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  1. - Top - End - #811
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tzi View Post
    ..... Mad Max Fury Road, am I the only person whose seen it and wishes to somehow have that in a world?

    Considering I'm working with four seperate moons, I think I could have one significantly devastated or war turn.
    Have you looked at Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games? It's probably the book that got GURPS a reputation for being math heavy, but it is everything you need to run Mad Max.
    Quote Originally Posted by lt_murgen View Post
    Exploratory expeditions expeditiously expediting exploration would be epicurially equipped.

  2. - Top - End - #812
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    I've been working off and on with a campaign setting for a Kingmaker Style Pathfinder run, kind of like a colonial campaign. The major powers of the world have recently found an island continent and have started work on colonizing it. The continent is called Odlania, and is a minimum of 4 months by sail from the colonizing powers.

    Anyway, I've been working on the natives and kind of hit a stumbling block. The local ecology is going to be totally prehistoric (primarily Mesozoic era, so dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and so forth are the primary native wildlife). The thing is I want some local natives that echo that ecology... and I'm torn between just using troglodytes or kobolds (with an avian coat of paint), and pathfinder tengu (with a snout instead of a beak) to make dinosaur like natives, or making something totally new.

    Another thing is, has anyone run a campaign where elves and drow coexist together? I'm thinking of including drow as a more 'fey-like' ethnicity of elves, due to how their stats work.

  3. - Top - End - #813
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    I've been working off and on with a campaign setting for a Kingmaker Style Pathfinder run, kind of like a colonial campaign. The major powers of the world have recently found an island continent and have started work on colonizing it. The continent is called Odlania, and is a minimum of 4 months by sail from the colonizing powers.

    Anyway, I've been working on the natives and kind of hit a stumbling block. The local ecology is going to be totally prehistoric (primarily Mesozoic era, so dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and so forth are the primary native wildlife). The thing is I want some local natives that echo that ecology... and I'm torn between just using troglodytes or kobolds (with an avian coat of paint), and pathfinder tengu (with a snout instead of a beak) to make dinosaur like natives, or making something totally new.

    Another thing is, has anyone run a campaign where elves and drow coexist together? I'm thinking of including drow as a more 'fey-like' ethnicity of elves, due to how their stats work.
    Personally, I'd probably go with something that has existing stats and change the fluff and descriptions. If your players won't be playing natives, there's no reason for them to ever know whether they're dealing with feathered kobolds or whatever, they just know about the little birdlike people who they keep encountering in the wilderness.

    And yes, elves and drow can coexist if you say they can. It helps a bit if you come up with different labels for them, so your players don't necessarily bring their preconceptions from other game settings to yours. One very high-profile example:the Elder Scrolls games, wherein Dunmer ("Dark Elves" in the setting's elf language) are just another elven ethnic group, with their own set of cultures and historical conflicts with other flavors of elf, humans, and beastfolk. These conflicts are less about "good" elves versus "bad" elves and more an extension of the way people of all races, fantasy or otherwise, tend to have a significant "racist, xenophobic jerk" demographic among them.
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  4. - Top - End - #814
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    Quote Originally Posted by Everyl View Post
    Personally, I'd probably go with something that has existing stats and change the fluff and descriptions. If your players won't be playing natives, there's no reason for them to ever know whether they're dealing with feathered kobolds or whatever, they just know about the little birdlike people who they keep encountering in the wilderness.
    Yeah, and kobolds are about right for a intelligent race of velociraptors, tengu work pretty good for larger ones especially with the claws alternate racial traits... I'll probably use both of their stats at different points, keep the local natives a mixture... plus awakened animals showing up on occasion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Everyl View Post
    And yes, elves and drow can coexist if you say they can. It helps a bit if you come up with different labels for them, so your players don't necessarily bring their preconceptions from other game settings to yours. One very high-profile example:the Elder Scrolls games, wherein Dunmer ("Dark Elves" in the setting's elf language) are just another elven ethnic group, with their own set of cultures and historical conflicts with other flavors of elf, humans, and beastfolk. These conflicts are less about "good" elves versus "bad" elves and more an extension of the way people of all races, fantasy or otherwise, tend to have a significant "racist, xenophobic jerk" demographic among them.
    Well, the campaign is set in a full sized (~25,000 mi in circumference) planetary setting I call Barboraii. Considering most campaign settings seem to be about the size of Europe (~2,000 mi across), I feel pretty comfortable using a wide variety of things (I tell players that any God from any setting is allowed, because the Golarion pantheon is a lot smaller then historical pantheons, let alone the multiple pantheons you get in a big world), and breaking 'races' into multiple ethnicities is just about a constant. Already I'm running with two major drow ethnicity on the more populate continents (and more elven ones then I can count).

    I've got Shetney Drow (coastal cave and cove dwellers based on the original Trow/Drow myths), which are mechanically the same (aside for using certain alternate racial traits more) but they're culturally predominately CN and more fey like in their behavior. Their skin is predominately black or earth like brown instead of dark blue, and their hair tends to look wiry. They have a thing for the fiddle (in fact a Drow Fiddle is one of the more common wondrous items I made for the setting).

    I've got your typical 'Underdark' Drow, which everyone knows and is basically unchanged from the normal drow.

    Then there's the different cultures and ethnicity on this continent... which includes an elven and drow population (plus humans, gnomes, goblinoids, troglodytes, and avians of various types). Local drow and elves fall into one of two major camps, either rising to positions of leadership in some of the tribes with mixed membership (having several lifetimes worth of experience counts for a lot), or being the primary population of the more fey-aligned tribes (populated mostly by Drow, Elves, Gnomes, and Half-Elves).

    In appearance the native drow will look a bit like aboriginal australians, dark skin with black, salt and pepper, or dark brown hair, and a tendency to use bright white or off blue war-paints. Male drow in this part of the world can and do grow facial hair.

  5. - Top - End - #815
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    I am completey rethinking the map for my setting and I really don't like the open plains that break up my pretty giant forests. How plausible would it be to have a continent that is almost entirely forest, ranging from subartic to tropical? I don't recall any deserts near the coast of China. Before they started to cut the trees for building and burning, was there a forest reaching all the way from Russia to Singapore?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I am completey rethinking the map for my setting and I really don't like the open plains that break up my pretty giant forests. How plausible would it be to have a continent that is almost entirely forest, ranging from subartic to tropical? I don't recall any deserts near the coast of China. Before they started to cut the trees for building and burning, was there a forest reaching all the way from Russia to Singapore?
    This site has a few things to say about Russian forests. It gives a pretty good idea for some of the largest RL forests. But it looks like they spread horizontally/latitudinaly as opposed to how you're looking.

    Off the top of my head, biomes have trouble spreading north-south. That was why Eurasia, being so wide was able to share many types of crops and animals, whereas the thinner, long double American continents have a lot of wide-ranging biomes and unrelated fauna and flora. A Forest Continent stretching from Subarctic to the Tropics would also run into the problem of the Horse Latitudes, that region around 30 degrees latitude where a natural drying effect occurs. There might not be enough moisture to support a forest at those points, unless the continent was super-thin, like Panama thin all the way down.

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  7. - Top - End - #817
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    Florida is in that zone and pretty wet, as it New Zealand. Both are pretty narrow, running north and south with lots of water on both sides, which might be an important factor. And in China there's the Himalayas, which really mess up weather patterns in the entire region. I wonder what mechanism is at work there.
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  8. - Top - End - #818
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Florida is in that zone and pretty wet, as it New Zealand. Both are pretty narrow, running north and south with lots of water on both sides, which might be an important factor. And in China there's the Himalayas, which really mess up weather patterns in the entire region. I wonder what mechanism is at work there.
    My first guess would be elevation. A lot of florida is basically sea level, while comparatively New Zealand has mountains.
    Quote Originally Posted by lt_murgen View Post
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  9. - Top - End - #819
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    I asked the question here, and I think I found the answer. Oceanic winds tend to travel along the eastern coasts of large landmasses from the equator towards the poles. All the big deserts that are close to the sea are on the western coast. Arabia and eastern Sahara being an exception, but there is no coast which the winds could follow north. Asia is in the way. Somehow that seems to prevent the creation of a strong airflow from the Indian Ocean over Arabia.

    So the real answer to my problem is not how I could have a forest in the location that I want it to, but that I was completely wrong putting a barren steppe in that location in the first place.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I am completey rethinking the map for my setting and I really don't like the open plains that break up my pretty giant forests. How plausible would it be to have a continent that is almost entirely forest, ranging from subartic to tropical? I don't recall any deserts near the coast of China. Before they started to cut the trees for building and burning, was there a forest reaching all the way from Russia to Singapore?
    Well, so long as there's water (like on a coastal zone) you can have forests. I think that the vast majority of China's coastline is forests... but they're not the same type of forest in every part of the country, subartic taiga, deciduous forests, conifer forests, and tropical forests and so forth are all different.

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    Yeah, that's the great thing about it. All forest but still with lots of different environments.

    I think I discovered a new rule of worldbuilding: When you try to create a conflict in which the players could chose to side with either party or play a character of that group, that conflict does not have to have started in a way in which neither side is at blame. I've been going through many of my favorite settings which have such conflicts where both sides could be chosen without making it a good or evil choice, and they almost always started because some important member of one group was a total **** to people of the other group. You can have the conflict start in a way that clearly puts all the blame on one side without a problem.
    The only important thing is that this start of the conflict is so far removed (be it in time, location, or hierarchy) from the people now fighting in the conflict, that it doesn't really matter who started it. So perhaps one person from one group did a totally unprovoked and evil crime and then the other side struck back and the fighting went on? Doesn't really matter if the people now engaged in the conflicts were neither the guilty people or the victims. They are all just fighting because the others are fighting. In Dragon Age the church is terrible to all mages because several hundred years ago some mages caused a huge demonic invasion and they really want to make sure it won't happen again. Which isn't in any way the fault of the mages alive today and they still all get imprisoned in monasteries for life. That's unfair. But the church has a good point at trying to prevent any mages from running around freely so they won't cause another disaster. Both sides in that conflict have good points, you can sympathize with each of them, and could easily decide to take sides with one or the other. There is no clear good guys and bad guys. Even though the whole thing started because some mages really did something terrible and you most likely would never side with those!
    You can start a conflict black and white, but after a few years that might no longer matter and both sides are fighting on the defensive.
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  12. - Top - End - #822
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I asked the question here, and I think I found the answer. Oceanic winds tend to travel along the eastern coasts of large landmasses from the equator towards the poles. All the big deserts that are close to the sea are on the western coast. Arabia and eastern Sahara being an exception, but there is no coast which the winds could follow north. Asia is in the way. Somehow that seems to prevent the creation of a strong airflow from the Indian Ocean over Arabia.

    So the real answer to my problem is not how I could have a forest in the location that I want it to, but that I was completely wrong putting a barren steppe in that location in the first place.
    That's what I basically thought, as long as you have your campaign world on the eastern side of a continent you can have forests from north to south (and a where it might be to hot you can put a few mountains so trees come back again), more or less like the eastern rim of Asia (from Manchuria to Malaysia).

    But depending on the size of your continent you'd still have grasslands, shrublands and steppes more inland.


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    Also, while it is not considered "real" forest a lot of savanna landscapes have a lot of (small) trees. Your average savanna is not a grassland like this:



    but more a mixture of shrubs, trees and grass like this (and can get a quite foresty):


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    How are you dealing with scale when it comes to creating geography?

    When I try to make maps the size of small continents, it still ends up somehow looking to me like the size of the Netherlands. I'm never able to make it feel huge, at least in my own perception.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    How are you dealing with scale when it comes to creating geography?

    When I try to make maps the size of small continents, it still ends up somehow looking to me like the size of the Netherlands. I'm never able to make it feel huge, at least in my own perception.
    Do you make maps on the computer or with grid paper? One thing I always would suggest is making sure to scale the map when you start... either by deciding a pixel equals x amount of miles/km or a grid squad equals x amount of miles/km.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Corneel View Post
    I agree though that it would be an interesting period to set a Campaign in, lots of possibilities for a band of plucky adventurers to carve out a realm of their own.
    This would be the Arthurian era. In the actual sense, not romanticized sense.

    Personally, I do most of my settings along this. Just after the fall of an empire. Most warriors of that day were little more than militias or mercenaries and most rulers were just glorified bandits. Large battles fielded a few hundred troops at the most.

    Personally I like the aesthetic of wooden forts and simple keeps guarding the ruined remains of a recently fallen empire. Also non-plate armours look more rugged.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stellar_Magic View Post
    Do you make maps on the computer or with grid paper? One thing I always would suggest is making sure to scale the map when you start... either by deciding a pixel equals x amount of miles/km or a grid squad equals x amount of miles/km.
    Funny, I would rather do the opposite. Creating an exact map will result either in a very small continent or a huge continent with many blank/repetitive areas.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thrawn4 View Post
    Funny, I would rather do the opposite. Creating an exact map will result either in a very small continent or a huge continent with many blank/repetitive areas.
    Generally I make a huge global map, and then a much smaller local map to a scale of around 10 miles per grid square (on grid paper). Then make more local maps as necessary.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    How are you dealing with scale when it comes to creating geography?

    When I try to make maps the size of small continents, it still ends up somehow looking to me like the size of the Netherlands. I'm never able to make it feel huge, at least in my own perception.
    I think to get the huge feeling you need tiny details. Little specks and spots that are islands, for instance.
    It basically means that you need to draw your map on country level and then you zoom out. Of course that means a lot of work.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    How are you dealing with scale when it comes to creating geography?

    When I try to make maps the size of small continents, it still ends up somehow looking to me like the size of the Netherlands. I'm never able to make it feel huge, at least in my own perception.
    Scale is a bit tricky because we live in the modern age and I'm guess most of us are Americans, were our sense of scale is REALLY big. Like what we consider to be Counties are actually countries in Europe. Also our sense of distance and time is distorted by cars.

    The Netherlands is small compared to France, but still fairly large if your walking or even riding a horse.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tzi View Post
    Scale is a bit tricky because we live in the modern age and I'm guess most of us are Americans, were our sense of scale is REALLY big. Like what we consider to be Counties are actually countries in Europe. Also our sense of distance and time is distorted by cars.

    The Netherlands is small compared to France, but still fairly large if your walking or even riding a horse.
    As an Australian, my sense of scale is even more warped. Our states are colossal compared to American states, and each American State is about the size of a large country....
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  21. - Top - End - #831
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    Quote Originally Posted by Milo v3 View Post
    As an Australian, my sense of scale is even more warped. Our states are colossal compared to American states, and each American State is about the size of a large country....
    You're not wrong. Go 500km in pretty much any direction from Sydney and you won't even leave the state. Do the same from Paris and there's a fair chance you're out of the country. Go from Budapest and you can potentially end up three countries away.

    It gives me a chuckle to think the time it takes me to drive from Sydney to Newcastle and back could get me across Switzerland.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tzi View Post
    Scale is a bit tricky because we live in the modern age and I'm guess most of us are Americans, were our sense of scale is REALLY big. Like what we consider to be Counties are actually countries in Europe. Also our sense of distance and time is distorted by cars.

    The Netherlands is small compared to France, but still fairly large if your walking or even riding a horse.
    Nonetheless, if you're really dedicated to building an entire world, it can be important to think about distant lands and the vastness of continents. Often, what makes a resource valuable is scarcity, and historically, that scarcity often stemmed from it being produced thousands of miles away. The Silk Road existed in one form or another from 130 BCE or earlier, and while it could take years for goods to trickle along it, it doesn't change the fact that goods that served as key symbols of status and wealth at one end of Eurasia were quite often produced at the opposite end. The same seems to apply around the world - archaeological sites around the Great Lakes often contain items made of stone from the Gulf Coast or even further away. The Ainu, the indigenous people of what is now the northern Japanese islands, had Chinese silk robes as status symbols and used Japanese metal swords as key elements in religious rituals, despite having no ability to produce either on their own. The Incans at one point controlled a huge percentage of South America, using a vast network of relay runners to quickly spread information across thousands of miles of rough terrain.

    The pre-modern world was huge from the perspective of any one person, but on the scale of societies and generations, it was much smaller. Goods and information would find their way across continents, affecting the lives of people who may never have traveled more than a day or two's walk from where they were born. Creating a fantasy world that conveys that same sense of scale - where it takes months of hard travel to reach the place where the king's dishes were made, or even where the spices on his food were grown - is ambitious, but I can definitely see why a world-builder might try.
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    My setting has a type of monster that takes a role very similar to lichs and vampires and is very strongly inspired by Inspired from Eberron, Abominations from Dragon Age, and Eternal from Spears of the Dawn. They are mortals, like humans or elves, whose souls have been consumed by a demon that now inhabits their bodies. It knows everything the person knew and is strongly influenced by that persons original personalty, but it has all the motivations, priorities, and ideals of the demon, as well as all the memories and knowledge the demon had before. By adding all the persons memories to their own, the demons can then pass reasonably well as a normal mortals, but everyone who knew the persons quickly realizes that they started to act very strangely and different than they used to. Usually a demon snatches a body when an opportunity presents itself or it can get a cultist to provide one (as demons can not take bodies that have not been corrupted by demonic magic), but sometimes sorcerers think it would be a great idea to become a half-demon, gain lots of power, and become immortal. (After the fusion the creature often notes that the result is not quite what the sorcerer had expected, but at that point the sorcerers desires no longer matter.)

    What I've been struggling with for years is to find a name for them. Never really had anything good that doesn't make it seem like a total ripoff (even though that's what they are. )
    I've been clicking through a big thesaurus and what about "anathema"? It means "dedicated" or "offered", with the later implied addition "to evil". In early Christianity it was used to mean excommunication.

    Now in my setting there are no Gods, no hell, and no afterlife and no objective Evil. The word "demon" is just a negative term for a type of very old, rarely seen, and usually extremely dangerous spirit. That means many classic terms to describe evil black magicians don't really work. (They are not "damned" or "heretics".) But I think anathema would still work. Once the demon has taken possession of the body, it's interests and goals are those of a demon and sorcerers who did it willingly were after demonic power. The creature is now a danger to all living things that doesn't care about any traditions, customs, or laws and has no desire to integrate into human society. Their allegiance is now to the Underworld and other demons and while there is no supreme god to cast them out, they have cast themselves out. The original spirit of the person is now part of the demon and can never rejoin the ancestor spirit from which all new children of the tribe are born. (Even though memories and personalty are erased, it is believed that strength and couraged are preserved are preserved in the ancestor spirit and make future generations stronger.)
    And though most people are unlikely to know the meaning of the term (I had to look it up myself), it's one that most people have heard of and know it has something to do with evil. And even if not, it still sounds ominous and negative. (Though in this case, the a- is not a prefix meaning "anti".)

    What do you think of it? Does it sound good? Is it fitting for a bronze age Sword & Sorcery setting? Not 100% happy with the name myself yet, but names usually get much better once you use them for a while.
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    So, I've been making a Pathfinder campaign setting- And I'm thinking about Psionics in the setting. Psionics in this setting is deeply tied to Nightmare, Dreams, and Eldritch Abominations.

    To shorten it down- Eldritch Abominations from beyond the stars tried to destroy everything, the world itself worked with the people, the people taking in a bit of the nightmares to lock them abominations within the earth.

    As kinda a method of preventing the Abominations from becoming overpowering, and exploding violently, there are "Dungeons" that are basically randomly generated dungeons, containing mostly psionic loot.

    Now, the thing is, I'm not sure whether to limit how frequently this loot is found or not- The Duergars deal with the dungeons, as such, I'm split between them working like the SCP foundation, sending in poor folks to retrieve Psionic artifacts from them so the Durgars can store them and attempt to neutralize their capabilities, and/or keep the world safe, or just letting the Psionic stuff just be there.


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    I think I would do both. Maybe the duergar think that they should collect all psionic items and store them safely, but they can't get to every cache first and a lot of it gets discovered and looted long before they have a chance to clean it up.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I think I would do both. Maybe the duergar think that they should collect all psionic items and store them safely, but they can't get to every cache first and a lot of it gets discovered and looted long before they have a chance to clean it up.
    Well, the thing is, the Duergars control ALL entrances to the Dungeons. Every single one. If they didn't the creatures from within would slowly flood out, and would release the eldritch abominations- Think if the abyss had a giant gash open literally throughout the entire planet- The world would literally fall to these eldritch things.


    GNU Terry Pratchett

  27. - Top - End - #837
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    My setting has a type of monster that takes a role very similar to lichs and vampires and is very strongly inspired by Inspired from Eberron, Abominations from Dragon Age, and Eternal from Spears of the Dawn. They are mortals, like humans or elves, whose souls have been consumed by a demon that now inhabits their bodies. It knows everything the person knew and is strongly influenced by that persons original personalty, but it has all the motivations, priorities, and ideals of the demon, as well as all the memories and knowledge the demon had before. By adding all the persons memories to their own, the demons can then pass reasonably well as a normal mortals, but everyone who knew the persons quickly realizes that they started to act very strangely and different than they used to. Usually a demon snatches a body when an opportunity presents itself or it can get a cultist to provide one (as demons can not take bodies that have not been corrupted by demonic magic), but sometimes sorcerers think it would be a great idea to become a half-demon, gain lots of power, and become immortal. (After the fusion the creature often notes that the result is not quite what the sorcerer had expected, but at that point the sorcerers desires no longer matter.)

    What I've been struggling with for years is to find a name for them. Never really had anything good that doesn't make it seem like a total ripoff (even though that's what they are. )
    I've been clicking through a big thesaurus and what about "anathema"? It means "dedicated" or "offered", with the later implied addition "to evil". In early Christianity it was used to mean excommunication.

    Now in my setting there are no Gods, no hell, and no afterlife and no objective Evil. The word "demon" is just a negative term for a type of very old, rarely seen, and usually extremely dangerous spirit. That means many classic terms to describe evil black magicians don't really work. (They are not "damned" or "heretics".) But I think anathema would still work. Once the demon has taken possession of the body, it's interests and goals are those of a demon and sorcerers who did it willingly were after demonic power. The creature is now a danger to all living things that doesn't care about any traditions, customs, or laws and has no desire to integrate into human society. Their allegiance is now to the Underworld and other demons and while there is no supreme god to cast them out, they have cast themselves out. The original spirit of the person is now part of the demon and can never rejoin the ancestor spirit from which all new children of the tribe are born. (Even though memories and personalty are erased, it is believed that strength and couraged are preserved are preserved in the ancestor spirit and make future generations stronger.)
    And though most people are unlikely to know the meaning of the term (I had to look it up myself), it's one that most people have heard of and know it has something to do with evil. And even if not, it still sounds ominous and negative. (Though in this case, the a- is not a prefix meaning "anti".)

    What do you think of it? Does it sound good? Is it fitting for a bronze age Sword & Sorcery setting? Not 100% happy with the name myself yet, but names usually get much better once you use them for a while.
    While I follow your reasoning I'd like to propose a possible less sciency sounding alternative: Striga/Strigoi

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Those seem to be pretty generic vampires, though.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Those seem to be pretty generic vampires, though.
    My setting has a type of monster that takes a role very similar to lichs and vampires and is very strongly inspired by Inspired from Eberron, Abominations from Dragon Age, and Eternal from Spears of the Dawn.
    Your words not mine
    Also:

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    Seharvepernfan's Avatar

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    Default Re: Worldbuilding Talk Thread

    I'm having trouble coming to terms with how a D&D world even works. There's too many things in it for it to even begin to make sense.

    Ageless immortal evils and goods (gods, powers, planes, etc) that apparently have no source or reason for existing (though we can't answer how our own world exists or why). Demons and angels have been fighting since forever, yet neither has won yet, and for whatever reason the material plane hasn't been completely overrun yet. Dragons have existed since forever, yet somehow the smaller races have come up from under them. Speaking of which, in a world of monsters, undead, demons and dragons, how the hell does a human come into being? How would they evolve up in a world full of scary evil monsters?

    In most settings, in their present time, you have nations or empires of various races, all with their own territories, all dealing with invading armies of other races, plus undead, dragons, monsters, demon incursions, etc....why hasn't any one side come out on top and wiped the others out? That's how our world works.

    Are they all separated by time and distance? Do the undead only pop up for a period of time every once in a while? Like, is the negative energy plane closer during some periods (ala eberron)? How come dragons haven't wiped us out or been wiped out by us (and how does a giant, flying, intelligent, fire-breathing lizard come into being in the first place)? Are they stuck on one continent for some reason, and occasionally come over to screw with us, but haven't done so in enough numbers to wipe us out for some reason? Can demons not get to our world on their own, yet somehow mortals can summon them? How? Gods exist, basically as powerful people, and are roughly balanced with each other, and have been so for a bajillion years, yet even they can't seem to beat each other? Then there's the aberrations down in the underdark. Yeesh.

    How do we answer these questions?

    I can handle one or a group of similar ageless evils bent on screwing up the world or any worlds that they come across. I can't handle the fact that they've been here a bajillion years and neither of us have won yet. What's the deal?
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