Magic is a Dead God: Using a deity's carcass to cast spells (and other oddities)

[The Aboleth]

Hello, everyone! I'm in the process of building a world from scratch and could really use help fleshing things out. Below is everything I have so far; any feedback and help would be greatly appreciated! In particular, I could use help coming up with better names for things (the names I've put down for the Gods and races are not set in stone, so if you think of something more interesting please suggest it!) and also I was thinking of adding an Elvish race but I don't want to make them TOO generic. Anything else I need help with will also be listed below and noted in red.

MY WORLD (Still don't have a name for it, help is appreciated.)

MYTHOLOGY:

There are 3 living gods and 1 dead god. Each of the living gods have 2 domains.

Zaultar: God of Time and Death. Also known as The Timekeeper and The Reaper. In charge of the keeping of Time and of ushering the souls to the afterlife once their time expires. Domains: Time and Death

Tylain: God of Life and Seasons. Also known as The Mother and The Earth Shaper. Said to have created the races that make up the world. Ushers in the seasons that bring new life to the world (plants grow in the spring after the winter, etc.) Domains: Life and Change

Ezra: God of Order and Knowledge. Also known as The Tamer of Chaos and The Teacher. From the chaos of the universe she forged the elements that created the foundation for the world and the laws that govern it. Domains: Law and Knowledge

Valarus: Viewed as the God of Magic, though the theology surrounding him is more complicated than that. It is taught that the gods wished to give magic to their followers, but could only do so little-by-little because magic comes from their very essences. Valarus so loved the people of the world that he sacrificed himself, tearing apart his body and spreading his essence throughout all of existence. His essence is the magic that people use to this day…when a wizard casts a spell, he/she is literally using the dead “body” of the god to do so.

Because of this Sacrifice, Valarus is known in some circles as The Benefactor, The Virtuous One, and other similar names. He is not “worshipped” in the traditional sense as he is dead, but all faiths acknowledge that without Valarus the world would have no magic (at least not on the scale that it is currently), and thus praise his sacrifice accordingly. A dead God cannot have a domain, but Magic is acknowledged as kind of a pseudo-domain of his; additionally, virtues like Generosity and Sacrifice are debated among scholars to have been his domains before his death, and it is not unusual for some people to send a small prayer of thanks in the name of Valarus when acts of generosity are received upon them.

The secret teachings of the various faiths hold that Valarus was not a benevolent deity after all…that in fact, he was the God of Greed and Power (his two domains, as well) and sought to overthrow the other gods to have creation all for himself. When the other gods learned of his ambitions, they slew him and spread his remains throughout the entire universe (one cannot “kill” a god in the traditional sense; the only way to achieve the “death” of a God is by deconstructing it down to its very essence and then scattering that essence as thin as possible so that the “body” cannot reform).

However, this has the unintended side-effect of allowing the created races to harness magic, an outcome the gods neither expected nor wanted. To temper this, the accumulation of magical power is monitored very closely by the various faiths. If an individual shows enough ambition and/or accumulation of magical power, they are offered a prestigious position within a Church’s research wing/university to continue their research and add to the wealth of civilized knowledge (the obvious real intent being to keep a close eye on the person in question). If the individual declines to accept the position, then they are watched covertly by special church-directed “Monitors” (super religious church rogues, basically) who make sure the person does not succeed in gaining TOO much power…and if they are close to doing so, then as a last resort they are secretly assassinated by the Monitors.

I think I'd also like to add in demons/devils/etc. into the mythology somewhere, but am unsure how to do so (or even if I should). Any help on this would, again, be greatly appreciated!


RACES:

Humans: Fairly standard, not really any deviations from your standard fantasy human. Short-lived but plentiful, they are effective traders and possess a sharp intellect that suits them in both areas of combat (as generals, soldiers, mercenaries-for-hire, etc.) and scholarship (professors, theologians, and rulers of state). Inhabit nearly all corners of the world that are hospitable, except for the mudflats of Myrladan.

Salakeem: A race of humanoid salamander people who live in the mudflats of Myrladan. Viewed with a mix of hesitation and fascination by the other races of the world, they are a mostly peaceful race that enjoy basking in the sun and living in the mudflats that are abundant throughout Myrladan. They are welcoming of those who visit their lands, though few do so because the environment itself is uncomfortable for those who are not Salakeem (thing of the buggiest, marshiest wetland you can and multiply it several times. That gives you an idea of what I’m going for).

The Salakeem, like real-life salamanders, can regenerate lost limbs.

They do worship the gods mentioned above, but their interpretations have a more “lizard-like” tone to them…for example, the forces of chaos are interpreted as a swarm of bugs and Ezra (God of Knowledge and Order) is said to have eaten them and then basked in the sun in deep mediation until finally unlocking the secrets of the universe; having done so, she then raised the land up from beneath the mud, where Tylain then fashioned every living thing from the mud and the elements that were dredged up from it.

Tinivs: Generically called the “tiny folk” by the other two races, appearance-wise they are like halflings in traditional fantasy settings. Nimble, resourceful folk who are charismatic and possess a keen wit. Kingdoms who have halflings in their armies typically use them as commandos, as they are adept at hit-and-run tactics due to their small size and quick feet. Many Tinivs also enjoy careers as politicians due to their oratorical skills.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I'd like to have an elvish race as well but don't want them to be TOO generic. Any ideas?

GOVERNMENT:

Have mostly drawn a blank here, so any help would be appreciated. I have a vague idea of there being various city-states or kingdoms scattered throughout the world, and that no "kindgom" is composed of just one race (Humans and Tinivs live together throughout the world, though some places might have a majority of one race vs the other). The exception is the Salakeem, who live exclusively in the mudflats of Myrladen because the climate is ideally suited to their unique physiology. There ARE Salakeem who live outside of the mudflats in human/tiniv communities, but these are uncommon and most Salakeem who choose this life are adventurers or wandering theologians who seek to share the Salakeem interpretation of the gods with the Human and Tiniv churches and receive their set of ideas in return to bring back to Myrladen.


Those are the things I have so far. What do you all think? Constructive criticism is welcome and wanted!

Thanks,

The Aboleth

[DaedalusMkV]

I think I'd also like to add in demons/devils/etc. into the mythology somewhere, but am unsure how to do so (or even if I should). Any help on this would, again, be greatly appreciated!

In this case, I think it would be pretty simple to have had these Outsiders arise from the same source as mortal magic. In this case, the Fiends are congealed clumps of Valarus' essence, perhaps animated by a fragment of his consciousness. Given that Valarus is the 'evil' god, associated with greed and power, he fits fairly well with the different sin-based incarnations of Demons and Devils. It also gives you a ready-made motivation for the two different types of Fiends: Devils seek to assemble the fragments of Valarus and resurrect the dead god, worshipping him as their master (and perhaps being guided by the most intact shard of his consciousness) while Demons oppose such a goal at all costs, seeing the reassembling of their progenitor as a direct threat to their own existence.




RACES:

Humans: Fairly standard, not really any deviations from your standard fantasy human. Short-lived but plentiful, they are effective traders and possess a sharp intellect that suits them in both areas of combat (as generals, soldiers, mercenaries-for-hire, etc.) and scholarship (professors, theologians, and rulers of state). Inhabit nearly all corners of the world that are hospitable, except for the mudflats of Myrladan.

Salakeem: A race of humanoid salamander people who live in the mudflats of Myrladan. Viewed with a mix of hesitation and fascination by the other races of the world, they are a mostly peaceful race that enjoy basking in the sun and living in the mudflats that are abundant throughout Myrladan. They are welcoming of those who visit their lands, though few do so because the environment itself is uncomfortable for those who are not Salakeem (thing of the buggiest, marshiest wetland you can and multiply it several times. That gives you an idea of what I’m going for).

The Salakeem, like real-life salamanders, can regenerate lost limbs.

They do worship the gods mentioned above, but their interpretations have a more “lizard-like” tone to them…for example, the forces of chaos are interpreted as a swarm of bugs and Ezra (God of Knowledge and Order) is said to have eaten them and then basked in the sun in deep mediation until finally unlocking the secrets of the universe; having done so, she then raised the land up from beneath the mud, where Tylain then fashioned every living thing from the mud and the elements that were dredged up from it.

Tinivs: Generically called the “tiny folk” by the other two races, appearance-wise they are like halflings in traditional fantasy settings. Nimble, resourceful folk who are charismatic and possess a keen wit. Kingdoms who have halflings in their armies typically use them as commandos, as they are adept at hit-and-run tactics due to their small size and quick feet. Many Tinivs also enjoy careers as politicians due to their oratorical skills.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I'd like to have an elvish race as well but don't want them to be TOO generic. Any ideas?

Assuming the system is designed for a D&D-like RPG, I'd suggest some sort of sect of Salakeem which might be more motivated to a less sedentary, more adventurous lifestyle. As it is, there's very little room for them to venture out and explore the world, or even leave their own territory (which, as you've mentioned, nobody else really wants to visit), which will make them very awkward as a PC race. Moreover, there seems to be little if any place for them in an overall political landscape, and just in general I doubt the race as described would do much other than keep to themselves and not interact much with anyone outside of a little bit of trade.

As for Elves, it depends on what sort of inspiration you want to draw for them. You could go for a more primal, Celtic-inspired Sidhe race, long-lived and alien, perhaps with a Summer and Winter court. The Summer Court serves Tylain and acts as a more traditional 'naturalist' style of Elves. They seek to protect the flow of nature, but can be capricious and unpredictable. Mostly dwell in forests, but they can be found pretty much everywhere in small communities and nomadic bands. Don't get along well with most human kingdoms, but tend to have good relations with small individual settlements and other groups they see as 'acceptable' to Tylain's vision of the world. Right until they raid them and burn them to the ground for 'disrupting the balance of nature'. Meanwhile, the Winter court act as servants of Ezra (if you prefer the 'High Elf' aesthetic) or Zaultar (if you want a group of grim, frozen Death Elves who act as a thematic counterpart to the 'Wild Elves' of Summer, which I think is thematically a little more interesting). Unlike the Summer court, they are organized into a tight hierarchy, tend to be extreme sticklers for protocol and care nothing at all for the state of the natural world. Seeing themselves as the guardians of either the balance between the races (if Ezra) or the sanctity of death and the afterlife (if Zaultar), they are haughty and follow agendas that are utterly incomprehensible to the other races save the Summer Court, who oppose them at every turn. In this case, you would align different types of Fey between the two Courts, and Elves would simply be the most humanlike, or perhaps the only sort which serves both Courts.

Alternatively, Elves might be travellers from another continent, world, or even another reality. One day, a thousand years ago, they showed up out of nowhere at the edge of the civilized world with a complete, intact civilization a little more advanced than the humans at the time and conquered themselves a nation. Nobody but the Elves know where they came from or what their motives are, but individual Elves have been a more and more frequent sight throughout the world, some working towards the inscrutable designs of their masters in the Elven kingdom, other seeking to escape the cold order of an ancient tyranny.




GOVERNMENT:

Have mostly drawn a blank here, so any help would be appreciated. I have a vague idea of there being various city-states or kingdoms scattered throughout the world, and that no "kindgom" is composed of just one race (Humans and Tinivs live together throughout the world, though some places might have a majority of one race vs the other). The exception is the Salakeem, who live exclusively in the mudflats of Myrladen because the climate is ideally suited to their unique physiology. There ARE Salakeem who live outside of the mudflats in human/tiniv communities, but these are uncommon and most Salakeem who choose this life are adventurers or wandering theologians who seek to share the Salakeem interpretation of the gods with the Human and Tiniv churches and receive their set of ideas in return to bring back to Myrladen.


Those are the things I have so far. What do you all think? Constructive criticism is welcome and wanted!

Thanks,

The Aboleth

Honestly, it depends how much you want to have international conflict play a role in your campaign/world. If it's primarily a story of Adventurers making their way in a deadly, hostile world, individual nations need to be weak, small or isolated from one another. Trade is common but difficult and expensive, scientific progress is slow to nonexistent and you'll be looking at what basically amounts to a big scattering of kingdoms in the safer, more hospitable parts the world with mostly unsettled, dangerous stretches of untamed or lightly settled wilderness between them. The larger, more powerful and more stable your national polities are, the more conflict between them will replace conflict with the environment as the main source of plots. Unless political and military conflict is going to be a core facet of your campaign, I'd suggest leaving coming up with actual nations and what have you to last, since they really matter less than environmental details. In this case, you wind up with more 'the icy northern kingdom', 'the island kingdom', 'the jungle kingdom' and 'the mountain kingdom' with fancy names, which mostly act as backdrops for adventures.

If you do want politics to play a critical part in your campaign, the ideology and organization of your nations becomes vastly more important and you should probably be putting a lot of thought into it.

[The Aboleth]

In this case, I think it would be pretty simple to have had these Outsiders arise from the same source as mortal magic. In this case, the Fiends are congealed clumps of Valarus' essence, perhaps animated by a fragment of his consciousness. Given that Valarus is the 'evil' god, associated with greed and power, he fits fairly well with the different sin-based incarnations of Demons and Devils. It also gives you a ready-made motivation for the two different types of Fiends: Devils seek to assemble the fragments of Valarus and resurrect the dead god, worshipping him as their master (and perhaps being guided by the most intact shard of his consciousness) while Demons oppose such a goal at all costs, seeing the reassembling of their progenitor as a direct threat to their own existence.

I like this idea a lot! I forgot to mention in the main post that I imagine there were certain pieces of Valarus that are highly concentrated and could not be "thinned out," so they were hidden (I think of these highly concentrated parts as being akin to important body parts, like a heart and a brain). Having Outsiders be formed from smaller concentrations is a great idea, and once that I can easily incorporate.



Assuming the system is designed for a D&D-like RPG, I'd suggest some sort of sect of Salakeem which might be more motivated to a less sedentary, more adventurous lifestyle. As it is, there's very little room for them to venture out and explore the world, or even leave their own territory (which, as you've mentioned, nobody else really wants to visit), which will make them very awkward as a PC race. Moreover, there seems to be little if any place for them in an overall political landscape, and just in general I doubt the race as described would do much other than keep to themselves and not interact much with anyone outside of a little bit of trade.

Hmm, that's a good point. I had intended the Salakeem to be seen as weird and kind of mysterious (though not in a hostile sense), but I think you're right in that I went too far and ended up painting them as pretty isolationist. Maybe I can tweak it to where they live throughout the world like the other races, but they are the only ones who willingly travel to the mudflats (kind of like an exclusive vacation spot because the environment is uniquely enjoyable to them)? What do you think?



SNIP Very good suggestions on creating the elves.

I quite like the Summer Court/Winter Court idea you've presented. That will allow me to showcase some diverse ideologies within the religions from an Elvish perspective, which is something I am hoping to showcase as part of the world (this is specifically why I showed how the Salakeem's interpretations of the gods differed from the other races, too). Also provides me with a source of conflict both inter-species (elves vs everyone else) and intra-species (conflict between the summer and winter elves) should I go that route during the course of a campaign.



Honestly, it depends how much you want to have international conflict play a role in your campaign/world. If it's primarily a story of Adventurers making their way in a deadly, hostile world, individual nations need to be weak, small or isolated from one another. Trade is common but difficult and expensive, scientific progress is slow to nonexistent and you'll be looking at what basically amounts to a big scattering of kingdoms in the safer, more hospitable parts the world with mostly unsettled, dangerous stretches of untamed or lightly settled wilderness between them. The larger, more powerful and more stable your national polities are, the more conflict between them will replace conflict with the environment as the main source of plots. Unless political and military conflict is going to be a core facet of your campaign, I'd suggest leaving coming up with actual nations and what have you to last, since they really matter less than environmental details. In this case, you wind up with more 'the icy northern kingdom', 'the island kingdom', 'the jungle kingdom' and 'the mountain kingdom' with fancy names, which mostly act as backdrops for adventures.

If you do want politics to play a critical part in your campaign, the ideology and organization of your nations becomes vastly more important and you should probably be putting a lot of thought into it.

The "main" conflict I had in mind for my campaign was that a powerful wizard discovers one of those concentrated parts of Valarus I mentioned above, steals the power for himself, and eventually has the goal in mind of overthrowing the gods and ruling the universe himself (in this sense, he would become Valarus 2.0). The heroes, throughout the course of the campaign, would slowly learn about the secret history of Valarus and put the pieces together, at certain parts being opposed by the churches (Monitors would probably attempt to kill them in the mistaken assumption that they were trying to acquire Valarus's power for themselves) and helped by them (assuming things play out in such a way that the Church feels they are not in league with the main baddie and are willing to help). Basically, the campaign is going to have a lot of themes surrounding absolute power corrupting absolutely, be it individually or institutionally. So, any further suggestions that would help to achieve these ends would be greatly appreciated.

[Lleban]

For government I'd recommend a structure similar to the Holy Roman Empire. Basically the Holy roman empire consisted of quite literally hundreds of kingdoms, cities states and principalities across Germany and northern Italy who were "loyal" to the emperor. The Holy roman empire was extremely decentralized and the emperors were basically elected by a grand council that consisted of the most powerful dukes princes etc...basically the council did most of the governing, depending on the strength of the emperor.

It'd be an interesting way to tie these different kingdoms together, if only in name only.

[DaedalusMkV]

Hmm, that's a good point. I had intended the Salakeem to be seen as weird and kind of mysterious (though not in a hostile sense), but I think you're right in that I went too far and ended up painting them as pretty isolationist. Maybe I can tweak it to where they live throughout the world like the other races, but they are the only ones who willingly travel to the mudflats (kind of like an exclusive vacation spot because the environment is uniquely enjoyable to them)? What do you think?

It works pretty well this way, particularly if they see the mudflats as a holy place, but have a cultural motivation for pilgrimage outside of it. I'm kind of imagining most Salakeem as missionaries now, travelling through the world to spread the Truth of the Gods but always yearning a little bit for the sanctity of their swampy homes. Travelling Salakeem would be mostly humble and kind, but always clearly just a little bit homesick. They travel not because they want to, but because it's their duty, and many of them inevitably wind up gathering in those places around the world that remind them of their sacred home purely out of that homesickness, giving you a reason to have communities of them peppering the world's swamps and desert oases. Obviously everyone else considers them a little bit insane for even wanting to live in all the most horrible, inhospitable places in the world. Every Salakeem born outside of the mudflats dreams of returning there, if only because of all the stories told to them by their elders of how wonderful and magical a place it is.




I quite like the Summer Court/Winter Court idea you've presented. That will allow me to showcase some diverse ideologies within the religions from an Elvish perspective, which is something I am hoping to showcase as part of the world (this is specifically why I showed how the Salakeem's interpretations of the gods differed from the other races, too). Also provides me with a source of conflict both inter-species (elves vs everyone else) and intra-species (conflict between the summer and winter elves) should I go that route during the course of a campaign.


Shamelessly stolen from mythology, really, with a few adaptations to fit your cosmology. You don't even really need to come up with anything but the vaguest motivations for them as a whole, since it's easy to run them purely under Blue and Orange Morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality). Why did the Winter Court assassinate that guy? Doesn't matter, you wouldn't understand anyways. Why are the Summer Court kidnapping children from villages in the Great Plains? Nobody but them would understand the reasoning anyways. Makes it a little bit hard to play them as PCs, but if you've got a player who loves to be a little bit loopy and psycho I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot of fun.


The "main" conflict I had in mind for my campaign was that a powerful wizard discovers one of those concentrated parts of Valarus I mentioned above, steals the power for himself, and eventually has the goal in mind of overthrowing the gods and ruling the universe himself (in this sense, he would become Valarus 2.0). The heroes, throughout the course of the campaign, would slowly learn about the secret history of Valarus and put the pieces together, at certain parts being opposed by the churches (Monitors would probably attempt to kill them in the mistaken assumption that they were trying to acquire Valarus's power for themselves) and helped by them (assuming things play out in such a way that the Church feels they are not in league with the main baddie and are willing to help). Basically, the campaign is going to have a lot of themes surrounding absolute power corrupting absolutely, be it individually or institutionally. So, any further suggestions that would help to achieve these ends would be greatly appreciated.
In that case, I think you'll want a whole bunch of small, weak governments or one corrupt, fractured one. A big, powerful authority would leave a lot of questions as to why the mighty Emperor and his grand legions aren't stopping this superwizard from becoming God2.0 and a world as settled and developed as, say, Eberron would see a whole bunch of nations banding together to wipe out a threat like that. You'll likely want your nations a little bit isolated from one another (so they can't get organized), with large swathes of the world completely unsettled (to hide the hidden concentrations of Valarus' power).
Something like the Holy Roman Empire, as Lleban suggested, would work pretty well as your big, fractured government (as would something like the late Western Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire shortly before the Turks decided to take over). A weak central authority supported by dozens of strong, factional regional authorities that don't get along. Some of the Electors might well side with the Wizard out of dissatisfaction with the current regime, and the whole thing would be too slow and ponderous to get moving, leaving it up to the PCs to act in time to save the world. Ties in well with your desired themes, which is also good. Perhaps the current Emperor is a drooling moron, put on the throne because he wasn't seen as a threat to anyone, leaving the Council of Electors to bicker and backstab each other over every little decision. It makes for a great 'Citadel Council' scene, where the PCs attempt to convince the Council of what's going on, only to be met with derision and dismissal. "Ah yes, 'nascent gods'. We have dismissed these claims. The Church knows more than anyone about how all this works, and they've assured us it's impossible. Now stop wasting our time with your mad ravings and begone."

I can perhaps help you brainstorm a bit more with regards to the nature and geography of government in your world if you like the idea. If nothing else, I could probably quickly whip up a list of current Electors and a paragraph or so about the territory they control, or half a dozen simple sample kingdoms to serve as a backdrop if you don't want politics to really play a part.

[The Aboleth]

For government I'd recommend a structure similar to the Holy Roman Empire. Basically the Holy roman empire consisted of quite literally hundreds of kingdoms, cities states and principalities across Germany and northern Italy who were "loyal" to the emperor. The Holy roman empire was extremely decentralized and the emperors were basically elected by a grand council that consisted of the most powerful dukes princes etc...basically the council did most of the governing, depending on the strength of the emperor.

It'd be an interesting way to tie these different kingdoms together, if only in name only.

Great idea! I'll admit I don't know much about the Holy Roman Empire's makeup (it has been many years since I learned about it in school), so thank you for the quick rundown. Do you have any book recommendations or anything of the sort so I can continue to learn about the subject?


It works pretty well this way, particularly if they see the mudflats as a holy place, but have a cultural motivation for pilgrimage outside of it. I'm kind of imagining most Salakeem as missionaries now, travelling through the world to spread the Truth of the Gods but always yearning a little bit for the sanctity of their swampy homes. Travelling Salakeem would be mostly humble and kind, but always clearly just a little bit homesick. They travel not because they want to, but because it's their duty, and many of them inevitably wind up gathering in those places around the world that remind them of their sacred home purely out of that homesickness, giving you a reason to have communities of them peppering the world's swamps and desert oases. Obviously everyone else considers them a little bit insane for even wanting to live in all the most horrible, inhospitable places in the world. Every Salakeem born outside of the mudflats dreams of returning there, if only because of all the stories told to them by their elders of how wonderful and magical a place it is.

Agreed, the more we flesh them out the more I also see most Salakeem in this way. Also explains why their weirdness is not viewed in a hostile manner by most of the other races: "Sure, them salamander-folk are weird and kinda loopy, but they're still working to spread the word of the Gods in their own...err, 'unique' way!"



Shamelessly stolen from mythology, really, with a few adaptations to fit your cosmology. You don't even really need to come up with anything but the vaguest motivations for them as a whole, since it's easy to run them purely under Blue and Orange Morality. Why did the Winter Court assassinate that guy? Doesn't matter, you wouldn't understand anyways. Why are the Summer Court kidnapping children from villages in the Great Plains? Nobody but them would understand the reasoning anyways. Makes it a little bit hard to play them as PCs, but if you've got a player who loves to be a little bit loopy and psycho I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot of fun.

This also provides a nice counter-balance to the way Salakeem are viewed as mentioned above. Whereas the Salakeem are seen as loopy in a kind of sweet and endearing way, the Summer and Winter Elves are seen as loopy in a "We better hide and hope they don't find us!" kind of way. I like it!


In that case, I think you'll want a whole bunch of small, weak governments or one corrupt, fractured one. A big, powerful authority would leave a lot of questions as to why the mighty Emperor and his grand legions aren't stopping this superwizard from becoming God2.0 and a world as settled and developed as, say, Eberron would see a whole bunch of nations banding together to wipe out a threat like that. You'll likely want your nations a little bit isolated from one another (so they can't get organized), with large swathes of the world completely unsettled (to hide the hidden concentrations of Valarus' power).
Something like the Holy Roman Empire, as Lleban suggested, would work pretty well as your big, fractured government (as would something like the late Western Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire shortly before the Turks decided to take over). A weak central authority supported by dozens of strong, factional regional authorities that don't get along. Some of the Electors might well side with the Wizard out of dissatisfaction with the current regime, and the whole thing would be too slow and ponderous to get moving, leaving it up to the PCs to act in time to save the world. Ties in well with your desired themes, which is also good. Perhaps the current Emperor is a drooling moron, put on the throne because he wasn't seen as a threat to anyone, leaving the Council of Electors to bicker and backstab each other over every little decision. It makes for a great 'Citadel Council' scene, where the PCs attempt to convince the Council of what's going on, only to be met with derision and dismissal. "Ah yes, 'nascent gods'. We have dismissed these claims. The Church knows more than anyone about how all this works, and they've assured us it's impossible. Now stop wasting our time with your mad ravings and begone."

Agreed, I think you and Lleban have both come up with a great solution here. I think it would also be satisfying to lead the players to believe that the Emperor is a powerful and respected figure, only to later pull the rug on them when the truth comes out that he's actually a bumbling moron and the Council is where the true power sits...or would, if they weren't constantly back-stabbing one another and forcing matters of state to become bogged down in a bureaucratic mess. It would give the heroes a real sense that it is TRULY up to them, which I think is important in a campaign.


I can perhaps help you brainstorm a bit more with regards to the nature and geography of government in your world if you like the idea. If nothing else, I could probably quickly whip up a list of current Electors and a paragraph or so about the territory they control, or half a dozen simple sample kingdoms to serve as a backdrop if you don't want politics to really play a part.

This would be great! Thanks so much for your help (and to you as well, Lleban, for the great suggestion)!

[Lleban]

Your welcome unfortunately my knowledge of the H.R.E is limited to Wikipedia and a few youtube vids.

[The Aboleth]

So, I have revised the Salakeem based on the suggestions. Here is what I have written for them:

Salakeem: A race of humanoid salamander people who are native to the mudflats of Myrladan. The mudflats are viewed by the Salakeem as the most holy place on the planet, believing the area to be the birthplace of creation itself. While the Salakeem govern the mudflats and are fiercely protective of them, they are friendly to outsiders and welcome all races to visit and even live there should they so desire--but few do so, because the marshy and buggy environment makes it almost inhospitable to anyone that is not one of the salamander-folk.

Devoutly religious, the Salakeem worship the same gods as the other races but interpret them with a "lizard-like" twist. For example, the forces of chaos are said to have been a swarm of bugs that Ezra (God of Knowledge and Order) ate, after which point the god basked in the sun in deep mediation until finally unlocking the secrets of the universe. Tylain, in turn, then raised the land up from beneath the mud and fashioned every living thing from the mud and that which was dredged up from beneath it.

Due to their religious nature, many Salakeem live outside the mudflats of Myrladen in order to spread their faith abroad and participate in a friendly exchange of ideas with the other races. This voluntary exile from their holy land is seen as a sacred duty, yet the feeling of homesickness is nevertheless a strong and ever-present one among traveling Salakeem. For this reason, those who do not live in the mudflats often choose to inhabit other swampy and marshy areas of the world to remind them of the pleasures of Myrladen. Salakeem born outside the mudflats are entranced by the stories their elders tell about the wonders and joys of living in Myrladen, to the point where these "foreign" Salakeem often vow to make the trip to Myrladen at least once in their lives as a sort of religious practice.

The Salakeem are viewed by other races with a mix of hesitation and fascination. The fact that they willingly choose to live in the areas of the world's marshes and swamps make them seem a little odd to humans and Tinivs, for instance, and their lizard-like interpretations of the gods seem a bit weird. That being said, the Salakeem are a friendly folk and eager to share their culture and learn about others in return. A Salakeem that strikes a rapport with a member of another race soon becomes a friend for life, and those individuals who do choose to visit a Salakeem in their marshy homes are treated as the most honored of guests by the Salakeem's family.

The Salakeem, like real-life salamanders, can regenerate lost limbs; the regenerative process is painful, however, and can take days or even weeks depending on the limb that is lost and the damage that was done in the process.


How does all that sound? Is there something that anybody thinks I should add, edit, or scrap all together?

[DaedalusMkV]

How does all that sound? Is there something that anybody thinks I should add, edit, or scrap all together?

Sounds about as well fleshed-out as I'd expect of any RPG material. Gives players a good idea of what to expect from them while still providing enough conceptual freedom to make them interesting from a storytelling perspective. I like it.

I've been pretty busy (and tired) the last few days, but I'll still try and finish that 'snapshot of an empire' I said I'd do.

[The Aboleth]

Sounds about as well fleshed-out as I'd expect of any RPG material. Gives players a good idea of what to expect from them while still providing enough conceptual freedom to make them interesting from a storytelling perspective. I like it.

I've been pretty busy (and tired) the last few days, but I'll still try and finish that 'snapshot of an empire' I said I'd do.

Thanks! And no worries on the "snapshot" stuff; I understand that life frequently gets in the way of things we'd like to do.

Here is my write-up on the elves of my world based upon the suggestions you gave. As always, any help and feedback on making this better would be greatly appreciated (Not just by DaedalusMkV, either; anyone is free to comment and give me some constructive criticism is they are so inclined!).


Elydii: The elves of the world. They are tall, slender, and possess lifespans that are much longer than the other races. They are broken up into two distinct factions: The Summer Court and The Winter Court.

The Elydii belonging to the Summer Court worship Tylain, and seek to protect the flow of nature. To this end, they are mostly found in forests but can also be seen roaming and living pretty much anywhere in small communities and nomadic bands. They shun most human kingdoms, seeing them as a heresy against nature; however, they do tend to have good relations with small individual settlements and other groups they see as 'acceptable' to Tylain's vision of the world. They are unpredictable and capricious, however, and will not hesitate to raid and burn anyone to the ground at a moment’s notice for 'disrupting the balance of nature'.

Those Elydii belonging to the Winter Court worship Zaultar. Unlike the nomadic camps that make up the Summer court, the Winter Court is organized into a tight hierarchy with an extreme adherence to protocol. The Winter Court cares nothing at all for the state of the natural world; instead, they see themselves as the guardians of the sanctity of death and work to destroy those things that would seek to disrupt the natural flow of time that ultimately steers one towards their final rest. They are haughty in their personalities, and follow agendas that are utterly incomprehensible to the other races save those Elydii who belong to the Summer Court. Due to the often conflicting nature of the Summer and Winter Courts, they oppose one another at every turn with the violence frequently disrupting the trade routes, settlements, and way of life of other races.

The appearances of the Elydii vary, but are often influenced by what Court they serve. The Elydii of the Summer Court are typically radiant and golden-hued in appearance, often with long flowing hair of brown, blonde, auburn, and sometimes even green. In contrast, the Elydii of the Winter Court are often bleak in appearance, with their skin color consisting of various shades of white or grey and their hair a dark black that is either long and wrapped up in a ponytail or cut short into a military-style fashion. Some Elydii choose to serve both Courts, most often in cases of individuals possessing mixed-parentage; if Elydii of the Summer and Winter Courts are viewed as unpredictable and potentially dangerous by outsiders, those Elydii who serve both Courts are often seen as outright insane by other races as they cannot comprehend the seemingly contradictory actions and motives the dual-court Elydii display.


So, what do you all think? Any thoughts/suggestions to improve what I've come up with? In particular, I was unsure of my decision to separate the appearances of the Summer and Winter Courts; on the one hand, I kind of like the idea of Elydii who all look similar and it is unclear which Court they belong to until you actually attempt to engage with them; on the other hand, their mannerisms and structural ways-of-life are already so different that I figured a separation of appearance would almost be necessary. I am torn on whether to keep the appearances as they currently are, tone them down to not make the differences so stark, or scrap the bit all-together and make there be no discernible difference in appearance between Elydii of either Court.

[falcon1]

Perhaps fiends are bits of the dead god given life by something?

[The Aboleth]

Perhaps fiends are bits of the dead god given life by something?

Yes, this is what I'm leaning towards. Given that Valarus was actually the God of Power and Greed, I was thinking that each set of fiends could be created from those bits of the God's essence most concentrated around either aspect (so, perhaps devils could be those created from Valarus's "greed" aspect, and demons could be those from the "power" aspect...or should I reverse this?).

The power of the fiends can be determined by just how concentrated the piece of Valarus was that they were formed from...and perhaps they could grow in power by accumulating more magic (provides a nice incentive for tempting powerful mortals...once those mortals die, the souls go to the demon/devil that originally tempted them). Obviously, this is all rather rough right now...still working out the details of how demons and devils work, so keep the ideas coming!

[falcon1]

Power makes more sense for devils. And lesser fiend races could come from minor aspects.

[JoshuaZ]

I really like the dead god and secret history bit. It is very original.

There may need to be some explanation for why the demons and devils never tell mortals the truth about their origin.

[falcon1]

Not wanting to violate a truce with the gods?

[Perch]

I really like the dead god and secret history bit. It is very original.

It IS very original. Where did you get the ideia/inspiration for this setting?

[The Aboleth]

So, after taking in all of the suggestions, here is what I've come up with:

Devils and Demons:

Devils and demons were each created from concentrated bits of Valarus’s essence. The bits that were mostly part of the dead god’s “Power” aspect became devils, while the ones that were mostly part of the “Greed” aspect became demons. The concentration level of essence determines the type of fiend and how powerful it is, with the most powerful fiends being formed from the most concentrated amounts. A fiend’s goal is to always acquire more power, though how they achieve this end is a key part of what separates them.

Devils are constant schemers, and prefer subtle means to achieving their goals such as by tempting mortals with promises of power in exchange for their souls. Devils have many subjects of both the mortal and fiendish variety to do the “dirty work” for them while they plot and scheme ways to acquire even greater power. Demons, on the other hand, are more willing to take what they desire by force, such as by consuming powerful foes or by conquering mortal settlements and kingdoms.

This is not to say demons cannot be subtle or devils cannot be forceful; indeed, many a mortal has made the fatal mistake of thinking themselves to be one step ahead of a fiend when they were actually two steps behind the entire time.

What do you all think? Any further feedback/suggestions?




I really like the dead god and secret history bit. It is very original.

There may need to be some explanation for why the demons and devils never tell mortals the truth about their origin.

I have two ideas on how to explain why they never tell mortals about the truth. The first is that, as falcon1 suggested, they have a truce with the Gods. Perhaps knowing the secret of their origins is itself a unique source of power, and the Gods and demons/devils have determined it is within all their best interests if mortals are kept in the dark about it. Of course, there could always be "rebels" who don't hold to the truce and tell some mortals anyway...after all, how else would the BBEG know how to steal Valarus's power in the first place?

The second idea is that perhaps the devils and demons don't know the truth, themselves. They know not where they came from, they are just compelled by nature to acquire more and more power. Perhaps the most powerful fiends DO know the secret, but selfishly keep the knowledge hidden from the lower ranks of devils/demons as a form of control. Maybe I could combine this with the aspect of the "secret" being a source of power itself that I mentioned in the previous idea.

I don't know; I'll admit you've brought up a question that I hadn't considered to this point. What do you all think?



It IS very original. Where did you get the ideia/inspiration for this setting?

Thank you all for the compliments! The answer to where I got the idea/inspiration is rather complicated. I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (still play it after all these years!) and so I got the inspiration for a dead god from that game's campaign (for those who are unfamiliar, certain characters in that game's lore have used the heart of a dead god in order to basically become gods, themselves). I wanted to take the concept a step further, though, which is where I came up with the idea that magic itself was essentially the corpse of a dead god--meaning that every time a spell was cast, you were in essence performing a kind of necromantic ritual to use the leftover power. The more I thought about that, the more I liked the idea, so I ran with it.

I'm also a fan of stories that feature themes about power--what it takes to acquire it, what it does to those who acquire it, etc. We've heard the saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely," but is this really true? Or is it more what you choose to do with the power that does the corrupting? These are questions I'd like to explore, hopefully in an interesting and unconventional way.

Finally, I want to explore the "unintended consequences" of actions that are taken--not only as they relate to power, but in general. Every action we take has the potential to have consequences we didn't necessarily plan for--in the case of my setting, this is most evident by the fact that the gods killing Valarus introduced magic into the world. What do you do when thinks don't work out quite as planned? In the example I mentioned, the gods saw fit to monitor the ambitions of mortalkind and discourage--both in subtle and not-so-subtle ways--the acquisition of too much power. Of course, that action ALSO creates consequences that then have to be dealt with. How far down the chain must one go before you cut your losses? Can you even cut your losses after a certain point? Again, these are questions I have a desire to explore.

There are other things I can say, but I think those are the main points.

TL;DR: Certain parts of my idea are inspired from an almost 15 year old video game, while other parts stem from my desire to tell a story about what power does to those who obtain it and the unintended consequences that can result from one's actions.

[The Aboleth]

Ok, so thanks to everyone's suggestions I have a lot of the essential stuff fleshed out to the point where I have a solid foundation. Any further tweaks to what's already been written and proposed will continue to be appreciated!

Additionally, I'm envisioning a central government (for the human and Tiniv races, at least) that is functionally weak, with a figurehead Emperor who wields little power and a ruling council who would be capable of wielding the real power if not for the fact that they are consumed by constant bickering and political back-stabbing. The Salakeem will probably have a religious monarchy that oversees the protection and stewardship of Myrladen, but given that most Salakeem don't actually live in Myrladen they pretty much just accept the rule of law of whomever controls the swampy lands they are inhabiting at the time. The Summer and Winter Courts of the Elydii have different governmental structures between the two, with the Summer Court being more nomadic and less rigid and the Winter Court being more militaristic and very hierarchical; however, given the outward hostility of the Elydii when interacting with other races (especially the Winter Court), not much is actually known about how the Elydii govern themselves beyond what can be outwardly observed.

My hope is that by having the governments be weak and/or ineffectual, it will give the heroes a true sense of agency and foster the belief that the fate of the world really IS up to them; should they fail, there is nobody else in the world capable of bailing them out, and I think that's a powerful feeling for players to have.

Any ideas for the government side of things? What are the next big areas I should focus on in the building of my world?

[The Aboleth]

So, I think the next big area of my world is figuring out the geography of it. Does anybody have great knowledge on where things like forests, caverns, prairies, swamps, and other things are typically located? I don't want to create a situation where I've placed, say, a forest in a climate that wouldn't be able to sustain one.

As I've already mentioned several times above, Myrladen is composed of seemingly endless mudflats and thus is a swampy/boggy environment that favors the Salakeem. Various other parts of the world will also have swampy parts that wandering Salakeem will live in.

Forests and prairies will also be present, I'm thinking in the "middle part" of the world. This will contain a mix of humans, Tinivs, and Elydii. I'm also envisioning some colder "Sibera-like" northern forests where the many Elydii from the Winter Court will reside, though I'm undecided on this point. Perhaps the center of the the human/Tiniv government--where the Council and the weak-willed Emperor are located--can also be in the center of a a prairie on the outskirts of a large forest? I think that might be too generic, though. Any suggestions?

I also have an idea for a large cavern that connects certain parts of the world. Perhaps this cavern goes underground and is well-known, but hardly ever used because it is so dangerous? This would be an easy location to have lots of dangerous monsters that otherwise wouldn't make sense in other parts of the world. What do you all think?

Thinking about the story for a minute, I envision Myrladen as the last stop on the heroes' journey to stop the "big bad." Being the location where the world was created, I'm going to have it be the site of the final showdown and also where the last part of Valarus's most concentrated power is hidden. Essentially, it'll be similar to "race for the final Gate" situation currently playing out in The Order of the Stick; the heroes must find Valarus's power before the Big Bad does or, failing that, prevent him from successfully absorbing the power and start his God-killing rampage.

As such, the location of Myrladen is vitally important. Where should it be? I should probably start to construct a map of everything, if for no other reason than to not get my locations mixed up. Any suggestions on map-making? Does anyone use a special program (preferably a free one) in creating maps for their own campaigns?

[Zorku]

InKarnate is doing a sort of closed beta thing you could sign up for. Doesn't do anything you can't easily do in photoshop, but it does do it in a fairly automatic way so you don't have to struggle with setting up the tools to get something that's nice to look at.

As for climate and biomes... You don't need to do all of these to get a solid world, but if you like a ground up approach then here's my "I need to waste a lot of time" approach:
I come up with a kind of guesswork tectonic plates layout, where I've laid out how they move in relation to each other, and I try to sketch out how they move for awhile. If you've got not idea where to begin with that, ocean rock is more dense so it goes under continent rock when they meet, you get a lot of mountains where plates meet, a plate mostly goes in one direction but if you want to make it more complicated maybe a plate spins a bit and sometimes they get pushed in another direction. The rest you can pretty much just screw around with until you like how the sketch looks. Do this fast and dirty because nobody's ever gonna get a good look at it- unless you're planning something really strange for your game.

The next "so big it might not matter" topic is trade winds, or rather, air circulation. Assuming you're working with a globe, you get circulation cells forming (I always used to try and set the over burner to just the right temperature to make my ramen turn over while they cooked...) but how many you get depends on how big the planet is and probably some other factors. Mostly what you want here is to establish a few horizontal stripes on your map where there's a lot of moisture and ones where it's more arid.
(xkcd has a lovely article (https://what-if.xkcd.com/10/) you can use to eyeball this stuff.)

If you don't do any of this, but just kind of eyeball Earth and sketch out something similar-ish your players will never know.

Anyway at this point we have, general continents, mountains ridges, and dry/wet. You probably want a few mountains that aren't simply riding fault lines, so hotspot volcanoes are the main source of these. Hotspots tend to stay still while the plates move, so you get these volcano chains that the weather gradually wears away once there's no new lava from a particular peak (there are a lot of pretty pictures of Mount Ararat on google, displaying the major peak and a 2nd minor peak.) If you've got wind currents established then you can also start looking at rain shadows- basically one side of any tall ridge gets a lot of precipitation while the other side tends to be too dry to support a dense forest. With an entire mountain range this will mean some stretch of land beyond it is mostly blocked off from the ocean moisture that would otherwise ride the air currents, but this is going to be a loose fractal you set up all the way down to fairly large hillsides. You only need to care about this as much as the players are ever going to get a good look at it, but in a game where it's possible to mount a dragon maybe that's going to be a pretty good look.

With moisture and elevation taken care of you're pretty much set to plug in realistic biomes. I'm rather fond of this particular chart (http://inkwellideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/elevation_lattitude__climate_biome.png).

At about this point I break out some grid paper and start to transcribe what I've got onto it. I rather like these templates (http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-templates/), although I do wish there was a 6 mile hex template of equal quality I could link. (I use some shoddy ones of my own design.) Anyway, this is a nice point for creating the kinds of jagged and unpredictable shapes of things as you look closer and closer at them. You've probably got fairly smooth lines on the sketches, so now you're going to follow those lines on the grid paper, but add in some stuttery wiggles as you go. If you decide that you need to zoom in then you copy what you had in a hex into one of the big hexes, then go back over it adding that same kind of bumpiness to the line.

Very believable world at this point, but we're missing rivers and biomes like marshlands (which are kind of important for your setting.)

You probably don't want to set down every single river in stone (way too much to reference, and they're so damn useful to have in your pocket when the narrative calls for it,) but if you've got access to a photocopier (or even just wanna take a bad picture with you phone and send that to your printer,) you can kind of simulate it to get much better rivers than you'll see in most fantasy maps. Water's got one major rule: go downhill. Just starting from the peak of your mountains (or hills) you're going to draw short (blue) lines that go straight down the slope a ways, to indicate the direction water flows. Go down the slope a bit and repeat this (no need to connect the lines, we're just doing general flow directions here.) Around your steep mountains water takes very straight paths because it's moving so fast that it can easily chew through stone. As you get to hill country it still carves through some of the hills, but if there's a nice path around and between the hills then the water will detour a little bit. By the time you've hit prairies the water will meander a few miles off course only to almost loop back on itself before it turns again to head out to the nearest coast (and sometimes these pinch off and make this little horseshoe shaped lakes.) With the water flow diagram you've populated you should be able to come up with very reasonable rivers. Do be mindful of rain shadows again, because these should have a good impact on how big your rivers become.

Rivers only merge into each other. If they split to go in wildly different directions you'd better have a damn good (fantasy) reason for that.

As you fill in your rivers it should be easy to judge where lakes go. Some bit of terrain blocks the water, and the water can't carve through quite enough stone, you end up with a reservoir. Slow moving shallow water (as in, there's not a good channel anywhere,) attracts beavers and they'll build a dam to give them their own reservoir, given enough time (though this shouldn't be the source of your largest lakes, at least not without weird magic involved.)

So back to swamps- swamps are the forested version of a marsh, and both of these biomes occur where the land has fairly low drainage, which is to say, you don't have a big enough channel to hold the river. It's a sort of perpetual flood over a basin that's too wide to let the water get very deep and doesn't really have any terrain that dams the water so that it can fill up. There's a lot of water and the water doesn't have the momentum it had back in the mountains.

In this case, I'm thinking that a good bit of terrain to justify a vast stinky marsh, would be an inland sea. The whole area is in the rain shadow of some large mountains, but does get the runoff from the surrounding mountains and hills. It's enough to for a proper body of water, but there's this fairly wide shelf of water that's just deep enough to hide... well, with the Salakeem around there probably aren't crocodiles just chilling out among them, so the water can hide a man sized salamander, more so around the bayou than in the tangled roots of the mangroves.

This all means that the area should be on the arid side, but probably a lot more chaparral and scrubland than sand dunes. You still get forests there, especially when there's the right kind of soil to retain some of the water from the streams that meander around the hills. Goats, or something like them, roam around all the areas that lack trees, and mow down the edible plants anywhere from grass to shrubs as thoroughly as the local predators allow, and in some cases they're responsible for the lack of forest where you might expect it. There are a few lush pockets to be found in the valley, most often due to the few surviving aqueducts that civilization erected here centuries ago. It wouldn't be quite so fertile as somewhere like Spain, and whatever mountains were involved would make for a lot of wild/savage terrain, but you could have some interesting city states sitting in the bowl.

If the Salakeem want to keep their wetlands stable in years of drought they'd probably invest a little more effort in selling food to the other races in exchange for the farmers not siphoning off too much water upstream. Since they've got a rather secure marshland and are comfortable in the water, maybe they've perfected some kind of underwater grain silo (not plagued by all the vermin that farmers usually have to chase away,) and they buy up excess grain in years of abundance so that they can sell it back within a couple of years (which has a nice power theme you could play with- in the states we had a system like this, but it had some strict limitations right up until this strange piece of legislation allowed a short list of corporations to participate. Prior to that the participants weren't so rich that they could afford to sit on the grain indefinitely, but since that changed this seems to be a significant/noteworthy factor in the rising cost of food over the last several decades.) So long as you find it reasonable that they could somehow transport the grain without the bugs getting into it (maybe they're experts at tightly sealed pottery?) this could make for a nice backdrop in the way they interact with neighboring nations, or pose a recent source of tension if some charismatic Tiniv decides it's convenient to smear them.

[The Aboleth]

Wow, Zorku! That was incredibly detailed and extremely helpful. Thank you!


InKarnate is doing a sort of closed beta thing you could sign up for. Doesn't do anything you can't easily do in photoshop, but it does do it in a fairly automatic way so you don't have to struggle with setting up the tools to get something that's nice to look at.

I took your advice and signed up for the beta. I'll have mess around with the tools for a bit before I really get a feel for how to build my world, but it seems like a great program! Any tips or tricks you can give me (I'm assuming you use InKarnate since you recommended it?) would, again, be greatly appreciated.



As for climate and biomes... You don't need to do all of these to get a solid world, but if you like a ground up approach then here's my "I need to waste a lot of time" approach:
I come up with a kind of guesswork tectonic plates layout, where I've laid out how they move in relation to each other, and I try to sketch out how they move for awhile. If you've got not idea where to begin with that, ocean rock is more dense so it goes under continent rock when they meet, you get a lot of mountains where plates meet, a plate mostly goes in one direction but if you want to make it more complicated maybe a plate spins a bit and sometimes they get pushed in another direction. The rest you can pretty much just screw around with until you like how the sketch looks. Do this fast and dirty because nobody's ever gonna get a good look at it- unless you're planning something really strange for your game.

The next "so big it might not matter" topic is trade winds, or rather, air circulation. Assuming you're working with a globe, you get circulation cells forming (I always used to try and set the over burner to just the right temperature to make my ramen turn over while they cooked...) but how many you get depends on how big the planet is and probably some other factors. Mostly what you want here is to establish a few horizontal stripes on your map where there's a lot of moisture and ones where it's more arid.
(xkcd has a lovely article (https://what-if.xkcd.com/10/) you can use to eyeball this stuff.)

If you don't do any of this, but just kind of eyeball Earth and sketch out something similar-ish your players will never know.

Anyway at this point we have, general continents, mountains ridges, and dry/wet. You probably want a few mountains that aren't simply riding fault lines, so hotspot volcanoes are the main source of these. Hotspots tend to stay still while the plates move, so you get these volcano chains that the weather gradually wears away once there's no new lava from a particular peak (there are a lot of pretty pictures of Mount Ararat on google, displaying the major peak and a 2nd minor peak.) If you've got wind currents established then you can also start looking at rain shadows- basically one side of any tall ridge gets a lot of precipitation while the other side tends to be too dry to support a dense forest. With an entire mountain range this will mean some stretch of land beyond it is mostly blocked off from the ocean moisture that would otherwise ride the air currents, but this is going to be a loose fractal you set up all the way down to fairly large hillsides. You only need to care about this as much as the players are ever going to get a good look at it, but in a game where it's possible to mount a dragon maybe that's going to be a pretty good look.

With moisture and elevation taken care of you're pretty much set to plug in realistic biomes. I'm rather fond of this particular chart (http://inkwellideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/elevation_lattitude__climate_biome.png).

At about this point I break out some grid paper and start to transcribe what I've got onto it. I rather like these templates (http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-templates/), although I do wish there was a 6 mile hex template of equal quality I could link. (I use some shoddy ones of my own design.) Anyway, this is a nice point for creating the kinds of jagged and unpredictable shapes of things as you look closer and closer at them. You've probably got fairly smooth lines on the sketches, so now you're going to follow those lines on the grid paper, but add in some stuttery wiggles as you go. If you decide that you need to zoom in then you copy what you had in a hex into one of the big hexes, then go back over it adding that same kind of bumpiness to the line.

Very believable world at this point, but we're missing rivers and biomes like marshlands (which are kind of important for your setting.)

You probably don't want to set down every single river in stone (way too much to reference, and they're so damn useful to have in your pocket when the narrative calls for it,) but if you've got access to a photocopier (or even just wanna take a bad picture with you phone and send that to your printer,) you can kind of simulate it to get much better rivers than you'll see in most fantasy maps. Water's got one major rule: go downhill. Just starting from the peak of your mountains (or hills) you're going to draw short (blue) lines that go straight down the slope a ways, to indicate the direction water flows. Go down the slope a bit and repeat this (no need to connect the lines, we're just doing general flow directions here.) Around your steep mountains water takes very straight paths because it's moving so fast that it can easily chew through stone. As you get to hill country it still carves through some of the hills, but if there's a nice path around and between the hills then the water will detour a little bit. By the time you've hit prairies the water will meander a few miles off course only to almost loop back on itself before it turns again to head out to the nearest coast (and sometimes these pinch off and make this little horseshoe shaped lakes.) With the water flow diagram you've populated you should be able to come up with very reasonable rivers. Do be mindful of rain shadows again, because these should have a good impact on how big your rivers become.

Rivers only merge into each other. If they split to go in wildly different directions you'd better have a damn good (fantasy) reason for that.

As you fill in your rivers it should be easy to judge where lakes go. Some bit of terrain blocks the water, and the water can't carve through quite enough stone, you end up with a reservoir. Slow moving shallow water (as in, there's not a good channel anywhere,) attracts beavers and they'll build a dam to give them their own reservoir, given enough time (though this shouldn't be the source of your largest lakes, at least not without weird magic involved.)



So if I am understanding this correctly (and I might not be), I must establish the mountainous regions and volcanic hotspots first before I do anything else, as these are what will determine where the rain shadows go (and thus, where my marshes and such go), right? It sounds like the presence, or lack thereof, of mountains pretty much dictates the climate of the area. Am I correct in this assumption?


So back to swamps- swamps are the forested version of a marsh, and both of these biomes occur where the land has fairly low drainage, which is to say, you don't have a big enough channel to hold the river. It's a sort of perpetual flood over a basin that's too wide to let the water get very deep and doesn't really have any terrain that dams the water so that it can fill up. There's a lot of water and the water doesn't have the momentum it had back in the mountains.

In this case, I'm thinking that a good bit of terrain to justify a vast stinky marsh, would be an inland sea. The whole area is in the rain shadow of some large mountains, but does get the runoff from the surrounding mountains and hills. It's enough to for a proper body of water, but there's this fairly wide shelf of water that's just deep enough to hide... well, with the Salakeem around there probably aren't crocodiles just chilling out among them, so the water can hide a man sized salamander, more so around the bayou than in the tangled roots of the mangroves.

This all means that the area should be on the arid side, but probably a lot more chaparral and scrubland than sand dunes. You still get forests there, especially when there's the right kind of soil to retain some of the water from the streams that meander around the hills. Goats, or something like them, roam around all the areas that lack trees, and mow down the edible plants anywhere from grass to shrubs as thoroughly as the local predators allow, and in some cases they're responsible for the lack of forest where you might expect it. There are a few lush pockets to be found in the valley, most often due to the few surviving aqueducts that civilization erected here centuries ago. It wouldn't be quite so fertile as somewhere like Spain, and whatever mountains were involved would make for a lot of wild/savage terrain, but you could have some interesting city states sitting in the bowl.

When you say an "inland sea," what real-world examples come to mind for you? I'm picturing something like the great lakes of the United States, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean. Perhaps something more like the Dead Sea?

Also, how far out from the mountains should my swamps be? 10 miles? 100 miles? Do the ranges of the rain shadows you mention vary, or are they pretty close to the mountainsides? I don't know exactly how big the mudflats of Myrladen will be, but I'm imagining a HUGE swampy/boggy area that stretches as far as the eye can see. Is it common for swamps to run right up against mountains? Could they, in theory?


If the Salakeem want to keep their wetlands stable in years of drought they'd probably invest a little more effort in selling food to the other races in exchange for the farmers not siphoning off too much water upstream. Since they've got a rather secure marshland and are comfortable in the water, maybe they've perfected some kind of underwater grain silo (not plagued by all the vermin that farmers usually have to chase away,) and they buy up excess grain in years of abundance so that they can sell it back within a couple of years (which has a nice power theme you could play with- in the states we had a system like this, but it had some strict limitations right up until this strange piece of legislation allowed a short list of corporations to participate. Prior to that the participants weren't so rich that they could afford to sit on the grain indefinitely, but since that changed this seems to be a significant/noteworthy factor in the rising cost of food over the last several decades.) So long as you find it reasonable that they could somehow transport the grain without the bugs getting into it (maybe they're experts at tightly sealed pottery?) this could make for a nice backdrop in the way they interact with neighboring nations, or pose a recent source of tension if some charismatic Tiniv decides it's convenient to smear them.

This is really great, and I'll definitely be using something like this in my world. I particularly like the idea of the Salakeem being experts in tightly sealed pottery (thus allowing them to transport grain to human/Tiniv settlements) and of there being some shady Tiniv politician who is trying to run a smear campaign against them in order to further his own goals (perhaps he runs a competing pottery business on the side that can't match the quality of Salakeem pots?). Probably won't play into a campaign at all, but it's great for fluff and for making the world seem like a living, breathing place instead of just a generic sandbox for the players.

[Superstition]

If you're trying to create as realistic a map as possible and your planet is spherical, rotates on an axis, and orbits a sun, using the Coriolis effect to estimate wind pattern and ocean current is not a bad way to determine where you want to place your deserts and forests, as well as which routes people in your world might use for sea trade. Doing so requires that you also establish where your Oceans, Equator, 30, 60, and 90 degree latitudes are, in addition to your mountains.

As a very generic rule of thumb: Deserts (and drier climes) are found at 30 degrees and 90 latitude, whereas forests and denser vegetation (more humid climate) will be at the equator and 60 degrees latitude.

If you have the time, reference the two videos below for specifics on why this happens. It should be about 20 minutes of lectures in total.
I can't include the videos because of the post limit, but search for the following terms on youtube:
SEARCH: Global Wind Patterns Joshua Fulton
SEARCH: Atmospheric Circulation asmajda | and start the video 13 minutes into it (he is rather dry and boring as a lecturer)


I've also been kicking around an idea for Elves that came out as a thought experiment about how Feudalism might develop in a world filled with magic. Feel free to take what you like from it.

The basic premise is that Feudalism emerged when the central government (Rome) collapsed and was unable to adequately protect its citizens. Without a central government body for them to rely on, the local government and mayors took control and did the best they could. In the end, the majority of their work was focused on providing safe housing, and protecting their people from bandits and foreign invaders. Their citizens paid for this safety by providing the government with food and labor. Other developments, such as the practice of chiefs gathering soldiers underneath them, and the high costs of body armor and horses eventually led to the development of nobles and knights. Everything in Medieval Europe was based on power. So the question is: how might this influence a world where magic exists and any Wizard (since I used DnD as a template) could completely up-end the power structure a King needs? The simplest solution of course, is that magic originates from the King: Pact Magic so to speak.

For your world though:
I imagine the Elydii as a race that was once favored by Valarus and were blessed with magic power, perhaps in return for their service. In current times, this attribution gives the Elydii a particularly benevolent reputation as they were the servants and favored of the dead god who blessed the world with magic. The Elydii were a much more powerful race back in the days when Valarus was alive, and they remember those days vividly in their histories. The loss of Valarus is remembered with mourning, both for the loss of a great God, as much as it is for the loss of Elydii culture.

With their magic weakened, the Elydii civilization crumbled and split into pieces against the onslaught of monsters and opportunistic raiders that attacked them. Some Elydii however, quickly realized that gathering magic power can extend their life spans and return some of the power they have lost. Noble Houses emerge, with a hierarchy based on magic power, and the Elydii start breeding for it. Eventually, a King/Queen emerges, holding immense magical power, who proclaims that Valarus has gifted him/her with the Divine Right to Rule. The Elydii King/Queen gifts their magic power to chosen servants, warlocks imbued with Fey magic that serve as knights and nobility. The Elydii expand and conquer, leading their people north. They spend magic to cultivate the land, turning the icy tundra into fertile farmland, and making the citizens dependent on Elydii nobility. The Winter and Summer Courts can be particularly powerful Houses or even two or more equal but distinct branches of the Royal family, each with their own agenda.

And so, you have a very hierarchical, feudal society based around the accumulation of magic power in its ruling class. The added benefit for your world is that this can become a major plot point for any of the churches or factions trying to control magic power. It is a feudal government as well, so while power is centralized, individual nobles and local governors can still act independently from their government's official stance.

[Zorku]

Any tips or tricks you can give meDidn't see this so pretty late response, but I used Inkarnate enough to grasp what it was doing. I've been using photoshop since I was in High School so the process is really second nature to me, except I end up spending hours skimming through free use art galleries to find textures and stamps that my players would never be able to tell apart from the ones I already have.

For you it's basically "draw a shape like you would in MSPaint and fill it in (last I checked the program didn't have a good fill tool, so gotta make your lines thick enough that you can switch to a big brush and punch out your land mass the old fashioned way,) except here the program made the empty canvas look like water, you land mass is a rocky brown shade, and there's already an olde parchment texture to make it look map-y.

Some of the zooming in fractals stuff I mentioned should work nice. Make a low detail version of your coastline, then zoom in close with a little brush to add some wobbly and jagged details, then maybe zoom in again and make itty bitty wobbles and corners.


So if I am understanding this correctly (and I might not be), I must establish the mountainous regions and volcanic hotspots first before I do anything else, as these are what will determine where the rain shadows go (and thus, where my marshes and such go), right? It sounds like the presence, or lack thereof, of mountains pretty much dictates the climate of the area. Am I correct in this assumption?They're definitely the biggest factor on local climates. If Earth was so smooth that there wasn't any rain shadow you'd pretty much get this big band of rainforest and swamp down the equator, have a bunch of dry-ish terrain where you're used to seeing deserts, and then two bands of temperate forests at the lattitudes where our colonial style nations existed. Everything is wetter near the coast line, but stretched in the direction the Earth spins because wind predominantly goes in that direction. Differently sized planets would develop different convection cells, so they could have more or fewer bands, and if you wanted to go nuts they might evolve plant life that falls into more varied major categories than evergeen and deciduous...

But mountains tend to shape a lot of a fantasy world anyway so they're always a good place to start, plate tectonics or no.


When you say an "inland sea," what real-world examples come to mind for you? I'm picturing something like the great lakes of the United States, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean. Perhaps something more like the Dead Sea?I was thinking more like the Dead Sea, but the Great lakes probably work, and you wouldn't be stuck with the high salt concentration if your body of water did actually have an outlet to w/e ocean. I'm not particularly familiar with the great lakes, but you could probably look into what kinds of swamps occur around them and see if that's to your liking.


Also, how far out from the mountains should my swamps be? 10 miles? 100 miles? Do the ranges of the rain shadows you mention vary, or are they pretty close to the mountainsides? I don't know exactly how big the mudflats of Myrladen will be, but I'm imagining a HUGE swampy/boggy area that stretches as far as the eye can see. Is it common for swamps to run right up against mountains? Could they, in theory?That all depends on the slope of the terrain and what latitude this is all at in the first place. If you're thinking typical Europe climates and you want to respect that scale then 100 miles isn't a bad benchmark, but your players won't really question it if the scale is different. Where a party on a road can travel 24-30 miles a day, it makes sense to me for it to take a few days to get out of swamp-nation and into forest-nation (oversimplified) but if these are more like city states some of the territories in early Europe were narrow enough you could easily enter and exit in the same day (though you'd probably have to camp out in the wilderness or beg nearby farmers for a place to sleep since you're, by definition, not stopping at the most likely place to have an inn within a day's travel.)

[The Aboleth]

Ok, so thanks to everyone's amazing input I feel pretty confident in the geography of my world. Thank you all for your help!

I'd like to focus a bit on the Tinivs for a moment, because I feel they're a bit under-developed in comparison to the other races. I want very much to avoid the stereotype of the "jokester halfling" that permeates much of fantasy. This is why I made them as highly charismatic and skilled speakers that frequently hold positions of real power in the political and business worlds--I wanted them to be taken seriously by other races despite their short stature. In fact, I imagine the current "head" of the Council to be a Tiniv--one who wields immense sway over the other Councilors and, by extension, the Emperor (because the Emperor is weak and typically defers to the Council's "wisdom" in most matters).

However, I'm worried that this isn't enough to break the typical fantasy mold. What do you think? Any suggestions on how I can make my world's halflings "different" from the standard tropes common in fantasy?

[Superstition]

I'm going to talk a little about gaming history and how it's come about to create the current list of generic fantasy races. This is an over-simplification and there are many on this forum who could probably explain to you at length, all the intricacies of the fantasy races, but this gives you a brief idea of what is original, what is Tolkien, and what is derivative of those fantasy races.

Barbaric Orcs, immortal and beautiful elves, and High Humans were all canonized by Tolkien to create the current definitions of the classic Fantasy races.

These creatures had existed for centuries earlier, but Tolkien re-imagined many of them and his books' popularity helped ensure that they became the new standard and are usually the first fantastical creatures most readers are introduced to (especially in gaming). DnD and related games based many of their original fantasy races off the Tolkien mythos, which further perpetuated many of those fantasy race stereotypes (many of which are very different from the original lore and mythos that built them).

The Halfling in DnD is an exception since it was based off a creature created originally by Tolkien himself. The Hobbit does not exist in any prior mythology or story and is a creature created solely from Tolkien's own imagination.

You can still play with the basic concept of a Hobbit's simple, rural, and innocent lifestyle, which serves more often as a lens for his children and other young readers to better relate with his book, but there is no reason to explicitly use Halflings if you're intentionally creating races different from the Tolkien concepts.

Look instead at gnomes, dwarves, and fairies as a source of inspiration for small folk who interact frequently with Humans. Fairies are like children, mischievous and tricky; whereas Dwarves may be closer to adults and factory works (diligent and hard-working); and Gnomes may be their cousins, with a penchant for hoarding gold and gems (could work very well as your businessmen or bankers).

[inuyasha]

Looking through this thread a bit, I think you may want to check out a book by Malhavoc Press called Requiem for a God, which is all about the concept of what happens when a god dies, and how you, as a player or as a DM, can use that.

[The Aboleth]

Looking through this thread a bit, I think you may want to check out a book by Malhavoc Press called Requiem for a God, which is all about the concept of what happens when a god dies, and how you, as a player or as a DM, can use that.

I took your advice and bought the book online, and all I have to say is "Wow!" The book has been an immense help for me already and I'm not even halfway through it all. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm working on some more details concerning the societies of each race; once I finish with those I'll post the write-ups here so everyone can give me feedback/suggestions on them.