/wbg/ - World Building General

There were some King in times of Judges that was so fat that when Judge struck him with his sword it was completely emerged into fat.

And there is of course Leviathan and Behemoth.

Lucifer and Eden Snake are the same person. There are other demons though, Belzebub the Lord of Flys, Asmodeus the Manslayer, a king, the angel of the bottomless pit; whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon; in Latin Exterminans, Gog the King of Locusts and Azrael angel of Death if you are into Jewish satanism.

There are few more bad guys in Tradition. There is Nimrod, Hunter of Men. The Dragon that Daniel killed. Nabuchodonosor the Beast-king, Emperor Nero, Lemech and his sons, Pharo, Antiochus IV, Nicolai, Balam, Corah.

Also, bonus points if you make Necromancer the Simon Magus.

>good/evil split
Strictly keeping to medieval Christianity:
Good is what the spirit wills one to do, as passions are a manifestation of God's will. This is a path to one's Destiny as God intends. It's hard, arguably unfair, but the payoff for the faithful is heaven and status quo on earth.
Evil means sticking with worldly things, by a king who doesn't represent your desires, by an oath sworn to knights that keeps you from practicing your passions. This is to tell God that he is wrong for imbuing you with such passions and desires and is the path to war, death, disease, famine and the Wasteland.

T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land is a good source of inspiration if you go this route.
Good=Authentic
Bad=Unwillful

I’d probably have to look a lot of those up, but those are good leads.

I know Lucifer’s supposed to be the serpent, but I find it more interesting to portray the serpent as having been something else. I’m thinking my take will be the serpent was in fact eves best friend, and only tricked her, in so much as she knew exactly what would happen, and convinced Eve that it was still a good idea.
For me it’s just really hard to look at his track record, especially concerning the Old Testament stuff, that he’s unambiguously good.

What is your opinion on multiple types of elves?

Personally I like wood elves, dark elves, and original recipe. I'm also down with sea elves and maybe even a few other variants, both physically and culturally. But the thing is, it feels weird to be like "here are 5 types of elves who all have different appearances, stats, biomes, and cultures... and here's humans, they're white/european and also there's a fake-asian/japanese one but it's exotic and unimportant." Which is what many settings do.

I also want to have a pair of angel-esque and demon-esque races that aren't from another plane or anything (no 'outsider' stuff like D&D, just races that reflect some traits commonly associated with angel/demons) But then it's like... do they have pointy ears? Are they just another type of elf?

Is there a good solution to this? How do I make the angel/demon races markedly different from the elves? Should I split some of the elves into their own distinct races? (ie- turn wood elves into 'fey' or something?) Or do I just come up with an origin myth of one elf-goddess being the mother of each race with different fathers and that's why they're all elves but they're all unique?

Or do I add more sub-races for other races to balance it out?

From philosophical point of view it was beaten to death that sin of Eve and Fall of humanity as a whole have it's source in Pride i.e. I place my judgment above precepts of being that is by definition all-wise and all-loving and it's root in covetousness i.e. wanting to have things that are not yours. It is thefore in your setting that Pride's Spirit should be one responsible for it.

Also there should not be any fellowship between Christian-esqe Demons and prefall humanity. For for demons there is inward inpossiblity to have fellowship with beings of Grace. And grace, especially orginal grace, as something supernatural have dominion over demon. So if Eve ask Snake something he will be bound to anserw truthfuly.

There isn't much wrong with it fi you give other races the same threatment, including humans, don't go completely overboard with it in a forced attempt at creativity and make some of these differences more blurry. You don't need a kind of elves for every biome, and maybe some of these sea elves are basically high elves that don't differ that much from them, but spend a siginificant enough time outside of their homeland that the high elves barely consider them their kin. But to an outsider they are almost the same. But you certainly shouldn't overdo it and give the setting much more elf-variants than all other combined. Also any subrace should have their niche and purpose.

I personally think it would be more interesting to adapt some of the sub-races into more full races as suggested. Me and somebody used to have a long running joke about Beach Elves, a kind of elf who was only there for the sake of having a type of elf for every biome, they were constantly resentful of the sea elves and the land elves for not being mundane. They were slightly less than mediocre at everything so despite rallying warbands to take their revenge every time they attempted to ended in disaster due to their non-adaption.

in my universe, elves are just most human-looking of what comes from Faerie, so they are in the same boat as other outsiders, more or less.

Whether other races that come out of Faerie, including Fae Gods and, eventually, not!Azathoth, should qualify as "elves" is open question in the universe.

What are your thoughts on having timeline completely fucked up ON PURPOSE?

e.g.
>Judging by geological mumbo-jumbo and dinosaur bones the world is several billion years old, like ours
>According to the religion of dominant God the world was created much shorter time ago, though still in hundreds thousands of years range
>According to elves, they've been here before God, but still just short of hundred thousand years. Although their grasp of time is kinda tenuous
>According to Old Races they've been here for millions and millions of years, though they fought elves for all of their history
>There's an aritificial continent built by giants back in their prime, which has been there like always, but giants' structures on the continent have fallen in disrepair about a million years ago. Giants fell out of their prime just several thousand years ago, but barely any of their ruins remain, indicating that they somehow stopped building and repairing stuff... for some reason.
>Demons refer to wars and battles that don't fit into timeframe at all.

and stuff like that

>What is your opinion on multiple types of elves?
I like 'em when the physical differences between them are more subtle (besides skin tone based on region) and the differences are more cultural than trait-based.

what would be a fitting name for a very salty inland sea, surrounded by bone-strewn plains, besides Dead Sea (which is already taken for pretty much the same thing, minus bones, IRL)

Honestly the Regular Elves, Wood Elves, and the other ones I'm calling "fel elves" for now are very similar. Skin and hair colour differences, otherwise they're the same (same stats, basically.) But the fel ones are culturally different and people think they're cursed because they live in a shitty area and their god is shady so they assume they're all bad.

Sea elves are super different physically- can hold their breath, have flippers and weird skin, that sort of thing. These could probably just be their own thing or have a unique name. They're not exactly mer-folk though, that's another race (which is super fishy.)

Drow are the most different of the land elves of course- dark grey skin, white hair, etc. Live underground. So if I split the 'sea elves' into their own thing and maybe say Wood Elves are elves who bred with Fey that kind of gives a decent explanation for all the types of elves. But I feel awkward saying "the races are human, dwarf, orc, elf elf elf elf, angelthing, demonthing, merling you never see, goblin, oh and another elf."

Salt Mire?

What's the differences between regular and wood elves though?

... skin and hair colour, honestly. Different types of magic? They have different gods, that's the big difference. Each god has a race (there are a few extra races that don't necessarily have a god though..) So the nature god has wood elves. Could easily be 'fey' or nymphs or dryads, though.

Basically high elves are all about arcane magic (their goddess is magic/knowledge) while the wood elves would be druids etc. One lives in the forest, too. Pretty much standard.

Should I just drop the wood elf thing and commit to them being weirdo fey?

Well the serpents female. Little detail but I feel that's thematically appropriate. Additionally I also fed envy makes more sense, especially with the idea eve was in on it. The fruit of knowledge and life were the gifts God did not give to Man, they were forbidden. Both eve and the serpent were envious of this, and pursued it despite Gods commands, deciding the punishments were worth it.

>Is there law in your setting? (Inherent, divine, solipistic or otherwise.)
Yeah, though it varies from country to country, though the coastal region follows a form of divine law passed down from the prophet of floods. for the most part though the kingdoms of the Homelands have relatively similar laws due to Luvidian influences.
>How are people who break it dealt with? What is the mantra of the enforcers / judiciary system with regards to it, is it one of rehabilitation or retribution?
As time has gone on rehabilitation has come to the forefront in many countries as innovation and technology advances, though a number of countries are either split on the issue or still wholly based on retribution. Heinous criminals are rarely rehabilitated though.
>What is the most severe crime that can be committed?
The two most severe crimes is to take the mantle of king or emperor (any other synonym is fine though, blame history), though for 'mundane' crimes the worst ones would be those that deprive people of life or autonomy. Of course rape and sexually exploiting a minor are also extremely heinous.
>What is the most severe punishment that can be received?
Some variation on execution in most countries, though the highest form of punishment of the secluded country of Mu is to become an exile, forced to wander.
>Do you have stories about the first to commit crimes / sins? (E.g. Cain, Eve (or Lillith in the case of the apocrypha), Prometheus and Pandora)
The most obvious example of this is the Empire of Cyn (where the word sin is derived) which once held total control over the people of the Homelands. Nearing the end of their empire they had became totally complacent and hedonistic in their wealth and power, and went so far as to exile the prophet of their people for his doomsaying. It was a mixture of the Wizard Kings rebellion against them (which would lead to another despotic era) and the first great flood (which historically is the second flood).

>Well the serpents female. Little detail but I feel that's thematically appropriate
Christian demons are agender or rather asex in all aspects. They only apper male because in most cases it is more fitting (war, deals etc are musculine) but there is nothing stoping them from changing into female mode at any moment. They are pure spirit after all. Heard about Succubus and Incubus? It was common knowlage in middle ages that those bastards are one and the same thing i.e. demon apper female, steals sperm, changes into male and fucks with witches or whatever.
> Additionally I also fed envy makes more sense, especially with the idea eve was in on it.
"Through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it" says the Holy Writ. But casue of this envy was pride.
> The fruit of knowledge and life were the gifts God did not give to Man, they were forbidden.
Few things that you ought to consider first:
Tree of life was free for all to take. Tree itself served to maintain Adam's biological processes for an extended earthly animal life. It did not provide immortality as such, for the tree, being finite, could not grant infinite life. Hence after a period of time, the man and woman would need to eat again from the tree or else be transported to the spiritual life i.e move from Corporal Garden to spiritual one. The common fruit trees of the garden were given to offset the effects such as loss of matter via hair, nails sweat etc. while the tree of life was intended to offset the inefficiencies of the body. Man was furnished with food against hunger, with drink against thirst, and with the tree of life against the ravages of old age.
(cont.)

Second of all, tree of knowlege of good and evil is not tree of knowlege itself. It did not grant any theoretical knowlege at all. It only granted experimental knowlege evil. And this knowlege is of the same kind as you experimentally knows how choping of your balls with rusty knife feels like after the fact.
Thirdly, tree of knowlege was ordinary tree. It had absolutly no supernatural effects. It could have been "Stream of Knowlegde of Good and Evil" or "Doors oof KoGaE" or whatever really. It had it's efects only because it was percept not to eat from it.
>Both eve and the serpent were envious of this, and pursued it despite Gods commands, deciding the punishments were worth it.
There were no ignorance in Garden. Eve knew exactly how misserable her life would become and did it anyway. Ignorance came after fall.

>typical something-themed races (genasi, djinni, deep [race], etc)
>have magical abilities themed around their element or theme

>typical ratmen or pigmen or stuff like that
>have affinity towards rats or pigs or whatever, using them as pets and/or mounts

>typical centaurs or minotaur or stuff like that
>have names like Stuffhoof or Shtickhorn

>humans
>don't have inherent meat-themed magic
>don't generally have affinity towards apes, don't use them as mounts or pets
>don't have names ending in typical human features

Magic takes many forms throughout the Paths, and the wizards of the past spent thousands of years simply to categorize it into failing schools. For the most part magic is entirely based on concepts and spells arbitrarily fit into many different pathways solely on individual interpretation. To follow a Path is never to know what the next spell will be until you have found it, drawn to its resonance. Each spell has five spheres; the waning sphere, the waxing sphere, the first sphere, the second sphere, and the third sphere. A magic-user grows more competent with their spells through research and application, and at the first sphere the spell mutates uniquely to the caster, with each sphere after that becoming even more unique to the individual until it's final iteration.
So the most impressive things magic can do have hardly even been explored, of course the unimaginative magician may come away with a fireball after long years of honing his magic while another may learn to rob others of their shadows. Though during the time of wizards there was a singular Dwarf who achieved spellcaster status and grand infamy through his eponymous curse. His recursive curse exponentially grew until the very weight of the magic tore apart the soul, for it did nothing besides multiply. It's believed he succeeded in making the curse transmissible, though that's what is believed to have killed him and no one knew what became of the spell.

Makes it fun for the PCs to try and figure out what the fuck actually happened.

You know, I’ve read exodus, and it’s a very short book. I get there’s a lot of theology around this stuff, but I’m not delving into theology, I’m delving into myth, plus taking some liberties where I think it’d make it more interesting. Not that I’m not thankful for the interest, this is just getting too deep for what I’m aiming for.

I had a magic system for a book (realized it was derivative as hell, reworking) that I still really like. The basics were that Reality is made of strings, like the universe was set on God's Loom. You had strings like heat, electromagnetism, and gravity. Physical things were also made of strings in a more closed system, and thoughts/perception/the mental plane were also their own strings. It was very easy to reach out and "pluck" such strings, so most people could be wizards with little training.

But it was dangerous. Imagine trying to draw strands of Heat out of a fireplace, only to have some of them snag on the stones in the fireplace, causing you to tear the wall apart. Then, when you pushed the flames away in a panic, some of your strings got snagged too, causing you to be either instantly boiled or frozen to death. Imagine trying to read someone's mind by touching their memory strands, only to accidentally get tangled in them and swap some memories with the subject. You'd go mad!

The system's strengths were that you could do practically anything with enough creativity. The only limitation was that you couldn't really see the future or the past, nor travel there (the pattern cannot view itself afterall), and you couldn't bring the dead back to life for the same reason. Also, excessive use of strings tended to wear them out, risking a Snarl, which was bad.

I wrote it out more completely here: reddit.com/r/magicbuilding/comments/2pq5uq/help_me_with_my_settings_magic_system/

>Linking to plebbit on Veeky Forums.
You're going to get some flack for that, newfriend.

I like multiple flavors of Elves, since they are extremely close to Humans in my setting.
Despite there being three major classifications of Elfin types, there is no statistical difference between them - each bearing similar racial traits (their keen sight and empathic senses). The three types of Elves are Elvestri, Gamosi and 'Midland', with Midland Elves simply being any Elves that are neither Elvestri nor Gamosi and often have their own local monikers.
For your question, either make the Elves all very similar or each interesting in their own right. Same for the angelic/demonic races, make them different enough from Elves that they stand on their own merits and couldn't be construed as Elves. An Elf should not just be their pointy ears (if they have them), there should be a distinctness in them. In the same way you could make the angelic/demonic races have extremely distinct or variable traits. Have the angel-esque ones manifest stigmata or be followed by the sound of chimes - or really anything angelic - and have the demon-esque ones have, quite literally, demonic appearances (it doesn't even have to be horrific, perhaps just weird). Perhaps both of the races are wildly different from even their own kin, one might look cyclopic while another could have majestic black wings. Though the question is are you talking uniform traits or a agglomeration of disparate traits associated with their possibly planar ancestors?
You can always just make more subraces, that's always an option, and no one says Humans can't have unique racial abilities and their own subraces. If they are interesting enough and don't share many common traits, just write them up like unique races of similar ancestry.

Although, seeing as you haven't posted 294 days and that thread was from 3 years ago, I guess that's acceptable?

I know. Not a newfag, but my harddrive AND backup drives shit themselves recently, so only shit I saved online somewhere survived. And it was a longer piece than the word cap here.

D-did you like it?

Can be very interesting if there are potential answers, and even if there aren't any clear ones. The players can accept this as some immutable fact of their world or they may fight to learn the truth of things. Though if you go that route, don't just give them proper answers, it would be more rewarding to let the players arrange them as 'facts' are made available to them. Very few sources would be comprehensive, cohesive, or objective - I doubt anyone interested in a certain chronology of events would consider an alternative or an ancient entity would have remembered everything perfectly (unless that was their thing).
Make it fun for the players to traverse, and make it complicated but solvable, and if they don't care for it just don't force it on them. Allow it to be simply a strange mystery that they can come back to if they decide it's relevant or interesting to do so.
Personally I find myself doing this to my timeline intentionally, obscuring facts and chronology to make it all the more intriguing to finally uncover. I think that it would take away some of the mystery of a world if everything was so clearly defined, it's not like the players should know the full history of a setting without trying. You could tell the secret history of the world through artifacts (not the magical kind), lost tomes and scrolls, magical remnants of long since cast spells, ghosts of ruined kingdoms, and the ruins themselves. Perhaps the secrets would require them to not only delve the giants artificial continent but also the elvish histories, the demons stories of war, and the secrets of the Old Races. Even the modern creationist god has some secrets to spill.

You could still just call it the Dead Sea. I'd go with something like Ivory Sea though, since it references the bleached white bones and the salt itself.
Is the plains around it a sort of elephant graveyard where things come to die or have things just died here in times past?

Only scanned it but, I think it's a pretty cool idea, however as mentioned there needs to be more limits. Like perhaps meddling with the strings too much begins to twist and tangle your own, incurring subtle consequences over time. Sort of like a butterfly effect mechanic, where should one change something major that was planned to be it could cause catastrophic damage to the world, thus in turn the meddler would be damaged in a way to prevent them from changing the course of things. It seems like a serious world so the following wouldn't fit, but I think it would be quite entertaining if the chances of a wizard dying in a household accident correlates directly with his power level.

So your humans don't master the vile art of fleshsmithing and blood magic, don't enslave and ride upon their lesser ape-kin from which they take powerful limbs and organs to supplement their own, and to top if off you don't end your human names in -blood, -muscle, or even -brain?
For shame, we didn't kill off the Sasquatches for this.

So I just read the Powder mage series after a couple of people on here recommended it. It's shit, but it got me thinking about gunpowder magic, and then I saw it pop up a few times on Veeky Forums lately.

So for those unaware, it has "Powder Mages" who can use shot and powder to effectively do seeking machinegun fire and other tricks. This struck me as a very limited and banal use of gunpowder and magic, especially as the rest of the world wasn't really built around it (there are noble sorcerers who are deathly allergic to gunpowder but for some reason go around fighting huge wars with gunpowder, you still have napoleonic-esque tactics when you also have sniper machine guns who don't even need the gun part, etc).

So, what could we do with gunpowder fantasy?

I'm specifically interested in magic that is based on interacting with guns and gunpowder. Fire magic, for example, isn't - you can use it to light a powder keg off, sure, but you can also use it to light anything else on fire.

hm, Ivory Sea, I like it

nah, its just anything that comes close normally dies because it either tries to drink the water before realizing its deathly salty, or because resident batshit crazy necromancer kills them to add to his bone collection

Glad you like it, though that explanation makes it even better, the name could be used in part to explain why people might go there - Ivory being valuable, whether or not there is money to be made there.

How would the Ancient Irish and Norwegian appropriate the clothing of Ancient Egypt with its cold and tough climate?

The fuck?

I more recently added a disorder that develops in older mages. It's basically Parkinsons, but it makes spellcasting exceedingly dangerous. Usually it's dangerous because you need a careful hand and good concentration. But when you got the shakes...

they'd look like ancient Scots with funny headdresses, I guess

since all I can remember about Egyptian dress are fancily-wrapped skirts, full-body shrouds and funny headdresses

How would Irish and Norwegians appropriate Egyptian clothing and make it suitable for their climate?

No. Egyptians were either completely or just shy of naked. Scots and Vikings dealt with snow.

Well as always you could look at history. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the Native American ghost dance that they thought would protect them from bullets.

I love the idea of Gun mages crafting what is, in essence, a golem for their firearm. A musket pistol with a mind of its own, helping your aim, adjusting itself to compensate for wind and bullet drop, silencing itself, giving you another set of senses, etc.

and snarking at you all the bloody time

What about royal palaces located on geothermal vents? The heat should be enough to allow for it.

After rewatching Revenge of the Sith out of boredom, I understoon I want stuff like General Grievous in my setting

problem is, my setting is fantasy with little to no magitek
would a nation using clockwork golems with a few prominent human warriors being turned into clockwork cyborgs feel lame in a fantasy setting?

You could always do golem warriors or magically animated statues, terracotta army-style.

You really oughtn't put something into your setting on a whim, lest it turn into a kitchen sink. If it doesn't fit lorewise or aesthetically it's best not used without serious consideration, unless you're going for rule of cool; in which case why are you here?

I think I want each race to be pretty unique, but the angelish race and the demonish race should be similar but opposites in ways. The demons are sort of like succubi/incubi more than like... pit fiends or whatever. So while they might get power from sex (or more likely I'll make it about indulgence or something like the 7-deadly-sins, the angels would get power from love (romantic, friendship, family) instead. Or even require it to live a healthy life, really.

Which is probably as little silly.

Anyway, maybe I'll just focus on making those two races distinct from the elves, and keep the elves as a clear 'group.'

Why don't you explain exactly what it is about him you like? The spinning crazy multiple arms? The fact that he's a cyborg?

Like would you like a human with magical arms that held additional weapons? If the arms weren't literally part of him, I mean. Or would you be ok with a mostly human normal guy with a few replacement bits but no extra arms?

Which part makes you happy?

How would you go about doing one of those settings where the players don't know jack shit about it and everything is bathed in mystery? You know the type found in every Team Ico game? I know the idea of having pretty much no setting is somewhat antithetical to the idea of world-building, but I think it just requires focused and very deliberate world-building. Something that can be limited without feeling empty or half finished and present enough without loosing the sense of mystery.

Any thoughts or ideas?

the fact he's a coughing robot (okay, cyborg, but he looks like a robot unless its a really close shot) mainly

Flesh golem, two sets of arms, animated by a necromancer of some sort.

>that pic
I can see you're a man with good taste in music, as well.

Honestly not really could be a fun dichotomy

You could probably do some sort of goliath-esque thing.

Like undead-but-not.

>goliath
>not Thri-Keen
Come on man, you're only supposed to /pretend/ to be retarded here.

idk what that is sorry man.

Nimblerights are like weird steampunky gizmo guys from 3.5, maybe he should just look at that.

You could allow both races to pick one/two virtues or sins (angels and demons respectively). Not like subraces, but differing options. Anything else could just be character dressing that only matters to their appearance.

If it's pulled off properly and there were answers to be found, or at least there was enough detail to discern that there is something going on, I imagine players could find that very refreshing.
It would allow them to not have to deal with knowing about the setting beforehand because it was an element intended for the game.
It should be less that you don't world-build, and more that you obscure the elements you have, letting the players pick it up on their own as the game progresses. You could leave everything about the world beyond the games boundaries even more vague or non-existent, if the players never leave the vicinity of the campaign then it would be unimportant and might take away from the mystery of what they do see. Hiding something doesn't take it away, you can still discover it. That should be the most important thing to remember in a game like this, discovery.
In the end I think it's a matter of what's seen and what isn't. In the same way a lot of world-building is unseen, in this world you might choose to leave out anything the players would never discover or purposely leave some things they do discover vague. I'd imagine the players should know beforehand that they don't know anything, because I can see a player getting frustrated if the mystery was just thrown at them and answers withheld without prior knowledge.
As a note, I can see this concept working best for smaller regions, the larger the possible area the less you can focus on little details that might enlighten a previous mystery. A continent would have larger brushstrokes than a small, possibly secluded, region's deliberate detail.

Also, great taste in music.

I need some ideas for a city/society/land of ogres, oni, and rakshasa.

Ogres wear blue collars, Onis wear pink collars, and rakshasa wear white collars. That seems like a rather eclectic mix, so I'd suggest justifying it as them forming a mutually beneficial allegiance to cover for each-others shortcomings, rather than having a unified culture or anything of the sort.

>Is there law in your setting?
in civilized places

>How are people who break it dealt with?
as those in power see fit

>What is the most severe crime that can be committed?
dunno racial genocide I guess

>What is the most severe punishment that can be received?
death and reincarnation until you roll the race you genocided I guess

>Do you have stories about the first to commit crimes / sins?
no but I'm sure an NPC would if someone asked

Congratulations, you've earned the award for putting the least effort possible into a response.

I was hoping more for a unified sort of culture. They're all connected in some sense to eating human flesh.

my players start off with general knowledge based on their background and explore and expose the world as they go. it's a setting where nobody knows much, maps are inaccurate here be dragons tier and spoken word knowledge varies locally.

just make a framework, detail some immediate local shit that doesn't contradict itself and start them off without that first bit of knowledge from their background.

my current game features a large rift in space and time that's core to the central arc and manifests itself in the world they knew being much different from the world they now inhabit.

I'd be more worried about involving them in the start so it's not contrived (y'all amnesia!) or "you're all now in the plane of ragical mealm"

it's a shitty question because it depends on where in my setting you are. I'm not some autist who things there is universal morality and if you're with the demon king he sure as shit has his own laws and punishments which are much different from the Baron of Waterford's laws and punishments and does law even hold on the planar realms?

Where is your answer so I may see how "effort" appears?

how does any of that matter to Joe I want to hit things Fighter?

also that's not fucked that's like earth and some light sci-fi mixed with the most common concepts of elves and old ones. I suppose you'll have a Vthulhu who's not anything like Cthulhu while you're at it? What if your timeline is just all a passing instant of daydream in God's mind? What if ancient aliens? What if the alien invaders are actually earthmen from the USA?

well that sounds good, write that.

I need to map sewers with levels and waterways as the first levels of the network under a decent city.

I'm totally uninspired. Anything to get me going?

You had no obligation to answer the question. The thread questions are more to prod you to come up with interesting answers, not just give vague answers because you "guess".

You had no obligation to read my answer. Where is your answer again? Just link famamlam thanks so much for your time and opinion.

Bump

Sure that's a start, but where else could I go? Is there some cool real world culture that gives a certain importance to cannibalism?

How about going the Bloodborne route Flesh is seen as a sacred gift that, when consumed in a ritual not too dissimilar holy communion, allows you to become one with the mysterious vaguely eldritch gods. The more you consume the stronger your connection grows and the more you mutate to become like them. They are three races brought together through wishing to become the same idealised transcendant being.

*route?

I mean the basic tenant of some cannibalism is that you absorb the power of your enemy by eating them.

Some American Indian tribes believed that if the body was not whole it could not proceed to the land of the dead (thus Liver Eatin Johnson)

I suppose you could make it a bastardized version of racial envy in the former case or in the latter something that reflected on the non-human races' beliefs and not the humans. Don't want those sluglike pussies in our happy hunting ground.

You could do both depending on race and have the common ground be eating humans with some tension about the why.

Besides human is basically pig and porkchops taste gud, bacon tastes gud.

turned out ancient mesopotamia was the first thing I turned up so I just banged this out. Thoughts?

>yes I'm aware this is world building

>For me it’s just really hard to look at his track record, especially concerning the Old Testament stuff, that he’s unambiguously good.

If you suspend your disbelief to entertain the notion that the biblical "God" exists, then He defines "good" and "evil". There is no other objective standard. To argue with God about whether His decisions are "good" is like arguing with the sun about how long you think the day ought to be. It's not merely impossible, it is illogical.

This concept is pretty constant in every religion, monotheistic or otherwise. Anything that is incomprehensibly greater than man is utterly beyond man's judgment.

I was considering this idea that Ogres are more a category of thing, rather than just a kind of lesser giant.

Like, Ogres were once humanoids who have gorged on so much humanoid flesh they have become swollen with power. There can be Ogre animals, who have fed extensively on humanoid flesh.

I associate Oni, because they were once Ogre Mages, and I love the idea of magical flesh eating ogres.

Rakshasa are there because they're man-eating creatures with crazy demon tiger faces.

>tfw you just made elves vegan ogres

it makes so much sense now

>Speaking of world building, does anyone know what happened to the Storythread?
Conventionally they pop up every other friday (or later if the previous one managed to stay alive 14 days). Sometimes, we end up skipping one, resulting in a four-week long gap before getting back on schedule.

Bump

I'm working on a neo-feudalism with some low-key cyberpunk stuff mixed in there for a setting, maybe even a novel.

Dou you have some recommendations of things to check out for inspiration for that kind of setting?

If you have a strong stomach, DEFINITELY check out Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin. You might even want to check out Day of the Oprichnik by the same author, arguably set in the same universe.

That said, be warned. It's not an easy read, and at times (especially in Oprichnik) also some of the most fucked up, disgusting and disturbing shit you may ever end up reading. The guy has a lot of issues, and has quite a lot to say about the state contemporary Russia is turning into.

The removal of writers crippled it.

>The removal of writers crippled it.
"Removal of writers"?
What do you mean by that?

that's what I figured
a small island kingdom with generally poor health because reasons, but plenty of metal in their mountains and one genius inventor who made first clockworks

in general they remind of Crete patrolled by Talos, from greek myths. when some warlord actually buys several clockwork monstrosities for his army, people mostly seem them as weird demons and treat as such