New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Results 1 to 29 of 29
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Random Lore Ideas

    I had a random lore idea for a common fantasy creature, and figured other people probably had random lore ideas pop up. So I figured I'd start a thread for people like me to post whatever random lore ideas came into their head.




    End of the Steppe Elves

    Thousands of years ago, clans of steppe elves held sway over much of the world. Their skill with spear, shot, and saddle was unmatched by anyone then living, and their ability to combine those talents made them a force to be reckoned with. The only reasons they failed to unite the world were internal disputes and their apathy towards any territory where a horse could not graze.
    The elves were a warlike race, and revered their cavalry as modern elves do their poets and arcanists. When an exceptional warrior lost his ability to fight, whether to age or injury, it was a tragedy as great as if a modern poet lost his hands, or an arcanist her magic. With the primitive healing magic of the time, there was little to be done.
    But the steppe elves eventually found a way. Perhaps they birthed a brilliant transmuter, perhaps they captured a foreigner who promised a great leader renewed youth. Regardless, they developed a ritual which took a horse just entering the prime of its life and allowed the warrior to gain its youth and vitality. This ritual was not perfect, however. It required the warrior's torso to be magically bonded to the horse's, depriving them of many of life's pleasures.

    In time, however, this transformation was recognized as a boon. These horse-warriors had greater control of their riding and superior stability to anything a normal rider could ever possess. This alone, combined with a second chance for the clan's greatest warriors, would be a great boon to any steppe elves who fought alongside elite horse-warriors.
    Then, a tradition was developed where these elder warriors would select promising young warriors as squires. They would serve their elder in exchange for being tutored by an elite warrior; in battle, the squire rode the master to provide a second lance or sling. These warriors, master and squire fighting as one with the strength of two, came to form the core of elven armies; they rode in the center, with normal cavalry on the wings, and hence became known as centaurs.
    With this, the power of the elves increased, bringing about what is now known as the Elven Silver Age. Not only could any given leader conquer more with the same number of troops, they had more, more experienced, and more effective warriors than ever before. Moreover, since near every war-leader was given a second chance to fight when they would otherwise have been forced to step down, ambitious warlords had more time to expand their territory.

    This period shaped the world as we know it today. The language of the steppe elves became the lingua franca of the world, the precedent to modern Common. Humanity was shattered into countless nations, each either agreeing to alliances with the elves or being forced into militancy like none previously seen. Dwarves and gnomes, safe only in their rugged homelands, all but cut off relations with the outside world. The halfling nations could not defend themselves, and were absorbed into the cultures of whoever could provide protection. Orcs, goblins, lizardfolk, and other "savage" races were driven into barren hinterlands or savage swamps where no elves wished to live.
    In time, however, the elven dominance came to an end. The rise of druidic magic was at first a great boon to the elves in their internal conflicts; it could make their mounts stronger, distract enemy steeds, or alter the terrain to their advantage. But the magic was used with little care for future conflicts; the steppe elves changed the world around them, without realizing that their way of life would have to change with it.
    The steppe elves experienced a brief golden age to eclipse the Silver Age; however, this golden age sowed the seeds of its own destruction.
    Modifying the terrain of the steppes had made it more rugged, more forested. These magically-grown biomes were able to spread more quickly than expected, due to lingering magic. The elves refused to acknowledge this, and refused to accept that their way of life was in danger. They focused on immediate problems, on rivalries with other clans.
    At last, the end came. A decade of worldwide drought crippled the nomadic elves; discontented rank-and-file warriors protested, realizing all too late that their leaders had lead the steppe elven way of life to destruction. Dangerous demagogues took control in the chaos, tearing the elven clans apart; their more-settled (and more forethinking) subjects and neighbors had used their druids to create reservoirs and other ways to blunt drought's impact, allowing them and their way of life to weather the storm. Even so, the collapsing steppe elf world order destroyed many kingdoms and ended many dynasties, bringing an age of darkness and fear to the world.

    The elders retreated to deep wilderness, contemplating the error of their ways; these exiles became the centaur clans known today. They practice much of their old traditions, though without the militancy behind them, and refuse to directly interact with the wider world for fear of destroying it once more.
    After the elders retreated, the demagogues squabbled over power. The elders may have set the fire alight, but the demagogues allowed it to spread rather than fight it. When the young elves recognized that their leaders' hubris had harmed them as much as the stubbornness of their elders, they cast out the demagogues and those who still followed them. These sought refuge in the Underdark, abandoning the druidic magic which they still insisted as the cause of their fall. Their descendants struggled to survive, ultimately turning to fiendish powers for assistance.
    The elven youth established new kingdoms in the great forests their forebears had created. It was not perfect, but they at last helped their wounded world recover. These elves found a new way of life, with its own virtues and flaws, but never regained the glory of their steppe forebears. One kingdom would eventually start the Elven Bronze Age, bringing in a new era of elven supremacy...but that is a story for another time.
    Last edited by GreatWyrmGold; 2019-04-26 at 02:13 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    I just read about manes, and that sparked a few ideas. Nothing as expansive as the Steppe Elf stuff, but still ideas.



    My first thought was basically "Why do only demons get these things?" Manes are basically just souls steeped in Abyssal energies for long enough that they turn into larval demons—but gods and outsiders of all alignments get souls, don't they? So what I'm thinking is a sort of "afterlife process" by which souls get converted to something more useful to the divine entities holding them:
    1. A mortal dies.
    2. The mortal's soul goes to an afterlife antechamber—purgatory, paradise, or anything in between.
    3. While in this antechamber, some fancy soul-magic stuff happens which purges the soul of undesired influence, replacing it with the plane's natural energies. CE fiends would purge the soul of lawfulness and goodness, essentially draining their kindness and orderliness; meanwhile, LG celestials would purge the soul of chaos and evil, daining their cruelty and disorder. (The undesired influence forms a sort of "soul slag" that could probably manifest as some kind of pest, e.g. celestial dogs spawning from the congealed traces of good pumped out of evil souls. Probably best to find a good place to dump that...maybe the River Styx?)
    4. Once the transition is complete, you have a creature which is a fusion of the desired components of mortal soul and the local energies—the mane. (Non-demonic versions probably wouldn't be called manes, but I don't know what they would be called, so "manes" it is.) The mane is halfway between a mortal and an outsider, a being with the substance of a celestial/fiend/whatever but the heart and power of a mortal.
    5. Manes have some uses, but they have many limitations; it takes many souls to create a powerful outsider. Manes are moved onto the first layer of [insert plane here], where they participate in some kind of task to accumulate power—ideally, something related to their intended purpose. (Soldiers would be sent to battle, workers sent to labor, the outer planes' equivalent of pencil-pushers shoved into a planar cubicle, etc.)
      Chaotic or evil manes tend to be put in direct competition, where they need to win, steal, or devour each others' energies to increase their personal power; lawful or good manes tend to be assigned tasks too great to handle individually, forcing them to cooperate more and more thoroughly until they literally become a single being. (CG and LE places would mix these two methods. LE manes would get stuck in a cutthroat bureaucracy, where they maneuver themselves into positions where they can drain each others' power or else claim the power and souls of their underlings to ascend; CG manes would compete to be the best and inspire others to lend their power or join their forces.)
    6. You have a new outsider to put somewhere as needed!




    My second idea is focused on the fact that when killed, manes disperse into a cloud of demonic miasma that reforms as a mane later. (I assume more powerful demons also disperse into demonic miasma that reforms as multiple manes.) The idea of soul-stuff persisting lead to a setting idea vaguely inspired by Pact's Limbo.
    Basically, imagine that everything that dies releases a soul-miasma that can reform into magical creatures. Mortals can kill these magical creatures and claim a portion of their soul-power; this is how they "level up". Simple idea, not original.
    The default assumption is that there is a constant amount of soul-energy in the world, with the energy released by deaths being balanced by the energy absorbed by births. But who says this has to be the case? Maybe each birth adds a bit more, or certain types of acts can generate new soul power, or something like that.

    Let's add in an adventuring-based economy. With the wonders soul power can bring (let's make all magic of note dependent on it), people want to kill the right kinds of monsters, gain soul-power, etc. This leads to the creation of adventurers' guilds that actively go out to kill monsters instead of just fighting the few that threaten civilization.
    All is well. This new system brings great magical power to the world, and leads to the formation of adventuring dynasties—families started by great heroes, who now control adventuring guilds and hence the flow of magical power. Things are going well, but everyone knows that the world depends on the constant, ever-increasing cycle of magical power.
    With more and more soul-power in the world, monsters more powerful than ever before are being spawned. As long as the power of adventurers and armies continues to increase, this isn't a problem...but if their power stops increasing, the monsters will catch up in power and threaten civilization itself. And the world is running out of unused power. In order to increase the power available, many guilds are exploiting the outer planes—invading heaven, hell, and everywhere in between to bargain with angels or slay fiends or finding some way to keep the power flowing.

    This setting would be very different from Faerun. To start with, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that even commoners have 2-3 levels, which gives you a good excuse to have rookie adventurers start out at low or even low-mid levels. You might also let all players pick a cantrip or two, to illustrate just how high-magic the world is.
    The setting itself also offers possibilities. I'd imagine this world is more urbanized than your standard medieval fantasy world—not to Ravnica levels, but still plenty of cities. The soul-miasma itself could also be an interesting element; it could be a mist which ebbs and flows across the land, spawning minor nuisances in its wake, with the risk of more powerful monsters spawning if the mist concentrates enough.
    There's also plenty of conflict baked in, ranging from simple hack-and-slash ("Kill the monsters that just spawned from soul-mist over there") to political intrigue (rivalries between adventurin guilds or the dynasties which control them) to epic save-the-world stuff (either finding a way to keep the cycle going, or to exit it without destroying civilization as we know it). Lots of stuff.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    The illithid reproductive cycle (as of 3.5—I don't know if 5e lore changed things) is pretty simple. Illithids make tadpoles, tadpoles infest humans (and only humans), tadpole takes over human and turns it into an illithid. But I find complex life cycles interesting, so let's see if I can't add some interesting detail.

    Illithid larvae are much smaller, small enough to fit a couple in the palm of your hand. They latch onto humanoids, burrowing in and eventually making their way to the brain stem. (If an adult is implanting the larva, the process is quick and causes minimal injury, but if it has to burrow from the leg or something, the process is slow, painful, and causes serious internal injuries.) Once there, essentially it disconnects the majority of the victim's brain from the parts controlling its core biological functions, before connecting to the brain stem itself and taking control. For its first days, the larva's host stumbles about animalistically, slowly gaining the skills, memories, and knowledge of its host as it extends roots through the (still-living) brain of its host.
    Over the next few years, the larva eats, assimilates, and replaces the host's nervous system. Meanwhile, the host is under its control; these larva-hosts are often used as spies or agents by the illithids. Eventually, the larva (now stretched across the host's entire body) begins to metamorphose; its host becomes ill as its nonessential tissues are consumed, with the larva using the illness as an excuse to retreat to less-observed areas "in search of a cure". Eventually, the metamorphosing illithid decides its host has no further use and begins consuming vital organs, using the host's corpse as a cocoon and energy supply to finish its transformation into an illithid nymph.
    The illithid nymph looks much like an adult illithid, aside from its proportions (being far skinnier than should be possible for a humanoid) and its lack of fingers or toes. The nymph attempts to locate either an illithid community it can join (usually the one it was spying for, if it was a spy) or a small, isolated group of humanoids it can prey on. Initially, it feeds on the flesh of its prey as well as brains, enabling its frame to fill with muscle as it reaches maturity; once it has reached its adult mass, however, it can subsist almost entirely on brains.

    And if you're fond of alternation of generations or what are formally defined as complex life cycles, you could add an extra step or two.
    For instance, perhaps mature illithids don't produce illithid larvae themselves. Instead, when they mate, one or more of their tentacles develop a growth at its base before separating from their face. This tentacle develops into a creature that looks like a mixture of sea snake, worm, and severed tentacle; I'll call it an "eelithid" for now. The eelithid may be kept as a pet by its "parents," put in a communal pool, or cast out into the wilds. Regardless, this creature has its own ecology, psionic powers, etc, and it produces the illithid larvae.
    Or perhaps there are extra steps, possible drawing in other species of tentacley aberrations. Perhaps the eelithids grow up into ropers, gricks, grells, or something like that. As an example: The eelithids grow up into gricks, and the gricks come together into a great mass to form an Elder-Brain like creature that spawns grells, which in turn implant people with illithid larvae.
    If you really wanted to screw with D&D lore, you could make aboleths or something like that the mature form of elder brains. On the other hand, you could also have aboleths be larval elder brains, just needing some kind of psionic catalyst to become a being of pure cerebrum, able to see the future as clearly as it once saw the past.


    Overall...between the infiltration opportunities presented by illithids having a yeerk-like larval form, the possibility of a big conspiracy where all the different species of aberration are secretly working together, and the implied plot hooks involved in turning an ancient, powerful monster into a new type of even stronger monster...there's gotta be something here you can use.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Banned
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    Denmark
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    I have a (slightly) different take on illithid: The elder brain makes tadpoles. Tadpoles will eat their way into anything with a brain, and do their level best. May become a mind flayer, may become some other horrid beast. Mind flayer lairs are choked full of these fun experiments.

    At the end of their life cycle, all brains are returned to the elder pool, where they are rendered down - they feed the elder brain, not just in a nutritional sense, but it also absorbs their memories.

    Tossing dead bodies into the pool also allows the little tadpoles to gnaw their way in, creating either a mind flayer (if the body died, like, last round) or something I call a mind thrall - basically a psionic zombie.

    And of course the illithid can use alchemy to brew all sorts of potions from the brain juices of the various creatures they've enslaved.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    I was thinking about the 3.5 rule that let clerics worship things other than gods and still get power. I've long assumed that this was because divine magic came from within, like arcane magic; their faith and devotion aren't a key to divine power, but a source of personal power.
    I decided to think about why that might be, and if I could link that to a core source of all magic. What do clerics and wizards have in common? Their discipline. Clerics need discipline to follow their god's commandments and need to pray regularly; wizards need discipline to comprehend magic and need to study regularly.
    What if it is, at heart, this discipline which lets one use magic? Discipline would be like exercise for the soul, letting one's inner magic come forth. Gods would likely assist their clerics' use of inner magic, and wizards' understanding of magic would help their spellcasting, but the discipline is still powering their magic at heart.
    How would this work for other classes?

    • Bard: Like the wizard, except with music; their magic comes from extensively practicing their magic. That still doesn't justify playing "Smoke On the Water" for three hours straight.
    • Druid: The druid's discipline comes from living in whatever manner they feel is natural. This makes them less predictable than most types of casters; clerics are restricted by dogma, and wizards can at least be expected to act and think in a scholarly manner, but a druid could just as easily be a fearsome predator, a kindly gardener, or apathetic bystander.
    • Monk: Halfway between "discipline as exercise for the soul" and "discipline as boring normal exercise".
    • Paladin: The paladin gains power from doing good and fighting evil. Their discipline comes from a rigid adherence to their code of conduct, which is why nearly all are LG. Oathbreakers who retain shreds of their former power (ie, who have the Oathbreaker subclass from the DMG) maintain it by methods as diverse as the reasons behind their fall. Some keep their empty rituals without their original purpose, others cling to whatever is left of their shattered honor with even greater urgency than before, a few find a darker cause to champion, etc.
    • Ranger: Somewhere between druid and paladin. The way of life they draw power from has less to do with acting as nature and more to do with acting alongside nature—coexistence, not mimicry.
    • Sorcerer: Vanilla sorcerers have magic for no apparent reason, just some weird innate power; much the same is true here. The sorcerer's magical potency is enough to imbue seemingly-mundane rituals, quirks, or superstitions with arcane power. The sorcerer doesn't have to do much to maintain their power, as long as they don't lose their magical habits.
    • Warlock: Somewhere between the cleric and the wizard is the warlock, someone whose discipline comes from both holding up their end of the pact and studying whatever arcane secrets they bought.
    • Eldritch Knight/Arcane Trickster: Could be like any of these, but sorcerer seems to fit best.


    This sort of thing would fit a campaign storyline built around the strength of belief and conviction, whatever those beliefs and convictions are. If you were going to incorporate it, you'd probably want to add some other alternatives:
    • A Devoted Champion archetype for the fighter, similar to the eldritch knight but with different spell restrictions and abilities focused around strengthening and protecting a specific person.
    • Some kind of paladin oath relating to loyalty to one's liege or nation. I'd call it something like "Oath of Patriotism," but that feels hilariously anachronistic even for a setting where stone age lizardmen coexist with crossbows and plate armor.
    • A bard-like class for crafts or skills which don't lend themselves to active performance so much as static (but permanent) displays.
    • A druidey wizard archetype for those who want to study and understand nature rather than magic.
    • Paladin oaths for dark philosophies (imagine Andrew Ryan as a warrior empowered by Randian ideals, for instance).
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    I recently discovered that empyreans, children of the gods, were in the 5e Monster Manual. Upon further examination, I found that they aren't half-mortal (so...they're just quasi-deities rather than demigods? Isn't that less interesting?), they're specifically the children of good gods (dull), and they're referred to as titans despite the Greek titans being the parents of the gods (which bothers me more than it should).
    Despite this, I still got an idea about a world with lots of demigods from that.




    It's common for half-mortal, half-divine heroes of myth to become kings. Sometimes they conquered them, sometimes they united a people, sometimes it was just a quest reward; doesn't matter. Generally speaking, there's one demigod as an ancient ancestor who justifies the current dynasty's rulership, barring the occasional instance of a god taking mortal guise for a fun night out and banging his great-granddaughter before he recognizes her. What if that wasn't the norm? (Not the great-granddaughter thing, though that's not going to be the norm either.)

    Imagine a world divided into kingdoms, each with a patron god. The laws of inheritance state not that the eldest child of the last monarch shall inherit, but whoever has the most blood from their patron god. (In case of a tie, pick the eldest.) Normally, this is going to be a child of the last monarch, since if anyone else's kid had more divine blood than the prince/ss, they'd usually have more divine blood than the last monarch, which would make them the monarch. Of course, it shouldn't be hard to think of some ways to muck with that:
    • Obviously, if a new demigod was born, they'd likely have more divine blood than the current rulers.
    • Strategic marriages could let enough divine blood build up in one family to surpass the ruling dynasty's divinity. This would, of course, encourage the rulers to marry other descendents of their patron. (The duplicated divine genes would probably not be a serious issue, but the mortal blood could easily become stagnant if the royal family tree didn't branch enough. This would obviously affect dynasties with weaker divine blood more, since they'd need to inbreed harder to keep their claim secure.)
    • Standard lost heir stuff, both in the sense of "Oh no, the prince is missing, and obviously not being raised by some kindly shepherds/dwarves/she-bear" and in the sense of "My father was the true heir, and now I've come to claim my birthright".
    • For extra intrigue, you could have fake heirs. This obviously only works if there's no easy way to check divine parentage; at minimum, all divine blood would needs to have identical characteristics (letting e.g. Loki's kid pass as Izanami's). To open the possibilities a bit wider, maybe have a "power is power" sort of thing, where the source of power (divinity, partial divinity, a pact with a god/demon/whatever, being some lesser spirit, study...) doesn't affect what you can do nearly as much as who you are would. That might take a little homebrew, but it could make finding the true heir very interesting indeed...or maybe just a matter of checking the citations on everyone's genealogies and ignoring relative power levels, but that's boring and doesn't allow "conquest by single combat".


    I'm imagining this world as being a hodgepodge of gods, creatures, and ideas from mythologies all around the world, especially if we go with the "power is power, succession is a bitch" possibility. Loki and Anasazi get into prank wars, Dionysus and Ame-no-Uzume throw wild parties, the Rainbow Serpent and Quetzalcoatl retreat into inhospitable to get away from all the sky/storm gods that keep trying to kill them, etc. Meanwhile, druids commune with naiads and kami, scholarly wizards and enlightened monks collaborate to find an escape from Samsara, kupua teach their shapeshifting tricks to witches in exchange for eldritch brews, and all the awesome vaguely-draconic creatures from around the world coexist in the same world. It's probably best if the cosmology and origins of the world are kept vague, with some common motifs included (e.g, the Earth being the body of some giant, probably-serpentine monster associated with chaos, which was slain by the first gods to bring order to the universe) and any other obvious problems (like who those first gods were) either being an "Every god has a different answer that glorifies them/their family more" sort of situation or involving some OCs.

    Fun plot ideas:
    • The last known semi-mortal descendant of Hades is on her deathbed; the princes and princesses of her realm have all died in various unfortunate incidents, she doesn't have any cousins, and Hade's hasn't sired any demigods since he and Persephone hooked up. The queen is offering an obscene reward to anyone who can find (and prove the legitimacy of) any other descendants of Hades.
    • The heirs to the kingdoms of Hou Yi and Nujalik met at a tournament and fell in love. They got married, inherited their parents' thrones, and planned to give their two kingdoms to their two eldest children. Unfortunately, their second and third children were twins, and their eldest child took this as a sign that the two kingdoms should be unified, with their patron deity being a syncretization of their parent's gods. Hou Yi and Nujalik do not approve of this idea, but no god is allowed to mess with any other god's progeny, so neither is actually allowed to do anything...directly.
    • A demigod of unknown origin has raised an army and started conquering a kingdom. Said demigod has gotten their army and some civilians in their new realm to start worshiping their new monarch, in hopes of becoming a true god...but if their true parentage is discovered, they'll just become another heir to a normal kingdom, with an unusually devoted army and a bit more territory.
    • The Belt of Muisa, a potent magical weapon capable of killing even the semi-divine, has vanished from Muisa's kingdom's treasury. It's suspected that this is a result of a recent feud between the various gods of the dead, but nobody has any idea which kingdom could have stolen it.
    • The fae courts have decided to play one of their classic pranks on humanity...by basically stealing the divine power from a couple royal babies and shunting it all into some random outlander too far from civilization to hear about the depowered royals. A bunch of royal kids from neighboring kingdoms growing up without divine power is enough to make people suspicious, and they manage to put two and two together and figure out the gist of the prank from the local satyrs. Unfortunately, nobody told the satyrs anything important, like where the outlander in question was (they're kind of obvious liabilities), so the hunt is on! Some people want to name this incredibly powerful child their heir, some want to reclaim their kids' power (probably by murder or sacrifice or something), some want to make sure the outlander isn't a threat, and some realize this kid is going to have a really tough life and try to stop anyone else from doing anything cartoonishly evil.


    (I swear, I didn't just do this to show off my knowledge of mythological trivia.)
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Isn't it kinda weird that, out of all the basic undead in the Monster Manual, ghouls and only ghouls have a special upgraded version (the ghast)? 5e doesn't even have the greater shadow or dread wraith anymore. I'm not complaining about that, since they were...well...
    Quote Originally Posted by Inevitability View Post
    Greater
    \ˈgrā-tər \
    comparative adjective
    1. Describing basically the exact same monster but with twice the RHD.
    ...but it's certainly odd that ghouls have ghasts. Not that they're just greater ghouls, mind you. They have stench, a turning resistance aura, the ability to paralyze elves, and only 60% more RHD! Regardless, why is it that ghouls and only ghouls have an upgraded version? I mean, the real answer is the same as the reason why elves are immune to ghoulish paralysis: "It was that way in AD&D and nobody's changed it yet, so it's tradition now." But just because there's an answer doesn't mean I won't want to find a better one.

    Ghouls, being flesh-eating undead, have a certain synergy with more specialized demihumanitarians. A illithid or vampire can eat the brains or blood of a victim, then leave the corpse for their ghoul minions. Illithids don't have any thematic resonance with ghouls, but vampires absolutely do. Both are undead which are noted for feeding upon the living, and no symbol of aristocratic vices is complete without some lower-class thugs to boss around. Let's see what we can do with that...




    A vampire lord is one of the most fearsome types of undead—not simply because of its sheer power, but because of the variety of other undead it can create. Legends tell of vampire kings whose breath could raise zombies and skeletons, whose ragged raiment could be wrapped around corpses to create mummies, who could drain a mortal's soul and spit it out as a spectre. Known vampires are obviously nowhere near so powerful, but they still possess the ability to create undead.
    Those drained by a vampire rise again, with only minor rituals needed to secure the vampire's power and the victim's soul in the body. If the vampire feeds the dying victim its blood, whether pre- or postmortem, the victim rises as a vampire spawn—essentially a juvenile vampire. However, such an honor is extended only to those who the vampire sees as worthy. Anyone else brought back becomes a ghoul.
    Ghouls serve the vampire who created them with loyalty built on enchantment and fear. In exchange for unlife and scraps from the vampire's table, the ghoul does jobs which are beneath a vampire. This may include tidying the catacomb, getting food from (alleys near) the market, or devouring trespassers.
    When a vampire dies, its spawn generally goes their separate ways (unless the vampire's sire is powerful enough to retain control over its spawn's spawn). Ghouls freed from such service often strike out to find an existence independent from greater undead, living and hunting only for themselves. But some dream of something more, of gaining the power possessed by their former captors. These ghouls search for the secret to becoming powerful like them. So far, no ghoul has ascended to a vampire's level (or type) of power, but those who apply themselves to increasing their ghoulish power eventually become ghasts.

    A ghast has learned to overcome its ghoulish weaknesses (such as clerical turning and elvish...whatever makes them arbitrarily immune to ghoul paralysis*), while leveraging its strengths in novel ways (such as weaponizing the stench of their food). Above all, though, a ghast is a leader of ghouls—a ghoul respected by former spawn-siblings and later comrades for its work ethic, ambition, and vision.
    Of course, no ghast has been content with merely being a slightly stronger ghoul. They strive to increase their own power, to forge the kind of organization a vampire can. Some found ways to mimic a vampire's ability to sire spawn, either infecting mortals with a disease that transforms them into (free-willed) ghouls or raising normal ghouls to ghast status, or both. However, even before a ghast reaches that level, it will be targeted by mortals and immortals alike.
    Mortals fear any undead army, and vampires specifically fear the possibility of being usurped by these glorified servants. Vampires don't want to dignify these social climbers by defeating them in person, like they would a vampiric rival, but their foot soldiers are generally ghouls, and it wouldn't do to risk them getting ideas...or worse, finding some way to free themselves from control and join the upstart. Hence, they often hire mortal mercenaries to deal with ghasts—never well-known heroes, and rarely small armies, for both would imply the ghasts were legitimate threats, and the vampires can't have that. A small group of up-and-coming adventurers, though? Just perfect.


    *I know that the Monster Manual says it's because the first ghoul buddied up with elven gods after Orcus decided not to help his minion, but that concept is too underdeveloped for me to take it seriously.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Troll in the Playground
    Join Date
    Mar 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    I am conflicted about this thread. First because the ideas are great and yet they are two big to read and digest all at once (I plan on doing a second pass to address that). The other reason if I think this might belong in World Building but that gets so much less traffic than Roleplaying Games, I think this thread existed in some form in that forum already actually (although it seems to have been archived since). I kind of wish there was a better connection than going up and back down. It isn't much put it is just enough to put it out of sight.

    My most recent lore idea was not for a creature, but a futuristic city that included the god of thunder's temple. Which was basically a giant lightning rod that got hit with enough divine lighting they turned it into a generator that powers most of the city (as in it produces just over half the power the city uses). For fantasy creatures I would have to think back a little bit more.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    I am conflicted about this thread. First because the ideas are great and yet they are two big to read and digest all at once (I plan on doing a second pass to address that).
    Thanks!
    I don't know what to do about the "too big to digest at once" thing. I keep trying to keep the ideas short and concise, but then I keep getting more ideas, and I realize that there's no "hook" to make this practically usable, and...

    The other reason if I think this might belong in World Building but that gets so much less traffic than Roleplaying Games, I think this thread existed in some form in that forum already actually (although it seems to have been archived since).
    Hm, probably. I didn't put much thought into this thread; it's mostly an outlet for all the ideas that I wish I could find some use for, so that I can feel like someone else might notice them and be inspired by them. (And, you know, so other people can read and be inspired by them, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up on that. The other guys probably have a ton of their own ideas to go through.)

    I kind of wish there was a better connection than going up and back down. It isn't much put it is just enough to put it out of sight.
    A better connection between what?

    [spoiler]My most recent lore idea was not for a creature...[/QUOTE]
    That's fine! This is intended to be a place to drop all sorts of random lore ideas, mine have only been creature-centered because I've been reading stuff about monster lore lately.
    ...I may need to clarify the OP.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    The various fiendish races in D&D, especially demons and devils, have pretty well-defined identities. Demons exist somewhere between unfettered hedonism and bestial rage, while devils are like [insert your least favorite politician here] and one of those corporate villains from the 70's had a kid whose empathy was surgically removed. But the differences between the celestial races are...less-defined. Archons protect order, eladrins probably protect freedom, angels protect...good or something, guardinals...oh, forget it.

    I came across the Wikipedia page for mythical archons (the non-gnostic kind is just a fancy title, kinda like how the ranks of angels include Thrones and Lordships), and wheels started turning. Sure, I'd have to take bits of the core concept to make something less...demonic, but there's something workable in there. I looked up the mythological inspirations for the other major celestial races, only to discover that eladrin and guardinals date all the way back to a Planescape card game released in 1995. sigh Well, guess I'm working with whole cloth here.

    Archons are Lawful Good celestials. According to legend, their structure and code was handed down from an enigmatic being known as Primum Movens, who created the Great Wheel and set it in motion. The Archons follow this code, protecting the multiverse and its inhabitants. Luckily, the code is written in such a way that allows edge cases to be identified and handled with a more flexible (though still deterministic) system, meaning that there aren't any known cases of the Code leading archons astray (unless you count the occasional instance where they, say, fight to protect devils from demonic war-crimes). However, the Code is firm; in situations which mortals would consider morally ambiguous, when neither side could be considered truly heroic or villainous, archons "know" which side is right and which is wrong, and will not be dissuaded from protecting the side of right (unless information is revealed which changes the situation enough to alter judgement, of course).
    Angels are Neutral Good celestials. When two evil deities or outsiders are about to fight, their peers make popcorn. When two good deities/outsiders are about to fight, their peers make angels. Angels are, at heart, messengers for the heavens, bringing messages between Good-aligned beings to enable mutual understanding. Angels have no allegiances, save to the angels who send them on missions. Angels outside the heavenly domains are generally lesser angels, sent to bring messages to Good mortals, whether that message is "You're on a mission from God now" or "You done effed up".
    Guardinals are also Neutral Good celestials. Where archons want to keep the Great Wheel turning as it "should," guardinals want to keep the Great Wheel turning as it is. They see the potential dangers which threaten the multiverse itself, and know that any sufficient imbalance could let those dangers grow out of control. It is said that Guardinals are the souls of righteous civilians who died in the First War, and who wish to ensure that no future calamity could threaten the world like that again. They seek to maintain balance, create balance where there is none (while changing as little as possible), and so on. Guardinals will always let a little suffering be if preventing it would disrupt the region, potentially causing more suffering down the line, even where both archons and eladrins would intervene. Guardinals tend to be anti-interventionist in general, acting only in response to another actor of similar scale.
    Eladrins are the rivals of archons, believing in a diametrically opposed view of Good. According to legend, the first eladrin were righteous fey whose groves were drained during the First War. The archons' code dictated that the elves who took power from the groves were righteous, as they needed that power to fight the Chaos Serpent, but it sure didn't seem that way to the fey. Without their grove, they lost their fey magic...but a glimmer of power is present even in mortal souls, and with enough determination, that glimmer of power can unfold into something greater. The former fey ascended as celestial beings, and contemplated their new place in the world. In the end, they decided to fight for the freedom of every soul—the freedom to do what they want, unrestricted by want, oppression, or codes. The gods have little respect for the eladrins (which is only fair, given how little respect the eladrins have for powerful beings who dictate commandments from on high), but lay-mortals generally prefer eladrins to archons. Both are usually only seen when smiting evils, but the eladrin's non-evil-smiting visits are driven by motives more comprehensible to mortals than the archon's ("We fight for freedom!" vs. "It's in this code you've never seen").


    ...Oh, and I guess I invented another setting element. The First War is sort of a combination of the Titanomachy and the Storm God vs. Chaos Serpent myth, a mythic war where the gods (good and evil alike) and their servants fought a great serpentine entity representing chaos. The Chaos Serpent's bones were used as foundations for and barriers between the planes we know today (with the skull protecting the Material Plane from extraplanar beings), its flesh decomposed into the elements used to build them, etc etc. The battle was presumably fought inside some kind of primordial void which made Limbo look orderly...or the slightly-less-empty precursor to the Astral Plane, dotted with storms of the aforementioned super-Limbo and random islands of (relative) order where life could form and take root.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Troll in the Playground
    Join Date
    Mar 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    A better connection between what?
    The Roleplaying Games forum section and the Homebrew Design form section. They are quite intertwined in my opinion yet seem pretty separate by organization of the forum.

    OK I want to talk about something but I'm not sure what, so how about this.
    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by TheStranger View Post
    But really - you're fine with your player making a butter golem, but you're concerned with the realism of the supply chain?
    As someone who has:
    • Worked wuxia style martial arts into evolving gender politics.
    • Debated plausible social impacts of flying islands.
    • Repeated re-written aspects of society to show the effects of family size and sleeping arrangements.
    • Explained why this alien's unusual life-cycle makes them great diplomats.
    • Created a story around a super-powered UN-like peacekeeping force and the politics involved.
    • Outlined a martial arts school that produced superhuman firefighters.
    • And more...
    YES!
    ...
    Do you have a blog? Not only do most of those sound fascinating to me, I want to see other writing/worldbuilding things you've thought of.
    As a kind of thank-you for giving me moment I remember for a while, pick one and I'll try to write out a post about it.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by Cluedrew View Post
    OK I want to talk about something but I'm not sure what, so how about this.
    As a kind of thank-you for giving me moment I remember for a while, pick one and I'll try to write out a post about it.
    I'm glad I gave you such a moment!
    All of those sound interesting (as I mentioned back then), but there's only one that I don't see how it could work (partly because I'm not that familiar with wuxia tropes). So how about the "Worked wuxia style martial arts into evolving gender politics"?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Troll in the Playground
    Join Date
    Mar 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    OK, this is from the system I am working on currently, have been for years and if my rate of progress holds steady for years to come. And this is one of the areas that hasn't been finished yet. I'm not even sure it is wuxia, but there is a section of the setting that is more martial arts focused than the rest and it feels similar to some of the wuxia stuff I have read. Actually to all of it as all the wuxia stuff I have read has been formulaic to a sin but I am not doing that and I'm not sure which parts of that are important.

    Anyways the inspiration for this particular story from it was a problem in my setting: what to do with unwanted -isms. There are good stories to tell involving them, but that isn't what my system is about and I want people to play characters who "look like them". So I decided the to get rid of them. And being me I decided to put hints of why they aren't there where I could to help build up the world.

    This particular one is about how ignoring large sections of your population when it contains talented individuals leads to problems. This is true in reality but the effect is even more pronounced when talent can go as high as it often does in fantasy.

    Enter Ada Moonblade (although she wasn't Moonblade at the time) a talented swords-master who was well on her way to developing a new branch to her martial arts style. But to actually propose any changes or even to get to show her work officially she needed a higher rank. And every time she was up for a promotion she was passed over for a male peer. After a few years she decided enough was enough and issued a formal challenge. Over a series she beat every pretty much everyone who had been promoted in her place. At which point she was kicked out for being disrespectful.

    But really that only fooled those who wanted to be fooled. So when Ada opened a new girls school it actually got quite a lot of traffic. It was staffed by other women who had hit a glass ceiling. It struggled until its first class of students hit the world and then soon started picking up. It was called the Moonblade school and Ada changed her name to reflect it.

    Now if the story ended there we would have just reversed the situation. Male characters wouldn't be able to use Moonblade style (which doesn't exist yet, but I hope to give it a unique mechanical feel) and lose access to those options. And an organization that turns aside men is going to have similar problems as one that turns aside women.

    And you know not every man is a sexist pig. Some of those women are going to meet good fellows, get married and have kids, daughters and sons. And it one thing to refuse a arrogant teen, quite another to turn aside a toddler who wants to spend time with mom and big sis.

    And that is how "associate members" got started. It took some years for it to be formalized and even more for the benefits of an associate member to effectively match that of a regular member. There are a couple of limits, each dojo requires a regular member on staff (not really an issue when they are still majority) and head of the school is only open to a full member.

    So the gender politics is evolving in that it is slowly going away. But there is buried in the lore is my quick story about what happened to it. Oh and the other schools did improve as well, Moonblade School was a good example and also made it a matter of not loosing female students.

    Any that is the story behind that bullet point.

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    That's a pretty cool post, with some pretty cool ideas, and the only reason I didn't say so earlier is I didn't want to make a post that was basically just "That's cool."

    Anyways, I've had some planar ideas.




    It's a common mythological trope to have the world made from the body of some primordial being (Tiamat the sea-dragon, Ymir the primeval giant, Cipactli the crocodile monster with knee-maws). The Great Wheel has a bunch of worlds; why not have a bunch of primordial beings?

    Once, there was nothing but pure chaos, a mixture of every kind of energy, merging and splitting endlessly. But even chaos will occasionally produce order, if only by accident. Many primordial creatures formed this way and were ripped apart once more by chaos.
    Finally, some beings strong enough to survive the chaos came into existence. The first were the four Elemental Primes, who began to distill and absorb their respective elements from the elemental chaos. Their gluttony created disparity between light and dark, presence and absence, life and dark; this disparity was ignited by two new primal beings, the Positive and Negative Primes, who fed off each other to grow even greater.
    The Primes were not benevolent creator gods, yet the peace and stability they created through their hunger was a safe haven for primordial creatures spawned chaos they had yet to consume. Some of these fed on the Primes as parasites, some fed on the energies which the Primes failed to consume, some fed on other primordials. Sixteen grew to rival the Primes in size and power, and another surpassed them; these seventeen are known as the False or Late Primes.

    Eventually, beings now known as the Titans came together. They were far smaller than the greatest primordial beings, but were blessed with intelligence and empathy, which allowed them to forge bonds and cooperate, two skills beyond any other primordial beings. The Titans began slaughtering the largest and most dangerous primordial creatures, fashioning their bodies into weapons, fortresses, and other artifacts to ensure their survival and victory. The Titans split apart into sixteen tribes on ideological grounds, but remained cordial rivals at worst.
    Eventually, the time came to fell the Primes. Every Titanic tribe banded together for the effort, felling one Prime after another by removing their hearts—the six sparks which originally tamed and consumed the chaos. As the Primes began to fall, the greatest False Prime absorbed its fellows to gather strength. The Titans saw this threat for what it was, and prepared.
    They transformed the six bodies of the six Primes into six worlds, which would become the Inner Planes; each had teams of Titans from all sixteen tribes forging weapons, soldiers, and more for the inevitable war effort. Meanwhile, the sixteen elders of the sixteen tribes took the hearts from the Primes and forged them into the Heart of War, perhaps the greatest weapon ever designed: A massive sphere filled with cavernous spaces, in turn packed with raw elemental energy and the machinery needed to shape it.
    The day for the great battle came, and after much fighting, the Titans defeated the False Prime. It was a terrible battle; many titans died, and the Heart of War was disabled, but the day was won. The False Prime's heart, a grotesque amalgamation of all the hearts consumed to form the False Prime, was removed and used as a burial shroud for the Heart of War, which was placed in the center of the cosmos as a reminder of that great battle.
    The sixteen tribes of Titans sought to create a new home for themselves, but squabbled over what it should be. Eventually, one Titan queen proposed a solution. Each of the lesser False Primes formed a sector of the final False Prime; their bodies would be transformed into homes for one tribe each. The center of the False Prime would be used as a neutral meeting-place for the tribes, and the queen would create a city at its center to serve as the hub of the multiverse. This plan was embraced and put into action.

    The Titans forged the Elder Gods in the Inner Planes and set them to work, shaping each of the Outer Planes in turn. When their task was done, they were sent to the mausoleum for the Heart of War, to ensure the Primes true and false never again bothered the multiverse. But this heart of hearts, the heart of the universe, was formed out of chaos given order, out of life and death and the four elements. It would not remain silent forever, and the Elder Gods took advantage of this. They nurtured the growth of life on this universal heart, encouraged the unfathomable energies within to blossom, and prepared to take vengeance on their creators and masters.
    The Elder Gods rebelled against the Titans, sealing them away in the hearts of their planes. Only a few survived, by retreating to distant corners of the cosmos or impregnable fortresses. The Elder Gods drove the Titans who fled and nearly all remaining primordial monsters to the edge of the Great Wheel, where the primordial chaos had begun to creep in once more, to the realm now known as the Far Realm.
    But the Elder Gods were unable to avoid their creators' folly. The world they created and derived energy from, which they were harnessing to empower the whole multiverse, had new life of its own. Mortals were more numerous and creative than any race to come before; they were therefore able to invent new ways to build and destroy, and the deeds they could accomplish together overshadowed those of any who came before.
    Mortals could not hope to fight the Elder Gods alone, but they created their own gods by channeling their mortal energies into ideas and beliefs. The gods of man overthrew the Elder Gods...but the cycle repeated, as the gods demanded that mortals serve them. With all that mortals had poured into the gods, with how their power and creativity and even their ability to cooperate had been tied to them, the mortals had no choice but to accept. And so the world remains.


    So...yeah. The Outer and Inner planes are obvious. The Material Plane is obviously the Heart of Hearts, with the old Heart of War being the Underdark and the False-Prime shroud forming the...Overlight, I guess. The Astral Plane remains as the empty space between worlds, littered with primordial artifacts crafted by the Titans.
    Not sure how to fit the Transitive Planes into this model. I guess the Ethereal, Feywild, and Shadowfell would stay as reflections of the Material Plane, maybe made after some weird machinery malfunction in the depths of the Heart of War. This might justify there only being one Underdark; the Underwild and Underfell are just different corners of one united Heart of War, which just link to different versions of the Material Plane.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  15. - Top - End - #15
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Hobgoblin lore pretty consistently paints their society as basically an army. Not a militaristic society, not a society ruled by a military junta, an actual army. Isn't that weird? The hobgoblin legionary structure has room for everything from foot-soldiers to generals, but where are the serfs and burghers and clerks? I mean, the simple solution is to assume that some divisions are assigned to non-martial tasks, but I had an idea I think is more interesting.
    What if there was an ancient empire which fell from grace, paving the way for a modern, more civilized world...but the ancient empire was goblins? The goblinoid empire had a strict caste system, created by magical modification and selective breeding and whatnot, maintained by fear and indoctrination. Bugbears were laborers, made to be strong but unobtrusive so they wouldn't disturb the masters; hobgoblins were soldiers, made to be loyal and fearless; and common goblins are mongrels of a wide variety of minor servants.

    When the empire fell, the overlord caste was all but annihilated. The soldier caste was the only caste containing servants meant to give orders; hence, laborers and servants without overseers giving them orders fell into chaos.
    Bugbears found a way to survive, by using their natural brawn and stealth to raid and steal. Hobgoblins found a way to survive, using their military hierarchy to preserve what fragments of ancient goblin culture and institutions they could save. Goblins...well, their culture started as a mishmash of different professions' indoctrination and standing orders, which clashed into a chaotic mixture of ideas which never really coalesced into anything workable.
    A given band of goblins has a hodgepodge of different ideas of what they should try to do ("Kill the horses an' butcher them!" "No, steal the crops, grind 'em up, mix 'em, and stick 'em in a fire!" "No, you idiots, just stick everything in a fire and pick out the charcoal!"), lead by the mania of whoever is best at herding cats. There's a reason they don't tend to go beyond "local nuisance".


    For extra flavor, there could be extra castes. Maybe hard labor which is already done far from the overseers was done by a caste which was stronger, less stealthy, and perhaps dumber; giant cave goblins? Maybe aquatic goblins were sent to fish and do other aquatic tasks. Maybe there's a hobgoblin subrace made to guard people, places, or items belonging to private citizens, who relied on overseers rather than the military hierarchy; these might form villages around whatever their ancestors used to guard, ensuring that no outsiders steal the treasure from what is now a pile of rubble covered in clumps of sod.

    And, of course, maybe some of those overseers found a way to survive. Maybe they're regrouping in some distant place, preparing to take control of goblinkind once more; maybe they were themselves enslaved by some other race (mind flayers being the obvious choice), forced to use their special powers to create and lead their masters' slaves. Or maybe there's just a vestigial fragment of the old goblin empire, making a big stink about anything they don't like in a desperate attempt to preserve the power they don't realize has already been lost.
    Last edited by GreatWyrmGold; 2019-05-03 at 12:55 AM. Reason: Tried to make it less wall-of-texty
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  16. - Top - End - #16
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Just a short one, which came to me when I noticed a weirdly specific parallel between two of D&D's most prominent non-true dragons. Pseudodragons and wyverns both have poisonous stings, albeit with different types of venom. Wyverns are also bigger, dumber, more aggressive, and have fewer limbs.

    My first thought was that wyverns could be war-creatures created from pseudodragons and, I dunno, maybe snakes. (Fewer limbs, deadly poison, it works, right?) That, in turn, lead to me wondering what other reptilian monsters the yuan-ti might try to turn into bestial war-machines.
    Maybe medusae could be turned into scaly apes with a mass of snakes coming out of the neck, presumably still with the signature petrifying gaze. Maybe a salamander monster could have a bite that injected liquid fire into its victims. Maybe a grick's tentacles could be replaced with snakes, possibly with suckers on the bottom for extra unnaturalness. Maybe a ravid's positive energy aura could be corrupted into a toxic aura.
    Hydras, kobolds, and shocker lizards don't have a lot of room for creativity (big poisonous brute, basic cannon fodder with venom, literal shock troops), but they're still worth mentioning. So is a potential end-goal for a campaign focused on this idea. After all, what (non-draconic) reptilian creature can hope to match the sheer terror induced by the tarrasque? If the yuan-ti can induce a serpentine upgrade, they would be able to psionically control this infamous destroyer of nations and use it to take over the world or whatever! It's a low-hanging fruit of a climax, but sometimes the low-hanging fruit is worth plucking.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  17. - Top - End - #17
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Gnolls—for when you need a generic brutish enemy tribe, but orcs are too weak and ogres are too strong. But I like trying to give the various "evil humanoids" distinct flavor, and I thought of something for the gnolls.

    Gnolls, like elves, venerate nature; however, their conception of nature is different. Elves value the idea of nature, fields of wildflowers and dense forest groves teeming with life. Gnolls would look at such places and deem them unnatural, gardens where wildfires and grazing beasts had been withheld. Elves love what nature should be, but gnolls love what nature is.
    To an outsider, a gnoll tribe seems composed of bullies and cowards, but this is just the result of how their morality affects their behavior. It is only natural for the strong to take from the weak, for the lion to drive hyenas from their own kills, for the buck with the greatest antlers to mate with all the does he wants, and for those who oppose this order of things to be killed for failing to recognize their shortcomings. As it is in nature, so it is for gnolls. Those with power command those without, they eat their fill and take what they want, and those without power accept these demands.
    Unlike many other evil humanoids, gnolls accept all forms of strength. Nature rewards not only the powerful bear, but the clever raven, the hidden serpent, and the cooperative wolf. Whether your power comes from strength, cunning, magic, or even deceit, gnolls will respect it. Gnolls even grudgingly respect those with political power, if only for the audacity in gaining power by acting like they have power.
    But the weak in gnollish society don't just roll over and play dead. All things in nature grow, or are destroyed. Gnolls seek to increase their personal power one way or another. Some train their brawn, some seek magical prowess, some search for powerful groups to attach to or convince their fellow gnolls that anyone following them will gain power (or other things gnolls want—they don't only want power, any more than a dwarf only wants gold or an elf only wants to hang out in sunlit groves).

    Some gnolls follow more powerful beings. Giants, dragons, and warlords are common, but very few follow gods. Gods almost never use their power to influence the world, and to a gnoll, power that is almost unused is almost not power at all. But there is one being who many gnolls revere like a god, and she is Yeenoghu.
    In life, Yeenoghu was a mighty arcanist, warrior, and strategist. She gathered a tribe of gnolls like few others, and invited anyone else who wanted to bask in her power to join with. But never did Yeenoghu try to establish something that would outlive her power, like an empire or a cult of personality; what she did would last her lifetime and then fall apart for others to empower themselves with, like the trunk of a tree which grants food and shelter to all the woodland creatures elves claim to love when they clear those logs away.
    Upon Yeenoghu's death, she was condemned to the Abyss. Yeenoghu was infuriated; had she not lived an honorable life, taking nothing she did not deserve, building nothing she did not need, and following the laws of nature? Shouldn't she be granted the glory of the heavens, like any other mortal hero? These were the questions Yeenoghu asked herself as she was dragged screaming through the layers of the Abyss.
    Yeenoghu had suffered in death, but she was still strong. As the demons which first found her began their torment, Yeenoghu slew them. During her first days in the Abyss, she discovered that eating demonflesh would bolster her power further, so she began to actively hunt demons. She was a thorn in the Abyss's side until some demon knights helped her carve out a territory of her own, with her own demons to form a new tribe. Even then, she regularly raided neighboring layers of the Abyss so frequently that Asmodeus considered making her an ally, before another demon lord just gave her the secrets of extending her influence to the mortal realm.
    Thus was the meteoric rise of Yeenoghu, the newest demon lord in the Abyss. Today, Yeenoghu regularly interacts with her followers in the mortal plane, striking down their enemies and any who seek to disrupt the natural order. Meanwhile, she seeks for some means of achieving her true goal. Some demons want power in the Lower Planes, some want to spread evil across the Material Plane, but Yeenoghu reaches for the heavens themselves—not to conquer, slaughter, or pillage, but because she feels it is her right to rest her laurels in those hallowed halls, enjoying the peace earned through a life red in tooth and claw. Wouldn't you think such a reward for her virtue would only be natural?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Orc in the Playground
     
    GreataxeFighterGuy

    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    United States
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    These are fantastic! I love the goblinoid concept and the idea of demigod blood as royal succession! Hopefully I'll have something to add myself soon.
    Currently worldbuilding Port Demesne: A Safe Harbor in a Shattered World! If you have a moment, I would love your feedback!

  19. - Top - End - #19
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Yora's Avatar

    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Germany

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

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

    I got the idea of farming giant bees that are lured to nest in artificial burrows, or suitable natural caves where available. But of course, the giant bees would protect their honey from being stolen by intruders, and with giant bees that would be rather deadly. So I was thinking about the farmers sneaking into caves where honey is being stored and pouring out honey from their stocks that have been deliberately contaminated by something that the bees identify as being harmful to the larvas, which causes the workers that detect it to chemically mark the cave as off limits, and the honey as being rejected. Then the workers can come back the next day and simply carry off all the perfectly fine honey. The following year, the cave will be regarded as clear again and new honey stores build.

    This sounds all plausible enough to put it into a fantasy world, but I still would like to have some general idea how the workers contaminate the repelant honey. Some kind of fungus infection would be plausible, but that seems like it has a really high risk of accidentally infecting and killing the entire hive. It definitely should be something that regular farmers can do without need for any kind of lab or complicated equipment. Maybe someone once discovered an abandoned cave with contaminated honey and realized that it works as a repellant, and that you can make more of it by simply giving a few spoons of it into a bucket with fresh honey. If for some reason you run out of it, you have to import new stuff from another farm, or hope you can find an abandoned wild honey cave that hasn't yet been raided by other animals.

    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?
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

  20. - Top - End - #20
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    I just read about manes, and that sparked a few ideas. Nothing as expansive as the Steppe Elf stuff, but still ideas.



    My first thought was basically "Why do only demons get these things?" Manes are basically just souls steeped in Abyssal energies for long enough that they turn into larval demons—but gods and outsiders of all alignments get souls, don't they? So what I'm thinking is a sort of "afterlife process" by which souls get converted to something more useful to the divine entities holding them:
    1. A mortal dies.
    2. The mortal's soul goes to an afterlife antechamber—purgatory, paradise, or anything in between.
    3. While in this antechamber, some fancy soul-magic stuff happens which purges the soul of undesired influence, replacing it with the plane's natural energies. CE fiends would purge the soul of lawfulness and goodness, essentially draining their kindness and orderliness; meanwhile, LG celestials would purge the soul of chaos and evil, daining their cruelty and disorder. (The undesired influence forms a sort of "soul slag" that could probably manifest as some kind of pest, e.g. celestial dogs spawning from the congealed traces of good pumped out of evil souls. Probably best to find a good place to dump that...maybe the River Styx?)
    4. Once the transition is complete, you have a creature which is a fusion of the desired components of mortal soul and the local energies—the mane. (Non-demonic versions probably wouldn't be called manes, but I don't know what they would be called, so "manes" it is.) The mane is halfway between a mortal and an outsider, a being with the substance of a celestial/fiend/whatever but the heart and power of a mortal.
    5. Manes have some uses, but they have many limitations; it takes many souls to create a powerful outsider. Manes are moved onto the first layer of [insert plane here], where they participate in some kind of task to accumulate power—ideally, something related to their intended purpose. (Soldiers would be sent to battle, workers sent to labor, the outer planes' equivalent of pencil-pushers shoved into a planar cubicle, etc.)
      Chaotic or evil manes tend to be put in direct competition, where they need to win, steal, or devour each others' energies to increase their personal power; lawful or good manes tend to be assigned tasks too great to handle individually, forcing them to cooperate more and more thoroughly until they literally become a single being. (CG and LE places would mix these two methods. LE manes would get stuck in a cutthroat bureaucracy, where they maneuver themselves into positions where they can drain each others' power or else claim the power and souls of their underlings to ascend; CG manes would compete to be the best and inspire others to lend their power or join their forces.)
    6. You have a new outsider to put somewhere as needed!




    My second idea is focused on the fact that when killed, manes disperse into a cloud of demonic miasma that reforms as a mane later. (I assume more powerful demons also disperse into demonic miasma that reforms as multiple manes.) The idea of soul-stuff persisting lead to a setting idea vaguely inspired by Pact's Limbo.
    Basically, imagine that everything that dies releases a soul-miasma that can reform into magical creatures. Mortals can kill these magical creatures and claim a portion of their soul-power; this is how they "level up". Simple idea, not original.
    The default assumption is that there is a constant amount of soul-energy in the world, with the energy released by deaths being balanced by the energy absorbed by births. But who says this has to be the case? Maybe each birth adds a bit more, or certain types of acts can generate new soul power, or something like that.

    Let's add in an adventuring-based economy. With the wonders soul power can bring (let's make all magic of note dependent on it), people want to kill the right kinds of monsters, gain soul-power, etc. This leads to the creation of adventurers' guilds that actively go out to kill monsters instead of just fighting the few that threaten civilization.
    All is well. This new system brings great magical power to the world, and leads to the formation of adventuring dynasties—families started by great heroes, who now control adventuring guilds and hence the flow of magical power. Things are going well, but everyone knows that the world depends on the constant, ever-increasing cycle of magical power.
    With more and more soul-power in the world, monsters more powerful than ever before are being spawned. As long as the power of adventurers and armies continues to increase, this isn't a problem...but if their power stops increasing, the monsters will catch up in power and threaten civilization itself. And the world is running out of unused power. In order to increase the power available, many guilds are exploiting the outer planes—invading heaven, hell, and everywhere in between to bargain with angels or slay fiends or finding some way to keep the power flowing.

    This setting would be very different from Faerun. To start with, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that even commoners have 2-3 levels, which gives you a good excuse to have rookie adventurers start out at low or even low-mid levels. You might also let all players pick a cantrip or two, to illustrate just how high-magic the world is.
    The setting itself also offers possibilities. I'd imagine this world is more urbanized than your standard medieval fantasy world—not to Ravnica levels, but still plenty of cities. The soul-miasma itself could also be an interesting element; it could be a mist which ebbs and flows across the land, spawning minor nuisances in its wake, with the risk of more powerful monsters spawning if the mist concentrates enough.
    There's also plenty of conflict baked in, ranging from simple hack-and-slash ("Kill the monsters that just spawned from soul-mist over there") to political intrigue (rivalries between adventurin guilds or the dynasties which control them) to epic save-the-world stuff (either finding a way to keep the cycle going, or to exit it without destroying civilization as we know it). Lots of stuff.
    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.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-06-13 at 04:08 PM.

  21. - Top - End - #21
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    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...


    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    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?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  22. - Top - End - #22
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    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'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?
    you did not understood the two last paragraphs: they were about how your xp system was encouraging more what gms usually call problem players than normal players: it encourages players who always use murder as a first solution and leaves no reward to players that avoids murder.

    And the first paragraph is not just about what sounds good: is suicide any less suicide because you spawn a bigger creature that itself will suicide to make a bigger creature?
    And why merge creatures that are conscious when you could just lower the amount of essence in a creature to give more to another which is a solution that does not needs the mentioned sacrifice.

    It is like supporting to have rich people kill and feed on each other to become fatter then go in Congo and kill themselves to feed the poor: it is needlessly horrific when you could feed people without all those dead even if you have no mass loss in the horrific process.
    sacrifice is good if you have no better alternative to help else it is just stupid and evil or suicide.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-06-15 at 05:33 AM.

  23. - Top - End - #23
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Bohandas's Avatar

    Join Date
    Feb 2016

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    I came across the Wikipedia page for mythical archons (the non-gnostic kind is just a fancy title, kinda like how the ranks of angels include Thrones and Lordships), and wheels started turning. Sure, I'd have to take bits of the core concept to make something less...demonic, but there's something workable in there. I looked up the mythological inspirations for the other major celestial races, only to discover that eladrin and guardinals date all the way back to a Planescape card game released in 1995. sigh Well, guess I'm working with whole cloth here.
    The leader of the guardianals, Talisid the celestial lion, seems like he might inspired by Aslan, and his name seems to be related to that of the bard Taliesin.

    "Eladrin" is a clear bastardization of "eldarin", a word used for elves in both Middle Earth and Warhammer
    "If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins

    Omegaupdate Forum

    WoTC Forums Archive + Indexing Projext

    PostImage, a free and sensible alternative to Photobucket

    Temple+ Modding Project for Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil

    Morrus' RPG Forum (EN World v2)

  24. - Top - End - #24
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    you did not understood the two last paragraphs: they were about how your xp system was encouraging more what gms usually call problem players than normal players: it encourages players who always use murder as a first solution and leaves no reward to players that avoids murder.
    It was basically just an in-universe rationalization of both the existing XP system and the murderhobo play pattern. Such a rationalization does not imply endorsement, and in fact opens the door to adventures which critique said pattern (which would be impossible, or at least nonsensical, if the pattern didn't exist in-universe).

    And the first paragraph is not just about what sounds good: is suicide any less suicide because you spawn a bigger creature that itself will suicide to make a bigger creature?
    It isn't suicide if you still exist in some way. It's also not suicide if it's a heroic sacrifice; I personally think some heroic sacrifices stray too close to suicide for my tastes (especially ones made by side characters which clearly exist so the important characters have a tragedy to mourn), but not all do.

    And why merge creatures that are conscious when you could just lower the amount of essence in a creature to give more to another which is a solution that does not needs the mentioned sacrifice.
    I'm reminded of a quote from the Giant, ironically from when someone was complaining about that universe's afterlife mechanics. It went something like "Why make assumptions that don't fit with what the author wrote when you can make assumptions that do?"
    Why would you assume that the celestials can solve problems without creating powerful celestials via sacrifice? I clearly established that this is how you make outsiders; there's no reason to think you can get powerful celestials without combining multiple souls somehow. So you must be assuming that you can solve any problem which seems to require a single solar by throwing a bunch of lantern archons at it. I don't see why you would assume that; take, for instance, the problem of a pit fiend spawncamping the Pearly Gates.

    It is like supporting to have rich people kill and feed on each other to become fatter then go in Congo and kill themselves to feed the poor: it is needlessly horrific when you could feed people without all those dead even if you have no mass loss in the horrific process.
    You seem to be confusing what I described for evil souls (competition which consumes the weak) with what I described for good ones (cooperation which creates a whole greater than the parts). Or not recognizing the difference between "come together under one leader" and "be consumed by one leader".
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  25. - Top - End - #25
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    It was basically just an in-universe rationalization of both the existing XP system and the murderhobo play pattern. Such a rationalization does not imply endorsement, and in fact opens the door to adventures which critique said pattern (which would be impossible, or at least nonsensical, if the pattern didn't exist in-universe).


    It isn't suicide if you still exist in some way. It's also not suicide if it's a heroic sacrifice; I personally think some heroic sacrifices stray too close to suicide for my tastes (especially ones made by side characters which clearly exist so the important characters have a tragedy to mourn), but not all do.


    I'm reminded of a quote from the Giant, ironically from when someone was complaining about that universe's afterlife mechanics. It went something like "Why make assumptions that don't fit with what the author wrote when you can make assumptions that do?"
    Why would you assume that the celestials can solve problems without creating powerful celestials via sacrifice? I clearly established that this is how you make outsiders; there's no reason to think you can get powerful celestials without combining multiple souls somehow. So you must be assuming that you can solve any problem which seems to require a single solar by throwing a bunch of lantern archons at it. I don't see why you would assume that; take, for instance, the problem of a pit fiend spawncamping the Pearly Gates.


    You seem to be confusing what I described for evil souls (competition which consumes the weak) with what I described for good ones (cooperation which creates a whole greater than the parts). Or not recognizing the difference between "come together under one leader" and "be consumed by one leader".
    you had multiple mentions of draining or stealing as if it was not always a take all situation and that you could manipulate continuously essence instead of having to either eat entirely a person or not eat at all.
    Furthermore in line with essence between continuous you speak of extracting the essence you do not want from souls that you call refining which is more in line with essence being something manipulable more than just "I eat a whole person or do not touch it"
    and you even speak of the leftover essence being pool-able and making pests.
    Essentially a huge part of what you described looked extremely incoherent if essence was not something continuous, manipulable and extractable.
    And fusing is completely identical to murder if at the end there is only one mind you lowered the number of minds as much as if the lone mind murdered all the others.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-06-18 at 11:12 AM.

  26. - Top - End - #26
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    you had multiple mentions of draining or stealing as if it was not always a take all situation and that you could manipulate continuously essence instead of having to either eat entirely a person or not eat at all.
    Furthermore in line with essence between continuous you speak of extracting the essence you do not want from souls that you call refining which is more in line with essence being something manipulable more than just "I eat a whole person or do not touch it"
    and you even speak of the leftover essence being pool-able and making pests.
    Essentially a huge part of what you described looked extremely incoherent if essence was not something continuous, manipulable and extractable.
    I dunno about you, but I find the idea that ripping a chunk out of a soul is somehow not damaging to be beyond incoherent, as is the idea that doing so is remotely suitable to angels. I don't know why I have to explain that, while angels could just rip a chunk out of every dead guy's soul, they don't want to because that causes a ton of pain (not to mention it's less effective).

    And fusing is completely identical to murder if at the end there is only one mind you lowered the number of minds as much as if the lone mind murdered all the others.
    Should I linger on the fact that these guys are already dead, or spell out the metaphor for those in the audience too dense to catch on? You know, I'll do both.
    The souls are dead. They're passed on. The person is no more, they've ceased to be. They've expired and gone to meet their (re)maker. If they hadn't been summoned to the Outer Planes they'd be pushing up daisies. It's kinda effortless to explain that souls being left alone aren't going to be able to live normal lives because most reasonable people are quite willing to accept even a meager explanation for why being dead is a bad thing. I could give a detailed explanation of the metaphysics behind that, but I'm kind of surprised I have to spell out "death isn't life" at all.
    As for the metaphor...Evil is, at heart, about doing what's best for the individual and screw everyone else. From tyrants to misers to petty thugs, they find ways to exploit others to their own ends because that's what they want to do and/or what serves them best. Good is, at heart, about doing what's best for other people. It means being willing to sacrifice stuff for a greater cause, especially stuff that's yours. The evil afterlife I described is a literalization of the Evil mindset; the souls feed on each other, exploiting the weak to become strong. The good afterlife is a literalization of the Good mindset; like-minded souls come together to do something greater than any one soul.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  27. - Top - End - #27
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2015

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    I dunno about you, but I find the idea that ripping a chunk out of a soul is somehow not damaging to be beyond incoherent, as is the idea that doing so is remotely suitable to angels. I don't know why I have to explain that, while angels could just rip a chunk out of every dead guy's soul, they don't want to because that causes a ton of pain (not to mention it's less effective).


    Should I linger on the fact that these guys are already dead, or spell out the metaphor for those in the audience too dense to catch on? You know, I'll do both.
    The souls are dead. They're passed on. The person is no more, they've ceased to be. They've expired and gone to meet their (re)maker. If they hadn't been summoned to the Outer Planes they'd be pushing up daisies. It's kinda effortless to explain that souls being left alone aren't going to be able to live normal lives because most reasonable people are quite willing to accept even a meager explanation for why being dead is a bad thing. I could give a detailed explanation of the metaphysics behind that, but I'm kind of surprised I have to spell out "death isn't life" at all.
    As for the metaphor...Evil is, at heart, about doing what's best for the individual and screw everyone else. From tyrants to misers to petty thugs, they find ways to exploit others to their own ends because that's what they want to do and/or what serves them best. Good is, at heart, about doing what's best for other people. It means being willing to sacrifice stuff for a greater cause, especially stuff that's yours. The evil afterlife I described is a literalization of the Evil mindset; the souls feed on each other, exploiting the weak to become strong. The good afterlife is a literalization of the Good mindset; like-minded souls come together to do something greater than any one soul.
    If someone have the choice between annihilating its own existence and suffering through tons of pain then the latter suddenly sounds a great idea.
    Good outsiders at the very least should leave a choice between sacrificing comfort by having parts of your soul being ripped and utter annihilation(which is called fusion but which destroys all input minds and create only one mind thus lowering the amount of minds) because many people prefer the former to the latter.
    Also you made your point: soul fusion is worse than murder: in case of murder the mind is not destroyed(it goes to an afterlife) but in the case of soul fusion the mind is destroyed: you have successfully made the basis of your "Good" outsider society be more evil than murder.
    And you are deadicist(people that discriminate intelligent dead people and consider them inferior to living people) if you consider doing things awfuller than murder to dead people is fine.

    And no it is not the good mindset: you are confusing lawful and good.(which probably explains our disagreement: you are speaking of lawful by using the good term)
    You exactly described the lawful ideal and labelled it good.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-06-21 at 03:48 AM.

  28. - Top - End - #28
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    -snip-
    You seem to be overwriting parts of what I've written with your own assumptions and biases, some of which I don't even start to understand. Like the idea that tearing apart souls is a process with as few long-term side effects as amputating a hand, as opposed to something which damages your very self.
    I've also written a few times, in a few ways, that your identity isn't any more destroyed by becoming part of the angel than it is by ignoring the part of you that wants to do things that hurt others, or the similar sacrifices which make Good different from Evil. Buut you've ignored the every time, so I don't know why I bother.

    And no it is not the good mindset: you are confusing lawful and good.(which probably explains our disagreement: you are speaking of lawful by using the good term)
    You exactly described the lawful ideal and labelled it good.
    So...you think that lawful evil devils don't have a society built on defeating and (metaphorically) consuming those weaker than them, and that chaotic good people would be perfectly happy with such a system? That Robin Hood can't gather together a group of like-minded men to accomplish some greater purpose, possibly while being merry? You honestly think that tyrants aren't selfish dastards, and freedom fighters won't make heroic sacrifices? You have an awfully cynical view of chaos.

    Law is not about working together, it's about organization. Chaos isn't about doing your own thing, it's about freedom. Those are perpendicular to what you use those organizations and freedoms to do, whether you do what's best for the world no matter the cost to you or the other way around.


    EDIT: One more thing that's been bothering me ever since I realized it, and only now have the chance to respond to it.

    Also you made your point: soul fusion is worse than murder: in case of murder the mind is not destroyed(it goes to an afterlife) but in the case of soul fusion the mind is destroyed: you have successfully made the basis of your "Good" outsider society be more evil than murder.
    You're making a lot of assumptions there. Obviously, there's the "fusion == soul destroyed" thing that I covered, but there's plenty of unexplored I should cover. Like your assumptions about how souls and afterlives work.
    It sounds like you're assuming that souls would go to some kind of paradise (or at least something resembling a pleasant life) if they didn't come together to form celestials. That's one valid way to write an afterlife, but it's far from the only one. To start with, we should question how bodiless souls would hold up. Sure, in some settings they'd do fine for eternity, but there's no reason to assume this must be the case. There's no reason dead souls without a body to act as a buffer between it and its environment can't be easily susceptible to outside influences if not reshaped properly. Or maybe souls need some kind of fuel to survive, but once torn from their bodies by death the only thing they can "eat" is other souls (obviously a Good no-no), which isn't the case for the celestials they become. Or maybe those who don't work for the heavens get put on the front lines as normal infantry, because the heavens need someone guarding against the legions of hell.
    I don't get why you refuse to accept anything other than a vaguely Christian notion of the afterlife, try to make my idea fit it, and complain when you can't mesh a square peg with a round hole.
    Last edited by GreatWyrmGold; 2019-06-22 at 02:07 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
    Quotes, more

    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
    Fanfic

    Pixel avatar by me! Other avatar by Recaiden.

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Troll in the Playground
     
    HalflingPirate

    Join Date
    Nov 2011

    Default Re: Random Lore Ideas

    Undead are mostly the creations of living beings. There are actually very few naturally occurring undead.

    Ghouls arise from the graves of clerics who have eaten the flesh of their own kind.

    Ghasts arise from the graves of defrocked and/or excommunicated clerics who consumed the flesh of their own kind.

    Wights arise from the graves of creatures slain by energy draining attacks.

    There are a few others, and a few excetions, like ghouls creating more ghouls via dirty fingernails, but the vast majority of undead are created via necromancy. All mindless undead for example.

    I am considering adding to the list some other natural causes of undeath. This is just brainstorming:

    Mass murderer = vampire

    Die while cursed = mummy

    Die while geased = ghost

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •