CBB Collaborative Fantasy World Thread

[thethief3]

Just an idea. I don't want to give anyone preconceptions this time so i won't be leaving any ideas before other people come up with their own.

[Arayaz]

Just an idea. I don't want to give anyone preconceptions this time so i won't be leaving any ideas before other people come up with their own.

I will be a part of this to the best of my ability, because I love collaborative stuff. But be warned they usually fizzle out.

[thethief3]

Does anyone want a rough draft of a map? Cause if you want one i've already made one.

[Arayaz]

Does anyone want a rough draft of a map? Cause if you want one i've already made one.

yes please! are we changing this through time?

[thethief3]

Perhaps the two big continents should be more equal in size.

[lurker]

So do we just throw out ideas willy-nilly or are we supposed to gradually build stuff up?

If we're just throwing out ideas, allow me to yeet some stuff onto the pile.

Iridopters:

Spoiler:

Flying feathered dinosaurs used as mounts. Their plumage is brightly colored like a macaw's. They scream loudly as a defense mechanism. They can also mimic human speech, and they sing in a hauntingly beautiful basso profundo. Since they're feathered dinosaurs and not birds, strictly speaking, they still have a muzzle with teeth, claws on their wings, and a fully developed tail.

Dwargis:

Spoiler:

A race of beast-folk based on Welsh corgis. They're your standard dwarves in terms of personality, stubborn and blunt, but they're nomadic pastoralists instead of blacksmiths or miners. Perhaps they raise the aforementioned iridopters.

They have a superstition regarding pups born with a white coat. As in real life, it often means the pup is deaf (lethal white) or blind (albinism). In less civilized cultures the pups would be left to die of exposure. Some managed to survive and have founded a sanctuary for others like themselves, which eventually becomes a haven for the deaf or blind of all races.

The Farspeakers:

Spoiler:

People who can communicate over long distances using something called The Ether. They enter a meditative trance and project their thoughts into The Ether, and listen for other Farspeakers doing the same. This isn't telepathy because both the sender and receiver have to be in this trance for communication to occur. The Farspeaker can't just read the minds of random people. This is a learned skill rather than an innate ability, and the Farspeakers' guild is responsible for training and mentoring perspective newbies.

The Ether is not a static field. Its potency waxes and wanes both over the course of a day and over a period of several years. It seems to be stronger at night and when there are more spots on the sun. Farspeakers believe The Ether is actually made of the souls of past Farspeakers who have died and spend their afterlives helping their living counterparts by speeding along their messages. Some farspeakers are trying to see if they can do other stuff with the ether than just send messages. It is said that some can use it to see objects far away (albeit without much detail) or even cause objects to heat up from the inside.

If the Mentats from Dune are human computers, than the Farspeakers are living modems. It's typical for a royal court to have at least one Farspeaker on hand to deliver messages via other Farspeakers.
[/spoilers]

[thethief3]

Probably the best way to begin is to describe the creation of the world by throwing around ideas. Then you get to ancient empires (if we have any) and finally the "modern" world. Alternatively if we are going of the model of Akana we have a relay for a language family or part of it somewhere spoken in the modern world and fill the rest in as we go.

Probably the Ether could just be the standard word for the magical realm or just the realm or arcane magic or even just magic in general. Alternatively it is part of the magical realm but sufficiently seperated that usually other magic wouldn''t affect it.

Also i am a fan of beast races but only ones i find personally cute but your idea is okay (but wouldn't that just be a Corgi? (or Corci?) after all wikipedia says Corgi is dwarf+dog). Probably good for some kind of minor race due to the limits of its culture (are they really only nomadic pastoralists?). I don't see how their suspicion surrounding white pups isn't basically a suspicion around the disabled and it seems more universally salient that way but then again its all to human like a blind seer (although i do not like exact predictions of the future).

And for some reason i associate dinosaurs with the tropics.

[lurker]

All the ideas I presented are leftovers from a previous worldbuilding project I never bothered to document, hence why they sprung forth fully formed as Athena from Zeus's head.

I like the idea of drastically limiting what magic can do. The farspeakers are just discovering the potential applications of the ether beyond communication. The idea is based around radio. The ether is like the ionosphere, which explains why it's stronger at night and why it's effected by sunspots. We could also involve the auroras. The other things the farspeakers are trying to do with it are also radio-themed: radar and diathermic heating. If we wanted to keep to the radio theme we could say they can predict oncoming rain (radar again).

I believe there were dinosaurs in cold climates, but the iridopters are supposed to allude to tropical birds.

Perhaps the dwargis are a bit cliche? Fantasy races based on animals always go with cats, wolves, or reptiles. The dwargis actually ended up transplanted into my current Lonely Galaxy setting as the yinrih, with a downgrade to quadrupedalism, but they got prehensile tail and a boost to Kardashev II status in the bargain. If we want an animal based race that isn't too derivative, lately I've been obsessing over siamangs (gibbons with inflatable throat sacs), and I bet they would make an interesting race.

The polity founded by the blind is from an even older setting. Upon further thought it would make sense to restrict it to the blind specifically, as that's arguably a greater handicap given humans' 80%+ reliance on vision compared to other senses, and you have to make a lot more changes to make things accessible. The original idea was to have the residents have a hereditary condition making their children blind as well, with a possible mistrust of sighted people like a sort of reverse X-Men scenario. Visitors would have to be temporarily rendered blind via magic in order to prevent them from taking advantage of the locals.

[Arayaz]

For magic, I like the idea of one binding principle behind what it can do. Say, magic is like harnessing the soul energy left behind by deceased things to do things similar to what it would do in life. So by burning a vine, you could give someone the ability to climb more easily, for example.

[thethief3]

Perhaps these two are different types of magic. The implication i think here is that you could do pretty much anything within reason so burning a vine could also be used to bind someone. With such a system i believe the world could possibly be created from a dead god.

For inspiration in Amayi magic works elementally with some degree of abstraction and expansion of what each element can do. In the Bindingverse magic wielded by the races of the world is particular to the race but is based around ideas and spirits have gained much by interacting with said ideas. Previously magic worked by binding spirits and doing tasks for them which could tie into the first system by saying every spirit has a power although i'm not sure how to keep spirit spirits and creature spirits seperate.

[thethief3]

Arayaz's idea is a way to integrate a non standard magic system into a dnd campaign you just say the players have to find something to destroy to achieve what magic they want to do. You could also extend this system metaphorically so say you push against something you can't move > you push something you can move. Also you become friends with someone > you turn something not valuable into something valuable so say a broken vase into a fixed one with some kind of magical property like doubling the quantity of any liquid put in it. The latter probably is involved in some sort of marriage ritual in some cultures.

[thethief3]

Two Racial Ideas
Starfolk: Basically elves but with celestial ancestry being descended from the beings who existed before the world was created. Their power is waning as the world gets more created and souls get more accumulated. Like elves they probably wield so called High Magic which isn't connected to the standard magic of the world. They've been on the decline ever since the loss of the so called Sea of Stars and inland sea whose destruction caused the shaping of the modern world.

Innyico: Sexually dimorphic species where females resemble cats and males resemble dogs. They wield the same magic the spirits of the world and are descended from them which means their deaths can be used for almost anything you desire although you will need to kill a lot of them to achieve something powerful. Unlike Starfolk their power is currently waxing due to their descent.

[Arayaz]

A suggestion.

Feel free to comment adjustments as you see fit.

[thethief3]

You guys may want to join the CBB discord since ive been discussing relevant things there.

[thethief3]

Ideas
-Possibly we have a war between the “aesir” or celestial deities and the “vanir” spirit deities. This would be won in the Vanir’s favour which is good for inhabitants of our world since the Aesir wanted to destroy it (although possibly they wouldn’t have been able to). The Vanir also captured some of the Aesir from where you get elven deities.
-Ages of the world
-Age 1 = Creation
-Age 2 = War between the Aesir and Vanir
-Age 3 = Age of some lost creatures who didn’t have magic of their own
-Age 4 = Age of the starfolk/elves and creation of the sea of stars a font of celestial power
-Age 5 = Age of loss with the sea of stars being destroyed
-Age 6 = Age of humans and the current age
-Age 7 = Age of Innyico since their power is increasing

[Arayaz]

You guys may want to join the CBB discord since ive been discussing relevant things there.

I'm on the discord, but I never check it. It goes too fast for me to keep up.

[thethief3]

Would you prefer a discord server just for this world?

[Arayaz]

Would you prefer a discord server just for this world?

Well, which thread on the CBB discord are you discussing it in?

[thethief3]

Confantastical