Need help fleshing out a world

[brian 333]

The race commonly known as hill dwarves in other settings has in this setting culturally merged with humans. There are no distinct hill dwarf settlements or deities, though the dwarves tend to be craftsmen, masons, and smiths.

On the other hand, the secretive dwarf clans who maintain the irrigation systems, aquaducts, and oasis springs, commonly called mountain dwarves in other settings,maintain a society apart from lesser races.

To most surface dwellers they appear to be few in number and scattered. But the vast caverns beneath the desert is their home.

Indeed, humans typically only encounter members of the Traders and Water Control guilds. The majority of dwarves are content to remain unseen deep beneath the sands.

Many springs and fountains are the result of their efforts to pump water from their hidden caverns, and they are responsible for many desert oasis.

[Wizard_Lizard]

how about orcs?
I am thinking desert nomads...

[MossyMeow]

how about orcs?
I am thinking desert nomads...

I was thinking something similar as well- a sort of counterpart to the elves.

[brian 333]

Orcs (and ogres) are the barbaric remnants of once mighty empires which rivaled the elven kingdoms in majesty and might. They now retain their hatred of elves but have lost the culture which once made them great.

The females and young climg to the ruins of their ancient past surviving through subsistence farming while the males are desert hunters and opportunistic raiders.

(Optional)
The male and female societies are strictly separated, with pubescent males given to the first hunter group which will have them. If, within a year of puberty, a male adolescent is not accepted by a band he is castrated and used as brute labor by the females. Otherwise he is inducted into a band and may rise to his potential as a warrior and hunter.

Females maintain sedentary farming communities which may even peacefully trade with nearby communities. Indeed, many folk believe the females to be a different breed of orc.

On occasion, usually after a successful hunt or raid, male bands return to the female community to share their wealth. They host a party and the females participate, with varying degrees of willingness. When the males run out of gifts and party supplies the females send them on their way along with any pubescent males who have come of age since the last visit.

(A genera of horror tale is built upon the concept of males overstaying their welcome at a female community.)

One gift males bring from raids is infants who survived the raid to be captured. This provides a source of slaves for the females and accounts for the large number of half-orcs in the land.

(/Option)

No one knows if ogres were masters or slaves in the former empires, but many ogres live among orcs as equals, and adhere to the same social structure. This is not exclusive; many ogres belong to independent bands which are not sexually segregated.

[Wizard_Lizard]

how about illithids?

[MossyMeow]

Silgre stood at attention as her eldest brother straddled the corpse of the great ogre, the sacred funerary jar in his hands. With bated breath, she watched as he carefully placed the jar between the brute’s massive legs- an embarrassing position, to be sure, but the dead have no honor. Had the ogre been younger, and an orc, his wives surely would have taken offense. Perhaps they would even have attacked Hogar, and given his weak leg, her brother would have easily perished from the assault. But the ogre was dead, and his wife- his only wife- with him. What once had been a great warrior was now reduced to a fleshy sack, the water in his blood his only offering to his former tribe.

Above her, Hogar began the chant, both hands placed firmly on the ogre’s chest. For the first time, her brother looked not like a feeble, castrated runt, but a true shaman. His dark eyes caught the flickering torchlight, and the ochre smeared on his tusks turned the color of freshly spilled blood. Silgre’s breath rattled in her lungs as she realized her brother was about to perform the tribe’s most sacred duty.

Smoke billowed from within the depths of the funerary jar. She breathed it in, and it was intoxicatingly sweet. Up the smoke rose, until it seemed to touch the stars. The same smoke, pale gray and feeble, emerged from the corpse’s open mouth. Hogar raised the jar up high above his head, and the smoke rose to meet it. In one swift motion, her brother captured it, and turned the jar to face the crowd. Where there once had been nothing, a pure, clear liquid had formed.

It was water: the final offering of a dead man.

[Max_Killjoy]

For different desert inspiration, I'd suggest the Taklamakan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_Desert

Of special note is the water system, which could be used as the basis for a system bringing water to desert cities far from the mountains where no rivers or natural wells exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpan_water_system / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

This is actually the basis for an entire region east of the mountain chain in my "greco-sumerian" / "4th century BCE" setting.

[Max_Killjoy]

Orcs (and ogres) are the barbaric remnants of once mighty empires which rivaled the elven kingdoms in majesty and might. They now retain their hatred of elves but have lost the culture which once made them great.

The females and young climg to the ruins of their ancient past surviving through subsistence farming while the males are desert hunters and opportunistic raiders.

(Optional)
The male and female societies are strictly separated, with pubescent males given to the first hunter group which will have them. If, within a year of puberty, a male adolescent is not accepted by a band he is castrated and used as brute labor by the females. Otherwise he is inducted into a band and may rise to his potential as a warrior and hunter.

Females maintain sedentary farming communities which may even peacefully trade with nearby communities. Indeed, many folk believe the females to be a different breed of orc.

On occasion, usually after a successful hunt or raid, male bands return to the female community to share their wealth. They host a party and the females participate, with varying degrees of willingness. When the males run out of gifts and party supplies the females send them on their way along with any pubescent males who have come of age since the last visit.

(A genera of horror tale is built upon the concept of males overstaying their welcome at a female community.)

One gift males bring from raids is infants who survived the raid to be captured. This provides a source of slaves for the females and accounts for the large number of half-orcs in the land.

(/Option)

This sounds a bit like basing a culture on elephant social structure. Interesting.

[Wizard_Lizard]

how about Duergar?
maybe dwarves who burrowed too deep in search of water?

[brian 333]

Are duergar necessary?

[MossyMeow]

Are duergar necessary?

Probably not, but it might be worth tossing a few ideas into the ring just in case.

[brian 333]

Kamzahk stood in the ring of glyph-stones and waited. He had prepared his whole life for this moment. He felt the first tingle of magic, and reacted by placing the quartz lens monocle over his eye.

The first glyph was easy: evocation magic in a focussed charge. He chanted as he drew the small focus-stone from his pocket, almost lost his concentration when it caught on the hem, and recovered in time to complete a shield spell. The magic dagger bounced away when its blue bolt impacted the translucent plane of force he had conjured.

Almost immediately a second rune began to glow with the aura of conjuration.

"No," Kamzahk thought, "Not conjuration: illusion!"

He looked at the image as it formed and knew it for what it was. The image of a goblin adorned with a belt of dwarf skulls attacked, but it was only an image. His mind's awareness robbed it of any power, and the goblin went translucent then faded.

Then a glyph glowed with negative energy. The power of anti-life coalesced and what Kamzahk had mistaken for a pile of white stones rose as the animated skeleton of a dwarf.

He had no power over the undead. He would have to contest force with force. The first stone he drew bore the rune of the magic dagger. Evoking its power with its word of command, he hurled the focus which became a bolt of energy before impacting the skeleton. The skeleton moved toward him.

Kamzahk drew a second stone and his dagger in the same motion. The stone crumbled as he chanted and rubbed it along his blade, leaving a gleaming edge.

It was too late for magic; the skeleton was upon him. Kamzahk had spent his short years in study, research, and reflection. He was not the most physically robust dwarf in the city, nor the best trained in martial arts. The skeleton's clumsy attack quickly proved to much for him. A painful rake of finger-bones across his face nearly blinded him and a kick to his gut knocked the breath out of him. He fell to the floor and blacked out.

He woke in near darkness with a sense of massive weight above him. A grey-robed dwarf walked along a row of stone slabs toward him.

"Where am..." he began, but the dwarf raised a hand to silence him.

'Voices are not wanted here, apprentice,' the gray dwarf said without speaking.

'You will learn, or you will be returned to the high city,' the dwarf said, anticipating his question. 'Rise now. First shift has already begun. You must learn your new duties.'

Kamzak rose, realizing the stone slabs were beds, and that he had lain on one. The dwarf walked off and he followed, leaving the pallet rumpled on the slab. As he walked he realized he wore a gray robe too.

'I made it!' he thought. 'I'm a duergar now!'

[MossyMeow]

So dwarves consciously choose to become duerger through magic?

[brian 333]

Yes. And the duergar choose and test candidates. Tweak the idea if you like it.

[Wizard_Lizard]

the underdark would have comparatively more water than the desert, so it could be a preferable alternative...

[MossyMeow]

It's an interesting twist, considering that in most settings, Underdark races were banished from the surface.

[Breccia]

I need help with connecting the dots of this setting and making it feel alive and real.

Besides everything else you're looking at, I want to address this line in particular, because it's important.

When you, yes you the real life person, enter a town or city for the first time, what's the first things you notice? Because I'm guessing it's not the political structure or the religion.

What do the buildings look like? What are the size, shape, material, decorations? Are the streets paved, crowded, straight or curved? Are they dirty or clean?

What are the people wearing? What are they talking about? Where are they meeting, shopping, working? Are there children visible, and if so, are they in school, in trades, playing in the street or begging? How about animals?

What is the food like? Is there music, what kind, and where?

Where are the safe zones? Is the whole city mostly crime-free, is it a murderous hellhole, or are there pockets of darkness within the light? Is there a strong police and/or military presence?

How are race/species/other differences treated? Is it a mostly single race, are the races mixed, are different races in little communities of their own? How does the dominant race/races affect any of the above?

I'm not saying that every town should have a pre-packaged-adventure-boxed-text kind of intro that lasts for five pages, but, consider the example city my PCs just walked into.Incidentally, the game world is post-apocalyptic, three people tried to cast an epic spell and the epic psion villain jumped in halfway through, killing 99.99% of all life as well as "killing" the earth and water (thanks, druid, for being part of that) so 150 years later most land is an infertile sandy lifeless mess covered in sawdust "sand" from decayed forests and the rivers and lakes are toxic green Jell-O.

As the party approaches Cauldron's Throat, their wagon first passes the city's lifeblood: the reservoir. Hexed water from the river has been routed into a massive iron kettle-like still device the size of a large warehouse, constantly pushing a pillar of white steam hundreds of feet into the sky. The purified water flows into a basin two hundred yards across, the banks of which are lined with cultivated crops -- reed-like grains to bushy greens to floating clusters of berries. Floating in the water are small barge-like "islands" filled with bright green vines and colorful fruit and flowers. Unfortunately, the appearance of this colorful oasis is ruined by the smell -- whatever the kettle device is boiling off smells like something that died in a swamp decades ago.

The city itself, a half-mile away and fortunately not downwind, is surrounded by a wall of logs of randomly mixed thickness. The houses and buildings near the wall appear to be made from sections of other, older, and sometimes mismatched buildings. A one-story house might have two walls that match, but a third and a fourth that came from shorter buildings, with a slanted roof to join them and a coat of fading blue paint to hide some of the differences. But larger buildings visible from the middle of town appear to be sections of massive seagoing ships, cut in half and stood upright. Some still have rudders and figureheads, from which banners in muted earth tones fly.

As the wagon comes to a stop at the Caravaneer's workshop, near the gate across from the Dry Dock Boarding House and Tea Room, the party can see Cauldron's Throat's large central market down the wide packed-clay street. There's a crowd forming, and you can hear the murmur of commotion from five blocks away. While the Caravaneer teamsters seem to ignore it -- unloading the cargo while eating some kind of rice-covered ball of green paste -- most of the citizens in the streets are heading towards the noise.

Now, the party would find out plenty of other things about the city in the following game days. Specifically, the commotion in the market was caused when one of the town's "rulers" was asked to leave her arcane research to resolve a dispute between a homeowner who paid a carpenter to fix the dry rot in his walls, paying ahead of time in food, only for the carpenter to run out of food before completing the extensive job. The ruler gave the homeowner, carpenter and crowd three chances to resolve the problem on their own, and when they didn't, casts a level 6 flame strike on the level 1 carpenter (instantly killing him), shouts that everyone knew that the city was supposed to resolve minor matters themselves, and left.

Now, that second part is what you were talking about. The politics, religion, and societal structure are all important and will shape the town/city/country as a whole, and you should 100% keep on that. They are walls and pillars, but don't forget the doors, windows, and decorations. There's a reason a lot of movies, including really good ones like Star Wars IV, start with a flashy or dramatic introduction. You want to make something look alive, you provide movement, color, smells, sounds, and if need be, action. Did two gnome kids just run past, chasing a giant rat with "saddlebags" stuffed with papers? Did a gaudily-dressed "tour guide" offer immediately to sell local news to obvious visitors? Is that a house-sized barbeque pit over there, and are those goblins playing a polyrhythmic steel drum band next to it? The party is more likely to wonder "Why does this town have X?" when you show them X worth asking about. Why is all the dwarf food vegan? Why is there only one building in town over two stories tall, and it's five stories tall? Why are the guards asking visitors to declare bladed weapons when they enter, except axes? Why did that guy just pick my pocket and then sprint down the street with the blue lamps, and why didn't the guards stop him?

A good story builds over time, but you only get one chance to make a first im-place-tion. Make it a good one.

Good luck! Keep us posted on how it goes!

[brian 333]

Excellent post.

[Max_Killjoy]

Just having a list of five to ten notable things about each city, town, region, etc that aren't about the standard game setting X, Y, and Z would do a lot for bringing it to life.

[MossyMeow]

Thank you so much for all the advice and ideas. It's given me a lot more to work with.

I've begun to think about deities. Initially, I was going to create my own from scratch, and I started working on some, but I'm starting to think I should elaborate on published deities instead. Since I'm planning on my setting to have a vaguely draconic motif due to plot reasons, I think I'll use the draconic pantheon from the 3.5 Draconomicon.

[Max_Killjoy]

Thank you so much for all the advice and ideas. It's given me a lot more to work with.

I've begun to think about deities. Initially, I was going to create my own from scratch, and I started working on some, but I'm starting to think I should elaborate on published deities instead. Since I'm planning on my setting to have a vaguely draconic motif due to plot reasons, I think I'll use the draconic pantheon from the 3.5 Draconomicon.

Take a look at LudicSavant's threads on some of the published deities in this subforum, if you're going to start with published deities.

Spoiler

Show

Wee Jas
Olidammara
Erythnul
Hextor
Corellon Larethian
Lolth
Nerull
The Deep Ones

[MossyMeow]

Take a look at LudicSavant's threads on some of the published deities in this subforum, if you're going to start with published deities.

Spoiler

Show

Wee Jas
Olidammara
Erythnul
Hextor
Corellon Larethian
Lolth
Nerull
The Deep Ones

I've actually already read them; they're a major inspiration to me.

[brian 333]

I advocate only fleshing out the deities your players want as patrons. Unless your campaign is religous in nature, the majority of deities won't matter, but they will consume a lot of time and creative energy. As needed you can come back and fill in details.

As an example, look at the deities in OotS. Lots of names, very few details. Even Thor, whom we have met as a character, is only vaguely characterized.

[MossyMeow]

I advocate only fleshing out the deities your players want as patrons. Unless your campaign is religous in nature, the majority of deities won't matter, but they will consume a lot of time and creative energy. As needed you can come back and fill in details.

As an example, look at the deities in OotS. Lots of names, very few details. Even Thor, whom we have met as a character, is only vaguely characterized.

Good point. I’ll probably write up some names and vague ideas of doctrine for my players to choose from, then flesh those deities out as needed. Creating a compelling sense of place is more important than the theological stuff, especially since my world doesn’t even have definite proof of the gods, unlike other worlds.

[Wizard_Lizard]

good to see how this is all working out!

[MossyMeow]

Okay, so I've been thinking that for the major deities, I'll just focus on the dichotomy between Tiamat and Bahamut. In this setting, they will be less good vs. evil, more order vs. chaos, with Tiamat being chaotic and Bahamut lawful. After looking up Bahamut for spelling purposes, I learned that in Islamic tradition, he is actually a massive sea monster (either a fish, whale, or serpent...it's not entirely clear), so I guess this is just another example of D&D taking a name without transplanting the actual meaning. I think I might go with the actual historical view of Bahamut rather than the platinum dragon version, and steal the Arabic cosmology while I'm at it.

Spoiler: Bahamut

Show

Duty. Honor. Loyalty. These are the tenants of Bahamut, who judges each and every soul and whose divine laws are the inspiration for the governments of mortals. He is the spirit of the law and its letter, the one who is never wrong and never cruel, at least according to his priests. To others, his punishments seem impossibly harsh: he calls down plagues of locusts to devour crops and sandstorms to tear homes apart. He is the patron of the weather and the guardian of fate, and it is he who decides who lives or dies. He is a god of obedience, and many of his stories involve great heroes rejecting temptation by evil demons or performing great sacrifices. He is a god of chivalry and grace, but also of brutality; his followers have been known to inflict unspeakably cruel punishments upon those accused of criminal acts, especially when it comes to demon worship. Tieflings speak in secret of the ancient legend of a cruel knight of Bahamut who cut off the tail of the high priestess of Asmodeus and whipped her with it until her cries of pain infused the weapon with a terrible magic. Worshippers of Bahamut treat such talk as the foulest form of blasphemy, and punish it as such.

Followers of Bahamut, called Bahamites, believe their deity is one of three true gods, the others being Tiamat and Io. They see all others as false gods. Some Bahamites believe the followers of these false gods should be killed, but most see them as heathens in need of conversion. Of course, the vast majority of Bahamites never act on these opinions, and are instead happy to trade with these so-called heathens as long as they are the ones profiting from such interactions.

As for Tiamat, I'm removing the draconic motif somewhat but keeping her as a multi-headed goddess, only she'll have three heads instead of five. Her holy symbol will be three interlocking triangles, which are believed to represent the three heads; unknown to scholars, they are triangles rather than circles because they are depicting the shape of a dragon's head rather than that of a humanoid. Her main prophet was an escaped slave who gorged her own eyes out in order to survive a sandstorm (which is an idea I took from a previous goddess I had been developing. Hooray for recycled ideas!). She is often seen as a goddess of vengeance because of her clergy's views on justice; they believe that the victim of a crime is the one who decides punishment, which could mean death, maiming, or even forgiveness. As a result, her worshippers are incredibly varied in alignment and moral philosophy.

[brian 333]

Cult of the Knife

Long ago a smith forged true steel blades and imprinted them with the runes, "B F F". Hundreds of these knives, (none were ever larger than a shortsword,) have appeared over the years, and quite a few have been proven to be fakes sold to gullible adventurers.

The true steel blade has a rippled layered appearance which runs through blade and tang, and it cannot be broken. An expert wielder can use them to sunder other metal weapons by achieving a critical threat while attempting to perform the sunder attack.

In addition, 1/2 are masterwork weapons.
1/2 of these have an enhancement property. They may also have other properties.

What very few know is that these blades were crafted by a master assassin and used as a recognition signal among his secretive guild. The Cult of the Blade is a remnant of that long ago guild who venerates 'The Grandfather,' and who continue to perform as a guild of assassins.

Though no one will ever know details of the cult, evil people in power will sometimes know upon whom to call when they want someone dead.

The cult members actively seek the lost knives as status symbols. They will buy, steal, or kill for them: whichever is easiest.

Five of the knives contain the souls of the five most successful assassins of Grandfather's day. A sixth contains Grandfather's soul. No one save the weilders know these even exist.

Rumors of these knives say they are cursed, but their advantages, in the minds of adventurers, make such rumors seem trivial.

[Max_Killjoy]

Blade Friends Forever?

[brian 333]

Blood For Fortune, but nobody alive knows that.

[MossyMeow]

They killed the last person who suggested it stood for Best Friends Forever.