Homebrewer's Challenge

[Malachi Lemont]

For everyone out there like me who likes to come up with new systems for everything, whether it's classes, races, magic, or personalities, I've got a challenge: I made a detailed diagram with many color-coded regions. Your job is to figure out what each region represents.

Be sure to take into account not just the colors, but the sizes of the regions and which ones are next to others. The diagram is intentionally asymmetrical, so there will probably be some idea of "imbalance." Whether that imbalance is a good or a bad thing is for you to decide.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/conworld/images/b/b5/Manycircles.png

Good luck!

[Soliloquy]

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/conworld/images/b/b5/Manycircles.png

The Four Basic Elements.
Blue = Mind
Red = Blood
Green = Plants
Greenish Brown = Poison

Races:
1 - The Formless
The Formless are beings of pure conscious, communicating directly into the minds of those around them. They are visible, although translucent.

2 - The Blooded
The Blooded are an amorphous race made of a somewhat more viscous type of blood, allowing them to move and interact with objects.

3 - The Toxic
The Toxic are a blight, a curse, and rather nice people once you get to know them. They are more viscous than the blooded, and poison everything they touch.

4 - The Growing
Plant people, some are trees, some are ferns, some are entire forests, filled with different species with one mind.

5 - The Planters
Also known as Plant Spirits, the Planters are spirits that bring plants to life all around them. The commonly inhabit these plants, becoming virtually indistinguishable from the Growing.

6 - The Possessed
The Possessed are creatures made of pure consciousness, called so because they Possess the blood of mortal creatures. Possessed commonly refers to both creatures in this relationship, as the hosts are permanently and unpredictably changed.

7 - The Dualists
Possessing the power to both heal creatures and poison them, Dualists often set themselves up as gods, or simply wander, doing good and bad as they please.

8 - The Rotting
The Rotting can possess groves of trees like the Growing and the Planters, but the trees begin to die and rot, and their fruit becomes poison.

(decided to take your idea of the inner circle being mortality.)

The Mortals: Unlike in most worlds, all of the mortal races consider themselves relatively identical, especially after the Melding Treaty of the Rebirth. (will be discussed in separate history section)

9 - The Wilted
These mortals make plants wither and die, or become poison, simply by their very presence.

10 - The Blooming
Similar to the Planters, the Blooming can make plants grow and blossom as they please.

11 - The Entranced
The Entranced are mortals with a strong connection to the world of minds. they can dream walk, and are masters of astral projection.

12 - The Handed
The Handed are mortals with strong mental powers, but also possessing a connection to the Blooded, to keep them from drifting off like the Entranced. They are called Handed because their powers usually manifest as telekinetic hands.

13 - The Menders
The Menders use their connection to blood to heal creatures, and aid them in other ways.

14 - The Tainted
The Tainted are mortals born with poison for blood. They are weakened by this, but have a tremendous resistance to normal poisons.

15 - The Foul
The Foul are poison in mortal form. They are immune to poison, as they are themselves highly poisonous. Some can exude poison from their pores, spit poison from small fangs, or even exhale poisonous gas.

16 - The Sickly
The Sickly have a mild resistance to poison and disease, but have low endurance and often appear to be somewhat sick. They are specialised in creating diseases, for both creatures and plants.

17 - The Sprouting
The Sprouting can grow plants directly out of their bodies. These can be used as weapons, shields, building materials, food, or even replacement limbs.

18 - The Bladed can solidify their blood and use it as a weapon or shield. Some can also poison the blades they make with their blood.

19 - The Balanced
Also called the Unwanted by those who don't like them and can't think of anything with two syllables, or jokingly, the Boring. Because they are.

[Malachi Lemont]

Nice. Thanks for posting. I like this new take on the four classical elements. The yellow-brown definitely looks poisonous to me. And the fact that you chose poison as the largest circle is definitely a good jumping-off point for a plot. I'd like to here more about what you come up with.

What I did was Blue = Wisdom (we seemed to agree on this one), Red = Passion, Yellow = Pride (sort of a poison, but not always a bad thing), and Green = Serenity (Sort of like nature). And then the other circles were all races that sprang up from some combination of those. So I guess our systems were similar, only that yours is a little more grounded in reality.

[Eldan]

Hm. For the ancient greeks, water was green. I think it was the same for the Egyptians. Now, earth tended to be black for many cultures, but I think

Air=Blue, Earth=Yellow, Fire=Red and Water=Green

would work just as well. Clearly, whoever wrote this one up lived on very loamy ground :smallwink:

From there, I'd say that 0 must be Chaos, the formless void.

19 must then be quintessence, so we are in alchemy here.

I'd say going inwards from the outer elements would mean purification, the purer, more primal elements.

Let's see what I remember:
Going inwards:
5: Air and water. According to Aristotle, these share the quality of wetness.
6: Air and fire is hotness.
7: Fire and earth: dryness.
8: Earth and water: coldness.

I have no idea what 9 to 15 would be. Sadly, those are only 7. If they were eight, they could be the eight alchemical reactions.

16-18: interestingly, your system collapses into only three circles here, which fits alchemy just fine. Paracelsus concluded that in addition to four elements, there are also three principles.

Now, Earth, here, is the only element that encompasses all three principles. That's potentially interesting.
The three princples are
Solidity or salt, flammability or sulphur and volatility, or mercury.

So, I'd say:
16: no air. I'd say this is solidity.
18: No water. Flammability.
17: This is the one left out, so I'd say this is volatility, which is apparently an absence of fire. This one doesn't make too much sense.

I'd probably have been happier if fire was the one encompassing all three principles, but there you have it. Then volitatility could have been an absence of earth.

Any good?
So, looking at it again, I should probably have said that fire is yellow and earth red.

[Zaydos]

I'd argue that lacking fire makes sense for volatility, since in chemistry a volatile substance breaks down with very little energy added and therefore evaporates quickly with heat (i.e. disappears if their is fire).