Snippets of Creativity

[Nightgaun7]

Looking to break away from the years-long, super in-depth detail that a lot of homebrew projects fall prey to, and I thought it would be a good palate cleanser to make a thread where people can post a few sentences of fluff about something. Things like the following:

Tribes of nomadic orcs worship an evil sun god, who seeks to turn the entire world into a vast desert

Trolls and mermaids are actually two genders of the same species, and form pairs for life. The gender of their offspring (and thus their form) depends on whether it's night or day when they're born - a night birth results in a mermaid, while a day birth yields a troll.

[EisenKreutzer]

Meidh is the core concept around which all druid faith revolves. Meidh means the correct alignment of all, a balance of light and dark, good and evil, life and death. Without meidh, there would be no world according to the druids.

[Jendekit]

1. A war between two organizations of dragons. One in favor of forming a nation of their own, the other in favor of continuing as they are. Both factions count chromatic and metallic dragons amongst their ranks.
2. An isolationist, nomadic culture of hobgoblins that revere a god of travel and their sabertooth mounts.
3. A drow noble woman flees to the surface with an ominous warning: "Prepare yourselves, for War is coming."

[DoomHat]

Lawful "Good" Religions are known to primarily rely on Negative Energy for their Clerics and Paladins. The greatest honor the bodies of the dead can receive (there for the most common funeral rite they are given) is to be reanimated as an undead and march in the Holy Army of Light. The majority of the world are followers of "The Light"

Chaotic "Evil" Cults are known to primarily rely on Positive Energy for their Clerics and Blackguards. For this reason the forces of darkness are known to be highly resilient, springing back from even the worst injuries, invigorated by unholy power. The gods of evil are known to create endlessly without, and even against, all rational necessity. They persevere and cultivate their worse mistakes against all efforts to correct or erase them.
Followers of "The Darkness" are many but secretive.

[Everyl]

The creation of mindless undead is not a moral (Good/Evil) one, but a cultural one. The people of one culture believe that undead are anathema, so they feed their dead to vultures and collect the bones to use as spell foci to communicate with their ancestors. Their neighbors to the east, however, believe that allowing the souls of the dead to rest is of utmost importance, so nearly all corpses are reanimated to perform basic labor (mostly digging or building their own graves, occasionally farm work), ensuring that the departed have no worry that their deaths have harmed their families' ability to survive. Speak with Dead spells disturb the slumber of the dead, however, and are strictly taboo.

[Don Quixote]

The rivers of the south are notable for the so-called 'fish men' who act both as the protectors of the hallowed waters and as a form of pirate.

Their epithet has caused the Formosian free cities, actual 'fish people' great distress to the point where they are trying to push for an international law restricting it's usage.

This campaign would work better if either the 'fish-men' or the fishmen had any knowledge of writing but attempts to point this out only complicates matter.

[gutza1]

The world is in constant conflict between magic and technology. That means orcs with machine guns.

[Oracle_of_Void]

The reason there are so many varieties of draconic beast is because the world used to be ruled by Primal Dragons, the god-like ancestors of true dragons and their descendants.

Dragons don't need to eat so much (despite their size) because the absorb nutrients from the background field of magic.

If the other races gave orcs a little trust and some access to valuable things knowledge like magic and technology, they'd stop being savage barbarians and become a civilized people.

The reason humans can breed with everything is because they were the original people and all other intelligent beings are divine modifications or biological evolutions of the human form (except for dragons, see the first point).

[brian 333]

1/3 of all dwarves are males as we know them. There are alpha males which are leaders and warriors, and beta males which are craftsmen and cultivators.

1/3 of all dwarves are female as we know them. There are dominant females which rule house and hall, and there are submissive females which serve and cook and sew.

Some beta males are more inclined to domestic activities and some dominant females are more inclined to typically male pursuits but by and large this culture is sexist, with the 'weaker' sex protected by the 'stronger'. Because they are a Lawful culture, there are stereotypical divisions of labor along sexist lines, and very strict social pressure to conform.

What about the other 1/3? Well, they are technically male, but they never achieve sexual maturity. Their bodies grow to adulthood, but they never enter adolescence and never acquire the urge to date or mate. They are a class of males I call 'gamma' males who stand outside what we consider to be the normal behavioral patterns. They are considered by their culture to be 'holy' people, and as such most of the clergy is comprised of gamma males. They also become engineers, healers, and follow other professions which require a high degree of education.

As a class Gamma males tend to stay out of political entanglements, though often a leader will have trusted gamma advisers, and families seek out gamma males to join them as life-partners. Such Triad marriages tend to be more stable and children who have a Third Parent are considered fortunate.

However, many gammas prefer a life of cloistered seclusion. These gammas become monks, studying facets of existence seldom considered by the average dwarf, and learning to hone their minds and bodies into perfect vessels to house an enlightened spirit.

Dwarves of this society never become wizards, sorcerers, bards, or any other spellcaster class. Indeed, even dwarven priests do not cast spells. Their magic weapons and armor are forged by their smiths from magical materials, as are permanent magic items of other sorts. Instead, two classes of magical experimenter known as the Alchemist and the Runesmith have developed, in which all dwarven magic, (aside from feats of engineering and craftsmanship unmatched by other races,) is invested.

The alchemist does not create potions using magic, but uses magic ingredients to create potions, powders, ointments, and such. He does not cast spells into a bottle, but instead combines ingredients in a scientific method to achieve desired results.

The runesmith uses ambient magic to conform to his desire by shaping powerful foci of stone, metal, and exotic materials. Again, this is a result of study and experimentation in a scientific way to achieve results, and not the actual casting of magic spells.

Because of their lawful nature, dwarves are the most scientific of the races, and their level of technology is far advanced beyond that of any other race. Alchemists, engineers, and runesmiths combine to form the great wonders of the dwarven world, and these persons are almost exclusively gamma males.

In settings other than closed dwarven halls mined out of the mountains, dwarves tend to birth fewer gamma males; however, the ratio of 1/3 female to 2/3 male is maintained. The surplus male population tends to be more militant and adventurous than found in dwarven cities, but females are always a 'protected' class.

[Oneris]

A set of super powers that can be voluntarily transferred from person to person, but links each wielder's soul so they can never rest until the common archenemy is defeated. Ends up with a Hero Support Group composed of the souls of everyone who's had the powers for the last millennia. Also shenanigans involving transferring the powers to random bystanders to hide from detecting, roping an unwilling recipient into the network. Could be used for blackmail.

[brian 333]

A major empire crumbles due to decadence, over-extension, and the bankruptcy of its treasury by ever-increasing demands for bread and circuses. In its wake warlords, barbarians, and religious hierarchies contest for dominance, each scrabbling and clawing for its piece of turf. Can the adventurers carve out a kingdom of their own, or do they choose to support another power in its bid for reconquest of the Old Empire?

[Honest Tiefling]

Chromatic and Metallic dragons are the same species. Metallics are the males, and chromatics the females. Their alignment is not connected to their color. The males are metallic because the metal they eat collects on their scales. Shinier males are seen as more successful (as they have gathered more metal) and more attractive to lady dragons.

[Milo v3]

The dragons are the human, elf, orc, etc. equivalents in prehistory dinosaur times. When the Age of Ash came, the dinosaurs and many megafauna started to die, so the dragons sealed themselves into different aspects of the world until the times were right for there return.

Chromatic dragons were dragons which sealed themselves within light itself, Metallic dragons sealed themselves within the earth, primal dragons sealed themselves within landscapes such as lakes and mountain ranges, imperial dragons sealed themselves within artificial structures, and void dragons sealed themselves within celestial objects.

[Tzi]

Dragons and Dragonoids are effectively ants or naked mole rats.

The live in hive colonies, ruled over by a tiered hierarchy of Heirophants, Princesses/Princes, and Queens at the top of an individual colony. Queens and Princesses birth kobold drones who work for, serve, and act as extra brain space for the telepathic fertile female Dragons. Male dragons are incredibly strong and aggressive, weaker ones are horded by queens and princesses, HOWEVER very old male dragons will eventually subdue colonies. A group of two or more colonies is called a "Dragon Flight."

Colonies grow first by mass producing kobolds, then tetzelwyrms, ect ect... types of dragonoids. Though its argued that some specific variants exist by population groups.

A male dragon of sufficient age who commands a single Colony as the dominate male is called a King, one with two is called an Imperial, Anything more than 2 is considered a Patriarch. Patriarch dragons are extremely rare as typically other challenger male dragons (Typically Princess) will align with a Princess to kill a queen and supplant her colony and then overwhelm the elder male dragon.

Why the Princesses turn against the older stronger male in favor of younger weaker ones is unknown. Though some suspect the health of elder dragons sperm is degraded and mutations occur. Or because the weaker Princess cannot convince a top male dragon to overthrow their mothers so only a Prince would go along.

Dragons have no language that is known.

[brian 333]

An extremely long lived, but ultimately mortal, being is trying to create a perfect servant race to carry on his plan to cultivate the stars with life. To accomplish this he needs an intelligent and obedient race which will breed true over the eons without mutation, which is also hardy and capable of withstanding extreme hardship on both an individual and racial level.

Unfortunately, so many of his intelligent races are disobedient, and his obedient races are less than optimally intelligent. While he continues to seek out the perfect stock from which to create his race, he has begun an experiment in which his less than optimum choices are placed on a single world, there to hack it out for survival. He watches this world from time to time, looking for good stock to breed into his new lines if they emerge, and to insure they do not leave the world and spread to other worlds, thus possibly infecting his long-term plan to use them as homes for his new super servant race.

This is the world of the PC. He knows nothing of the creator being or its plans. Nobody on the world does. All they know is that from time to time a new intelligent race appears and begins to carve out a home for itself amid the chaos.

[Everyl]

Races with reproductive patterns inspired by real animals, but vastly different from our own. Examples:

A race where the members are all born as one sex, but some or all change to the other sex later in life.
A race whose young are parasites on another species (sentient or otherwise).
A race wherein females are capable of self-fertilization if there's a shortage of males.
A race whose males die after mating, but leave the female able to produce children from that union for the rest of her life.
A race with numerous castes, each with distinct physical and mental traits leaving them suited for different roles in a complex society, not all of which are capable of reproduction.

... and real-life animals often have several of those patterns in one species, among many others I can't think of off the top of my head.

Also, the point is not just to make alien-seeming races, but to think about how fundamental differences in how the race functions would affect the development of their culture and society.

[Xuc Xac]

Following Everyl's idea, dwarves and elves are actually one species. The beautiful, graceful, and flamboyant elves are all male. The bland, frumpy, easily overlooked, boring beige lumps of dwarf are all female. They're like birds: the males are the colorful, noisy, sexy ones and the females are very plain to blend into their environment.

[DoomHat]

The main threat in the world is whatever is causing animals to become "Dire".
Orcs are actually Dire Humans. Goblins are Dire Halflings.

The majority of monsters are dire-ized natural creatures.

[Oracle_of_Void]

At first, there was only one type of Elf. They lived in a sprawling nation of millions upon millions, dominating the continent. They were a proud and arrogant race. Elves had become magically powerful, working literal miracles with their will alone. But they grew too ambitious. A city of Elves was lost. They had called upon powers too dark, the umbral plane of shadow. Dark shadow filled the Elf's veins, turning their skin dark and their eyes red. With the sun causing an agonizing blindness, they quickly fled underground to create a new civilization. The new elves, call the Drow, were without a leader and lost all hope, until a mysterious being, part spider part something else name Lloth introduced itself...

Some elves were disgusted by their kind's blind pride. They left the elven nation and fled to forests. These elves, called the Wood Elves, forsook arcane magic to pursue a more natural kind of magic, becoming a race of rangers and druids.

The remaining elves were shocked by the separation of their kind. While the elves still pursue magical mastery of all kinds, the High Elves try to remain vigilant. They wish to avoid any more magical cataclysms that might befall their race. Still proud and vain, the High Elves refuse relations with the other kinds of elves, seeing them as dangerous schemers (the Drow) and passive nature lovers (the Wood Elves).

[brian 333]

It is the Age of Titans

The Elder Titans are the gods who forged the world, and they stand apart as elemental forces in the world. Who knows what reigns over them, or if they are indeed the ultimate powers. But they don't care about humanity or any of the lesser races. They are hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning, mountains and oceans, and all the primal places of the world. When they act great swathes of the world tremble and are destroyed.

Their children are the Titans humanoids know, and they are the gods of this world. Each of these beings has a seat in his chosen place from which he rules the territory around him. Many have created lesser servitor races, and many more have stolen such creatures to serve them. Some of these Titans are visible as giants, perfect in form and features as viewed by the race which worships them, while others take the features of an elemental force or natural feature. They thrive in the ambiance of their servants' worship, and draw power from the channeled energy this worship generates. They can, if they so choose, select individual servants upon whom they endow their powers, (clerics.)

Lesser Titans are degenerate children of Titans which have as yet attracted no worshipers or which have been deposed and separated from their worshipers.

Their form is mostly a matter of choice, but they are seldom shapechangers. While a Titan can appear as anything, typically this choice was made long ago and is now the being's self identity. the worshipers may also influence the appearance of a Titan in that as they idealize him/her the being slowly conforms to their expected appearance as a perfect model of themselves.

Titans can be born, but this seldom happens. It is seldom that Titans cooperate long enough to form lasting bonds, and they see one another as competition more often than as companions. A Titan who takes on a Lesser Titan as companion/servitor soon finds he has lost worshipers to his companion. Most new Titans are the spawn of Elder Titans, but as they age their drive to procreate diminishes, and over the eons fewer and fewer such births occur.

Titans can die, but not naturally. They must be slain. This typically only occurs in great rivalries between Titans, and as a consequence of great wars between them.

Humanoids in this world live in city-states which are as large as their central Titan can hold. The average Titan holds a territory of one hundred miles in any direction from his seat, though some hold much larger territories, and some much smaller. Their level of technological development, affinity for magic, or other cultural features are the result of the choices of their Titan, so a Steampunk Gnome city-state may border a neolithic hunter/gatherer city-state, both of which border a magical elf city-state.

City-states trade, go to war, or interact as much or as little as the nature of their Titan and their race dictate.

[Oracle_of_Void]

Dragons really love gold and treasure and are a proud (sometimes arrogant) race who are slow to change their ways. Dwarves really love gold and treasure and are a proud (sometimes stubborn) race who are slow to change their ways.

Seem oddly similar? Its because ages ago, their were only humans and dragons as mortals (see my past posts on this thread). A group of particularly clever chromatic dragons were annoyed by having to share the world with these puny creatures. They rounded up several thousand humans and performed dangerous experimental magics on the humans to imbue them with draconic features to make us more bearable. In a way, it worked, but it didn't work far enough. Dwarves become hardier and sturdier and wise and proud and greedy like dragons, but they shrank in size and didn't grow scales or tails or become natural arcane spellcasters (ironic since most dwarves prefer being clerics over wizards). Disgusted by their failure, the chromatic dragons abandoned their creation in a deep cave inside a tall mountain, hoping they'd all die. Same to say, it didn't work.

[jqavins]

A planetary system with extensive rotation-orbit resonance. The planet has a large moon like Earth's with an orbital period of exactly 29 days and a rotation period of exactly 1/2 that. There is a smaller moon that orbits in exactly 7 days and rotates in exactly 3 days. The planet's orbit around its sun takes exactly 377 days, which is 13 of the 29 day months. In summary, all these time periods are in ratios containing 2, 3, 7, 13, and 29. The creation deity has decreed that the day is divided into 23 hours, each hour into 61 minutes, and each minute into 59 seconds.

There is a branch of the clergy dedicated to numerology, prime nubers are holy, and as a result mathematics is more advanced than one would expect for the general advancement in other areas. (But not radically so; the curch for centuries denied the existance of irrational numbers, and still considers them unclean.)

[Milo v3]

Dragons really love gold and treasure and are a proud (sometimes arrogant) race who are slow to change their ways. Dwarves really love gold and treasure and are a proud (sometimes stubborn) race who are slow to change their ways.

Seem oddly similar? Its because ages ago, their were only humans and dragons as mortals (see my past posts on this thread). A group of particularly clever chromatic dragons were annoyed by having to share the world with these puny creatures. They rounded up several thousand humans and performed dangerous experimental magics on the humans to imbue them with draconic features to make us more bearable. In a way, it worked, but it didn't work far enough. Dwarves become hardier and sturdier and wise and proud and greedy like dragons, but they shrank in size and didn't grow scales or tails or become natural arcane spellcasters (ironic since most dwarves prefer being clerics over wizards). Disgusted by their failure, the chromatic dragons abandoned their creation in a deep cave inside a tall mountain, hoping they'd all die. Same to say, it didn't work.

Little did the dragons know that the small nature of the dwarves was actually a result of them being in a wyrmling state, and when one would be expected to die of old age they actually accumulate the benefits of the draconic template and return to "young age", this repeats again when they die of old age next by replacing draconic with half-dragon. Sadly because of the warlike nature of the dwarves and the other creatures of the depths, non-wyrmling dwarves are ridiculously rare occuring generally only once every ten dwarven generations.

[Oracle_of_Void]

Orcs used to be normal humans, but thousands of years ago, the Celestial Angels needed more firepower to fight against the fiends. Finding thousands of human volunteers, the Angels drafted them into their army. Asmodeus, worried that the humans might tip the balance in the war, confronted the human army. He forcibly corrupted them with his infernal blood, intending to turn them to his side as devilish soldiers. However, at that moments, an Archangel general swooped in. The general used his own blood to try to cancel out Asmodeus' corruption. It wasn't fully effective; while the human army didn't become devils, they retained evil and brutish traits, their skin becoming a sickly green. The humans, now orcs, refused to fight for either side. Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders and left, thinking "Eh, close enough." The Archangel didn't know what else to do, so he left the orcs in a desert wasteland, hoping that these savage brutes wouldn't prosper.

They were wrong.

[braveheart]

Casting an arcane spell is actually a trade agreement with another plane, the material components are the good you are trading for the effect from the other plane, the somatic component is signing a contract and the vocal component alerts people in that plane that you are offering a trade. the reason material components are so small is because the item you are giving is nonexistent in the other plane, and the effect (fire, water, rocks ect.) is so plentiful that the people in the other plane believe that they are actually ripping off the caster.

Divine casting is the same, however your deity manages the transaction in the caster's stead.

[DoomHat]

Casting an arcane spell is actually a trade agreement with another plane, the material components are the good you are trading for the effect from the other plane, the somatic component is signing a contract and the vocal component alerts people in that plane that you are offering a trade. the reason material components are so small is because the item you are giving is nonexistent in the other plane, and the effect (fire, water, rocks ect.) is so plentiful that the people in the other plane believe that they are actually ripping off the caster.

Divine casting is the same, however your deity manages the transaction in the caster's stead.

For this reason all clerics, even those sworn to benign deities, can't be resurrected. All clerics have sold their souls for power. When a cleric dies, payment is due, and their soul is consumed by their patron.

God's give their clerics more and bigger spells over time so as to encourage them to grow stronger. The stronger the Cleric, the better their soul's flavor and nutritional value.

If a Cleric violates the contract with their god (changing alignment or working against the deities interests) not only to they lose access to their spells, all the deities assets in the material world are directed toward killing them. Even if they loss access to their spells, without some kind of mystic intervention, they will still have to pay up when they die.

Only Evil Deities are honest with all this, mainly because they're not patient enough to "slow roast" their meals, preferring instead to offer a small handful of big miracles then cash in. So called Good Gods use deceptive language to entice people into the priesthood. Promising things like "Eternal Communion" or "Oneness" with their divine spirit (ethereal stomach) upon death.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

Once, there was the One. At the dawn of time, he split himself into the Sun, the Moon and the World. Then, the World split into the Land, the Sea and the Air. The Land formed the Three Continents, and the largest continent to the north split into the Three Kingdoms.

Each kingdom had three kings, each king had three wives and each wife had three daughters. The daughters of the three kingdoms wed and each had three children. Their descendants, together, formed the Nine Races.

In the First Kingdom, there were the Dwarves, the Elves and the Men. In the Second Kingdom, there were the Gnomes, the Halflings and the Tinkers. In the Third Kingdom, there were the Orcs, the Goblins and the Giants. And so came to be the shape of the world.

[Razanir]

Following Everyl's idea, dwarves and elves are actually one species. The beautiful, graceful, and flamboyant elves are all male. The bland, frumpy, easily overlooked, boring beige lumps of dwarf are all female. They're like birds: the males are the colorful, noisy, sexy ones and the females are very plain to blend into their environment.

To further add to this idea, dwarves still have beards. Because what are dwarves (even dwarf women) without beards?

[SPOILERS]
Yup, it's the Doctor
[/SPOILERS]

[SPOILER], sweetie.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

[SPOILER], sweetie.

Thanks, I was wondering what I did wrong there…

[ReturnOfTheKing]

Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders and left, thinking "Eh, close enough."

Mind if I sig?