Random Lore Ideas

[GreatWyrmGold]

I think the kwama egg mines in Morrowind are really cool and want to do something similar.

-snip-

Any idea what could trick the bees in considering contaminated honey as so dangerous to the hive that they will abandon the whole batch, without any actual risk of it spreading through the whole hive?

Sounds pretty cool.
It should be something that being near is a potential existential threat to a hive of bees, which mortals can easily contain, and which makes for an interesting story/setting element. My first thought is "demons". Let loose a semi-bound imp in the honey chamber, let its demonic essence scare off the bees, profit. Heck, maybe the bees don't even need to mark the cave with pheromones; the workers can all detect the presence of a sufficiently-powerful fiendish/corruptive/whatever force, and avoid it like the plague.
Of course, there's the question of how powerful a demon would need to be to be detected by and scare off the bees...

I think a reason why many good planes decides to not use souls as building blocks for bigger outsiders is that it is too much horrific for sounding good.
There is a lot of people who would never want to become part of someone else nor want someone else to become part of them.

There is a adventurers that never kills and would you feel fair to tell them "no you do not get xp for going through an endless fortress made of traps and capturing the villain and capturing it and bringing back to base to tell it to be a good person then release it"

also it would make traps in general not reward players and trying to do diplomacy would also not be rewarded.
essentially what cause "problem players" is magnified by a thousand times.

I'm confused by two things.
The first is the idea that celestials must do what "sounds good" to noob, GitP member; there's no reason they can't, but also no reason they must. Some people might think sacrificing their essence to become part of something greater is the ultimate manifestation of a heroic sacrifice, for instance. There's also a strong fantasy tradition of the immortal forces of light acting in ways mortals don't perceive as good, either because light does not align perfectly with what we consider "good" or because their Good is based on morality mortals apparently can't comprehend. Of course, "This is actually good, you just don't understand" is a stronger argument if the "this" in question involves transforming the affected beings into something completely different which can understand why the transformation is good, and being part of a gestalt warrior of light is certainly nothing like the original souls' existence. Maybe it's a sort of networked-intelligence dealie, where you can talk with the other souls making up the celestial (presumably friends and family you knew in life) without the constraints a fleshy body brings.
Second is...well, the entire second and third paragraphs. I think the second is something about how it's denying Good people the "heavenly reward" that people raised in a certain popular belief system expect good people to get, regardless of if this makes sense in a world like most D&D worlds where the forces of light aren't lead by an omnipotent being who can afford paradise for a hundred billion souls and where they're opposed by equal but opposite forces of darkness. The third is baffling; apparently details about the afterlife makes problem players a thousand times worse, because people not believing in paradise after death makes them not value diplomacy? I suspect I'd feel personally insulted if that argument was constructed better.

[hr]

Two ideas I've had, that I'm putting in this thread while I remember its existence:

First relates to the nature of the Underdark (or its knockoff equivalents in other settings). Where do all the apex predators get their energy from, I wondered? The answer I struck upon (after a few obvious standbys like "magma" and "adventurers die really often") ties back to the popular mythological motif of "big creature dies, its corpse is the world". After all, real-world corpses are used as energy sources by all sorts of decomposers.
Obviously, the earth alone can't support mundane maggots or mushrooms. But if some primordial monster died and was shaped into a planet, maybe there are primordial parasites or what-have-you that adapted to feed on their late host. (Maybe these primal maggots even dug out the Underdark by eating it.) They're not as powerful as the primordial monster was, by any stretch, but predators wanting to bring one down need to be extremely strong. This might lead to a sort of inverse food chain, where big and powerful predators are eaten by smaller ones which band together, dispersing afterwards to make sure they don't start eating each other or whatever, only to be attacked by packs of weaker predators which coordinate better.
Or the primal decomposers could just be giant mushrooms.

Second...a draconic creation myth.
Mortals believe the gods created the world thousands of years ago, as a place for mortals to live. Dragons look at this childish belief and smile, for their memories are long and their mythohistory deep.
According to draconic beliefs, the world had no true beginning; it was crafted over endless aeons. The rulers of the world took their place and reigned for a time; eventually a new, larger, and more powerful ruler would arise, slay the previous rulers, and add the slain rulers to the near-literal corpse pile that is the world, built out of the remains of countless empires and emperors.
Near a hundred thousand draconic generations ago, the dragons overthrew the previous kings of the world—some kind of giant crocodile-bird creatures. They have long known their successors, called the Titans, would one day come for their place, casting dragons from their place as the most magnificent beings in the universe and exterminating them. Most believe that the titans will be two-legged, two-armed beings from mammalian stock...that is to say, giants.
There are three schools of thought on how to handle the titan issue. One group wishes to do nothing; let the titans come, the cycle is only natural, even dragons can do nothing to stop it. A second wishes to prevent the titans from arising; whenever a giant bloodline is producing larger and more powerful descendants which could become titans, exterminate every man, woman, and child in their clan. A third wishes to step down graciously, allowing the titans to rise peacefully in exchange for the continued existence of dragonkind.
Of course, the giants know nothing of this debate. When dragons come to ravage their kingdoms and slay their heroes, they don't care that only a minority of dragons support those actions. They see creatures with power using it to maintain their interests at the expense of everyone else. Is it any surprise that they turn against the dragons, even those who wish for peaceful coexistence? And is it any surprise that such dragons dwindle in number as giant attacks on dragon lairs and sacred sites become more and more numerous?