when livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze. Strictly speaking, true nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance where seasonal pastures are fixed.[1] However this distinction is often not observed and the term nomad used for both—in historical cases the regularity of movements is often unknown in any case.
>Transhumance is a type of nomadism or pastoralism, a seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (vertical transhumance), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter. Herders have a permanent home, typically in valleys. Generally only the herds travel, with a certain number of people necessary to tend them, while the main population stays at the base. In contrast, horizontal transhumance is more susceptible to being disrupted by climatic, economic or political change

And as it turns out there are semi-nomadic people with a caste system
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people#Social_stratification

Need some help with some sci-fi worldbuilding.

I'm putting together a random planet roller that uses an expanded form of Stars Without Number's Planet Tags, based on a d100 instead of d10+d6; they're also divided into 10-line categories.

I'm looking for some suggestions to fill some of them out.

Here's my Resources column, one of the ones that I'm most stuck on:

RESOURCES
>1- Fuel
>2- Industrial Ore
>3- Precious Stones
>4- Arable Land
>5- Medicinal Plants
>6- Miraculous Elements
>7- Natural Polymers
>8-
>9-
>10-

I'd appreciate suggestions for the other three.

How about some animal stuff? Animals that can be harvested for one reason or another. Maybe fish?

And water is a huge one, I'm surprised you don't already have that.

Then there's always unobtanium.

Unobtanium is what I mean by "miraculous elements".

There's another column for kinds of native life, but that entry fits here too.

Ah, I see.

How about archaeotech? Ruins, technology, and info from ancient alien cultures.

That works too; I'll add "Salvage" and "Livestock", which means I need one more. Thanks for the help!

Maybe 10 is a combination of two different resources on the same planet?

Water. Fresh water is super, super important.

that I think depends upon the setting itself. In a lot of softer SF water is fairly plentiful; in harder SF, liquid water is a rarity.

I wonder if I can differentiate between "Fuel" as "the stuff spaceships run on" and "Fuel" as "the stuff cultures use for power."

Here's another one I'm working out. It covers natural hazards other than native life that will kill you or basic characteristics of the planet (such as gravity or atmosphere):

HAZARDS
>1- Radioactivity
>2- Toxic Water Supply
>3- Disease
>4- Bollide Strikes
>5- Seismic Instability
>6- Megastorms
>7- Solar Flares
>8-
>9-
>10-

Any ideas?

Should add the following to that list
> Weak Magnetosphere - The Weaken Magnetosphere makes the planet more to outer space radiation, and solar winds. Planets like these could still exist and be habitable but would require a thick atmosphere kind of like Venus.
> Wobbling Axial Tilt - Axial Tilt of the planet is unstable to Tidal Forces from other celestial bodies or rarely internal forces of the planet itself. You get really wild seasons/climatology with this scenario.
> Hazardous Alien Elements - Imagine going to a planet and discovering an element endemic to that planet in a large enough quantity that life is made to exclusively adapt to this element. Can be a Solid, Liquid, or Gaseous element.

How long is your war right now? The current Ibacca war has been going on for about 41 years now.

The war of Ibacca was basically a "Space Blitzkrieg" in the earliest stages. The Merlods, genocidal extragalactic invaders started attacking it. On that fateful day, January 31st, 2399, the world of Rebirth was lost. All communications were lost, nothing was there, no signals. The last message was
>"WE ARE BEING ATTACKED I REPEA-"
It ends there. Sooner or later, Athena, Juno, and Babylon were attacked as well. Sector command was completely taken by suprise. Sooner or later, the main worlds of Akkadia, New Jeruselem, and Horus Prime were starting to be attacked.

Mine is. It's mostly set in a fantasy version of 1800's Europe and Asia, with the unification of not!Germany by the Orcs in order to form their own nation state. It's very low magic though, as I felt that having magic play too large of a role would ruin the aesthetic.

I'm a history dork, so I love making allusions to real world events in my setting. What would y'all recommend I add in order to really capture the aesthetic of the period?

I'm a sci-fi worldbuilder, and I make allusions sometimes as well. I tend to make them very subtle. Also, can you tell me about a war in your universe,
Just like my original comment.

>Also, can you tell me about a war in your universe,

Currently, we have a low level conflict going on between the people of the partitioned kingdom of Skael, which was divided up between the Gothmaren Imperium and the Kingdom of Illuvan, the former being essentially a fusion between Russia and Mordor, while the latter is aesthetically an Elvish France.

The partition happened 60 years ago, the then High King of Skael had died without an heir and so had plunged the numerous tribes that made up the federation of kingdoms to fight one another to claim the throne. The neighboring Gothmarens and Illuvians saw this bloodshed, with both deciding to bring an end to the conflict before it potentially becomes out of hand. Their armies met at the gates of the city, with war being threatened between both sides before peace talks began so as to prevent a major war between the great powers, resulting in temporary dividing the kingdom in two, for as long as it takes to "bring peace to the region".

The Skaelings, natives of Skael, are traditionally pastoral and as are considered to be quite primitive. They are having their lands currently being bought and sold to outsiders who are colonizing and driving away the natives. Though the land is officially partitioned, neither power exerts its authority for fear of enticing the other. As a result, the region is currently faced with a flood of migrants and fortune seekers who pour into the land, setting up towns that develop into petty fiefdoms and republics that swear loyalty to their respective lieges.

The Petty Realms, as it's now called, is currently in a state of flux. The pre-partition clans who incited the initial conflict still exist, and continue to battle for supremacy over the Skaeling Throne. The natives raid and fight off the colonists in defense of their lands they've lived on for generations, while the colonists fight in order to drive back the uncivilized savages. etc. etc., Would you like to hear more?

They evolved naturally as opposed to being born from the original god of the setting. During the time of the previous race's dominance they were barely-evolved and kept by said previous race as cheap labor and experimental guinnea pigs. When the original race fucked up big time and wounded god, the resulting magical feedback explosion jumpstarted their intelligence and left them the only sentient species on the planet amidst a world full of ruins. They were basically left to their own devices at this point since the original god was split in two and too weak to interact with them, so they could only watch as humans did what they do best - kill each other and fumble in ignorance. It's been about twenty thousand years since then in the setting timeline, and humanity is well into their own version of the Renaissance. Firearms are becoming abundant, art and science are starting to flourish, and humans are starting to become truly curious about the ancient ruins of what came before them.

here

They came from the stars originally (you can breath and fly around in the Aether) riding the backs of flying serpents while conquering and pillaging most of the main continent. They were drafted as mercenaries into some Dwarven and Elven armies, and many eventually became accepted into society and came to settle and interbreed with the native Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves of the world. The Orcs have a special hatred for Humans as a result of them being similarly nomadic, and thus most susceptible to raids while the elves and Dwarves could just hide in their cities.

Thousands of years later, humans have become the majority of the planets population, as well as developing into a multitude of different cultures and ethnicity's. The only humans who still hold on strongly to their ancient nomadic roots are the Skaeling and Iniluuk peoples however, and as a result are deemed to be more primitive and uncivilized, their ancient legends of their origins being noted as mere fairy tales with no basis in science.

What human culture would you say be interesting to integrate into a Goblin race?

I'm going for "former slave/bandit race united under a king and a prophet". I was also thinking of them integrating some human tribes into their warband.

Brazilian desu

They're kind of more northern, guess I should have explained they were in a not!Russia area. I was actually thinking maybe Mongolian.

I could do a Brazilian offshoot faction I guess.

How would you recommend I capture the lightning in a bottle that is the tone and lore style of the Elder Scrolls for my own world?

What specifically do you want? What do you like about it?

The weird mythopeic ramblings and world details mostly.

I guess your main goal should be to show you're "inspired by" rather than ripping it off. Try look into the cultures they were inspired by and twist them to be a little different.

Read Hindu scriptures like the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita. A lot of TES is derived from Indian religions

How do you flesh out a world? Every time I come to these threads, I realize how undeveloped all of my settings are.

You focus on one region at a time, explaining how the people got there and how their individual cultures developed, then go from there to explain how conflicts and rivalries came to be between them.

bump

OK, I give up. I want to use magic weapons in a low(-ish) fantasy setting without ruining the setting and turning it into Exalted or DBZ. Any pointers?

Sounds like you just need the "magic" part of magic weapons not be allowed to get too out of hand. What are some examples of magic weapons you want in your settings, and what are you afraid of happening?

Just keep it simple like Ice enchanted swords, Flaming axes, Weapons that are the bane of a certain race or creature, Maces so heavy they leave small craters upon impact etc.

Well, thanks, I think. Honestly, now I'm wondering why I should even bother with magical weapons. What exactly is the point of them, beyond being MacGuffins?

>What exactly is the point of them, beyond being MacGuffins?

>Ice enchanted swords, Flaming axes, Weapons that are the bane of a certain race or creature, Maces so heavy they leave small craters upon impact etc.
shit's cool yo

How important do you guys find realistic topography and city placement?

I started a campaign without a worldmap and now I'm in a bit of a bind because I have messed up the distances and locations for what I want to do in the end

Sorry, let me try again. Is there any point to magical weapons other than being MacGuffins or "cool"?

Is there any point to worldbuild other than "cool"? Hard to give advice on their purpose when I don't know what you want out of your worldbuild. "Purpose" is a relative term.

OK, I know this sounds stupid, but what about practicality in whatever fantasy world they're in? The people I've thought would use magic weapons are pretty utilitarian, they don't care about cool, they care about what works.

As mentioned, differing damage types have better effectiveness versus certain monsters, as well as some magic weapons just being better than normal weapons, like a longsword that's inexplicably lighter or sharper than it should be allowed to be.

Or to turn things around, what sort of magical effects would make weapons more useful in your setting?

>OK, I know this sounds stupid, but what about practicality in whatever fantasy world they're in? The people I've thought would use magic weapons are pretty utilitarian, they don't care about cool, they care about what works.

A magical weapon is something that takes a certain kind of effort to create. You should not be able to buy them in magic item shops, or enchant them yourself.

Magical weapons should be crafted by a lame fire giant in a hidden mountain, with rare metals said to be the blood of a dead god, and the core of the bone of a demon prince. Or something equally as epic in scope.

It should be a big deal. They were all created for a purpose, and they will be incredibly effective when used for that purpose.

If you're talking about things like +1 weapons, they're just better. You can make them just as interesting by making the requirements of their construction strange. Like, humans cannot make enchanted weapons. They just can't. You need an elf or a dwarf to do so for the minor kinds.

At no point should magical items be considered a mundanity.

I'm really starting to regret this decision. Thanks for the feedback.

My setting features a race of Ooze-Humanoids, a sort of chimera created by ancient wizards. They are highly fluid (obviously), capable of surviving a lot of punishment due to lacking real organs, but chemically unstable. This last part means they are partly elemental (fire, cold, acid, etc), but also short lived.

I don't know what else to do with them, however. I like the idea of them, but I want to come up with more racial character so players will have some real meat to dig into.

How do you write for a really "alien" race in your settings? Pic unrelated.

From the Clay. They where the most adaptable, so the most widespread.

And the primogenitor of the most subraces, which has made thier stake in the modern world tentative at best

I mostly just fill blocks of paper with sketches, maps, and information about history, cultures, religions, politics, and linguistics.

When I use a computer I do with something basic like notepad as the most important task ahead is getting information out of your head and down in writing, and too many functions and features will distract you from this.

idea for mappe

Ancient asteroid collision?

iunno, the idea just evolves as time goes on, the only thing that stays is that it was dickass wizards going fucking apeshit with raw magical power (like they all do, vicious cycle) and dividing everyone in this general area to one of two fates, either they were obliterated in the red zone, or the saw a huge explosion and had a lot of questions until they could get scouts back and forth

>How would you recommend I capture the lightning in a bottle that is the tone and lore style of the Elder Scrolls for my own world?
By studying a lot of actual (preferably lesser known/popular) real world mythology and religionistics.
The only reason why Elders Scrolls is better than most fantasy is because - like Tolkien and unlike most other fantasy - it's not based in other fantasy. It's based on real world oriented research. It's not using tropes because they are common to the genre, it's trying to reconstruct eastern real world philosophies and religions - it's attempting to re-create mythological feeling, not recreate fantasy feeling.
That is what sets it apart. It's not a small goal though. Achieving something like that requires talent and massive amounts of research and effort invested.

>OK, I give up. I want to use magic weapons in a low(-ish) fantasy setting without ruining the setting and turning it into Exalted or DBZ. Any pointers?
Make magic a matter of perspective and narrative, rather than a trope or a system.
Consider item magical only if it has a really interesting STORY behind it. You know - the sword that was the last thing a famous artisan before he commited suicide due to tragic love - the sword that participated in every major historical battle of the last four century - that sword that was used to murder the good king by his very own daughter: that sword is magical.

Magic is boring if it's meaningless: if it does not serve to actually tell interesting stories. Magic as a mechanical property is dull. And actually complete misunderstanding of what magic is supposed to be about: in fiction and real life.

Things should be magical because they represent strange stories. Not merely because you add unrealistic properties to them.

>How important do you guys find realistic topography and city placement?
Depends on the type of settings and fiction you are creating. Some settings are entirely unrealistic, strange and magical. In those cases, unrealistic topography is not only tolerable, it's downright desirable.

If you are making a more grounded settings, however, blatant misunderstanding of basic geography will easily become jarring and distracting from the fiction though. Not a major one - if your players have not actually realized that you messed up some logic of your environments so far, they should not be bothered by it on a map unless it's something REALLY stupid.

Don't forget that if you want to make a map, you don't need to make the map realistic. You can go for highly stylized form to make illogical shit less blatant and evident.

Why are you not using MS Word or Adobe PDF to store info?

At the very least, use adobe Bridge or a folder to collect everything in one place.

Help whenever I try to worldbuild I spend hours and hours just fleshing out this one little part of my world and then I get sick of it and I have one duchy that is really cool and the rest is almost empty except links to the one duchy

Then just keep doing that for five years and you'll have a full setting

>The moon is a giant congealed mass of horrible monsters just kind of mashed together
>Bad guys create spawn points that's literally just a portal to the moon. This is where every monster in the setting comes from.
>not weird Cthulhu tentacle monsters either. Basic stuff like goblins, skeletons, and dragons and shit.

Is this as awesome and stupid a I think it is or just stupid?

Why is the moon there?

At least it's not the Lunar Cry.