/wbg/ - World Building General
"I can't describe it, but I wanna fuck it" Edition
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>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
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Seeing as it's suprisingly rare to come across anyone else on this board who has tried adapting Fallout, would you mind giving me a quick rundown of your version of the setting? If it isn't just a straight rip of course. I'm attempting to create a homebrew version without any of Bethesda's contributions and would like to see what others have done for inspiration.
Pic related is the best example I've seen of a weird species used in a played with setting.
Working on a setting where 300 years ago someone fucked with reality driving the gods that had been helping men establish civilization into seclusion, or insane. Now there's a civil war going on because of the resulting power vaccum in what used to be the central government.
Anyone got any cool ideas I could riff on?
> most interesting race
Kind of a subjective question. I quite like the Draconians in my setting.
> why
Basically dragonborn,except roman. They worship a holy hierarchy based upon how draconic/dragon something is. Mammals are close to the bottom of the list, naturally. Draconians are considered less dragon then dragons themselves. Their god-king, the Hydra, is the most dragon thing to have existed so far, so he ranks the highest. Hydras are said to have eaten their siblings before birth, gaining a head for each sibling slain. All hydras are named after the original. He left the planet a long time ago.
> where they live & what their relationships are like with other races
They live on one of the larger continents on the planet. They have the largest empire in history land-wise, and probably the most powerful on the planet, but that's hotly debated. Most humans hate them since they enslaved them for quite some time, but there are still some draconian human states around that aren't completely opposed to them. That's the only two nations I have really fleshed out at the moment.
> humanoid or alien sapient species
it really depends on how you use them
fantasy races tend to be humanoid if you see them a lot so they can be relatable, but if the author wants to throw in some really weird shit he can
scifi races tend to be weird and 'alien', but we can only guess what they'll look like and you might as well make them humanoid unless you really wanna apply yourself
> unrelated
What's the best way to style an avian beastfolk race physically? I don't really want to just give them a bird's head and wings and leave them otherwise the same and I don't really want to give them some kind of weird combo of bird wings/arms (although it seems like I might have to). I would really like them to be able to fly, but I'm open to ideas.
>someone fucked with reality
Do you mean someone mortal or something beyond the gods? From my interpetation, you could do something like a combination of The Matrix, Star Ocean and Serial Experiments Lain.
Could we please have a little more information about your setting?
>What genres do you want to encompass?
>What socio-technological era is it set in?
>Where is it set?
>Who are the factions in the civil war?
>Who are the gods?
>What is the nature of their insanity?
>What happened to distort reality?
>What genres do you want to encompass?
I see it as going between high and low fantasy depending on region. For instance, the "high fantasy" region to the far west (Trachovie, on the map) has magically determined borders between feudal kingdoms that shift, causing a lot of internal conflict, and so it stays mostly cut off from the rest of the world. I want to keep things open to different play styles for different groups depending on who's playing.
>What socio-technological era is it set in?
Think Elizabethan era except nobody can use metal to make guns because all the metals are kind of alive. People mostly live in exceptionally large cities or villages close to them since the wilds have become increasingly unsafe.
>Where is it set?
The campaign I'm running now is in/around a border town that's about to be invaded from the South.
>Who are the factions in the civil war?
The humans/dwarves that live in the North mostly have charter governments with the cabal/monarchy in Alfjord, which currently has an aging head of state and no clear line of succession. The "Baskarim" in the south are revolutionaries aligned under a kind of shadowy ideologue cabal leader without much connection to the monarchs.
>Who are the gods?
Concentrations of magic in a region that take on traits as they're assigned a la American Gods.
>What happened to distort reality?
An order of paladins tried to take over the world by manipulating the source code (a big schizoid mumbling fire in Alfjord). They failed and ruined the world. Magic got a lot cooler though.
>What is the nature of their insanity?
Mostly they roam around in the wild trying to "reconstruct" the old world by doing some kind of repetitive task like building a tower out of twigs or trying to drain a lake by hand. Some of the more humanoid ones became wanderers or warlords.
>>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
I really like mousekin and want to more effectively insert them into my setting any tips?
>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
Probably the drakes. They're a bunch of intelligent, photosynthetic wyvern-type dragons.
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
Well, they're fucking dragons. Duh. To be serious, though, I think the fact that they're an airborne and photosynthetic race has made for some interesting ideas in regards to their outlook and presence in the setting.
First, a flying sapient race means all sorts of things for this world's history. Drakes have long been couriers and mapmakers, and have served as respected airborne cavalry in times of war. Their ability to fly is something humans have only just begun to achieve themselves, and even then, only through the use of machines.
Drake brains are also better adapted for mathematical calculation, and possess a preternatural sense of time. This means they're extremely well-suited to, among other things, music.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
They originated in the alpine regions of one of the main continents in my setting, and have roughly paralleled humans in spreading throughout the world. They are well-adapted to mountainous regions (flight and all that), and have built many nations centered on the great peaks of the world.
In contemporary times, they're pretty well-integrated with human populations the world over, but that's not to say there isn't plenty of racism to go around. One of the better places for them is the Republic of Ehreist, which has equity between humans and drakes as one of its national cornerstones.
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
Both have their purposes, but for my tastes, I like having something entirely different. It opens up a lot more possibilities.
>What's the best way to style an avian beastfolk race physically?
You rang?
I keep staring at this goddamn map and I can't figure out where to put the mountains.
That's why I always unironically start with plate tectonics.
Just put them wherever you want/think they belong, and let anons who know a lot about the subject in these threads critique you after the fact.
I start the other way, using a semi-random system to make the base map and then laying down mountains where they logically should.
Only plate line I can think of. I just don't know where the second or more would logically be in this setup.
Been seriously worldbuilding for ten years now. Dozens of worlds, some half complete and some that I’ve run years of campaigns in. All gone now after both my backups were corrupted. All gone.
What keeps everyone here going when shit like this happens?
The geography makes me think of Iberia and Morocco. So have some hilly terrain with a few tall points immediately on the north side of the strait, relatively flat terrain on the south of the strait but large mountains along the southern map border, and some more big mountains up on the north map border.
Can't lose progress when you never write anything down.
The fact that I uploaded or emailed all my shit to various places so it would require me losing all my backups and every online messaging and cloud backup service I've ever used breaking down for me to lose all my work.
So my world is a cube but the atmosphere and gravity is not. I want water to go out to the edge of the world so you can sail off of it. Water without atmosphere in fantasy? Yes, no? How can I make it work?
None of what you are describing makes much of any sense in any logical or speculative fashion, but you could present it as an absurd fever-dream of a world and get away with pretty much anything you want. Just don't pretend there is much of a rational or causal justification behind it.
>but the atmosphere and gravity is not
Wait so does the gravity function realistically? Because that would mean that what you have is, in essence, a normal planet but dominated by 8 gigafuckoffhumungous mountains with 3 very sharp ridges each, each mountain representing one of the points of the cube. No way water would be at the edges of the cube. You would need gravity to act evenly along each face, and then you'd get some interesting things happening in the case of your sailing off the edge. I would have it that the edge region encounters overlapping gravity fields acting perpendicular to each other, so stepping off the edge means you immediately begin experiencing the gravity of the face you would fall onto pulling you backwards, but that wouldn't be enough to stop a ship from quite easily sailing over, and provided it has its center of mass far forward enough it should be able to right itself on its new face as well, although the experience will be quite a jolt.
Water would also then be able to distribute itself over the faces evenly as one contiguous ocean.
I made this yesterday. What do you think ?
I already have draconians in my setting, they're based off of dinosaurs. And I want a distinct avian look with a beak and full feathers and everything, not the feathery lizard look.
here have something better
Is it bad that I have no real aliens in my sci-fi setting? Just mankind and it's various off shoots inhabiting the milky way?
No.
It's fine we probably actually are all alone out here
Drake equation suggests that's really unlikely. But all the lack of evidence of extrastellar civs suggests something fucky is going on.
>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
Since I haven't focused on elves or dwarfs much yet, it gotta be lionfolk.
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
Culture. I'm trying to move away from human conventions, and determine what would humanoid lions be comfortable wearing, what tools would they be comfortable using, etc. Their language ended up being unpronounceable by humans as well (and vice versa).
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
All over the world, in isolated enclaves. They are descended from powerful wild spirits who wanted to live mortal lives, but were fascinated with lions' ferocity, and so took shape of humanoid lions. These spirits then traveled the world, leaving litters of cubs in various places, which is where lionfolk kingdoms rose from.
Their relationship with neighbors are as varied as any other races'. I try to avoid "one race = one kingdom = one political faction" as much as possible.
One lionfolk kingdom is in tight alliance with local dwarfs, another embraced their savagery and scare even local demonworshippers.
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
I'm gonna add truly alien species when it feels appropriate. In far-off lands, perhaps, or deep underground. "scorpion people" are marked on the map already, but I know nothing about them yet, besides the fact that they are sapient, alien, and hostile to humans.
What could happen to a continent (besides sinking) to turn it into perpetually dangerous and uninhabitable (yet traversable) wasteland? Basically all life on the continent, even conventional monsters and servants of evil, dwell on high mountains or surrounding islands.
Nuclear waste or magical waste, perhaps the dark lord managed to some good spirit and and most of the world is not suitable barring some areas. Perhaps there are monsters who can't deal with mountanous ranges.
>Humans beleive in a civilized !NotChristianity
>A different race believes in Irish Paganism, with it's church making up a mix of way of the ancient paladins, druids, nature clerics, and fae warlocks
>Last race is very inidivudal. Focusing on the power of man alone rather than gods or occultism, doesn't beleive in the afterlife, and that anyone can change thier fate.
What races would fit best for the last two, boys? Preferably they're all human like similiar to dwarves, halflings, and giants. I've been thinking of Dwarves for the Irish Pagans and Giants for the Indiviuality centrics but it would feel weird for Giants to be so civilized to have that kind of philosophy and for Dwarves to be so tree-hugging.
Neat.
write an awesome legend with multiversal cataclysm destroying countless worlds
then create a new world born after the cataclysm of the debris of destroyed worlds
people having some knowledge of old worlds (as much as you remember) as myths and legends
I think Giants would fit perfectly. Just because they tend to have a savage culture in fiction doesn't mean they have to in your setting. I think modelling them off the Titans of Greek Myth would work well, making them into high artists but also easily woeful to suit the pseudo-nihilistic ideology. I'd also give them a philosopher-king to idealise as the perfected man.
>looking for a mapping tool that would suit me
>can't find one
>finally sit down, grab some paper and colored pencils
>start drawing map
>feels so right and awesome I almost tear up
guys, forget shitty computers, do it the right way
This.
Turn this tragedy into something that will give birth to another world. This is meta. The "destruction" of your worlds IRL on your computer will become a real cataclysmic event in your imaginary multiverse.
>have soft-soft sci-fi
>stick word "quantum" into technobabble
>instant rock-hard sci-fi
praise God for quantum physics
Bump
That's fucking sexy.
arctic regions on my map are rather boring
anyone got any pointers as to what should be in frozen lands? any cool settings/books with much action happening in arctic parts?
You can look at MMOs and similar large-scale video games. Their nature means they need a token representation of every biome imaginable, which of course includes arctic/snowy regions.
Northrend from WoW comes to mind, as well as Sylvalum from Xenoblade X although if I recall correctly it's not even technically a snowy region - something about the "snow" being dust or spores or some shit.
They're good places to draw inspiration from at least.
>sapient beings in the world are what could be thought of as golems and cannot reproduce themselves out of nothing
>rely on digging up "stones" that will develop to mimic forms and magics it is exposed to
>various races are the result of differing demigods exerting their influence over these blank slates
>warfare involves killing someone, taking their stone, and creating a new being out of it
Humanoid and "truly alien" are not mutually exclusive.
>making sex slaves out of your defeated enemies
Through dick, humanoids are united.
Hope this is the right spot.
I'm in the early stages of making a setting where none of the landmasses are in fixed locations. Most civilizations are on islands that follow different pattern of floatation and meet on different timescales - sometimes apart for centuries.
What kinds of civilizations would develop in this kind of setting? How viable are multi-island-spanning nations or isolated island communities? What settings can I look to for tips?
For reference: planning high-fantasy with magic semi-common. Have taken some inspiration from On The Backs of Gods, but landmasses don't have to be alive themselves if it complicates things.
The idea that I want is a setting ideal for city/tower defense scenarios, where whole tribes, settlements, or monster-generating ruins can appear on random encounter tables, all while players stay with the same NPCs/buildings/bases. I don't want island-hopping to be too difficult, but the norm would be staying close to a "home" spot and keeping it safe.
hm, you can take idea from Dune and have, say, a species of navigators who can tap into ocean's soul, instinctively know which landmass is where and teleport there.
they could be neutral, sell their services to anyone, and also sell keeping some landmasses "off-charts", i.e. you gotta pay them if you don't want them teleporting an enemy ship to your island's shores
that's bloody awesome
I'm stealing this for general inspiration (i.e. not to borrow ideas but to get inspired)
do my thinking for me, the post
>build castle on whale island
>whale dives
what
I thought I was being pretty forward about that, yeah.
>when you want a rogue planet to subtly fuck things up in the past to set up a cataclysm hundreds of years in the future
Is it just me or are the questions in every worldbuilding thread completely unnecessary? They lead to the classic "everybody posts, nobody reads" situations.
>"but I totally read everything!"
Most people don't. You know it's true. I'd rather drop the pretension.
Instead of "tell me some random thing about your setting that nobody really wants to know", we could ask questions about the process of worldbuilding. Like, whether or not the knowledge of geography is useful and why/why not. That would be useful and could spark a discussion.
What the fuck sort of cataclysm could shatter and reshape an entire MULTIVERSE?
>Like, whether or not the knowledge of geography is useful and why/why not
Anyone who doesn't meticulously calculate realistic plate tectonics, wind patterns, and oceanic currents is a true faggot like you.
>wind patterns
This is my favourite
Y-yeah. Mine too, user...
Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can't help falling in love with you
I completely agree. The bare minimum effort for posting on /wbg/ should be geological history at least four supercontinent cycles back, realistic fluid dynamical modelling of ocean currents (with the flow rate rounded to the nearest Sverdrup), albedo calculations for each biome and their effect on local evaporation and drainage, the planet's current axial tilt's effect on glaciation, and an overview on world population dynamics from the Neolithic or its equivalent to the "present" age (generally iron age/medieval), which is usually roughly 200-300 generations' worth of detail.
It's true though, I (OP), do read everything.
What is pretentious about wanting to share ideas and inspiration? Sometimes it can be hard to uncover the spark with everything unchanging under the sun, and so we aid each other by bringing invoking concepts into the light.
If you think the question of methods is far better, then feel free to start the next thread. Although, with the exception of map-making, I believe most people come to these threads to discuss specifics of their creations not to argue process.
In fact, I'll start some straw polls to gauge why people come here and which they'd prefer to be the thread topic.
...
what?
i always figured they are for people to think about THEIR setting. others reading it is just a bonus.
i love these questions, they often make me think about parts of my setting I haven't thought about before
>we could ask questions about the process of worldbuilding. Like, whether or not the knowledge of geography is useful and why/why not.
Thing is these question have been asked a million times and have roughly the same answers. Setting questions (hopefully) have varied answers and provide ideas to steal. At the very least it makes you think about whether your own setting wants/needs to even answer such a question.
I really don't fucking know
What things do you normally cram into every setting you make, simply because they hold great appeal with you?
For me, it would be a massive uncharted forest, which people are afraid to venture into and which has been a source of scary tales for centuries.
>What things do you normally cram into every setting you make, simply because they hold great appeal with you?
My fetishes.
So I have my setting in a soft but very high level science fiction universe centered around the milky way. There are no aliens just the offshoots of mankind that have spread out from earth but they are really only two universe wide hyper powers and I need help naming the other two great powers.
"The Society" Personally I like this name for the Net-born of mankind.
>Essentially a civilization of virtual human minds that live in the "net"
>The net being systems of Dyson Sphere Server worlds that exist in a net of wormholes
>Essentially each mind in the society is free to do as they wish as long as they live by the rule of no killing of a fellow mind.
"The Dominion" Needs work and is still very much WiP
>The only "Physical" hyperpower that resides within the galaxy
>For lack of better terminology a galaxy spanning fuedal empire centered around a single hyper mind. A being who is the perfect and final physical evolution of mankind.
I just want roughly two empires with clashing ideals. One physical and one virtual.
I'm terrible at naming things, but I'll throw out my two suggestions:
"The Society" to "the Connected"
"The Dominion" to "the Monofervent"
it is plausible for uncharted wilderness frontier being as large as frontiersmen' parent empire, but obviously with settlements flung far and wide, right?
Yes.
Kek
>tfw mlp screwed ever a juicy setting premise
Really, a setting where assorted types of mythological horses each represent a race could have been so interesting.
IT ALREADY IS!
Even if it is ( I wouldn't know ) I would prefer a being able to do the concept without the baggage and being able to do it with a more mature atmosphere. As it is even if you try to obfuscate it people will notice the clues and say "is this a mlp fanfic?"
>I literally have "Albionne" on my map
well, fuck
>I literally have Avalonne on my map
fuck
>sentient species
>look like crystal statues of sorts, with lots of tiny tubes inside
>live in arctic wastes
>drain living things of blood, but feed not on organics, but on warmth
1) what could their culture be like?
2) should they be humanoid, or another form would do better?
>sentient species
>look like crystal statues of sorts, with lots of tiny tubes inside
>live in arctic wastes
>drain living things of blood, but feed not on organics, but on warmth
One of these things is not like the others.
>drain living things of blood, but feed not on organics, but on warmth
This is bad. First, there would be very few living things to drain of blood in the arctic circle. Second. sentient creatures would not get their nutrition in the most barbaric way possible. Third, draining creatures of blood seems like a very strange way of draining them of their warmth. If it's warmth they need, they would mine coal and burn it to feed.
>what could their culture be like?
Whatever you want it to be? Go nuts. Inuit type culture would be natural, but nobody stops you from going the opposite way and giving them an amazonian type culture for contrast. They would probably wear very tight clothes to preserve their heat, since that seems to be what they feed on. Perhaps they would wear full body suits for maximum insulation. Visual arts would be very developed, since natural crystal lenses would give them kickass sight. It would be a very visual culture. Probably wouldn't be too keen on stone masonry, that's a but like building houses from flesh. A very sophisticated culture normally can't develop in the arctic circle because of extremely limited resources.
>should they be humanoid, or another form would do better?
Literally doesn't matter, make them whatever you like, from humanoids to terrestrial octopuses. Humanoids are always better, because convergent evolution would push any lifeform in this direction.
Love both of those names user.
Thank you.
Why would they be in here if they weren't going to read? I think you have an overly negative attitude that, if supported, ultimately leads to the end answer of "don't bother with making /wbg/ threads at all", which is obviously not the case as lots of discussion and interesting ideas get tossed around in these threads.
Gigantic fuck-off trees are my number 1 worldbuilding fetish.
...
I come for the methods and tourism but stay for the telling others they're stupid
do they fly around play a bass axe and have a rocky relationship with their dad?
have you ever been in the pacific northwest?
please mister can I have some sauce?
Well, my last post got deleted. So then...a GREAT CATACLYSM has shattered the Multiverse (ie; I lost my worldbuilding hard drive). While the Gods and a few ascended mortals have managed to fix a lot of the problems, a lot of worlds are fucked, some beyond easy repair.
Three realms, Eramus, Urus, and the Yamato Islands had to be stitched together to keep anything of them from vanishing forever.
>Eramus
This was a world in the midst of their Golden Age, the Pax Aurelian guaranteeing stability and imperium for centuries. Now, the Republic has been destroyed by internal strife caused by the warping of the world, and strongmen fight over the Empire while barbarians and monsters hammer at the gates.
>Urus
(Steppes and Sorcery) This cold realm has seen the return of spring once more thanks to the Warp lowering their latitudes somewhat, and civilization returns just as quickly to the forests and long lost ancient cities once buried under tundra. But even as the Barons unite the land, darkness stirs within the mountain halls of the "extinct" Dwarves...
>Yamato
An island nation in the midst of a civil war between competing Daimyo, Yamato is now the most advanced nation in the world. If it could unite under a single Shogun (or a single Emperor for that matter) and tame the rampant Oni that threaten its people, the Yamato Empire could rise above all others one day...
>The Rest
What should go here? I'm taking suggestions.
Ultima Thule was a term first used by medieval cartographers to denote that which fell outside of the boundaries of the known/explored world. As man’s knowledge of the Earth expanded, the term fell out of use. In time, man had little need for maps of his homeworld and thus turned his eyes to the heavens above. Soon, humanity would settle across the solar system and even come to penetrate the heliosphere, exploring distant shores that the ancient cartographers could not have imagined. It was not long before the other powers of the galaxy, ancient, wise, and malevolent as they are, took note of man’s expanse among the stars. The nightmarish slaughter that these forces unleashed dashed the entirety of the human race so quickly that there is scarcely record of it at all. Mankind was all but extinct.
Now, in this Second Age of Man, we once again take to the stars. Ultima Thule has new meaning as we begin to rediscover all that was lost, and as we reclaim the stars that were once ours. Our enemies are myriad, more powerful and numerous than they have ever been. They are corrupted things, lusting for power, wealth, and glory. In their pursuits they fight amongst themselves as they fight against us. That is their weakness. That is how they will come to fall. The other races of the galaxy are a powderkeg and humanity will be the spark that sets their great empires ablaze.
So, say I made a world where people lived on the sun. How would that work?
That's hot.
>How would that work?
hot and heavy
well during the day they would work and play, go to school, build and do all the normal things people do.
they'd do most things at night when its dark and cool?
Hit the discotheques in search of liquor and love
1) depends on how much time they have for leisure vs necessities, and whether they are settled or roaming. Settled would have houses of some kind, various crafts. Roaming would be less material, with an oral tradition and such
2) "arctic wastes" implies a lot of snow and cold. So large, rounded shape to contain heat with wide or multiple legs to not sink into snow. Alternatively a streamlined shape that tunnels through snow and ice
Also
>drain living things of blood, but feed not on organics, but on warmth
that must be some magical thing
because there are better sources of warmth
and if they want to get warmth from living things they could just hug everyone to death
>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
Elves, or the remnants of them
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
The elves have long since given up their mortality in pursuit of necromancy. They have all but abandoned the idea of being a race, instead becoming islands in and of themselves.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
They mostly live in icy islands around the South Pole. The setting is focused on the Southern hemisphere so that cold equals South. Their relationship varies based on the individual, but many have taken to a life of piracy to capture new subjects for experimentation.
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
I think humanoids provide just enough interest to allow for effective mystery to draw people in to edge them out.
>the night
I finally completed my map. Sort of.
Here's some info about the geographical features.
>What is the most interesting race in your setting?
Ghostspinners: gargantuan sapient spiders that can produce bioluminant threads of silk.
>Describe what makes them so, whether it be appearance, culture, environment or something else entirely.
They are among the oldest living races (and species) on the planet; their earliest ancestors prowling the towering fungal forests long before trees or vertibrates colonized the earth. They can live for thousands of years, and since they never cease growing the oldest of their kin are the size of mammoths.
Mature Ghostspinners are all white, while juveniles start their lives completely black, developing white marking and patterns on them as the grow, until these patterns cover them completely. No one Ghostspinner has the same kind of patterns develop on them during adolescence, and fittingly it's when they're at their most individulistic.
Ghostspinners get their name by the silk they spun; they place traps made of normal webbing, with globules of glowing silk shaped into animal shaped puppets. To the eyes of hideous Shantaks flying overhead these traps look like glowing morsels of food in the shape of sheep or mountain goat, and as they swoop down to snatch them they get tangled into the sticky web instead, becoming only more tangled as they try to desperately flap away. The tremors from the strugling prey is transmitted via the web to a waiting Ghostspinner who'll come around to finish off and feed on the hippocephalic hideousity.
Ghostspinners have a mathematical system of counting using strands of silk with pebbles and pearls, similar to an abacus, as well as system of writing by scratching symbols on tablet-shaped stones found naturally in their home Plateau lands.
Flat square world, I guess? What's the scale approximately?
Keep in mind that if the moon crashed, there's no more tides.
>Whereabouts do they (primarily) live? And how are their relationships with fellow races / civilisations?
Ghostspinners used to live around the world, but can now only be found in the frigid and sun-shunned Plateua lands, located north-east on the Arcanian continent. Surrounded by mountain ranges from west and south and by the sea east and north it's as difficult place to reach as it is remove and uninviting; the climate is bitter cold around the year, and worse still thick stormclouds block the skies all the time, leaving only the hardiest tundra plants and lichen a fighting chance of growing there.
Due to the remoteness of their home most other races have never even heard of Ghostspinners, and those that have consider them as nothing more but tall-tales or fancy imaginations of eccentrics.
Ghostspinners, despite their fear-inducing arachnid appearance, are harmless to anyone besides (Shantaks, yaks, and the odd wild sheep every now and then). The silk they produce is incredibly strong, which they will happily trade with travellers for mere glass baubles and dyes of colour, which they use to create tapestries and cloth of superlative level as gifts to anyone they deem friend.
Their only enemies are the Gugs that also inhabit the Plateau lands; once the Gugs lived a peaceful coexistance with the Ghostspinners, but after the Outer Gods which the Gugs worshipped left the world for good somehow the Gugs put the blame on the ancient arachnids, and now mercilessly hunt down any Ghostspinner they can find.
>Do you think it's more interesting to have humanoid or truly alien sapient species in a setting?
Whether a race is truely interesting doesn't depend so much on whether its humanoid or not, but more on other qualifications. Obviously non-humanoid, truely alien races have an exotic appeal to them but imo just including them is not nearly enough to make a setting interesting.