Life isn't interesting enough, tough worlds to live in

[EvilElitest]

"If you children don't behave, the Zombie BugBears will come"
from
EE

[Llum]

Hands down this is a really cool and evocative idea. The idea reminds me of Sharn, from Eberron except less civilized, more barbaric, more magical.  Sadly, it also reminds me of the Jetsons, except more of a 19th Century Arabic Jetsons... Anyways, I'm fascinated by the idea.

Thanks, I don't really know what Sharn is (I'm not very familiar with Eberron), but your points seem very valid. And there's nothing wrong with the Jetsons :P

I approve of the first idea more. I think you should spend time on both these ideas in amounts of effort that are appropriate to you.

Not acting on one or the other seems like such a waste. And sure, you could think about developing these two into one single idea, but I don't think the gravity of the first idea could be maintained if melded with the second.

I'm glad you like the first idea, well approve at least :D I do spend some time working on them, there all a little fleshed out (some more ideas for them in this same thread). I'm working on getting a critical mass before I post anything, currently I have two settings that have threads (Divergence and the Eye) and four that I'm working on (cataloging ideas on a different site), the worlds of the first and second idea, something removed from Divergence and a fourth world inspired by something I read on this site I believe (it isn't really that similar to anything here, as far as I can tell, somewhat similar to the Eye though heavily relies on Bloodlines).

I don't really want to start like 5-6 different threads at the moment. Like I said, I want to flesh this stuff out more. Thanks again for the support and what not.

[EvilElitest]

Sharn is the major city of Ebberon, its the "City of Towers", its like a fantasy New York City
from
EE

[Llum]

There's this idea that I've had kicking around in my head for about a month so far, I can't seem to place it anywhere so I'll just put it out here.

It's a desert, the inhabitants are mostly humans. There are Drakes, akin to 4e Dragonkin with Wings. Most are bright green in color. Humans are killed by looking at them, yet they still manage to co-exist.

The other inhabitants of the desert are Dry Lichs, kinda a lich/mummy hybrid without the bandages. Their only goal is to expand the desert.

[Llum]

Here are a few ideas I have for races of the second idea.

Azurai

The Azurai are bird-like humanoids. Bright blue feathers cover their entire bodies except for their wings which have emerald green feathers as well as bright blues feathers.

The only part of their bodies not covered in feathers, are their hands and legs, bird like claws covered in fine green scales.

Azurai are capable of flight, though flight is difficult near the ground due to the dominance of Regrowth vegetation.

A unique feature of the Azurai is that they all have a flower growing somewhere on their bodies. Most females have a flower growing on their heads or on their chest, similar to adornments worn by human females. Males tend to have their flowers growing in the center of their chest or on their backs.

Veg

The Veg have a unique constitution.

Physically Vegs are massive, they resemble hairless humans with greater muscle mass, broader shoulders, wider jaws and small tusks.

The strangest thing about the Vegs is that they're part plant. Their skin takes on a green color shortly after birth, and they begin to photosynthesize energy. While this energy isn't enough to feed them entirely, it gives them great endurance.

Ohm

The Ohm are bipedal lizard-like humanoids. While they have no actual scales, they have a thick leathery gray hide, their facial stricture is similar to that of a lizard.

The Ohm come in varying shades of gray, with darker coal and black stripes or dots on their backs, thighs and shoulders. Chest and stomach and the underside of their tail are usually in a lighter shade of gray.

Dro Mae

The Dro Mae are a strange race, they resemble theropods that grow feathers. Feathers cover the neck, thighs, arms, legs and back.

Skin not covered in feathers has small clam shaped scales. Scale and feather color range in varying tones of yellow, green, pink, and blue.

Dro Mae revere a creature known as the Cornocopia Dragon. While they usually follow whatever beliefs can be found in the City or with the Barbarian tribe with which they live, they one and all have the separate belief in this creature.

Dro Mae are naturally curious, they all have a thirst for new experiences and learning new things. This leads the Dro Mae to frequently travel, they have professions that aid them in this, merchants is a popular choice.

[Llum]

Alright, for the world with the humans, Drakes and Dry Lichs I've had a few more thoughts.

The Drakes kill anything that look at it with some sort of light, the pseudo-science behind it is that it triggers something that kills the brain. Like a seizure or something.

It can be avoided by closing your eyes (which is still good for the Drake, cause what it's hunting is essentially blind). Or with a special kind of smoked glass. Most humans carry a band of silk with some smoked glass lens set into it, tying it around their eyes (like a blindfold) when a Drake is around, a makeshift sun-glasses kinda thing.

The Dry Lichs are probably going to be only a nuisance then real threat, they will periodically attack oasis and water supplies to try and drain the water, but other then that are relatively harmless (if you live in the desert).

[Llum]

Alright back to the world of the first idea.

For a city I had an idea that instead of being built on the back of an animal, there's a giant woman (like really really big, 300-400 feet tall) who wears armor built out of spare bits if castles and keeps. Her armor forms a large city made up of all the bits, the woman is simply called White Fortress. Now she isn't really awake, she's kinda in a sleeping/meditative trance that gathers clouds around her which transport her sleeping form (shes kneeling with her back straight arms on her thighs, similar to the Seiza of Japanese tea ceremony.

I guess this is just another take on the Castle in the Clouds motif, but hopefully its somewhat original.

[LordVreeg]

I don't like it yet.  Now, if she a little bigger, and had been asleep/entranced for a millenia, and so there was dirt and buildings built all along her, and olny a few select elders knew the truth...that might be cool...

[Llum]

I don't like it yet.  Now, if she a little bigger, and had been asleep/entranced for a millenia, and so there was dirt and buildings built all along her, and only a few select elders knew the truth...that might be cool...

How big did you imagine she would be? I figure 300-400 feet was massive (that's roughly 30-40 stories tall). Now there's nothing stopping her from being larger, I just figured 300-400 was really quite large. But now that I think about it, most of her volume isn't inhabited, only her armor is lived in. The tallest I can imagine her being is about a kilometer, maybe a mile in height.

How long shes been asleep/entrance is vary negotiable, I see it at least long enough for everyone to forget who she was and why shes asleep/entrance. I certainly see people adding on to her armor making more buildings and what not. How I don't really see how it could be kept a secret to be honest, shes a massive person, anyone who goes into a sub-sub-basement will find her. Another thing is that the face traditionally isn't covered in armor (well helms yes, but a fair amount of helms leave the face open for visual reasons) so covering it would be somewhat difficult.

Now back to the desert place with humans, Drakes and Dry Lichs. I see the human gods as people who have ascended into god-hood with the help of the creator God (haven't defined him yet, will probably be some animal god). They all have fairly large portfolios/domains, so the god of Justice and Law would also be the God of Trade, Taxes, Military, Travel. The gods would adopt an animal aspect and would be shown people with animal heads, similar to the depiction of some Egyptian gods.

As the main food source I see goats being raised as livestock, that gives meat, cheese and wool. Geography wise a mountain range creates the a rain shadow desert, so a large river runs from the mountains into the desert then sinks underground, only to be seen as various oasis across the desert. Date Palms, reeds are common plants that are farmed/harvested. Wild game can be found along the river as well.

[Llum]

Another idea for a city in the world of the second idea (the setting is tentatively named Nirvana, the setting of the first idea is tentatively named Ouroboros)

The city is a giant sphere of earth, attached to the ground by a few slender columns of earth. The sphere of earth itself has all kinds of decks, gantries and assorted wooden stuff attached to the outside of it. Rope ladders fall to the ground and the only main entrance is at the very bottom of the sphere. The sphere of earth is ruled by a dragon, Hiros the Antler Headed Dragon.

Hiros looks like an incredibly fat worm a scaled bird-like face. He has a immense set of 22-point antlers. He has nine legs, three sets of three that radiate out from his body. Hiros is something of a glutton, he sends out hunting parties to capture alive any beast they can. In the sphere he keeps a sort of zoo/larder, stocked with hundreds of species, some sentient. Using twisted magic he crossbreeds most of the creatures in search of the ultimate meat to savour.

The city is mecca for every hunter or chef in existence, Hiros lavihsly rewards those who bring him new creatures or create new dishes for him to enjoy.

[Nomadic]

Let's give him an awesome artifact... Behold the Ambrosial Pillar...


Within his "throne room" there is a massive pillar of glass studded with shapes of various animals and plants in a procession that twirls up towards the ceiling hundreds of feet above. This pillar interior is a gigantic hollow space that contains the Elixir of Bliss (a wine that changes taste based on who is drinking it and what their favorite flavors are). The great hiros normally lies sprawled about the pillar, lazily drinking from it via a tube of sorts and waiting for his next meal.

[Llum]

That idea is fantastic, if you don't mind I'll incorporate something very similar to it. I think it needs a somewhat evil way of generating the wine. Maybe its distilled from the blood of the creatures he eats? Or hunters/chefs who displease him?

The visual you bring are amazing, thanks.

[Llum]

Alright for some reason lately I've been thinking about the first setting I ever thought of. So I'm going to post about it here to get it out of my head. It was very detailed so there won't be a ton of info. I would also like to say that this setting is nearly 8 years old and was made when I was still in grade school.

The world was at war. One side was composed of Mages of Sound (they gather their magic from sound) and their allies from the Plane of Sound. The Plane of Sound people were fairly different. They have long narrow shark like faces with a pointed chin, large mouths filled with needle sharp teeth, skin the color of snow, pointed ears and no hair at all. Each of these things had the strength, speed and stamina of 20 humans.

The Mages of Sound used sound as their power source, all there spells were cast by words or sounds (hymns etc). Their leader was the most powerful Mage to have ever lived. He had three apprentices, two women who were just about as powerful as he was and a man who wasn't nearly as powerful as the other two. The male apprentice was special in that he was super sensitive and could draw magic from the faintest of sounds. The sound of his own heartbeat was enough sound for him to cast his most powerful spell, where the others would need something as loud as blown horn or a yell to cast the same spell.

The other side of the war was everyone else in the world who didn't want to be ruled by the Mage. It was an alliance between the other elemental mages (Fire, Water, Earth, Wind) the Knights (proto-paladins), the dragons (classic fantasy dragons, they fly and breathe fire) and the Elves.

The Elves were very important to the alliance because they were the only people who could stand toe to toe with the beings from the Plane of Sound. Elves were wild tribal people, they lived in forests, shunned everyone else and were extremely hardy. Like the beings from the Plane of Sound they had the strength, speed and stamina of 20 humans.

[Llum]

Over the holidays I got some more work done on the settings of the first two ideas.

In the setting of the first idea, I think it will be the setting of Divergence, at the very end of time. So some familiar elements will appear but changed over time (sometimes drastically). The Powers would be dead/gone (mostly) and have lost a lot of their power for some reason. The setting wouldn't really be related to Divergence except for a few things since there's such a huge time gap but I think its still a good and fitting idea.

For the setting of the second idea, I think the main driving force behind the conflict of barbarians and cities (aside from the natural resources--magic thing) will be a philosophical one. The cities believe in their own view of civilizations (mostly inspired by a single great philosopher) while the barbarian tribes do not follow this view. Now each tribe/city would be different, and view a different facet of this philosophical view, but they could easily be divided into two broad categories. Those who adhere to it (cities) and those who don't (barbarians). There would be some oddities (Mavpel, the barbarian city/trading post as an example) but as a rule that would be the main divide.

Each city would be its own city-state. I think wars between them could be fought, they certainly wouldn't be unified.

[Llum]

Alright, just an update. I've been thinking about a Ancient Greek/Modern Western setting.

The main meat of this post is just some details of a setting I'm making to fill up Snakefing's almanac while I test it.

Digitalis is a digital city. It is ruled by the Board of Directors. While user generated content is enabled in the city, everything must adhere to the strict "cultural and technological standards" established by the Board of Directors. Tech level is capped at steampunk equivalent genre. Culture is much less mundane, being an amalgamation of stylized Roma and Ottoman Empire ideals.

Gaining a position on the Board of Directors is achieve through ether winning enough ranked matches of Digitalis' game, Tacticus, to be able to challenge other members of the Board or performing enough beneficial community acts. These can be a few extremely important gestures or a long service of smaller gestures. Any member of the Board can be challenged, however it is considered extremely bad manners to challenge the Goodwill Board Members to a game of Tacticus without their express consent.

Tacticus is played in Digitalis Arenas. Board matches are always played in the royal Colosseum. Tacticus is a game of strategic warfare. Starting resources and units are determined before the match. During the match units are able to spend Action Points (AP) to accomplish actions such as moving, attacking and using special abilities. AP replenishes at the beginning of a Cycle (cycle lenght is determined before a match)

Most matches are simple Capture the Flag (CTF) or Deathmatch (DM) style games. However more esoteric game modes are occasionally used. Such as the famous King of the Hill (KotH) match between -=Dest1ny=- and 13lack-Lumpus for a seat on the Board of Directors.