/wbg/ - Worldbuilding General

There's literally a cultural questionnaire in the OP resources link:
frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir's_Ethnographical_Questionnaire

Go nuts.

Dawn of Worlds?

>How do you establish your setting's theme or feel?
Maybe one day I will write some short stories or even a novel, but I'm mostly worldbuilding for mental exercise and sanity, with less concern for an audience. So the theme and feel of different areas and time periods can change depending on the kind of place that I'm in when I'm writing about it. I try to look at it as a map of my mind; I try to date when I'm writing about something so when I read it over again it's almost like a tangible representation. That character died a tragic death around this time, or this conflict killed a lot of people? Oh yeah I remember that, I was in a really bad place at the time because X, Y, and Z. Or the inverse for good things of course.

>How much do you think about your setting's flora and/or fauna?

A lot. Any time I add an animal to my ecosystem, I ask myself what it's doing there, what it's eating, what are its competitors, how it should adapt to particular environments, etc. I actually just drastically changed the food chain in a plains environment because I removed a large herd animal, figuring realistically the area was too small to support it, especially with local humans who would probably hunt it, and as a result I had to remove a lot of large predators that would have depended on it.

For the people who can design entirely alien worlds and ecosystems, I salute you and I always love reading about shit like that (books like Expedition and what not), but I don't have that kind of talent. So mine resembles real world flora and fauna with rearranged biome placements. But aside from real animals I have a ton of extinct animals and a handful of original creations.

>How do you establish your setting's Theme or feel?
I highly doubt anyone's ever going to play anything in my setting because of my rampant autism that manifests in being horribly anti-social, so I'm planning to write a bunch of stories set in the world just exploring it at leisure through the eyes of a traveling wizard dispensing wisdom, fixing problems both arcane and mundane and seeking his own discoveries. It's meant to be a high adventure kind of setting, a Conan-esque world of wanderlust and secrets, so there's place for both flashy battles and fanciful explorations of spooky magic.

>How much do you think about your setting's flora and/or fauna? Do you prefer "normal" worlds? Alien worlds?
Only when it's necessary. It's a traditional kind of fantasy world with a bunch of weird shit just under the surface, because I believe that a little of what you know makes the unique aspects stand out more and they can also be introduced easier than just being thrown at the reader. I would introduce weirder, more fantastical flora to accentuate the weirdness of an area, maybe warp for familiar things to do the same without going full fantastical where it's hard to relate to. I would almost justify it by saying that the story is translated into a human perspective, so it has terminology and names familiar to us so we can understand, so when you start coming across weird words, you know shit's going crazy.

Also these captchas are getting weird.

Let's say you're a small province that has become part of a fairly benevolent empire with plenty of construction resources available.

There's a fairly short river on your southern border that extends from the mountains to the coast.

Beneath that river is an empire that likes to conquer small, undefended border regions.

Would it be wise to build a wall on your side of the river? Probably more of a long series of periodic fortifications for archers with spiked barricades along your coast, but still, a 'wall'.

Or would this be a waste of resources due to the power of rivers in middle ages warfare?

>Beneath that river is an empire that likes to conquer small, undefended border regions.
I don't understand that sentence.

South of the river*

Hello
I need ideas for a god of change and renewal, any ideas?

Blue birdman who lives in a labyrinth of crystal

The god is gargoyle like, but I don't want it to be Not!tzeentch

Perhaps he is constantly forming and shedding a new layer of skin.

The old layers calcify and crack, flaking off, revealing the new layers beneath. Over the course of minutes.

Thats actually a pretty good concept thanks!!!

That's just gross as fuck

Make it a fire god. Fire burns and destroys, it creates ash, it feeds the land, fire brings warmth and life, it's constant, always moving, always changing cycle, fire is the power of change and renewal, growth and destruction, it is a force of immense power. The God of Change, the God of Fire. It's a white hot shimmering entity casting a million shadows with no stable form.

Whenever i have a block or feel uninspired i just watch this

youtu.be/3u_UQoMViEM

It's like a canned brainstorm

...

I'm not an expert but I think walls are mostly good for defending, or more often, restricting access to, smaller areas. A long wall across a long stretch of land won't do much good to deter a large army, since it can't all be maintained and guarded all the time. It would be more efficient to build a handful of forts/posts/towers along the river to keep vigil at certain points, while strengthening the standing army of the nation.
If the bigger empire decides to invade, the wall will be the first thing they break through, at which point it is useless. Instead of using the resources for that long wall, the watchtowers or whatever spaced out along the riverside will be able to spot any incoming army, send word out to the army, so that a proper defense can be assembled.

But then again the Great Wall of China exists, so what the fuck do I know?

A giant snake who sheds his skin.

You described Tzeentch though, he's a god of fire

A god of the seasons. He rides across the world in a chariot / on some sort of animal, when he leaves his absence turns the world cold in winter, but when he comes back around he melts the snow and gives way to new life.

He could also have seasonal minions or children like one of storms or monsoons, forest fires, etc.

Genuinely didn't know this. I'm not too new to 40k/Fantasy lore, but where is that mentioned?

Have you even seen his army?

>I'm not an expert but I think walls are mostly good for defending, or more often, restricting access to, smaller areas. A long wall across a long stretch of land won't do much good to deter a large army, since it can't all be maintained and guarded all the time. It would be more efficient to build a handful of forts/posts/towers along the river to keep vigil at certain points, while strengthening the standing army of the nation.
This is more or less what I intended for the wall--a series of mile-spaced towers (Hadrian's wall) with decent fortification, with wooden, iron, or iron-tipped wooden barricades between along the banks.

Okay, but Tzeentch himself, is he like that? Do we even really know what Chaos Gods look like? And Lords of Change are big birdmen, not fire creatures.

Nah dude Tzeentch is just god of sorcery and intrigue, are you really sure about it?

>How do you establish your setting's Theme or feel?
Usually the basic idea will just come to as a short thought or daydream and I'll build upon it

God of change OR here, this is the description of tzeentch
>The skin of Tzeentch crawls with constantly changing faces, leering at and mocking onlookers. As he speaks, these faces repeat his words with subtle but important differences, or provide a commentary that throws doubt upon his words. These lesser faces appear and disappear quickly, but the puckered visage of Tzeentch himself remains low down in his chest, so that head and body are one. From above Tzeentch's burning eyes spring two sweeping horns, the spiralling extremities of which crackle with arcane fire. The firmament surrounding Tzeentch is heavy with magic; it weaves like liquid smoke about his head, forming subtle and interwoven patterns. Forms of places and people appear in the smoke as Tzeentch contemplates their fate. Those who appear there will inevitably find their minds, bodies or destinies mutating into strange new forms, for none can come to Tzeentch's attention and remain untouched.
I like the idea I was alredy going to make my pc burn cultist, this really goes with the theme thanks!!!

We know 100% what Tzeentch looks like. This is an official and very recent illustration.

You'd be sure about that if you read an armybook.

Hypothetically, how do we feel about plant-people?

You just reminded me about the plant-race from Guild Wars, they were pretty damn cool.

Cactus men are patrician.

So I'm trying to create a weapon that is made out of two parts, the handle and the part that hurts. The problem is that they can't touch without destroying each other. Is it possible to use magnetism to keep them connected without ever being in physical contact? I'm going for science, so fantasy logic isn't an option here.

Ok, sounds good then.

I was thinking, my god of agriculture is also the orc god. I know Orks are fungal or something but I was thinking maybe I'll have them be plant people? Or just have a plant race anyway and they can be comfy farmer friends.

Either way- plant people are happening.

If you make orcs into fungi, they might as well not be orcs anymore. I'd suggest either turning orcs into a home-made race, or including both orcs and fungal race. Just don't merge them. I always hate it when people do "these are my dwarves but they have no dwarvish traits" or some iteration of that.
Maybe there's myth or lore tying the the agriculture god to the planet people? Maybe orcs were somehow related in the creation? That's if you firmly want to tie the god of agriculture to these plant people. They can easily be plant-based and yet have no relation to agriculture.

I made my spooky hill/cave/forest elves plant people, or more specifically, flower people, the blooming bodies of a weird central body. Like flowers, they also wilt and die fairly quickly, returning to the central body. Individual elven lives are quick, but their communal consciousness is constant. New elves remember, or have access to, pretty much every previous memory, and are eager to learn new ones. Mercenary elves can be a thing this way.

For fungus people you could work with the same central body concept, or even colonies - fungus people die, bring bodies to a massive pile of detritus, dead animals, refuse, recycle it into new living fungus people, who then go out to found their own fungus colonies. Heavily guarded, of course.

>If you make orcs into fungi, they might as well not be orcs anymore.
...You're joking, right? R-right, user?

yes. This is incidentally how you would control a black hole (assuming it's spinning so that there's a EM field to latch onto in the first place).

Depends on what you mean by plant people.

If you mean a tree-hugger vegan race, or super-advanced agriculturalists, or both, or something along those lines, then yeah I'd say that's cool. But if you mean a race of actual sentient plants, I'm not a big fan.

Usually what it consists of is the writer laying out that plants evolved to a point where they adopted humanistic or at least animalistic qualities and were able to build a civilization. But plants and animals are so different anatomically that there would be pretty much no plausible way this could ever happen. And even if we just say fuck biology and evolution, the other difference is the way plants perceive and react the world around us. It's an extremely complex, completely different way of living. Honestly I feel this way sometimes about bug / arthropod type people and they're at least animals, if not vertebrates; plants are a whole separate kingdom.

>but user who cares, it's fantasy, rule of cool

You're right, I'm sorry if I'm being a bit of a buzzkill, and anyone can certainly do whatever they want. I just personally don't think it's very interesting because if you're going to give a plant locomotion, a central nervous system, and potentially even make them heterotrophic, why not just say they're an animal? Because they basically are at that point.

Each god has a major race who is their direct descendant, and then there are lesser races that were also created by different gods. It doesn't matter much but I like to have it worked out in my head.

So, Agriculture -> Orcs. Plant people can be their friends. Alternatively, plant people are the 'major' race and orcs are just your run of the mill orcs. Plant people feel like a 'lesser' race though.

Maybe some fungus people in the not-underdark? I like your ideas.

Yea this is why I wouldn't want Treants or anything like that created by the Nature god. Sentient animals maybe, but plants no. There are spirits of trees like dryads, but no walking plants in the forest. Unless it's a weirdo hivemind deal.

The plant people would be created by the god of agriculture, so having like.. a plant that's been tamed and changed for the benefit of intelligent races kind of fits thematically.

Either way they won't matter at all and will just be background fluff. I think the other user was right, 'orcs but not at all orcs' is a cop out. And there's no reason not to do both and have the world be a little denser.

Can you explain how? please mind I am not a smart man

I was thinking of something like this-
would it work? Could it be swung like a sword?

shit
flip the magnetic signs on one of the ends of the interlocked magnets

>Maybe some fungus people in the not-underdark? I like your ideas.
Thanks, user. Furthermore, on fungalfolk culture, they'd probably be kind of alien in how they operate, sense the world around them, kinda creepy and icky, but not nasty. I could go out on a limb and say some local villages or small towns (or just one settlement to make it unique) might have developed a friendly 'recycling' system with the funguys - in return for specially cultivated/grown medicinal fungal growths, the locals hand over their dead to the fungus people for care and usage. The fungus people get biomass to grow stuff, the dead get to be of use, recycled naturally and maybe even live again, who knows. The town might have a certain animistic, nature cult thing with the fungus people, it might just be a deeply traditional thing. Maybe some people go to the fungus, other local faiths don't. Play with it.

I'm working on a future campaign that is more survival horror themed. I'm hoping for to make players feel legitimately stressed to complete their objective on time. I need feedback on the story so far:

>Players arrive in a town that's infamous for it's terrible luck, this year's crisis has been the most horrific and disturbing. Normally it's just werewolves or bandits or a serial killer, this year it's a curse

>Everyone remembers having a visible red mark painfully burned into their foreheads in their last night of sleep, since then, they have been completely unable to sleep. Everyone has suffered from this insomnia for 3 days now.

>On top of this, people who die with this mark are raised from the dead shortly after.

>people have tried to prevent this by burning the bodies of the dead, but this practice ended as the corpses screamed and writhed in pain, only to be risen as something much worse.

>By day, the streets are some what safe, though as time goes on, the residents of this town will lose their sanity and things will start to get a little more random. Windows are boarded up and doors are barricaded towards the end of the day.

>By night, the dead walk the streets. Zombies, phantoms, "cinders" and "the decapitated" wander around, looking for new victims. They are becoming more and more aggressive and will eventually attempt to knock down civilian barricades for prey.

The players will have to find the source of the curse and break it.

So far, what I have in mind is a serial killer from years back, who's murders went unsolved had finally been tracked down by a paladin. The serial killer had long since ended his rampage after the birth of his son and decided to become a family man.

The paladin had been the sole survivor of an adventuring party that set out to solve these murders, and as such, was willing to go through any lengths to see this man die once he found out who he was.

1/2

Actually, possible alternative: Maybe there's a primitive race (humanoid or anything else) that colonizes a harsh area of jungle or forest (probably as the result of some catastrophe) where there are no viable prey species, and they are the bottom of whatever food chain exists.

So over generations the people who choose to stay develop serious mutualism with the flora, to the point where the trees are providing natural defense mechanisms to protect the population in return for the spread of their seeds. Maybe they produce a chemical defense that doesn't kill the race in question, or the race chooses well-defended trees and over time they are living in massive thorny tree forts. This race would then only be eating the fruits of (and later growing and harvesting) plants that are conducive to its existence, shaping the environment around it.

If you gave it long enough, especially in a jungle, the people might start to resemble the plants they live with, either for camouflage or mimicry (maybe to look like a poisonous species of flower). As they gain sentience and then technological advancement, they might staple their diet with the protein of the predators that once hunted them now and then, but they could also possibly be completely herbivorous and dependent on their agricultural way of life.

You could get really creative with the ways the "plant people" and the plants benefit each other's existence, mutualism is an awesome thing to play around with. The resulting culture would also be pretty interesting, with little concept of hunting, but it would also have the potential to be really stratified.

Anyway, just an alternate route, I might actually do something similar now that I'm thinking about it a lot.

cont.

The paladin broke into the killer's house and snuck up on a young man in a rocking chair. He inserted his blade right through the man's throat, severing his spinal cords and killing him almost instantly. The paladin felt a cold feeling over take him and he realized something was wrong. He looked at the face of his victim and saw what was actually the face of a woman. He killed the killer's wife. He now knew what it meant to be godless.

In haste, the paladin drew a pentagram, the symbol left behind by the serial killer in his previous crime scenes. Once found, the town would correctly believe they had finally found the monster responsible for all those deaths long ago. He had successfully framed the killer for the death of his wife.

On the night before the killer's execution, the killer was approached by a demon with an offer, pledge his soul to Mephisto and he would be granted a chance to get revenge on the man who murdered his wife. The whole town would know no sleep until it brought justice to the real killer.

Players can only break the curse by investigating the happenings, finding the fallen paladin, and presenting his head to the grave of the dead serial killer. If players take too long, the whole town goes crazy and the players will never break the curse for themselves either.

I like them, provided they aren't just green humans.

For my world, I'm developing a squad of "antagonistic but not entirely" demons that were sort of willed into existence by an ancient empire that gave names and meaning to traits of humanity they perceived as negative.

Each one is based on a human emotion or sin or negative quality, obviously borrowing quite a bit from the seven deadly sins. Here's what I have so far:

>Demon of Wrath, Rage, and Fury
>Demon of Lust, Repression, and Desire
>Demon of War, Bloodlust, and Destruction
>Demon of Sorrow, Regret, and Depression
>Demon of Power, Ego, and Greed
>Demon of Isolation, Fear, and Madness

I'd like two more to get to eight, but I don't want to include envy (which seems derivative of anger) or sloth and gluttony (which seem derivative of greed). Any ideas?

>envy is just anger
>sloth is gluttony is greed

pls go and stay go

Opinion time
Regardless of setting and genre, which do you prefer
>Guilds
or
>Companies

I'm trying to come up with major parties/groups of things that serve the aims of powerful demons.

Orcus is a nihilist Demon Lord of Undeath and seeks the annihilation of reality because he's fat goat satan and hates the world.

For followers, things like undead are obvious, but i'm looking for not so obvious things, things that aren't undead. I've had thoughts that some Orc tribes follow Orcus through nuturing his aborted rape godling child to hope it grows big and strong. I want a kingdom of Ghouls that are more Lovecraft's Ghouls than just ravenous dead eating undead. I was also thinking about myconids and thin alien minds of rot that are the fungi. Any other non-undead followers that would make sense for him?

>Demon of Disgust, Purity, and Hate
Think of it like an intolerant zealot.

Orks have a lot of things differentiating them from Orcs, and even aside from that, they don't really have any plant traits aside from the symbiotic relationship with the fungi in their bloodstreams, which is really just an elaborate way to handwave their mass-reproduction and healing abilities.

Companies. Guild has a weird ring to it that just makes me immediately think DnD, whereas company makes me think of more real life and historical examples.

Vultures

>envy (which seems derivative of anger) or sloth and gluttony (which seem derivative of greed)
Absolutely categorically untrue. Before you try to overhaul the classical seven deadly sins, try to understand them better.

Do something else. Thats some generic and cliched naming conventions, and if you wanna stick with that, at least rename them to something not so obvious. Also War and Wrath are literally the same thing, if you are worried (wrongly so) that envy is similar to anger and sloth and gluttony are similar to greed, why do you have two demons themed after being angry and killing. Also Power and Lust are the same deal too

Companies honestly, Guilds are so overdone and Companies has a really nice rings to it.

Vultures themselves as animals? Or Vulture-men, or Vulture demons?

>A species of bird that eats dead things working for an undead demon
Fool! The vultures are our allies against the undead!

The vultures themselves as animals were always demons. They were just waiting for this angry world hating Grinch to finally give them the orders they were waiting for.

Hmm. I guess I have some remodeling to do.

Maybe instead of sins, just purely emotions? Fear, anger, sorrow, disgust, etc?

I like that some Vultures are spies, and Giant Vultures are straight up in the service of Orcus. Might even be elevated to Vrocks.

Storm Mages (or something akin), folks who specialize in brewing up nasty disasters to ruin things

The Autonomous- A group of fucks who specialize in subliminal mind control, and intend on controlling people's every day lives, convincing them to live day to day by an inceasingly rigid schedule until the people stop thinking all together, their lives becoming so routine that time, free will and thought become meaningless.

No, go ahead and theme them after sins and emotions, that shit is fine, despite being monstrously overused, just name them and design them in a way that not so obvious. Look to the seven demon princes for an example. The prince of gluttony isn't the Demon Prince of Gluttony, it's Leviathan, and greed is Beelzebub. Theme demons through their actions, personalities and ideals, rather than just present their names as "This guy is this thing"

I like the idea of a thing that subliminally controlls the minds of people, draining them of all joy and life.

I don't want it to be some kind of human, that sounds more like an intelligent creature or parasite.

Anyone?

Or maybe some kind of sentient magical device. Like, Orcus' minions plant some weird metal beams around a city and it starts broadcasting subliminal signals, but no one suspects anything weird

If you're going sci-fi just throw some mumbo jumbo out there. You can get away with it by saying something like "the magnetic link device within the two sections of the weapon produce a specialized magnetic field that ensures the weapon remains in stationary position above the handle, while also retaining a constant distance between the two segments."

Oh those weren't going to be official names, just placeholders for organization as I'm developing the concept. Subtitles maybe, but even then probably not. I just figure I can't really name them until I've figured out what they actually are and will resemble.

I like that idea a lot. What if it's like an infectious idea that feeds on joy and implants the mind with instructions to create a device of desolation?

I love this idea, gonna steal it and make treehouse vegan flower people with pitcher plant moats for their leafy castles

I like the end goal of gray clad numb populace slogging from place to place, working through their day without the least bit of joy. not!Russia breadlines.

Alternatively if they feed on joy itself, maybe they manifest some hippy dippy culture that is so happy no one can care (or cares to care) for themselves any longer- basically the mind control fills them with carefree attitudes so they are always joyful, thus making a feast of joy for the minds and reinforcing their power to make the people carefree etc. I think it would be a lot more horrifying to look into the eyes of a joyful person and see the torment of living a life of constantly being overjoyed, being forced to be happy 24/7 to the point where you cannot care for yourself but still aware inside that you're actually, like, eating garbage and/or starving even though both just fill you with joy.

a gray drab utilitarian society is presented as such and isn't actually that much of a horror. eternally joyful people living in color and song being presented as a happy place but actually full of the tortured souls within seems more fun to me but then I might just be a little fucked up myself.

Related, but slightly less autistic: What are their views on pornography? Is it taboo, common? What's are some popular genres and what does that say about the culture? For example, porn with lecherous Monks was incredibly common during the enlightenment due to general anti-catholic feelings among intellectuals during the enlightenment.

Yeah, I think you can take nihilism as a theme and stretch it into all kinds of things, like making people feel s certain way until it becomes meaningless.

>How do you establish your setting's Theme or feel?
I treat whatever initial inspiration came to me as the crux of whatever I am developing. As an example, most people consider Cyberpunk to very definitively be a product of the socio-economic fears of the 1980's amped up to 11. So when I went about considering making a Cyberpunk setting the crux was "knowing what we know now from technology and having the fears we have now, what would that same projection of our fears produce?"

I've done this for Fairytale inspired settings, Space Operas, even things reworking more traditional settings for a different flavor. The root is important to the rootbeer.

>How much do you think about your setting's flora and/or fauna?
A surprisingly large amount in some settings and not at all in others. Anything that is directed to treat a natural world it is important to at least develop a reasonable amount of variety. That isn't as necessary in a lot of sci-fi stuff, though. If I need flora or fauna as materials or antagonists, at a minimum I identify the baseline (what things are encounter monsters, what things are exploited for a property or set of properties or for their production capabilities) and I ensure that I at least have a general understanding of one step up and one step down in the food chain. Why things have developed a certain way is important, and most animals are either adapted to eat things or not get eaten.
>Do you prefer "normal" worlds?
I do prefer generally normal worlds. I like them grounded. I don't want things that are weird just to be weird because that usually breaks immersion and limits how real the world feels. Obviously expanding on things as needed because just having real world critters is sometimes unfulfilling to a setting.
>Alien worlds?
Only as a juxtaposition against a less alien world. I appreciate a degree of familiarity. Anything too alien and there is a lot more to manage. However, having the exception to prove the rule can lead to excitement.

If there's a not!maple tree with particularly thick, rich and voluminous syrup, would I looked be down for calling it a Candy Tree?

Query: Why did [Ancient Empire] view these traits of humanity as negative? What other ways were these integrated into taboo or their customs? Are there other taboos or customs which are not represented here? Why aren't they demons?

Is candy used in other contexts? If there is absolutely no use of the term otherwise it is a weak choice because X tree is usually referential in nature. If candy does exist and doesn't directly resemble the sap, why or how was the association made?

Or is it a unique tree?

>tfw 4 out of 6 core races are plant people in your primary setting
I guess I like them.

Convergent development is a very interesting thing to consider. We see plants and animals in our world developing different features to exploit a similar ecological purpose.

Without jumping to the Gods or Magic explanations, if you consider why certain features develop, or alternative explanations for development (bipedalism, eyes, etc.) then you can start running into very interesting ways to elaborate on races without just making them "people but they're plants."

Shit ton of extra work I tell you, though.

Not a unique tree, and that's the reason I asked--candy probably isn't that common, even in the magical version of not!800 AD.

Maybe a juice tree... probably not tho!

Can I get some thoughts on this idea I had. It's like a kind of post-apocalyptic setting with dwarfs as the primary race. The concept is that in some bygone era the dwarfs were part of a sprawling fantasy world with a multitude of intelligent races, but for some reason or another they receded into the mountains and disappeared from the common world. So after millenia(?) have passed they reemerge, probably by accident, to discover the landscape radically altered and all of the other species they knew of in the ancient past are gone, and presumably destroyed. They would still be recognizably dwarfs but I was thinking they could have some mildly subterranean features along with the standard visual motifs of dwarfs.

I don't know if anyone of this is remotely original, it just seemed like a fun idea for me to toy with

How far apart should settlements be in a desert world?

What was his problem?

Simple answer is herd morality. The central ethical conflict in their society (which permeates to most of the modern remnant kingdoms) is order vs. chaos. In order to prop up order in a chaotic world, the religion then centers on morality which turns the individual against the instincts of life (human emotions). Deeming these emotions and values as negative and "demons" is a method of coping with frustration at not being able to express them, and gives meaning to the people (especially the underclass who can't really do anything about their existence) but it also inadvertently breathes life into them, causing them to take on twisted real manifestations. There is an entire pantheon based around these values, revolving around a central god of Justice opposed by a single chaos deity.

So for example, a pious man would be seen as someone who does not get angry or sad, only marries to have kids, doesn't have any real ambitions, just does his duty and dies. Because that is conducive to order. A man who frequently gets into fights, expresses how upset he is with whatever is going on, sleeps around, kills, aspires for a higher position in life, or who just goes insane is introducing chaotic elements to society that could disturb order, and is thus a sinner.

This is what I'm working with right now, kinda trying to shift things around at the moment though. They probably had other taboos and customs that aren't part of this bigger concept simply because they're viewed as "lesser" sins; it was long enough ago that no one really knows much about them to begin with.

Orcus is also very black goat sacrifice Satan, so his works should suit his gravitas.

Nihilism as desolation is more his style than acting free of consequence.

As far away from eachother as the oasis's are.

So, no settlements in between water sources?

More drawings

Basically any setting ideas I ever have are just fuel for drawing junk

For what reason would you settle in a desert more than a mile away from a water source?