TBPO's Conworlding Scratchpad

[TBPO]

I'm bored with conlanging, I'm bored with Alterverse and I have several ideas for conworlds. It can mean only one thing - I need a new scratchpad. Yes, I already have a scratchpad, but it's a conlanging scratchpad, and I think that I need separate for conworlding. My conlaging scratchpad can be found here.

So there are my ideas:

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Humans colonised the galaxy and they found... no, not aliens. They found strange crystals orbiting black holes. It turned that this crystals have magical properties, and clusters of them are sentient. Humans discovered large crystal clusters as big as planets floating in the void. They are Gods.

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Humans created interstellar empire, but bad thing happened. Mysterious cataclism maked the interplanetary communication and spaceflight impossible for thousand of years. Then it ends, they need to re-discover each other.

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Humanoid cats. Nothing original. I plan to incorporate it into a second idea.

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An idea for a religion. Members of this religion think that continents are gods and worship them. Priests fall over oneselves to explain how continents can do all things that human can do while still being large landmasses without human body.

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When you have hallucinations (because of LSD, hunger etc.), an evil spirit enters you. Blood spirit causes you to grab something sharp and kill as many people as you can do. Death spirit immediatelly kills you. Creativity spirit doesn't sound evil, but you don't want to know what it will do to your body...

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Something with dragons. It's REALLY important to me, but I have no good idea that include dragons.

Edit: I was joking.

What ideas are cool, and what are bad? And what's the best combination of these ideas? And how to include dragons into this? (Believe me, it's extremally important for me.)

[TBPO]

I have more ideas.

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Conphysics which are based on a model that's inspired by cellular automata. The conworld consists of three-dimensional grid. Each cell have: material (substance of mix of substances), speed and direction of movement. State of matter is calculated from the material and the speed (temperature is the same as speed). Time is discrete and the most basic and indivisible unit of time is tick. When tick passes, each cell is "moved" in its direction with its speed. When two cells are "moved" into the same place, a collision happen. Resulting cell is the combination of all colliding cells and calculated in a complex process involving their materials, directions, speeds and states of matter.

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When you lose a part of your body, you can go to a repairer, which cut off a part of animal and insert it into your body with the help of magic. This treatment is expensive, because magicians are rare and useful body parts are often cutted from a rare or exotic animal, and dangerous, because you can die or turn into the animal for ever. However, there is no alternative because all cilivisations in this conworld have low level of technology in this time period. Parts can taken from a few animals, including wolf, pig and yinrih-like half-sentient tropical animal, and excluding humans. Generally, the conworld is full of half-sentient species, but the only true sentients are humans. There's a universal taboo for talking about humans that turned into animals in other way than about pets.

Edit: In some cultures this taboo is limited only to public places.

Having parts of multiple animals is impossible. (This idea was inspired by dwimmery from Yeola-Camay.)

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The questions are the same.

[TBPO]

Magic system idea

Magic divides into Common and Arcane. Common magic is weak but common and its usets can evoke only weak and very specialized magical effects. One man in five hundred operates this type of magic. Arcane magic is extremally overpowered but extremally rare - only one man in few hundred million is Arcane magician.
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Common magicians fall into three categories:
-Repairers are people who repair bodies of other people by inserting body parts of animals in place of missing parts.

When you lose a part of your body, you can go to a Repairer, which cut off a part of animal and insert it into your body with the help of magic. This treatment is expensive, because magicians are rare and useful body parts are often cutted from a rare or exotic animal, and dangerous, because you can die or turn into the animal for ever. However, there is no alternative because all cilivisations in this conworld have low level of technology in this time period. Parts can taken from a few animals, including wolf, pig and yinrih-like half-sentient tropical animal, and excluding humans. Generally, the conworld is full of half-sentient species, but the only true sentients are humans. There's a universal taboo for talking about humans that turned into animals in other way than about pets. In some cultures this taboo is limited only to public places. Having parts of multiple animals is impossible. (This idea was inspired by dwimmery from Yeola-Camay.)

-Clairvoyants are people who sometimes feel a presentiment of upcoming danger. It's sometimes useful, but the big flaw is that the Clairvoyance don't know what is the nature of the danger. For example, if you'tr a Clairvoyant soldier which prepare to a battle, and you feel a strong presentiment of something bad happening, what it means? That your side will lose the battle? That you will die? Or that your brother will die? This is why this ability isn't really useful.
-Clerics are people who have bond to angels, which enable them to praying for a small things and wishing them to happen. Angels are shapeless beings built from ectoplasma and coming from Astral. Ectoplasma is a type of molecules completely parallel to the matter or energy, which is an essence of sentiency. Cleric can pray to an angel, and the angel can ignore the prayer or fulfill it. Only prayers about simple things can be fulfilled.
.

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Arcane magicians fall into two categories:
-Wizards are the powerful spellcasters that operate the magic of four elements: fire, water, earth and wind. They can evoke or neutralise powerful disasters, and often they are the cult leaders or even the rulers of the nations... They can manipulate four elements even after death!
-Warlocks can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and keep alive dying people.
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They are tens of half-sentient species, but only several sentient species.

[TBPO]

This magic system idea turned into a conworld Saytal ( Lithurgical Taraynar "lands").

Sentients of Saytal

In Saytal there are around two hundred half-sentient species. These species can create and use tools, but they aren't self-aware. In contrast, there are only few sentient species in Saytal. Below are 3 sentient species that are already settled in the conworld. S'oă do not count as separate species.

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Humans are humanoid ape-like dressed species with heavily reduced hair. They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world. They tend to think that people not belonging to specific group (usually non-humans, often other races) have no rights.

Spoiler:

S'oă are subspecies of humans. Main difference is that they are more social than humans but less intelligent. They also have more hair. One of one hundred is Common magician, but none of them is Arcane. They live in caves and primitive villages. Their speech is rich of bidentals, affricates and velopharyngeals.

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Arachnids are large (cat-sized) spiders. They are cannibalistic and stupid, but not more violent than humans. They are also social, but in very different way than us. Social structure of swarm is similar to bee hives or anthills - they have king and queen, which are the only pair in swarm able to reproduce, and countless small stupid workers. They usually eat large (hamster-sized) insects that are trapped on their webs, but sometimes they eat each other. Cannibalism is the only form of violence. All their languages are signed.

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Merfolk are octopus-like sentients. They are intelligent, smart and wise, but they're lonewolfs, which means no language. They're entirely underwater species, which means they can't live on land.

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Spoiler:

Term races in fantasy usually refer to separate humanoid (sub)species, but here is used for different "variations" of each sentient species.

*Am I using right preposition?

[Khemehekis]

*Am I using right preposition?

There's no such word as "throught". You probably mean "through". "Through" could work here, but I'd probably say "by virtue of".

[TBPO]

Pterix
I have an idea of adding Pterix - sentient crows/ravens. I have no idea of their social structure, but they will one of defenders of Qibảt.

Continents of Saytal #1
Nasat and Qibảt

Nasat and Qibảt are 2 continents that I'll focus on. They are geoogically one continent (Nasaqibẻ), but they are separated by huge mountain chain - The Mountains. Nasat is in the west and Qibảt is on the east (but some parts of Qibảt are on south-east). Nasat is bigger that Qibảt and it's dominated by humans. Qibảt is smaller and it's a home of S'oă, Arachnids and Pterix. Merfolk are mainly in oceans around the Nasaqibẻ, but rarely they're in lakes and rivers of it. If The Mountains won't exist and sentient of it won't protect it, it will be conquered by humans.

[TBPO]

Saytal reorganisation
Due to some ideas being unsensical and plans to making tabletop role playing game about it, I decided to change things a lot.

Magic
-Removal of the warlocks. They have no sense, especially if this conworld will become an RPG. They're poorely defined and they look to have less power than wizards sorcerers.
-Renaming wizards to sorcerers.
-Addition of mage? A mage is a Common magic user that's more powerful than other weak magicians, but its magic requires rare and expensive magical artifacts to work. I'll add it either if I'll make Saytal an RPG setting or if CBB community vote for it in Yay or Nay thread.
-Throwing out clairvoyances. They aren't very useful, and they probably will have extremally small impact on the world. It's possible that I'll add seers in indefinite future, but it isn't very probable.

Sentient species
-Removal of Merfork.. I have cool idea of huge calmar-like animals called krakens which are Saytal equivalents of our whales, and I fill that an idea of Merfolk is very poor compared to it.

Edit: -Turning Merfolk from octopus people to jellyfish people. Sentient jellyfishes maybe aren't naturalistic, but THEY'RE POSSIBLE, AND THEY'RE COOL.

-Renaming Arachnids to Arakan. (Sg. Araken)

Main Area

Edit: -Renaming Nasat to Nazat.

-Renaming Qibảt to Kivat Jarat.
-Renaming Nasaqibẻ to Main Area.
-Renaming The Mountains? CBB community will decide.
-From now all geographical names are not in-world names and all of them are possibly temporal.

[TBPO]

I decided that I create a tabletop role playing game about Saytal when it will be developed enough to make it possible.

Magic is under development

Currently I have lots of ideas for magic types (now called masteries) and I'm not sure what should I add and what shouldn't, so below is summary of current state of magic system.

Present masteries:
-Repairy - Repairers cut off animal body parts and insert them in place of human body parts. They usually do this because client loose part of his* body, but sometimes if client is rich, he wants to replace his body part with "better" animal version. Only body parts of
certain animals can be used.
-Clergy - Clerics can pray to... something unearthly, and this thing can (but need not to) fulfill small prayers.

Spoiler:

And no, in this version they don't pray to angels.

-Sorcery - Sorcerers are extremally powerful magicians that manipulate four elements. They are very rare, but each of them highly influenced history of Saytal, or at least destroyed large part of the world... The case of Salamaar teached people one thing: kill a sorcerer, before it will be too late.

*I'll use masculine gender for word 'client'.

Candidates for masteries:
-Wizardry - Wizards are magicians that are more powerful than repairer or cleric, but their magic require spending special runes to work.
-Alchemy & Witchcraft - The former is more like a mystic version of chemistry, while the latter is more like a mystic herbalistry or witchcraft from folklore.
-Enchantery/Enhancery consists in enhancing the abilities of others.

[TBPO]

Following question popped into my head: what would happen if humanity discovered Yih when both species were in the Middle Ages? Then I decided to create conworld about it.

Three main things diffrentiate it from The Lonely Galaxy; other differences are implications of these:
1. Both humanity and yinrih are in Middle Ages.
2. A paranormal passages lie between Earth and Yih, which enable to travel between these planets without advenced technology.
3. Humans discovered Yih before yinrih discovered Earth.

It will probably lead to two things:
1. Humans will invade Yih and make war with yinrih.
2. Bright way is likely to fall, replaced by anti-human movements.

[Visions1]

An idea for a religion. Members of this religion think that continents are gods and worship them. Priests fall over oneselves to explain how continents can do all things that human can do while still being large landmasses without human body.

I had an idea like this. I'll post it here eventually.
I like this little list.

[TBPO]

An idea for a religion. Members of this religion think that continents are gods and worship them. Priests fall over oneselves to explain how continents can do all things that human can do while still being large landmasses without human body.

I had an idea like this. I'll post it here eventually.
I like this little list.

You can write here about your idea, if you want. As for list, I like that you like my list.

[TBPO]

An idea:
Tribes of primitives reorganize into empires and fight for whole world, leaded by nearly immortal alien gods that use extremally powerful magic.

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Primitives are animals, the world is Earth, gods are humans and magic is technology.

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Million years after Breakdown due to difficulty to survive in a wasteland some animals gained sentience, but not sapience - they can't use tools, they can't talk about abstract concepts, they can't count to ten. But gods filled them with greed, causing the world to be a battlefield for brutal animals, which are pawns in gods' game.

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Gods are humans with extremally advanced technology. They theoritically can't be here, because after Breakdown humanity decided to leave Solar System for ever, but some humans didn't listen and travelled and stayed here. They are rogues hiding from galactic law, but in truth they're slaves of their own god, Mars.

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Mars is god-planet - an eldritchly advanced artifical intelligence, leaved in solar system after Breakdown. God-planets are sentient planets, extremally wise and intelligent, true rulers of humanity. The first was Mars, the only god-planet transformed before Breakdown.

[TBPO]

A few conworld ideas:

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Every animal knows a simple set of written symbols which allow them to communicate with each other even if they're only half-sentient. I'm not sure should I count humans as animals. Probably it depends on will I merge this idea with the idea below.

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Humans and animals are the sides of a cosmic conflict between the Animal Deity and the Human Deity. Animals see humanity as the cancer on nature's skin and the latter see them as an obstacle that must be destroyed because it stops the humanity from growing in power. Both sides advance in power, but while humans develop the more and more advanced technology, animals explore the secrets of magic...

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Sphereverse
A conworld consisting of infinite amount of spheres with worlds inside. Every sphere consists of a world which it contains and an infinitely thin barrier called firmament. A sun travels on it from east to west; the closer to the sun is something, the hotter it is. On sphere's center days are hot and nights are cold. On the east the hottest part of the day is the sunrise; on the west the hottest part is the sunset. On the north and the south every part if the day is colder that in the center.
Some people are able to read minds and manipulate them. They are called psionics. Their power can reach to other spheres because every sphere is magically linked with the other spheres. Most of them live in the center because they fall into madness when they're close to the firmament. So what make them mad? The answer is: the limbo, which is the primodial chaos filling the space outside the spheres. Divine entities traveling through limbo in their ships occur in most cultures in most spheres. Are they more than a myth...?

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I'm currently working on an interesting RPG that... Nevermind. Forget it. I said FORGET IT.

[TBPO]

Types of spheres by firmament
Spheres in Sphereverse are very varied. They can differ in almost everything, but some possibilities are more often that the other. Spheres can be classified in many ways, and below is a classification by the behavior of their firmaments, from most common to quite rare (rarer types are not present here):

-Unary firmaments never change as time passes. It means that in unary spheres there is no universal unit of time and no global clock exist. In such spheres global changes are never cyclical.
-Non-celestial firmament has no celestial bodies - it's the same in every point. The only things that change over time are brightness and temperature.
-Solar firmaments have a sun that never change its vertical position but cyclically change in other ways (horizontal position, size, width, brightness, temperature etc.)
-Planetary firmaments have moving sun that continuously change its vertical position but doesn't change properties other than position. It's main characteristic is sudden change between two phases (day and night) and huge difference between them. Other celestial bodies can be present on the firmament.
-Ternary firmaments have three phases. Usually phases are: bright+cold, bright/dark+hot and dark+cold.
-Chaotic firmaments change in unpredictable way. Some of them have two phases: ordered and chaotic, but their lengths are unpredictable. Chaotic spheres are often very unfriendly to life.

Larger-scale phases, such as seasons, are very rare across Sphereverse.

[Oliel]

They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world.

... and so imperialistic that they conquered...

?

[Oliel]

Just to revers !

"... and for imperialistic it they conquered..."

[TBPO]

They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world.

... and so imperialistic that they conquered...

?

...and so imperialistic that they conquered three quarters of the world. (I now see that it's illogical because only half of the Saytal is inhabited by humans.)

Your English is very Frenchy.

[Oliel]

They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world.

... and so imperialistic that they conquered...

?

...and so imperialistic that they conquered three quarters of the world. (I now see that it's illogical because only half of the Saytal is inhabited by humans.)

Your English is very Frenchy.

You right. I thought it was a three quarters of what is relevant.

[Keenir]

They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world.

... and so imperialistic that they conquered...

?

...and so imperialistic that they conquered three quarters of the world. (I now see that it's illogical because only half of the Saytal is inhabited by humans.)

Your English is very Frenchy.

You right. I thought it was a three quarters of what is relevant.

they can still be imperialistically grabbing and keeping any land not inhabited by humans, can't they? (whether uninhabited, full stop; or whether only uninhabited by humans)

...at least, they can so long as you keep the word greedy. If there are fifteen cookies, and I take fourteen of them - it doesn't matter if there are no other people who want cookies: I'm still being greedy.

[TBPO]

Spoiler:

They are very smart, curious and social but also selfish, greedy and imperialistic. Throught* the last feature they conquered three quarters of the world.

... and so imperialistic that they conquered...

?

...and so imperialistic that they conquered three quarters of the world. (I now see that it's illogical because only half of the Saytal is inhabited by humans.)

Your English is very Frenchy.

You right. I thought it was a three quarters of what is relevant.

they can still be imperialistically grabbing and keeping any land not inhabited by humans, can't they? (whether uninhabited, full stop; or whether only uninhabited by humans)

...at least, they can so long as you keep the word greedy. If there are fifteen cookies, and I take fourteen of them - it doesn't matter if there are no other people who want cookies: I'm still being greedy.

Two halves of Saytal were separated by huge mountain chain and non-human half was defended by non-humans. Were because this conworld is scrapped for ever and I will never revive it.