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>>25104099
Thread questions:

>What kinds of fantastical creatures and outright monsters exist in your worlds, and how did you design/choose them? What process did you use when designing them and/or would recommend to others? And what is your favorite monster of all (hard mode: no dragons)?
>If you used any existing monsters or creatures from myths and legends, like dragons, how did you put your own spin on them? And where do you prefer to look for your inspiration and ideas?
>Speaking of, did your monsters and/or magical beasts evolve more or less naturally, or were they deliberately created by gods, wizards, and/or some other beings? And if the latter, why did the creators make them and how?
>How does the presence of the monsters affect the ecosystem of the setting? Are any of your monsters herbivores or do they solely feed on the blood of the innocent?
>Are any monsters in your setting sapient, or are they all just beasts? And if any are sapient, what do you have to consider when including them?
>Do the people of your setting tame/domesticate any monsters somehow, and if so, how does that affect their society, and how do they manage that feat? Speaking of, how do people defend against wild monsters?
I'm also reposting the questions from last thread to increase conversation options:

>In your setting, what is the major religion(s) present? What advice do you have for creating religions, including books and other resources on the topic or existing fictional religions done well?
>Where did you look for ideas on the religion's name, religious garb, ceremonies/rituals, tenants, etc.? Are there any religions outside of the Judeo-Christianity umbrella that have good aspects for fictional religions, especially if they aren’t used as often as they should be?
>How accurate is the religion to the actual reality of the setting? And if the god(s) of the setting actually exist in the world, how does this affect their faiths, and what needs to be remembered when making said gods and pantheons?
>Where do you look for ideas/resources on creating the divinities of your settings? Are there any settings in particular that you feel do gods right?
>Do your religions have Saints, Angels, Demons, and/or other important figures besides the actual gods? If so, what are they like, and how do they impact the religion?
>Lastly, how much power does your religion have over the setting? And how do the people of your setting view the gods and religions?

>>25104101
I added Hamadryads to mine because I wanted to explore themes of the human experience and they contrasted well against a society of Liches who had rejected humanity in favor of theoretical immortality. Being permanently linked to their tree opened up more room for unique plot points through the limitation, one in particular being a pride point for me as I write my book

Thoughts on World Anvil?

Bump

>>25105395
It's just a mess of tabs that nesting within each other. Notebooks or a master document is more than enough for worldbuilding

>>25104101
There are some monsters that are just animals, but especially the more dangerous ones are derived from humans though the monsters in question may be quite diverged to an unrecognizable degree. The humans of the setting speculate about some of the monsters being related to humans while others are obviously so, but still others are so far removed that it is borderline impossible to guess.

The monsters have multiple origins. Necromancers are implicated in many cases. The only mortal humans capable of creating monsters are powerful necromancers who are few and far between. The immortals are capable of creating more complicated types of monsters. The dragons in particular were a big accomplishment with groundbreaking uses in warfare. The immortals themselves could also be considered monsters depending on the definition. Some individuals choose to turn themselves into monsters for power and immortality, and some of these transformations are more flawed than others. Others seem to have nothing but pure positives for as much as the first several thousands of years...

My favorite monster would probably be the atmospheric and versatile traditional vampire. Yes, this setting has vampires in it too.

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>>25104099
I asked too late in the last thread, so I’m going to try again. In my setting Angels have no physical form, so when an Angel needs to manifest in the mortal realm they have to use the ambient matter and energies in the area to construct a functional vessel for themselves. They sometimes make forms more akin to OP's image for combat scenarios against more powerful demons and shit, but most of the time they stick to the typical winged human archetype, with their wings and halos retracting when they need to be incognito. Certain types of matter/energy often take prominence in their forms though, which is most noticeable with elemental-type energies, though preference can influence things as well. So an Angel that manifests during a forest fire might have wings of flame and/or a halo like a ring of fire like picture related, one that manifests in a forest might have wings with feathers like leaves and a halo made of vines, one that manifests in a storm might have a halo of multiple colors of lightning intertwined, one that manifests in a frozen tundra might have wings of ice and a halo transparent like a giant snowflake, one that manifests on a battlefield may have wings of blades and a halo of blood, one that manifests in a graveyard might have a halo of bone and wings made from tombstones, etc. I just can't think of what the wings or halo of an Angel manifested out of raw air might look like, among a couple others, or other common markers that could appear when the Angel in question starts using their powers to any real degree when in apparent mortal form; besides maybe glowing holy symbols of appropriate design for the substance of the form appearing on their skin and appropriately colored hair and eyes, what would you suggest?

Any tips for worldbuilding and speciesbuilding in sci fi? It's not for its own sake, I have something there but Ive had to retool EVERYTHING today

>>25106735
That's a shame. I really liked the idea of a map tool since I'm a sucker for visual worldbuilding and want to include illustrations in my novel.

>>25107805
Think of the ecological niches that pushed said species to evolve to their current state.

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>>25104099
Hey >>25090874, I hope we see you again here! Out of curiosity, how well do the people of your setting understand the mechanics at play?

I was inspired by how ancient civilizations dealt with the old Urban Fantasy question of "but how can so many different pantheons coexist?" by simply saying that all Nations- in the sense of tribes- may have their own gods but the human race as a whole shares the same gods.

Under that mindset, Zeus was the same as Odin who was the same as Indra, and similarly all sorts of different gods were considered different names for the same deity.

Therefore I've decided that gods in my own setting are basically "reflections" of a basic archetype that shows up in different forms to different people.

Which also means that when one single empire unifies basically all premodern societies on the planet and "captures" their gods, it means all religion based Magic Systems of the world were forced together into a single one.

>>25110343

In practical terms, this means that the one empire's chief god now has practically infinite power over the planet. He can:
1. Control the weather in general and the winds in particular.
2. Cause earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and all tectonic activity.
3. Control the passage of day and night in his nation.
4. Control life, death, and the underworld in general.
5. Heal wounds and control health and sickness.
6. Give someone infinite luck or misfortune.
7. Control plants, animals, and everything bigger than a microbe.
8. Control liminal spaces.

And many, many more. If you know a god, this one has its powers.

>>25110463
Does he also have any weaknesses the individual gods had?

>>25110463
Does that one empire happen to be inspired by/actually be the British Empire?

Interpretatio graeca shouldn't result in one god having every power because the idea is that the gods really are the same entities deep down even if they have different names in different languages, and even if a particular culture only worships one or a few of the gods that only means the culture is ignoring/unaware of the other gods that also exist. The idea of "god instances" absorbing each other sounds very off and product of postmodern thinking to me.

Also, the idea of "the god of x" (rather than "a god who sometimes does x" or "the god whose assigned position in the hierarchy is doing x") is also a modern idea unfortunately reinforced by Dungeons & Dragons.

>>25104099
>Worldbuilding is the process of creating entire fictional worlds from scratch
lol no it's not

>>25111649
Gods don't have weaknesses.

>>25111792
No, it's inspired by Bronze Age Empires like Assyria, Egypt, Babylon and such.

>>25112129
How much do your gods get involved with the mortal politics of the setting and how much is magic substituting for technology? In the real bronze ages the logistics of managing a global empire on an Earth-sized planet would have been insurmountable, which can be seen in how not one of the empires you mentioned even got close to ruling the world.

How could the chief god of that one empire end up with all those powers rather than than just the powers of his close equivalents? My first idea was that you were going for monotheism, but if the empire is in fact polytheistic, do its other gods have wide-ranging power combinations too from having absorbed random tribal deities?

>>25112857
The chief god of this empire controls all of Earth's forces, from the sunlight that falls on its surface to the movement of the core. The Empire is a Kardashev 1 Civilization despite not even having discovered the steam engine.

When I said he has ALL the powers of the average pagan god, I meant ALL.

>>25112857
>How could the chief god of that one empire end up with all those powers rather than than just the powers of his close equivalents? My first idea was that you were going for monotheism, but if the empire is in fact polytheistic, do its other gods have wide-ranging power combinations too from having absorbed random tribal deities?
Black Magic. He has metaphysically consumed the other gods and now has their domains.

He was simply born stronger than them, and for the sole purpose of killing and consuming all other gods.

>>25113651
How did that chief god come into being? If it was something the people in his country did, why didn't any other culture in the world have the same idea or was it just a case of whoever goes the first wins?

>>25113645
But when it's all being managed by one non-human entity, can it really be said that it's the civilization that is Kardashev 1? Can the chief god even be called a god if if it's just a slave to the humans that created it? Does it have free will? What does it want to do after it has consumed the world? Is it the unstoppable main villain of the setting or merely a tool that everyone wants to control? This scenario is getting completely removed from the original idea of a world operating under interpretatio graeca.

>>25113712
He was born from the primordial nothingness and incarnated into a human body to satisfy his lust for material possessions.

You could see him as a fantasy version of Apep/Apophis, the serpent that ate Ra.

That he was born into that specific tribe had no real meaning. It was simply coincidence.

> can it really be said that it's the civilization that is Kardashev 1?
Yeah, of course it is. It's just that instead of being masters of their civilization, the people are simply slaves that keep it running for the benefit of their divine overlords.

Magic can only be passed down through the maternal line. However, that does not mean women are any stronger than men.

In fact, they're usually far weaker. If I had to draw lists for strongest Wizards in any given speciality, like Alchemy or Summoning, then I don't think there'd be a single woman anywhere. Even the few women that do make it to the top are way weaker than the men.

In practice, this means that all magic using women are effectively the bottlenecks to production of new Wizards. Considering how much of a cheatcode Magic is, states evolved to raid each other for magic breeding stock while fending off raids.

As a result of this mess, all Mages are psychopaths and all major countries are dystopian tyrannies controlled by the strongest Clans.

>>25113752
Based on what you wrote earlier, the god should have had other reflections of his archetype all over the other pantheons, and that should have affected the strategic situation even if in the end there was only one winner standing.

In the traditional interpretatio graeca, Jupiter and Zeus being the same doesn't mean that one ate the other and especially doesn't mean that when Rome conquered Greece, Jupiter would eat the likes of Aphrodite and Poseidon and take their powers. But I suppose that is a pretty obvious thing to say and you know you have diverged far from your original inspiration into something that doesn't resemble actual mythology in the slightest.

>>25113865
Don't see how Mages would naturally come to be psychopaths, and how society would naturally come to be dystopian. Sounds like the pre-civilized state of nature. Eventually civilization will abstract the reproductive competition.

Though, the rarer Mages are within a population the more valuable female Mages would be. Also, if they're less than a tenth but still sizeable portion of the society I'd expect Mages to be the ruling ellite. At that point you have an ethnically locked ruling caste, effectively killing social mobility. At that point the civil conflict of every Mage society would probably look something like the sons of male Mages and female Non-Mages (merchants or priests or managers, incapable of Magic) vs the sons of male Mages and female Mages (warriors or priests, capable of Magic). But since Magic is so powerful, It'd probably have the same effect as Medieval peasant revolts.

>>25114135
Given that being a mage appears to be a strongly beneficial trait, the mages should be getting increasingly more common each generation, and the only thing that can stop it is the mages intentionally limiting their reproduction to maintain their elite status. Nevertheless, a society with a mage elite should be considerably weaker than a society of all or mostly mages and a system of citizen soldiers in which the farmers are part-time mages and the aristocrats full-time mages and both participate in the wars. And if mages are useful in increasing farming yields, an all-mage society could have farmer-mages producing enough agricultural surplus to support a sizable standing army of professional warrior-mages capable of steamrolling the countries that still have to rely on mundane means of production.

>>25114135
Magici society naturally selects for the sort of people that would kidnap and enslave women. Such people tend to be violent psychos.
The only reason they aren't Arab level psychopaths is because Magic genes grant you a rationality boost.

And they generally don't really have all that many children, really. Their population is actually sub-replacement and only spontaneous production of new Mages keeps them from dying out.

I considered that to be a necessary nerf to keep them a powerful minority of the human race.

>>25115289
All non-Magic societies have been completely wiped out because Magic is just that much of a cheatcode. All remaining societies are either majority Magic or keep a Magic elite.

It's just that due to how Mages deliberately regulate their own reproduction, Magic Aristocracies are usually less than a percent of the population while fully Magic societies are barely big enough to be considered a micro-nation.

>>25114071
My personal interpretation is that it's an act of imperialistic appropriation, basically just forcing conquered nations to be subordinate to the hegemon's religion by pretending their gods are your gods.

Assyria even literally "took gods captive" by taking their idols to their own capital city. That's why I made it a literal subjugation in addition to a metaphysical one.

>>25115325
I still don't see how the psychopath thing is supposed to be realistic.

More like this:

Male mages are the elite but also expendable. If a young male mage dies in battle before having had any children, it doesn't change the future prospects of the mage's home state that much. If a male mage brings home some slave girls, he probably captured some attractive female non-mages who are incapable of having mage offspring. These non-mage offspring born from a slave might well end up being exposed at birth in a primitive society that has little value for life.

Female mages are protected and socially expected to marry and have many children. In a society without many mages, female mages would often marry well-to-do non-mages. It's preferable to marrying own brother or first cousin, and the non-mage husband would be delighted at the idea of having his children be mages.

Over time the number of mages both male and female would naturally tend up, and societies fighting against this trend would end up on the losing sides of wars.

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>>25104099
I was loosely inspired by the Brothers from RWBY, and was thinking that the main deities of my setting would be a Lady of Creation and a Lord of Destruction, the former making things all the time and the latter destroying the things that would harm the world at large and refining what he doesn't destroy, like a writer and their editor. What other aspects make sense for them and/or their subordinate deities to have besides Art and Life for Creation and Death for Destruction (and maybe Disease, because things like diseases and monsters would be what occasionally slips by him)?

>>25115556
It's because Mages have to, by necessity, fight over magical women as a resource. That doesn't breed a civilized culture.

This is a setting I came up with while thinking up a story about AI world dominance that’s not boring to death upon arrival.

So, the starting point of the world is … AI world dominance. But! Only a selected caste gets to participate in the closed off part of the world which is ruled by a benevolent AI. The inhabitants of this perfect world were once chosen on intellectual merits, the best artists, programmers and scientists. the number of those who can enter this “paradise” at any time is strictly regulated by the AI itself and a deity-like committee of its top level programmers and philosophers deciding its course.

The inhabitants of the AI world (simply called “winners”, as in “winners of the AI revolution”, but they fashion themselves winners of the universe) do nothing all day but study visual arts, explore space, ponder about pretentious philosophies the AI supposedly can’t answer, have orgies, turn to religions, generally live a life of decadence and leisure all of humanity dreams about. Everything in their world is extremely beautiful (remember the elites include architects, psychologists, artists) and nothing hurts. Their lives of luxury and exuberance lead to them becoming extremely petty, developing an aristocratic culture of feeling superior to the “losers”, validating themselves and obsessing over perceived honor and trivial disputes like real life nobles did.

The living standards of the “losers” were once similar to ours, but rapidly deteriorate due to as THEY get to experience all the negatives of an AI-ruled world in the form of mass unemployment. Jobs became so productive they can feed a whole family, but having any job at all is an increasingly rare privilege. Everyone not qualified to have a job is kept in a welfare net that’s gradually eroding away as well. The winners of the AI world consider the (actually severe) issues of the losers trivial in comparison to their intellectual pursuits and pondering about existence 24/7. Gradually, the “losers” are completely forgotten about and their existence deteriorates towards subsistence agriculture, with some technology and medicine they can still afford.

Now what happens if a “winner” is excommunicated by the AI for reasons it refuses to elaborate upon and has to join the “losers”? That’s where the story starts.

The excommunicated “winners” are a pair of twenty something siblings. While the sister is a naturalborn “winner”, the brother was adopted last moment from a family otherwise destined to become “losers”. This fact makes him develop an inferiority complex towards his adoptive sister, a beauty and genius even amongst a eugenically chosen population.

This complex to prove he’s better than her has been his entire motivation since childhood. Remember; these people live for their petty image of aristocracy and spend their lives mentally justifying the luxury they as chosen ones get to live in.

He still cares about her well being and is obsessively protective of the egomaniac - whether because he loves her or still “needs” her to prove something to himself is ambiguous. So he won’t let any harm come to her, even as she’s maladapted to surviving in the “real” world than he is, in contrast to him.

So what does our couple of siblings do? They don’t even consider living for a second in the imperfect world of the losers and embark on a journey to return to the world of winners, where both had family and unresolved romantic affairs.

This requires one of two things: either brute force, as the AI world is still a physical place on our planet that can be broken into. But this is nigh impossible, as the losers capabilities erode by the day. Or figure out what the AI decide upon winners and losers, to be granted entry upon the only world they perceive as real again. Even as everyone of the winners has a PhD understanding of Informatics, this is still impossible as for someone who hasn’t worked with the initial parameters of the AI.

… but as luck (or whatever actually drives the AI) has it, the AI just excommunicates another former “winner”, an extremely charismatic middle aged cult leader who was chosen at the start of the AI world to invent its pseudo-religious justification/lore.

At first, he promises to work with our siblings to return together. Yet, as they gradually understand, he refuses to outright reveal everything he knows and manipulates the losers into serving him with false promises (his whole background, duh).

The siblings gradually understand the cult leader sees them as useless assets seeing they were discarded by the AI in the first place and their egomaniac personalities bring them to to a violent clash (biomechanic and robotic body modifications!)

The fight is three way at first, but once the siblings realize surviving together is more important to them than feeding their fragile egos, they team up and just barely manage to kill the cult leader, whose powers revolve around mass mind control.

Before dying, he reveals a glimpse of truth about the whole setting: the siblings were never excommunicated, but rather chosen as a seed for a new AI world by a yet unknown entity he served.

So much for a first arc. I’m far worse at second arcs than I am at firsts, so unless this is good there’s little hope the story overall will be lol.

>>25117524
Hmm. Rather than reveal a third-party who orchestrated the whole deal, why not the the new world arise naturally? I started becoming interested when the three of them became enemies because it seemed that instead of a story of overcoming evil (losers vs winners), it would end up being a story where new powers arise naturally to challenge the world order and erase the world of 'winners and losers'.

>>25117298
What you fail to understand is that when magic is inherited solely through the mother it doesn't matter at all to the continuity of magical talent in the society if a male mage breeds with a female mage, a female non-mage, or dies childless. You would instead see male mages introducing their sisters to the sons of high-ranking government officials or something similar. With big families enforced by social expectations, you could then see the number of mages double or more each generation.

This situation could end up a lot closer to stealth matriarchy than you might expect.

>>25117541
>why not the the new world arise naturally?
>where new powers arise naturally to challenge the world order
That's what happens in the next arc, the protagonists realise there's no direct way back unless they create their own similar world with the aid of a primitive "loser" civilisation set on the same goal of overthrowing the winners, because why wouldn't they want to. And through the siblings, they seem to have the means now.

Which is also exactly what that party wants, but they pay it no heed and fall straight into its trap.

>>25117442
>>25117524
There will be a flood of new sci-fi about AI, won't it? Even I have an idea about it.

>>25118293
Of course, it’ll become the new “medieval setting with knights and dragons” everyone in sick of very quick. So the trick is to write something exciting about it while the iron is still hot.

Would it make more sense for an alliance of criminals to divide their territory by geography or by a particular type of crime?

>>25119370
Geography obviously. Type of crime feels unnatural and Mota like an RPG/video game.

>>25117573
>r it doesn't matter at all to the continuity of magical talent in the society if a male mage breeds with a female mage, a female non-mage, or dies childless.
But it definitely matters TO THE MAGES, who are by definition the most powerful members of society and the only ones who can enforce their will on the females.

So why would male Mages want to let their women marry normies? They don't care about increasing the magic population. They want to increase the power of their own clan. And with how powerful they are, they don't need to use marriage politics to do it.

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>>25104099
I’m looking to create a fantasy setting where the four classical elements of fire, earth, air, and water are the dominant mystical force, a bit like in Avatar. As a result, instead of one pantheon of gods, I’m planning on having four separate pantheons for each element, each god having at least one divine domain outside of their element, like the fire pantheon having the forge/blacksmith god, etc. I’m just looking for ideas on which domains to associate with which elemental pantheon. Some are easy to assign like the fire pantheon getting the aforementioned forge god, same for the sun god, and the water pantheon getting the moon god makes sense both to counter that and because of the moon and the tides, but what other ideas can you suggest please, especially the more subtle/thematic associations (like how in Greek mythology Poseidon was the god of horses due to having created them out of the crest of a wave in a contest with Athena to become the patron of Athens)? In the last thread it was suggested that water have healing, fire have smiths/the forge, wind movement, and earth harvest, love, healing, nature, constitution, resilience, fortification, and defense, do you have any other suggestions? My traitorous brain is refusing to cooperate with me on this (not helped by the fact that I lost my notes on some of the ideas I already had) and I need as many ideas as you can suggest to me please so I can get past this, I really appreciate any help you can give me so that I can get this done!

>>25119446
When the magic talent is matrilineal, the mage clans would also be matrilineal as a natural development.

>>25119510
Why should they? They don't need the women's consent, nor do they have to care about it. The men are almost always far stronger than the women and violent, selfish brutes besides.

>>25119614
Earlier you said that all the male mages are psychopaths because they're forced to raid for women to reproduce, but now you have the mages raid for women because they're all psychopaths who want to raid for women. That's circular. It seems that you just want to write a story that is a Gor type sexual fantasy no matter how little sense it makes internally and how many plot holes arise when your characters aren't allowed to be intelligent or to have basic common sense and natural affection.

>>25119887
>Earlier you said that all the male mages are psychopaths because they're forced to raid for women to reproduce, but now you have the mages raid for women because they're all psychopaths who want to raid for women. That's circular.

It’s a "Chicken and the Egg" situation: the biological necessity to raid for survival made them evolve a more malicious culture and now, that psychopathy ensures the raiding continues as long as it's profitable.

Evolution, as guided by my hand, has forced their entire culture to be guided by conflict and domination.

>>25120914
The problem is that there was never a necessity to raid for survival in the first place.

>>25120927
There is a necessity to raid for survival, because any given Mage is dead meat if other Mages get their hands on enough new members to form a Clan.

Reproduction doesn't guarantee survival of individuals, it guarantees survival of communities.

>>25120930
The main threat to any given Mage's survival is other Mages. Therefore their entire society has selected for hierarchal, war torn communities where everyone is either related to or serving each other.

>>25120930
Your problem is that you're completely stuck on the idea of patrilineal clans and are also unable to conceptualize peaceful solutions, such as two-way arranged marriages to maintain genetic diversity.

>>25120943
It's because I'm trying to make an alluring (for me) horrible and dystopian society.

after sparring with a critical AI for several hours I think I greatly improved my setting and character writing >>25117442

but am still no closer to my goal, making a dystopian AI setting thats not boring to death. maybe reading even more Nick land will yield inspiration ...

>>25121050
You need to give more thought to the basics of your society.

How about this:

A few centuries ago the human world was invaded by demons who had an easy time steamrolling everything because the resident humans had only primitive technology and no magic at all. However a few courageous humans managed to wreck the dimensional gate, leaving a portion of the demon army stranded in the human world and suddenly mortal because the connection to their homeland was severed. The demons, bereft of their original leadership, argued among themselves and split into small groups that scattered all around the world, murdering and oppressing the resident humans with little worthwhile opposition.

In the present, an important concern for the demons is continuing their own race and bloodline in this alien world where old age will eventually fell every mortal, no matter how powerful and proud.

>>25118293
I've decided not to have AI in my sci fi project now that we have it and it's turned out to be worthless.

>>25121795
Why worthless, it’ll at the very least transform most intellectual jobs

>>25110343
This has always been seen as the lazy way out and not reflective of how every (or even most) ancient civilization viewed the pantheons. Read Edward Butler.

>>25121645
Ironically, this isn't all that far from the actual backstory. Magic isn't native to the Earth, it was imported here when refugees from the Dreamlands - ie the Magic World- conquered it.

All Mages are just descendants of those refugees, which is why they're so different from real humans.

It wouldn't be too inaccurate to say they're basically just evil demons from hell that were trapped in our world, metaphorically speaking.

>>25122305
You left out a vitally important part then. You see, the natural conclusion when talking about mages as if the only difference between mages and normal people is the ability to use magic is that the mages are the same as normal people, only with magic. This should include the psychological aspects, of which I've talked earlier, but also the physical appearance, so that a female mage in normal clothes would be visually indistinguishable from a non-mage (but primarily found in locations with other local mages nearby to help), which would make things difficult for a male mage looking to capture a wife for himself.

>>25122433
They do look similar to real humans. The only real difference, asides from magic, is their inherently malicious and power hungry nature.