General Discussion

I was originally going to put a super long post about all of my lore and a little characters but I’m far too tired to do that. Things have been pretty bad lately and I like to hear about your ore/worldbuilding/OCs because I need something to do .
Wright as much as you want I’ll read it all, I’ll probably ramble back though (This is like 4 AM why I am still awake?

I could probably write an entire essay about everything I have made so far especially since I like to torture myself and add in so many unnecessary details but I'll try my best to give a short summary of my own world building project without spoiling too much of any individual stories or anything, not that any have actually been written yet since I just keep adding more details in the world building side of things

Basically I wanted to create a world that combines all of my favorite stuff and so I have ended up with one that combines fantasy/magic with eldritch horrors and science fiction. It is technically a post apocalyptic world but Earth has healed and humanity is rebuilding and reinventing what was lost because there are already enough hopeless dystopias out there.

Basically what happened was that one day a tear in spacetime appeared in the Solar System. Venus immediately disappeared and soon following that these beings that defy all known laws of physics arrived. They seemed to fight against each other and in the process nearly destroyed Earth. However, a few benevolent ones did their best to save as much life as they could, sealing it into these massive cocoon structures. Around a million years later they are opened and the remaining humans start to rebuild. Some of those beings are also still around and from them comes "magic". It's called that because it defies physics and cannot be explained.

There is a loooot more I could talk about, like the magic system, the individual beings that are around, the different cultures/nations, the now ancient incredibly powerful AI that survived all this time etc. but this comment would become way way too long.

I have a lot of different sources of inspiration for this project, both for the overall world and for the individual stories. Some of the first ones that come to my mind are Marathon, Destiny (both games by Bungie), Legacy of Kain, Elden Ring, Dishonored and many more.

I'd love to hear about what you are making though, other people's work helps me fuel my own creativity too and it's always nice to know what others are doing as well considering how much I talk to my friends about my project too

In my (work in progress) worldbuilding, there is one earth-like planet in the system. Around it are 6 other planets, but without life on it (or maybe some? Still writing it). Each of those planets has their own unique ore.

Through meteorites, that ore lands on the main planet (Viredia) and reacts with the people, giving them elemental powers. (Viredia has elves/dragons instead of humans/animals)
So those 6 are fire, water, earth, air, light, dark.

Some people react just with one element, some with two, and very rare cases can react with all of them. But there are also some who can't react with any of them. (Chemistry/Biology?).

Those who have no natural elemental connection can use weapons/gadgets crafted from the ore to use powers. They are called witches!

That's the summary. I am still trying to write a conflict/plot, but so far I found nothing special that seems to fit. Aliens on the planets? Maybe natural users VS those who cannot use it? Writing is hard.

I have a lot of original story content that's waiting to become a full-fledged story someday, but for now I only feel comfortable sharing some world building that I think is mostly solid now:

- the world originated as a regular Earth-equivalent, which gained magic when an essence-infused meteor struck it. from the crater, a magical creature rose, which brought non-magical life into the world and then split into two magical beings.
- these two beings, commonly referred to as Iridescense and Opacity, created the first magical lifeforms. Opacity unfortunately became unstable and began emanating harmful and dangerous magic, which led to it being sealed away by Iridescense and eventually forgotten.
- Iridescense split itself into ten beings, which became known as The Ten Dragon-Gods and each represent an element of magic. these are: Alphae (Aura), Omcae (Darkness), Sumara (Light), Fioro (Soul), Thanae (Fire), Malao (Water), Aeri (Air), Tormu (Earth), Matai (Time), and Diomi (Space or Dimensions).
- there are two types of magic that do not originate from the Ten; Lich Magic (which originates from Opacity's corruption) and Technomancy (which is unique in that it cannot be an innate talent, it has to be learned, and can only be learned by otherwise nonmagical beings. it's common among humans and nonmagical Elvin)
- most magical beings are defined as 'dragon', with the exceptions being Shifters (shapeshifters, some species are limited to only a few forms while others can have many) and magical variants of otherwise nonmagical beings (e.g. unicorns, pegasi and kelpies are equine species that evolved the ability to use magic)
- there are three types of dragons in this world: Greater Dragons, Lesser Dragons, and Pseudo-Dragons.
*Greater Dragons are reptile-like in appearance, have four legs and two wings, and are generally large apex predators - although small variants filling other niches do exist.
*Lesser Dragons are either mammal-like or reptile-like in appearance, have four limbs (four legs or two hind legs two wings), and are generally omnivorous. this category includes the most well-known species of dragon, which is the Keshe (plural; Keshei). some four-legged species, including the Keshe, can form pseudo-wings by concentrating their magic, but these are nonfunctional unless they're formed with Air magic and are used for intimidation or showing off to potential mates instead.
*Pseudo-Dragons are... basically any other purely magical beings. this is the broadest category and includes creatures such as mantichores, sphinxes, basilisks, and other chimeric beings, as well as other magical creatures.

Yeah I'll tell ya the major points of my verse:
1.Dimensions are split between light and dark. The light worlds are harsher to live in than the dark realms.
2. Every world has 4 ruling gods. Who are often siblings.
3. Every world has a primordial plane/deity that presumably spawned the world.
4. The light and dark dimensions are inaccessible to each other currently. This was not always the case.
5. In the dark dimension, traveling between worlds is fairly common while in the light dimension it is practically unheard of.
6. Every world has at least 1 native immortal species. At least things started out this way
7.The Light worlds are Orderly while the Dark worlds are Chaotic.
8. Nobody knows where the humans came from.

You wanna get flooded? I don't care.
So, one of my favorite stories I made is where humans have gotten so powerful, they've colonized the entire planet, and wiped out most animals. Now, the Archdragon, a giant god from space, doesn't like that, and sends her children down to get rid of humankind. But as they wipe them out, they burn up the entire earth, so it's pretty much just a wasteland inhabited by dragons and the few humans left.
Another dragon-oriented one; A long time ago, a person was gifted with the ability to speak to and take dragons(based on some chinese mythology). But his ancestors abused that power, and now people have domesticated the dragons and ude then for free labor and hunting. And they have giant electric collars, so they can't disobey.
One of the others I'm really proud of, is about a bunch of lan experiments. So, the special project escapes and murders the scientists, and destroys the circuitbox to turn off the alarm. But doing so, the cell doors malfunction, and the other experiments escape, one of which is the MC. But instead of attacking and being vicious beasts, they decide to team up and find a way to escape the sealed lab. But when they repair the circuitbox, the special experiment gets down to their floor through the elevator, and begins to stalk them, and tried to kill them from time to time.
And if you steal any of these-well, please don't. These mean a lot to me?

I don’t have anything quite as Tolkienesque as you folks are sharing, but I did come up with something I’m fairly proud of awhile back.

On an alternate Earth, vampires and humans evolved parallel to each other and inhabit separate nations. There is a kind of perpetual cold conflict between many such nations, but never a global-scale humans vs. vampires deal. Different vampiric and human nations have different cultures and different relationships with each other, much as real life.

In the nation the story focused on, many large family groups make up the government. Old vampire clans hold large swaths of land with settlements on them and everyone who lives there is subject to their rule. The main character was part of one such noble family, but he’s only a kid, and had lived among humans in a neighbouring country since he was a baby. That country was one with low esteem for vampires, and their military would regularly carry out raids on villages in the vampire nation. Humans would kidnap young vampires to “save” them, have them adopted by human families, and raise them like pets. Sometimes they would be taken as subjects for research and experimentation. The government frames this as good and correct, pushing the goal of “coexistence” but really they have no intention of ever giving vampires any rights. This situation escalates into true war later in the story.

Vampires live over 300 years and reproduce in the typical way, but can also turn humans if need be. They look like humans of all ethnicities, but vary slightly more in size. All have fangs, some have claws, all must feed on blood but eat food as well. Human blood is necessary, if a vampire feeds only on animal blood they turn feral. Humans in vampiric nations may have better or worse living situations, but most of the time they’re subject to stricter rules than vampires and are relegated to a lower class. Many vampires believe in a life force rather than an anthropomorphized god, and reincarnation is an important part of many traditions.

The main character in this grew up in a human household until he was fourteen, when his older brother came to steal him away. He’s one of seven siblings in the same noble household(sadly I seem to have forgotten all of their names). He’s never had blood before and is fairly weak compared to his brothers and sisters, but he has a good relationship with them and his parents. His human “family” treated him more like a pet than anything else, but he sometimes misses them anyway. He’s sort of freaked out by all the in and outs of being a vampire, but it’s exciting more than anything.

I should try writing about him again…

@LazySkeleton
oh that sounds super interesting! it reminds me of hubertspala's posterra and adventure time to extent, as well as elden ring with fromsoft thing for constant apocalyptic cycles! tell me about the magic system, it sounds like it cuold be really interesting with whole scientific coating that it has(magic as just anomalous physics gets me hyped! plus I love robots characters you can do a ton of fun stuff with that, feel free to tell me more!

the world that my stories take place is the Strana-grez(that's just Russian for dreamland no high-fantasy stuff), in which reality can be influenced very heavily by the thoughts of beings. this is not just humans and what not. even a bacteria has enough thought to do some 'magic' which is what it is commonly called. Reality bends to will of whatever can push it around the most, that's the only rule really.
The deeper you look at magic, unlike photons, the wilder and less definite it becomes. You could spend all your time trying to factually describe one aspect of magic, and everything that surrounds that description would only get stranger and stranger. You could spend all your time trying to factually describe one aspect of magic, and everything that surrounds that description would only get stranger and stranger. The easiest places for magic to exist are those where you must reconcile two opposites. These places can be created by proximity—being so close or far away that you are forced to recognize how narrow or unfocused your perspective is—or by the liminal, which has always been a place where the illogical and the impossible—regardless of whether they exist or not—become most real.


the world wasn't always like this, it was caused a great event that shattered reality and history, destroying time itself, so the 'time' or 'place'(same thing really) can't even be thought of as something that happened–he process shattering the very structure of reality in a cataclysmic phenomenon known simply as "The Event," giving origin to an infinite, chaotic multiverse where individual space-time planes only retain a semblance of stability,

das mage ick baybbbee

@Strangeflesh

Took a look at the posterra stuff and yea, already got a couple of ideas from there, all of it looked quite cool. Same goes for your world, it seems like both of us have a similar taste when it comes to magic with the whole "impossible to really explain" thing going on. Especially the whole "time and space as concepts are basically gone" thing is super interesting to me.

So in my world magic originates from the Great Beings as I'll refer to them from now on until I figure out a better name for them. There have been attempts to categorize both the Great Beings and magic but due to a lot of their nature being completely incomprehensible and impossible to figure out by ordinary life in our universe, they are still very mysterious. The capabilities of magic seem to range from physics breaking things like gravity and time manipulation to more "ordinary" things like the manipulation of one's own flesh (neat body horror-esque stuff) and to things completely outside our laws of physics (dimensions, existing seeminly in all points in time both past, present and future etc.) Their appearances vary greatly with some having "normal" forms while others are either partly or completely beyond our capability to perceive them.

On top of that Great Beings are nearly immortal as their "mind/consciousness" is spread throughout their "bodies" in substances often just referred to as their blood for the sake of simplicity. By consuming this blood, a human being (or any other living thing) can gain access to the power belonging to the mind within. The more blood is consumed, the greater the range of powers you obtain. However, consumption of this blood also results in physical changes essentially turning magic users essentially into cracked out demigod hybrid things. The magical powers are also not really even controlled by the user themselves but by the mind within the blood and this is where the risks come from. In order to use magic, especially more complicated and powerful forms, the human mind has to communicate with the blood. This is risky as you may end up receiving information that your brain is simply put not designed to understand. Thus magic users tend to enter a trance-like state during the "casting" of magic as all of their mental faculties are focused on preventing anything from being received. The rewards however are high as a single magic user can effectively wipe out an entire army if they are capable of casting a "spell". The blood stuff is heavily inspired by Bloodborne

As for specific types of magic, there are two right now that I am fairly confident in design wise. Both come from benevolent Great Beings. Gravity magic belongs to the Monolith (name a wip for everything btw). As it's name implies it resembles a massive mountain or spire reaching all the way into the upper atmosphere. Surrounding it is a continent's worth of floating islands and it's made out of this liquid-like black and blue substance that can freely change it's form and density. It it also the creator of dragons, massive serpent creatures with the same form. While the true extent of its powers is unknown, it is believed that it could easily tear entire planets apart and form a black hole if it wished to do so. The dragons are capable of firing beams of concentrated "gravitational force" that tear apart anything with a sufficiently low mass. The monolith bends gravity to protect Earth from these massive solar system spanning vein-like structures that seem to originate from the scar in spacetime where the Great Beings originated from. What they do is uncertain ( I don't even know yet) but they wrap around planets and these space butterfly-dragon things + more stuff I have not yet come up with surround them. The monolith also constantly battles with a Great Being that originates from the somewhat ruined moon where the human built AI is also located but I have not fully designed the former yet and also what exactly to do with the two yet

The second type of magic belongs to this tree-like being that I have referred to as Avalan so far as well as its offspring the "elves" (absolutely not their final name). They are very plant-like, with a white exterior and covered in flora and fungi. They are capable of generating "light" that messes with time. Time within the light can be either slowed down or sped up to the point where a million years can pass within a few seconds or a million years can pass outside the light but only a few seconds within it and so on. This power was used to preserve life on Earth in those cocoons but it can also be used offensively.

There are more but I've yet to fully finalize them. Magic usage is strictly forbidden, for a multitude of reasons and those using it are often hunted down. Only the benevolent Great Beings and their creations can use it, both because they are trusted + revered and because there isn't a lot that could be done about it anyway. That blood also seeps into basically anything and everything and the only (currently) known way to destroy it and also kill a Great Being is to utilize the blood of another as the two minds will essentially destroy each other.

Also since you mentioned liking robot characters, along with the AI, one character concept of mine is a robot/android that was one of the few whisked away into the cocoons. While they were built to last, a thousand or so years after the cocoons were opened and no proper maintenance due to the simple lack of 22nd century technology, they are approaching the end of their lifespan. Despite this, they have this optimistic grandfather-like role. Having shared all knowledge they had of the old world to the scholars long ago, they have now spent their time telling stories and educating the past multiple generations the best they can.

Sorry for the massive essay but I wanted to give a somewhat comprehensible description of what I am going for, I think I managed to remember all of the important stuff. Things may still change a little bit but I think the core concepts are now firmly in place. The current time period I am going for is comparable to the 18th century in terms of technology but my idea is that the world will eventually progress into a more sci-fi level of technology with reinvented space travel, aliens and stuff like that but that's for later.

*clears throat*

The current story I am writing is for a game project I am going to make with RPG Maker (MV). It's in the beginning phase - aka I'll write the dialogue and story progression first before I start to make the game. But in a nutshell;

The 6 main characters, whom are computer viruses, travel from computer to computer to damage machines. Their main motive is to go destroy a mastermind's (potentially a president, not quite sure who) computer, that is going to launch nukes to destroy Earth itself. In the end, the viruses succeed, but also not, as they get demolished in the process.

During the journey, two starting viruses find more teammates through all sorts of situations. The aesthetic is going to be webcore mixed with cyberpunk, potentially Y2K too? The story is going to have a light-hearted feel with little bit of angst and such. In the vibes of Undertale/Deltarune, per say.

Characters being...

• Heaver, basically a himbo. Really kind and also will fight when there's danger, but also relatively dumb, and misjudges situations
• Nuclear Virus, aka NV... a feisty woman. Social butterfly and gets excited over everything, but also hot-headed and forgetful. The partner to Heaver
• Cryvian, whom is a transman! Understanding and nerdy (in a way he has knowledge over a lot of stuff), but also has attachment issues and is a crybaby
• Kitty, the fan service character... /hj. Sweet and caring, but also self-judgemental and easily surrounds herself in fights. Is in a relationship with Cryvian, but then they break up. Kitty stays single, while Cryvian picks himself a new fish...
• Husky, the big sister of Heaver. Fair and loves fighting, but also pessimistic and cold-hearted
• Light, whom is an adoptive child to Heaver and Nuclear Virus. Optimistic and positive, but also scared of a lot of things and sometimes gloomy

That's basically it for this atm.