Tag: 30dayworldbuilding

(This is the Day 9 and 10 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

‘Oh, I scrounge a meal, here and there’, remarked the old man with the one eye and the cleft jaw. I tried to give him some copper, but he refused, ‘Not the pieces with that ugly bird on, no way in hellsname!’ I assume he was referring to the The Crow, the portrait of whom adorned the back of every single piece of city treasure in The Fourth. I stepped over the vagrant and into the building he was slumped in front of, a scrawny dog by his side. Inside I spotted a swift grill, and from it ordered a hunk of charred impsnout — not the most appetising of meals — but very cheap, and also quite nourishing. A smallpint of honeymead washed it down and I disposed of the paper containers in the adjacent pile, closing the lid.

The show I was attending, an exhibition called ‘A Day of Kindness’, had been raved about by my closest friends, and I was curious to see it. Upon paying and entering the gallery I was confronted not with large and colourful tapestries, canvases, or boarskins, but with tiny square pictures drawn on common paper and placed on the wall at equal intervals. Examining the pictures more closely I was astonished to witness a degree of artistry, both illustration and composition, that I had never before seen. Each image, only a hands width wide, contained a complex illustrated scene with details tinier than I, of 20/20 vision, could discern. The scenes were both familiar, and yet odd, containing those denizens of The Fourth least understood. The stand out image for me was a scene on a balcony, standing on which was a gentleman, with a stately disposition, having a normal conversion with the A’leek! Really! The A’leek only sings AT you,  nobody has ever spoken WITH one. And so on it went, until I arrived at the last. This one stood apart from the others, it was not an illustration, but a mosaic, with uniform and square cells, eight across and eight down. As I squinted I could make out a strange smiling green face, and as I recognised it I got a vivid flash of a bloodcurdling scene in my mind — the world was scorched and everybody had turned to dust.

(This is the Day 8 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

Fashion in the fourth (municipality), is chaotic, anachronistic, and almost never practical. A lad of the ultra-violence persuasion has a range of close combat armour to choose from, fashioned from leather, iron, gold, ebony, steel, emerald, sandsteel, sunstone, paper, wood, kapur bark, and, well, practically anything that would resist a solid whack from a sawn-off claymore. The transcendant, the magikal and the soul-less, prefer lighter clothing, typically cloaks, bedsheets, or armour made from less dense materials, such as moonstone. This clothing is typically resonant with the wearer, amplifying whatever godless gift they have. And finally, the ultra-passive citizens of the fourth usually don’t wear armour, but prefer to wear whatever is the current style, from formal suits, shirts with white paints, gangster costumes, renaissance-era garb, whatever takes their fancy really. Head-wear or masks are often worn, from richly decorated feathered hats down to simple accessories, such as the +1 culture monocle.

(This is the Day 7 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

The fourth municipality of Oed is home to a number of human and human-sized creatures. Categorising these creatures into “race” by tracing evolutionary trees is impossible, as the old rogue magiks have distorted even these lineages. Many creatures exist which have no “biological” ancestors, spawning from the echo of an idea of a mad sorceror of a time long gone. Despite this, groups of similar beings gather into cliques, some of which have names, and others which don’t. Some groups of note are:

• Human: the ancestral line to most, if not all of Oed’s intelligent life.
• Towerman: the guardians and watchers of Crowhase, the birthplace of The Crow.
• The Fierce: A line of man-beast hybrids, with a rich monarchy and tradition.
• Mosa of the Underground: A race of bipedal golem-like creatures, aggressive towards any race of soft skin.
• Cerulean: A small shaman-led clan, whom worship the Cerulean Daedra.
• Barbarian: Small barbaric groups exist all over the fourth municipality, and are unmatched in melee combat amongst similar-size humanoids.
• Ember: These creatures have only ever been seen at night. It is postulated that they transcend to another world during the day. The Ember are passive, however communication with them is nigh impossible.

(This is the Day 6 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

Excerpt from St. P. Naturality Guidebook…

Although Oed has become dominated by the “intelligent” species, leading to the inevitable extinction of much of its wondrous wildlife, a considerable number of species still exist. Magiks run astray have torn the planet’s weather system apart, leading to chaotic and unpredictable weather and a landscape that changes far more rapidly than evolution has catered for. Nonetheless, the species that remain dominate their niche and have learnt to survive in these wildly changing conditions. Restricting our attention to those in the fourth municipality (Figure ii), we see a number of unique and interesting lifeforms.

(This is the Day 5 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

This book is a reference for the study of fungi, Mycology. It covers numerous topics in depth, including: taxonomies, practical acquisition of fungi, toxicological information, as well as several recipes for delicious mushroom stew. If you are new to the study of Oed’s most colourful and delightful organisms, then you are in for a treat. Mycology is a rewarding and fulfilling branch of science, nay, the most rewarding and fulfilling. A practicing mycologist can be expected to venture deep into the earth to collect specimens of the rarest mushrooms, thwarting attempts on his life by wild animals, beasts and bats. The hallucinogenic properties of some fungi means that mycologists are often The Life Of The Party, and typically have a wide circle of acquaintances. It isn’t all fun and games, though, a mycologist must devote his entire life to the serious study of fungi in all its forms — fungi is essential for medicine, food, and magiks (and Ale of course!) and only by advancing the state of the art can the people of Oed evolve. — Preface to “The Mycologist’s Index”.

(This is the Day 4 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

Excerpt from Page 17 of the St. P. Alc. Eyebook…

The creators of this world were truly the greatest of combinatorists. There are a finite number of elements, each of which has a relationship with the others. The Table above illustrates these relationships, the elements, except Air, lie in the top row, and their reactive friends lie below. These elements are: The Air [1] which breathes life into all of God’s creations, and is inert towards all the other elements; The Moonstone [2] which warms and lights our way at night. Remarkably, when Moonstone and Sunstone are within a small distance of each other, a low hum can be heard. Luckily, there isn’t enough Moonstone in our world for there to be an eternal hum; Third, we have Phosphor [3], a common reagent in many topes and remedies; Fourth is Gold [4], the bearer of the divine glow, the possession of which has resulted in many wars, including the longest, the Many Wars; Platinum, or Crowmium [5], can be molten in a Sunstone hearth, and formed into impenetrable armours and structural materials; Sunstone [6], or God’s Heart, the maker of  fire. Sunstone is used to break down the elements and recombine them. It is also added to many processes in order to strengthen materials and add heat. For instance, HM’s throne contains a small amount of Sunstone in which to keep HM at a constant temperature.

(This is the Day 3 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

The Bell Tower, of origin unbeknownst, stood weary on the tor,
There was great power within its walls, but would not toll anymore,
Some argue that, upon one chime, another would succeed,
And from the depths, where the daemons slept, would awake an ancient fiend.

– Unknown

(This is the Day 2 entry for the 30 day world building challenge.)

The geography of Oed is as varied as the pastries cooked by the fifth Lord’s master pâtissier. The following is an excerpt from the JE Atlas, a series of geographical and anthropological surveys performed by the team of expert spelunkers Jula and Ela, during the rule of the Crow.

(This is the Day 1 entry for the 30 day world building challenge being run over at tigforums.)

It was the world of a thousand names, Oed, Qusayma, Suevia, the mother world. For the inhabitants of Oed’s only moon, Lunem, it was heaven, luminescence, and the logical conclusion to an illogical life. It hung in the sky and lit the night up with a comforting hue. For the thirty thousand nine hundred and eight six million three hundred and ninety one thousand and seventeenth Lunem-man — coincidentally the first man to escape the immense gravity of the dense moon — Oed was to be his fate. In one of a billion possibilities, in a multitudinous-many-every-verse like his, the Lunem-man crashed landed on Oed, and awakened eight millenia later.