So Call of Cthulhu up in this world?

There are three core ways of using magic in the setting. The first of these is wizardry, which shouldn't even be considered a magic.

Wizardry treats spellweaving as a science and technology, and it's very well understood. Wizards have used their craft much like scientists today use electricity, and with their tools of power they have unlocked many of the secrets of creation, including intimate knowledge of chemistry, astronomy, psychology and electromagnetism.

Channeling, the second form of magic, is a natural magic that people learn as they age. It is governed by a core set of abilities that can be used at will, and combined with one another, but each individual person can only have access to a very small sample of these abilities. Channeling is similar to the powers of superheroes in comics.

The third, divine magic, is faith magic. It is also called dream magic. Casting a divine spell is like learning to lucid dream - it only works because you believe it does. As human belief is difficult to manage and control, different societies and cultures have developed widely varying methods for casting divine magic, each method arbitrary, yet necessary within each society for this magic to work properly. Belief that the magic will not work is just as powerful as the belief that it will.

>>3726453
How did the two gods die?

>>3726468

Call of Cthulhu with pastel colors. I like to treat the world as realistically as possible, which means that there is eldritch horror as well as irreverent, lighthearted whimsy. Some of the most horrifying gods (for instance, the god of undeath) find themselves swinging back and forth between light-hearted pranks and soul-shattering plague, death and pestilence.

>>3726483

The core essences of the gods were not truly "killed" - but they are for all intents and purposes, dead. The two gods in question, who created the medusae and the naga races, were killed by the insect Valdrex race, and their god of dominance and self-interest.

The entities decided they tired of that time line when they were defeated, and refused to ever set foot on it or its branching futures again.

Consider a couple of fa/tg/guys who had their favorite PCs killed, and decided not to play that campaign anymore.

>>3726518
Huh. Makes sense.

On another note, it seems like divine magic actually has nothing to do with the gods, given your description. Basically its more like... Psychic powers?

As long as the system you decide to use with it isn't d20, you'll be fine.

The technology of the setting is analogous to the technology of today, despite being high fantasy with medieval flavor. I like to think of the setting's tech as "gearpunk" - most everything is driven by magically animated gears, springs, flywheels and pistons. There are levitating airships, hovering land vehicles, giant clockwork golems, artificial beasts of burden, and the like.

As the setting is highly violent, it has a low population which allows high tech and low tech to exist side by side. The third-world slums can be a stone's throw away from the technological centers because of massive poverty gaps and lack of sufficient communication between varying groups. Public education is practically nonexistent.

Despite the dominance of magitech however, those without magic can still function - as all sentient creatures were created by the gods. Sentient races are called "godtouched" - and it is their divine origin that allows them to use magic. Those who do not use magic develop a high level of magic resistance, and also develop unhuman levels of physical capacity - cleaving a tree with a single sword slash, leaping 20 feet into the air, sprinting like a cheetah, etcetera.

Magic, science, technology and the mundane all exist side by side, and on more or less the same balance level.

Either I'm high, or this is interesting.

Maybe both O_o

You have piqued my interest. I am considering rolling up a character for this...

>>3726453

It sounds really cool, but may I ask what you used to make that spiffy map of yours, good sir?

>>3726549

Indeed! The divine magic is culturally associated with the gods, but its source is the astral sea, the metaphysical home of the gods and fey.

The astral sea is where sentient souls go to dream. The sea itself resembles a solar system, with each planet being one of Aarn's hells. (Aarn has no heavens, and only hells for its afterlife - it's not as bad as it sounds.)

The dreams of mortals twinkle like stars in this sea, while the sun of the solar system is the dream of K'tellos, the god of all fey and gods. Basically, a sleeping Cthulhu figure. He is trapped at the bottom of a lake on the material plane - if he wakes, he will become corrupted into a demi-fey.

Basically, if he wakes, his gody essence will separate from his godly identity. The godly identity will be antonymous, will become finite rather than infinite - and will be wrathful and insane because of this. And it will retain its godly powers.

Not good for Aarn, so for now, he sleeps.

>>3726639

Photoshop, a tablet, geological research, a bevel filter, and time. I drew 12+ contour lines after studying contour maps and how various global geological formations are shaped, then beveled those contour lines, then smoothed the bevels by hand.

I've put this kind of hard core research into most of everything in the setting.

The geography seems a bit...odd.
It seems to indicate terra-like living conditions.
Also, it IS a planet, right? (as in round)
While the north-pole is completely frozen over, it seems, the south pole contains a single white spot? and that isn't even at the centre?
How many suns, moons, other astral bodies are in the near vicinity? Logically thinking greenlands, high mountains and deserts & badlands exist for a reason. (too much sunlight, too little sunlight, high rainfall, low rainfall, earthquakes, volcanoes etc)
Most of Terra's oxygen is produced by our great rainforests. Is there an analogue here? Land seems to be scarce and I'm thinking hueg jungles would be very rare in such places. Is the big amazon-like riven in the middle supposed to be "BR?" in gearpunk?

Dude, OP, this shit is bitching. I am eager to learn much, much more.

I want to learn more about the "godtouched"--the sentient races. What you got goin' on.

http://conworlds.info/cwbb/index.php

>>3726711

Dude. I have been looking for a place like this. Thank you very, very much. I'll probably get to it sometime in the near future.

For those who are interested in reading more, but don't wish to F5 for my incoming summaries, there is 200+ pages of information I have on the following blog:

http://aarnblog.blogspot.com

>>3726731
Dude. You rock.

>>3726693
Erm, most of our oxygen is produced by algae, so, really, Aarn would probably have a higher O2 content than Terra. Probably more similar to the Jurassic period, when the air was around 40-50% O2. This also leads to gigantism (which is why Sauropods got FUCKHUEG during the Jurassic, it was the peak O2 levels in the planets history), and gigantism + magic = awesome.

>>3726731
I got a good laugh from "The World of D'awwrn".

This is good stuff, OP.
Wish I had the wherewithal to sit down and write out something like you have.

>>3726693

Geography:

There is no southern ice cap because there is precious little land mass to stabilize it. The purple outline on the map is literally the storms on the other hemisphere, and they whip around like crazy, disrupting the ocean, generating currents and weather patterns, and preventing any ice cap from forming.

The heart-shaped continent is almost entirely jungle, though most of the planet's oxygen comes from ocean algae, like earth.

Desert locations are due to prevailing winds, mountain ranges, and the locations of ancient societies that promoted desertification through over-farming.

The planet itself is roughly the same size and density as earth. It has one moon, also earth-similar. (The earth similarities are purely so we have normal gravity, normal years, normal days ... Aarn may be fantasy, but it also has its finger deep into the pot of science-fiction, so I take these things seriously.)

What sets Aarn's moon apart from ours is it has a series of rings, like Saturn.

The solar system has 13 other planets, and one sun.

>>3726756

Speaking of Gigantism, all godtouched races were created by using mundane animals as a basis.

Most surviving civilizations were created with the help of "Giants" as their base parts - huge human-like primates. This is why most civilized races look "human" despite human beings being one of the most recent races.

There were originally hundreds of thousands of godtouched races, and there are less than 30 still alive. Giant-bred races turned out to be good survivors, so the god who created humans figured "Imagine how successful my new race will be if I use giants, and only giants to make them." The humans proceeded to take over the planet, and create the huge chain of random islands to the east with an accidental magical cataclysm that got a little bit out of hand.

Fast fact: Humans are both elves and dwarves. No pointy ears, no squat stature. Giant language and human language were once the same. Giants called the human tribes who specialized in magic "elves" and called the ones that specialized in technology "dwarves"

Over time, and over three global civilization collapses, human beings have forgotten that they themselves are the dwarves and elves they speak of in legend.

>>3726830
>What sets Aarn's moon apart from ours is it has a series of rings, like Saturn.
Wait, what stops these rings from crashing into Aarn due to the gravitational pull?

Also, what about SPAEC TRAEVAL. Has man moonwalked on the moon?
Are there any other (near) habitable planets in the system?
How large is the sun?
What about aliens?
Are these gods essentially C'tan mixed with the Warp Gods?

>>3726830
Dude OP, I'm going through your blog and holy shit, bro. This is fantastic work!

I want to ask your permission to use your world in an upcoming game of mine. I've been looking for a high-fantasy setting and I think yours fits the bill very well.

>>3726904
>Wait, what stops these rings from crashing into Aarn due to the gravitational pull?

There are rumors that the rings are not there naturally. They are narrow, and close to the moon. From a distance, the moon looks very similar to saturn. Realistically, the rings should have crashed into the moon long ago.

>Also, what about SPAEC TRAEVAL. Has man moonwalked on the moon?

There are rumors of an airship crew that flew to the moon. The airship returned. The crew did not. A dead, gellatinous, magically neutral, aura-less mass of flesh of the same weight of the crew was found on board.

>Are there any other (near) habitable planets in the system?

Not to anyone's current knowledge. The population of Aarn is so low, and resources so abundant, that there is no desire to spend the resources required to look.

>How large is the sun?

Sol-normal.

>What about aliens?

The Gods and the fey are the aliens. So alien, that they are timeless creatures that only pretend to be mortal. As for mundane aliens, the only thing that comes close are the merfolk, who rely on earth-style science and biotechnology of severe advance instead of magic.

>Are these gods essentially C'tan mixed with the Warp Gods?

I'm not much of a 40k buff, but a quick wiki glance leads me to believe this is a somewhat accurate description of Aarn's gods.

>>3726963
Oh, cool. So Aarn's moon harbors even more horrific and unimaginable secrets?

>>3726963

Come to think of it, the demons in the hells are also aliens, and they are material. They are from another dimension, and use "superscience" - science so advanced with quantum technologies that it may as well be magic. They can use their superscience to turn the immaterial Astral Sea material, and this is how they created t he hells.

The hells themselves were created because Nektos, the god of undeath, broke the reincarnation afterlife in the process of creating ghosts and spirits. A replacement had to be found.

Demon practical technology is what Aarn mortals call "Demon technology" - and it is all from Earth. Hovercars, submachineguns, robots, nukes, computers, internet, holograms, the like. This is one of the reasons Aarn mortals tend to avoid using mechanical technology, and opt for magical technology instead.

Aarn demons worship Earth religions, and have no known afterlife of their own, though they are mortal. They claim to have come from Earth, and even named some Aarn cities after earth countries, though these names have become corrupted over time.

>>3726994

Indeed, but I'm leaving those mysteries unexplained and undeveloped for now. Prime material for possible expansions in the future.

>>3726920

Your idea intrigues me, though much of the information on the blog is out of date, and needs to be revised. I've been trying to work on a wiki and update everything, but the work has been very, very slow.

Might you object to me being somewhat involved, acting in a sort of advisory role for you?

rolled 60 = 60

>>3726994

Probably a lot like FF4, where the moon is host to horrible jellyfish amoeba monstrosities.

>>3727041
Not at all. It would probably be for the better, in fact. What you have seems to be very in-depth and thought-out, and there's no way I could hope to learn and fully understand all that on myself, to say nothing of my players.

>>3727064

Aarn has a small dedicated chatroom on espernet, #aarn, and you're welcome to join it to contact me. I run games there every friday and saturday, though I already have far too many people to allow more to join.

But those who wish to discuss the setting itself are more than welcome, that also includes others in this thread.

>>3727041
A Wiki would be great

>>3727081
Alright. I'll run the jist of your world by my players first thing tomorrow, and if they like what they see, you and I will get to work.

Wow, what did you use for your map making? I made a pretty good map but this kicks my maps ass in terms of artistic value.

>>3727145

See

>>3726678

S'more info, about some of the races.

Ardlins: The most recently created godtouched race. They first appeared 75 years ago. They are a mixture of lizardmen (reptilian primate race), goblins, and velociraptors. They are essentially Aarn's kobolds. Their god was originally the god of procrastination, but her portfolio is now evolving into the god of plucky resolve.

Because everyone remembers what happened with humans taking over the world, almost everyone wants to kill/marginalize the ardlins. They are very technologically savvy, though most of them are too uneducated to take advantage of this trait.

>>3727305

Valdrex: These insect slave traders and merchants were the first race to dominate the planet. Their race is hive-like, with a hive mentality, though there is no hive mind. Valdrex are individuals who have no egos.

They tend to travel in groups of 3, 6 or 9. They subvocalize in a droning, and excrete smells to communicate with one another and coordinate their actions. One valdrex is intelligent. A group of valdrexes are tactical masterminds.

Because their actions nearly destroyed the world when they killed the gods Retla and Gretash, they have become less about conquest, and more about economic domination and slavery. They are cold and calculating, and though they resemble monstrous insects, they garb themselves in such a way so they appear humanoid, in order to better their public relations.

The pouch on their stomach is double-sided - they store their middle legs in there, and when they wish to manipulate objects, their legs come out and extend to do so. Their large arms are useless for manipulating, the sleeves hide limbs that have massive scythe-blade fingers.

>>3726453
Hey, why aren't you talling lego stories here on /tg/ like you did with /toy/?

Spirit Animals:

This race was created after the humans, and are less of a coherent race, and more of a style of soul. Spirit animals are animals who have a godtouched's sentient soul. Every spirit animal has access to channeling magic.

What truly sets spirit animals apart is, when they die, their souls are immune to being collected by the afterlife. They remain on Aarn as spirits (hence their name) that can possess sleeping creatures and steal their bodies, expelling the body's original soul. This action comes at a price - if they do this, they lose their connection with nature, and their extra-sensory perception.

Spirit animals are curious creatures - they typically take up a role of protecting nature, yet they enjoy spying on civilization and manipulating it. There are rumors that Aarn's inter-continental banking system is being run and manipulated by spirit animals who have possessed the bodies of humans.

Animal races such as goblins, lizardmen, giants and ogers can have spirit animal individuals who can use godtouched magic. Such individuals are rare - though all spirit animals are rare.

Tell me, how far gone is the aforementioned wiki? Because, it sounds like something that is in my general area of interest.

>>3727344
These, these are awesome.

>>3727344
Small nitpick. The pluralisation of Valdrex would be Valdrices.

Naga: Nagas are a godtouched race created by Retla, one of the two dead gods, and the goddess of martial combat.

When humans were created, they were one of the few races that chose to protect humankind from the other godtouched races. They helped to save humanity from extinction. As a reward, the human god, Jennin, adopted the Naga and made them his holy emissaries. It would be the Naga who would build and maintain the temples of man.

When the first human civilization collapsed, the special place Nagas had in human religion was forgotten, and they were abandoned. They still maintain the old temples, even 6500 years later, and they highly resent humankind.

Naga and Valdrex are sworn, bitter enemies.

>>3727453

The wiki's not very far along at all. I've managed to do a handful of creature posts, and that's just about it. There's no new information on it either, that isn't also on the blog, as out of date the blog may be.

>>3727499

I'll keep that in mind, though I'm tempted to make it like Sheep, and have the plural of Valdrex be Valdrex. It would suit their "individuals don't count" mentality.

And I'm off for the night. I'll share more tomorow.

>>3727559
Good stuff.

>>3727519
inb4 snapesnogger nagas

RAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEEEE

>>3727992
Oh fuck off, techtonicfag.
It's a world with several wars as made by gods. What's to say those aren't craters?

>>3728019
MOUNTAIN CRATERS

>>3727599
Pffft. Naga's Nagas are superior.

>>3728039
C'mon /tg/ you're better than this. I had a crash recently and need to rebuild my furry folder. Post some actual porn.

>>Aarn's gods are essentially alien consciousnesses we literally cannot understand, who are themselves role playing when they "pretend" to have mortal concerns, whims and plans. From region to region, the same entity can role-play extremely different personas.

Have you ever seen The Nines?

It's on Instant Netflix. I'll give you a million dollars if you make it a plot hook in your world.

>>3728035
Yep.

>>3728039
It has arms, that's a Lamia.

omniscient gods means no free will because they already know how things turn out. have fun railrodan.

>>3728177
"Free will"? Such a thing did not exist in this world in the first place. It's really quite a silly concept, as usually portrayed.

>>3728120
Source of pic ?

>>3729361
Ummm. Pretty Lamia? It ends in sex, naturally.

>>3729377
Thank you!

>>3727992
They look like ENORMOUS VOLCANOES to me. Yellowstone-size enormous volcanoes. And Yellowstone fucks shit up when it erupts.

>>3729361
http://desudesu0.com/?p=1313

Holy shit, it's LegoTavernGuy! I remember the advent calender thing on /toy/. I still think it needed more *floodgates*

>>3728120

Outside of dungeons and dragons, "Naga" and "Lamia" are pretty interchangeable. Despite having a Lamia design, I chose to name the race "Naga" because that word has more divine connotations from the myths it comes from, while lamias tend to be ... pretty irredeemably evil. Name choice matters when it comes to how the race will be interpreted by players.

>>3727992

They are indeed giant craters. The one up north is relatively small and shallow, the one in the middle is massive and combined with volcanic activities (the mountain ridge around it is quite tall) and the one in the south is another relatively shallow one on top of a massive plateau.

Aarn's tectonics are a mess.

>>3728177

Aarn is a multiverse setting that uses a branching timeline theory for its cosmology. Everything that possibly can happen will happen in some varying different reality/dimension. "Free will" exists, because through the choices and their actions, the sentients are choosing which of many possible paths they can follow and experience.

>>3730343

Patience young padowan. The village I plan on building next will indeed have a floodgate.

Small note: my lego stories were taking place on "Lego Aarn," with a few changes here and there for the story's sake. I never mentioned it because it didn't matter at the time.

More races!

Satyrs: Satyrs are a pastoral race that lives in the central area of the northwestern subcontinent. Most Satyrs are peaceful farmers who use their charms and wits to find the path of least resistance through life. The Satyr civilization invented the millstone, the windmill, and Aarn's version of the Archimedes screw pump, all in the effort to make their peaceful life less strenuous.

Satyr children who start to develop channeling abilities are typically shunned and exiled from their villages, as violence is culturally unacceptable to them, and most channellers have abilities that do harm.

Satyrs have no kingdoms of their own. They live on lands claimed by human kingdoms, are overtaxed by humans, and tend to be overlooked by human guard patrols when it comes to the beasts and bandits of Aarn's wilderness.

The only Satyr cities and villages that thrive are very close to human cities and villages, because those are the only places that receive adequate protection.

Orchaein: Singular, Orchaeya. This plant race is a group of forest-dwellers that live along the southern coast of the northwestern subcontinent. Their bizarre reproduction practices prevent them from knowing which individuals are the biological parents of which children, so an entire community treats itself as family. An Orchaeya settlement resembles a hippie commune because of this.

To maintain biological diversity, young Orchaein are encouraged to wander and become part of new communities elsewhere in the woods. Their unique way of being raised encourages them to trust easily, and give love easily. Those interacting with other races quickly learn that the Orchaeya way is not the only way, and that around other races, love must be given carefully for one to survive.

They are almost exclusively meat eaters, and hunt beasts and animals for their food by firing clouds of paralytic spores from the leaves on their shoulders. They need about 4 hours of direct sunlight a day (or 8 hours of indirect sunlight) to remain healthy, and drink twice the amount of water as other races, but consume half the food.

Ghorma: Ghorma are a race of penguin-like merchants. They are a highly insular and careful race, and have isolated themselves on the large island to the west of the southernmost subcontinent.

Their society is so careful, that acts of risk are considered illegal, and grounds for exile. Those who are exiled are only allowed to return to the island once every 4 years, and only if they bring with them an item of value (money, technology, magic, art) that is worth more than the last item they brought.

It is this practice of sending out exiles and only allowing them to return if they bring in worth that keeps the Ghorma society from stagnating. Of course, this means that virtually every Ghorma individual encountered away from their homeland is a merchant that will take its profits and run.

Though Ghorma are not violent, they are despised in certain circles for their unethical business practices.

>>3730890
why the fuck would a plant race have human traits.

>>3730948
There is a face on the right hand's thumb...

>>3730958

>>3730958
Those are jewelry of some sort.

>>3730956

All the sentient magic-capable races were directly created by the gods, which is why they're called godtouched creatures. Each race is a god/fey-created mish-mash of animals that had evolved naturally. As mentioned earlier, the humans are a somewhat recent race, though the giants, large human-like primates, are the animal race that most surviving civilized races have somewhere in their makeup.

>>3730958
>>3731009

Sad to say, those are just the folds of fat and flesh in the Ghorma's hands. That thing is, horrifyingly, naked.

So is magic treated as formulae that channels energy to disrupt natural laws or is it a force of will that directly alters it? Is there anything such as mana that fuels such magical reactions?

>>3731069

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Magic is so pervasive in this world that it itself is -considered- a natural law. Imagine if a world without the forces of electricity and magnetism viewed Earth - they would certainly think that those forces were magic, even though we ourselves don't think so.

Wizardry works through spellweaving - using the auras of material components (that are not consumed) to paint threads of power in the air, which are then wrapped around the caster like a shawl. To cast that spell, one needs to activate the "shawl" with finger motions. No somatic components.

Channeling and divine magic are forces of will that directly alter the world, with channeling being more similar to the physical processes of a biological creature, and divine magic being more similar to using imagination and artistic expression to bring forth the desired effect.

Wizardry is more or less Vancian, channeling has a set number of magical "points" you can burn each turn to use magical effects at will, and divine magic uses exhaustible manna, that is restored through sleep or meditation.

In DnD terms, Aarn's wizardry is DnD wizardry (with some very important differences in what spells a wizard can and cannot cast), channeling is similar to Incarnum mixed with a warlock's powers, and Divine magic is similar to psionics.

Ah, holy crap, I just read most of the thread and I never saw that it was LegoTavernGuy. Looks like you've got a quite nice setting going. Though I usually don't find it really necessary to do so much work for a setting. Then again, it's fun to do it.

>>3728071

answer my question fool

>>3728071
>>3731300

I have not seen the movie, no, though it does seem pretty intriguing. I'm wary of using a plot like this in the game, however, as there is a clear divide between mortal souls, fey, and gods.

Fey and gods are the same entities, though fey are playing roles that have intentional limitations that they follow to the letter (that don't necessarily correspond with the limitations of mortals.)

Allowing a mortal who is actually a fey (a 9) and doesn't realize it could be quite interesting, though. And it might work out in a very similar way as the movie.

No plate tectonics? Or is the world artificial and has no plate movement?

>>3731395

The plates are shattered and much smaller than the plates of Earth. They are also more unstable, and have been known to change direction, though not recently. There are even "island" plates that unlike any plate on earth, are being pressed on by all sides, with nowhere to go but up.

>>3726453
How did you make that map?

>>3731432
See
>>3726678
See
>>3726678

This's still here?

>unlike any plate on earth, are being pressed on by all sides
>being pressed on by all sides, with nowhere to go but up

More info!

Aarn's afterlife is called "The Nine and a Half Hells." Few on the material plane understand how the afterlife works, as most Aarn religions are wrong, and the rest are dead wrong.

The hells and the demons who created them were never intended to be hellish. Instead, the hells were created bureaucratically, and the method by which souls are sent to one hell or another often sends a hell to a place that soul would detest.

The hells themselves lampoon the old 3.0/3.5 alignments, which I have avoided like the plague while designing the setting.

Immigration: The half-hell of Immigration is a pocket plane that consists of several hundred thousand lines of souls, each waiting to be processed. The wait on the line averages about 100 years before one is sent to their final destination, so there are "Caterer Demons" who patrol the lines to keep those there civil and organized, and also to dispense entertainment.

When judged to be sent to one of the other hells, a soul is given a several thousand long questionnaire. Based on how they fill this questionnaire out, they are then sent to one of the 9 other hells.

Bureaucracy: The home of the demons, this hell has no true laws, so to speak. Any action is legal, provided one can beforehand find and fill out the proper forms to do that action. Any action is illegal if the proper forms are not first filled out. Very few Aarn souls are sent here, because the demons enjoy their privacy, and it takes a very unique soul to be sent here through the judgment process.

Tyranny: This hell was originally supposed to be the only afterlife. It was modeled after Aarn, but unlike Aarn, no one there can ever die. The most evil, selfish, and corrupt people in Aarn's recent history are all here, and all in charge. Peasants are little more than slaves, and the police forces, kingdoms and authority figures are almost all nakedly and openly corrupt.

Anarchy: This hell was designed to try to fix Tyranny's flaws. Demons constantly patrol this hell and prevent organized authority from developing. As a result, lawless violence runs rampant, not unlike certain descriptions of Valhalla, with feasts at night and ceaseless, horribly bloody combat during the day.

Delirium: This hell was designed as an attempt to fix -Anarchy's- flaws. The demons used their technology to make this hell a waking dream, where the whims of all involved shape the hell in unpredictable, inconsistent ways. The souls who end up here are essentially all on an endless peyote bender that never ends.

>>3731423
Interesting.

Meh: This hell has no true description or purpose. It is an endless sea of nothing, and those sent here essentially experience nothing. Those who follow Buddhist-style beliefs tend to wind up here. It was originally supposed to be a hell that fixed -Delirium's- flaws, but once it was created, the demons realized that none of their hells were truly adequate, so they continued making more, designing the rest from the ground up.

Conformity: The first of the intentionally designed hells, Conformity is essentially a demon summer camp. Those sent here must conform, or else. All activities are timed, and are scheduled. It is run by robots, who are unerring in their desire to force conformity on the souls who are unfortunately sent here.

Security: This hell is essentially the ideal gated community. It has cities and societies with well kept streets and a decent public life. Unfortunately, the demons who watch over this place (Angels) are overzealous in their desire for its inhabitants to be happy.

Happiness is mandatory, and any risk or pain of any kind is illegal. Those who violate the rules and cause pain of any kind (physical or emotional) - or even desire to feel such pain, or even activities that risk such pain, are sent to "Happiness Reeducation Centers" until they "Learn better."

That means that yes, in Security, most sex is illegal.

Serenity: This hell is an unrefined wilderness. Some might consider it a paradise. Those who might enjoy this hell are artists, hippies, and those who enjoy the idea of love. Its downside is that violence is heavily frowned upon. Those who suffer from violent thoughts or tenancies find themselves under the effect of a persistent ennui. This depression keeps them from behaving violently, but it also makes them deeply unsatisfied and desperate for salvation from Serenity's ever present peace.

Revelry: The final hell, Revelry is a constant party, with pounding music, carnival rides, drink, food, and merry. That never, ever stops. It is practically impossible to find any peace or solace, and many people in this hell wind up going insane because of the constant extroversion.

Basically, each hell is an exaggeration of a certain way of life, and as an exaggeration, none of the hells are truly adequate as a place of eternal afterlife. For each hell, you could probably find someone who would enjoy it, and find someone who would be horrified to even set foot there.

As human faiths, dogmas, ideas of sin and their societal constructs often warp our true desires, and how we feel about those desires, the process by which a hell is chosen for a soul will most often send that soul to a place it would find hellish.

bump for cool setting.

More races!

Skull Imps: Before the god of undeath destroyed the original afterlife by inventing the condition of undeath, he first created a godtouched race that is, for all intents and purposes, constructed of already-dead flesh.

Skull imps are that race - a prankster race of living corpses. They are animated through channeling magic - they have functional, sentient souls, reproduce, eat, drink, and do not decompose or rot... but they are functionally dead. They have no blood, they do not need to breathe, and if hit with a powerful antimagic spell, they cease to function until the spell wears off. They are not undead, but they cannot truly be called alive, either.

Skull imps, despite their appearances, are not malevolent. They enjoy playing pranks, encouraging shock and horror, but they do not enjoy causing pain. Many skull imps are actually accomplished artisans, sculptors, poets and playwrights.

They are amused by the shock of people who discover their softer, artistic side just as when people are shocked that they even exist.

For the most part, their civilization is isolated and subterranean, though some individuals have seen fit to explore the world, and see what kinds of people they can meet and playfully torment.

>>3730679

About that free-will thing:
It may hold true for one person, but what happens when each sentient being starts to choose a new path of experiences? Who or what controls the other sentient beings in the separate paths? Not to throw a wrench, but I've had this philosophical debate before.

Oh wow LTG, you do this in your spare time too? You're pretty creative.

Hey Lego,

I have to say, this setting is awesome! I am definitely gonna check out your blog for more info.


Good luck dawg!

>>3730679
So are dwarves being dorfs one of the changes, or are they actually dorfan in Aarn?

Also, any idea when your town will be finished? And it better be at least a +Lego Floodgate+, if not a *Lego Floodgate* or even Shatteredbricks the Carp of Mourning, a Lego Floodgate

Hey Lego, this setting needs a 1d4chan article.
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Main_Page

>>3734918

With each branch made, every soul in that timeline is copied into the new branch, even if they didn't make any decisions. It's not that hard to imagine if you think of it as a giant 3D spider-web, and take "time" out of the equation. (I'm a philosophy grad, so I've had this discussion before too.)

>>3735047

Unfortunately, Aarn doesn't have dwarfs! Not anymore, anyway (extinct/evolved). And the ones it had weren't very dorfy other than being good at mechanics and living in caves.

(/toy/ content disclaimer) Gordon was a refuge from an alternate reality that got gated in accidentally, because the power of plot demanded it..

>>3735229

Man, I wouldn't even know where to start making a page for Aarn on there. I'll try going for it though, put the best bits in and link to the blog/other wiki perhaps.

What say /tg/ about how to put Aarn on 1d4chan?

>>3734918
Infinite branches.

>>3735047

(More /toy/ content disclaimer) Sorry about forgetting to reply to the rest of your post. I'm going to buy two copies of the medevial market set sometime after march, maybe june, and make the town out of that, so there's a while wait.

One more godtouched race, and maybe the thread will still be here in the morning:

Harpies: This unfortunate race is an example of a once-civilized society that has since regressed to a nearly animal state. Despite their godtouched status, harpies that exist in the wild act no better than animals, and will often indescriminately kill those who tresspass in their territories. Wild Harpies live in the mountains of the northwestern subcontinent, and though they are capable of casting magic, few develop the ability.

Harpies are a race of entirely female creatures, and in order to propogate their species, they must rely on the males of other godtouched races. This unfortunate need coupled with their animalistic behavior has caused them to become reviled and hated. In the nation of Cerenbaun, for instance, Harpies are allowed to be kept as slaves, like common animals, unlike any other godtouched race.

Though wild harpies are uncivilized, murderous wretches, a harpy raised in civilization can be a productive member of society, and learn magic like any other godtouched race. Unfortunately, the arguably justified prejudice against them encourages them to take up less than legal occupations, such as banditry and piracy, in order to survive.

Most civilized harpies travel far away from the mountainous home of their wild kin, in order to escape such prejudices and attempt to find a decent life.

>>3737089

As an important note, crossbreeding between different godtouched races is not a possibility in Aarn - the biology of harpies is a unique exception to this rule, and all children born of harpies become harpies, rather than some sort of half-breed.

Going back to the 'spell-weaving' comment earlier...
Are there any spelling machines (compare sewing machines) that make the process easier or is it all 'by hand'?
I had the mental image of the massive loom from Wanted (horrible breaches of physics, pretty snazzy set pieces) when I typed that.

>>3738145

There have been attempts for generations to create such a device, but so far, there has been precious little luck. A wizard's prepared spells must be woven into a godtouched person's aura in order to work properly. The more expanded the aura, the more spells it can hold. Spells cannot be created by a soulless machine.

Wizards have found that they can artificially expand their auras with devices such as staves and by soul-linking themselves to familiars and even other godtouched people, but as of yet, no machine has been able to prepare a spell without weaving it into -itself-: the only machines with the complexity to weave a spell are semisentient constructs that are powered by a "Soul core" - magical devices that emulate the presence of a soul. It's technically feasible to to make an "auto cast" machine that you can order to prepare a spell, then order to cast it, but such a thing would be horrifyingly dangerous. Aarn magic is volatile - once spell energy has been prepared, it must be released, somehow. The destruction of the machine would be like setting off a small bomb. When godtouched wizards die, they vent their uncast magical energy into the inbetween (where ghosts live). Such a machine would vent its energy into the material plane.

Big boom.

>>3740249

I'm glad -someone- noticed that.

Speaking of breaches of physics, I suppose I might want to describe what makes Aarn's wizardry unique from other Vancian systems.

Aarn's spellweaving is similar to computer programming. The spell needs to know ahead of time what sort of input it's going to require at the time of being cast, what the required output is, and -exactly how- to get from point A to point B.

Naturally, you could try casting a polymorph spell with wizardry, but you'd wind up with a dead rabbit with shredded insides. And the only if you knew the relative mass and construction of the desired target.

Other effects that don't work well are any spell that requires any kind of creativity, adaptability or semi-sentience on the part of the spell. Spells that create self-animated effects are right out, though a telekinesis spell might grant a wizard the ability to consciously control a sword at range.

Summoning spells are also not possible, unless you literally had the creature in a cage somewhere and portalled it in.

Conversely, unlike DnD, wizards make very good healers. Their spells can accelerate the natural healing processes of a body, as well as its ability to process the resultant flood of metabolic waste. Through wizardry, Aarn's medical technology is better than our own, by leaps and bounds.

>>3740361
Sounds like a wizard could have a menagerie set up in their sanctuary with a grid like organizational system to the holding cells. Fill them up with different creatures to port in when needed.

I like that idea.

>>3741938

You might like this next one even better. Let's talk Elemancy.

Elemancy is basically a "Familiars are my weapons" magic. By using the same energy points that channelers can burn on abilities, a channeler who knows wizardry can instead create and dominate creatures. This is now Necromancers, Biomancers, and Animancers (constructs) work.

When an elemancer dominates a creature, that creature is sharing a piece of the elemancer's soul. The elemancer experiences everything the creature does, and controls the creature as if the creature were a part of the elemancer's own body.

Some elemancers never leave home, and instead send their creatures/constructs/undead out instead. It's essentially a second body, carries little to no risk, the elemancer can prepare their spells in their spell library and then have the creature cast them (connected soul = shared spells) and if the elemancer has left over channeling points, the creature can use those abilities too.

Some animancers abandon their original fleshy bodies, even, and literally become their clockwork constructs. They leap their souls' main 'home' from body to body when one is in danger and the other is not.

>>3742016
Interesting indeed.

Are you saying that there might be truly ancient souls hidden in constructed bodies out there? I would imagine that after a long period of time inhabiting only constructs an animancer would lose a large sense of their self and in essence be a completely different being than they were before.

>>3742089
Also, if an animancer is fully inhabiting a construct and has discarded of their natural body... what happens if a part of them is injured? Does their essence completely fill the construct or is there something akin to a phylactery that holds the majority of the caster's soul?

Wizards don't blow up when torn in half, but what about an occupied construct?

sage

Are the myths/conspiracy theories on the blog still up to date?

>>3742089

There are indeed animancers out there who are older than dirt. And yes, they're thought of as less than human. and a little insane. Some consider them undead, because the body the spirit/soul of the animancer used to own is now dead.

>>3742110

The essence does completely fill the construct. If the construct is sufficiently damaged, and there are no other constructs left the Animancer can jump into, the animancer does indeed die. I -suppose- an animancer could make a machine that's phylactery-like, hiding out somewhere, but this isn't a necessity, and it's better to have it just be a spare body no one knows about.

... Granted, scrying in this game is based on auras. If you have their now-destroyed construct body, it will be -saturated- with their aura residue, and you'd be able to scry on their new body very, very easily.

>>3742197

The myths and conspiracy theories are indeed still up to date. There's nothing anachronistic in that post.

>>3742516
Nice twist with making it much easier to scry for these "people".

Are all godtouched possessed of unique, individual auras only? Basically I'm wondering if an entire race would have similar auras. Obviously not identical, but specific "frequencies" that tell someone what race the aura might belong to.

If this is true, then could spells be woven to specifically target only auras with a unique signature (i.e. race specific)?

>>3742614

Absolutely. Human auras would have a certain frequency, different from harpies, different from Valdrex ... it's not just godtoucheds that have auras either. Magic is so pervasive that even the non-magical things of the world have auras. (This is how material components for spellweaves work. The auras of said components are the different pallets and commands used to program the weaves. That's why material components aren't consumed by the magic.)

Not only are auras unique for each individual, but special patterns called "runes" are unique to each type of aura and each individual person. The international banking system of the world works by using these runes as signatures for each person. You stamp a gold-leaf piece of paper with a magical stick that has your own rune on it, and the interaction of the stick with the paper accesses a magical information network that then causes the gold leaf to transmute itself slightly, revealing your account balance and history.

Runes can be used for casing as well. Drawing the right runes on anything (even a person) will grant that object/person a channeling ability corresponding to that rune. Unfortunately, the ability/effect cannot be turned -off- or even controlled, so runecrafting has limited use outside of its niche for enchanting swords to be on fire, airships to float or lanterns to glow. Basically, constant effects.

Further, if a rune is disrupted or destroyed, it releases energy that damages what it was drawn on. This is why runes configured to release a complex wizardry or divine spell effect destroy the object they're on when cast (read: scrolls.) Someone with rune tattoos would be in for a lot of hurt if the runes were improperly removed.

>>3743660
Has a being of great power (or a group of beings/kingdom/race) taken advantage of this to commit magical genocide?

>>3743748

Yes, in fact! The Aledorans (one of the first tribes of human, who had access to wizardry far more powerful than what exists in Aarn's modern time) were in a protracted war with the Valdrex. In order to win that war, the Aldeorans created a magical plague that only targeted Valdrex and their hives. It was the only thing that prevented the humans from being overrun.

>>3743797
That's actually what I was thinking. Awesome. Let me think up another question. The past six were all mine, too. I respect the amount of detail and research you've put into your work, and I get the feeling (since I am of the same mindset) that you have the same sort of dedication to any project you take a shining too. Kudos.

Oh, I just looked on the timeline and noticed the year 730 entry, lol.

>>3743660
Ah, here's a question. How long would runecasting take? Could some cheeky wizard slap a rune usually used to make airships float on someone's back? Or say, the same situation, but with the flaming sword trick, heh. I'm guessing it isn't as quick as a normal casting would be.

Oh, and how do changes in temperature affect plant based creatures like the Orchaein? Are they forced to stay in certain climate regions?

>>Magical Styles: The mages of the Easern Islands are overwhelmingly divine, with thousands of different casting methods. Some of the more exotic methods of casting include whistling, burning one's one flesh, acts of sexual depravity, eating sacred fruits, putting on masks and wearing animal skins, and making silly facial expressions.
>>eating sacred fruits

YO HO, HE TOOK A BITE OF THE GUM GUM

Your thread has been archived, good sir.

You can trust countless future generations of fa/tg/uys to lift your ideas or parts of them for future works.

>>3744224
Because LTG just HAD to be inspired by an anime and not the countless mythologies involving eating sacred fruit to gain power.

>>3744433
Does Spinach count as one of the methods?

>>3744455
Your post made me see the bias in my words. If I can consider Popeye to be a mythology then it is quite wrong of me to discount One Piece as such. Perhaps I should have said "world religion mythologies" instead.
Toot Toot!

>>3744053

Runecrafting takes a few minutes per rune, though your weightlessness idea is a legitimate medium-level wizardry spell that plays -havoc- on agile characters. One wizard in one of my beta-test games used weightlessness on a fighter that was in the middle of a jump attack. ... The fighter was last seen drifting about a thousand feet above the ground desperately trying to make swimming motions.

>>3744433

Each island in the Eastern Islands has a different culture, and there are thousands of islands. And very few of the cultures are politically significant. That gives potential GMs a lot of leeway to have fun. And yes, that includes anime references. Speaking of which...

>>3744455

Spinach? Sure. Why not?

>>3744657
Something told me that at least one of your players would have thought of something like that if it was feasible. What about the whole plant race being affected by temperature/climate differences?

How familiar are the Merfolk with the Jhettan storms?

>>3744730

Orchaein are no more and no less susceptible to extreme temperature conditions than any other animal, despite being plant based. They have hair and can wear clothing for warmth, and plant-protein-based muscles generate heat just as well as animal-protein-based muscles.

Merfolk are quite familiar with the Jhettan storms. The storms themselves are more than an atmospheric disturbance - they exist in the water as well, and likely manifest in underground rivers and air pockets.

I should probably get to the Merfolk in a future post, they're one of the more unique races. I don't have a very good picture for one, though.

>>3744994
The merfolk have been intriguing me this entire time. Please do write more about them! I love how you have described the evolution of their brand of technology.

Beached whale? Nope. Student driver :)

Bump for awesome.

Frankly, I like a lot of the ideas here, but it's just so... immaculate. Why does there have to be a million fantasy races dreamed up by little girls? Do you really need all of those races?

If you're trying to be "somewhat" realistic, you should really pare down the list. I mean, how many sentient races are there on Earth?

>>3745698

I concur wholeheartedly. Every setting needs to have one species only, shitting all over every other species.

LTG, move Aarn into FATAL territories.

>>3745698
Nips, Aryans, Spicks, Krauts, Chinks, Ruskies, Rom.

... Ahhh ... yeah. Moving right along ...

Merfolk!

The merfolk were one of the first races created during the War of the Gods, all those hundreds of thousand of years ago. The Naga race, Medusae race, and the Merfolk race are all cousins of one another, created from similar stock.

While the naga were land creatures, and the Medusae land, sea, and air, the Merfolk were purely sea. Merfolk look like naga who have fish tails instead of snake tails. Like naga, they are completely covered in scales, which can vary between shades of grey, cerulean and cyan. Their ears are long and pointed, like fins, and they have long rows of gills running down their backs, along with a dorsal fin similar to a dolphin's along the spine.. At the top of their head, hidden by hair, they have a third nostril that acts as a blow hole. They can breathe air or rely on their gills, each respiratory system supplementing the other.

Their society is highly organized to the point of fascism, and governed directly by their god, Occus. Occus was a brother to the dead gods Relta and Gretash, and chose not abandon his merfolk race when the war of the gods ended, unlike most of the other gods. To tribute his fallen siblings, he decided to lead the merfolk race personally, which has kept their society vibrant and unusually stable for countless generations.

Merfolk are known for horrible sprees of genocide after the war of the gods - the merfolk are the only aquatic godtouched race left (save for water dragons). All the others were hunted to the last individual, to ensure that the merfolk had no competition in their sphere.

>>3747048

Continued...

As mentioned earlier in the thread, merfolk biotechnology is pervasive and advanced. Their vehicles are living creatures. For example, their dreadnought battleship is a giant, mile long eel that the surface dwellers call "Leviathan" and think is a natural animal. As another example, merfolk side arms resemble lamprey eels with large eyes. These creatures have been bred to latch onto a merfolk's arm, and then generate and fire pulsed lasers.

Merfolk cities are alive as well, with buildings submerged, and a giant jellyfish dome holding in a bubble of breathable air, maintained by living CO2 scrubbers. Virtually every merfolk structure is a living thing, or maintained by living things. As a precautionary measure, they never allow their technology to breed itself. Instead, they have entire farms where they grow their technology.

Since the "Silent Era," the time during which the afterlife was broken, Occus has had the merfolk retreat to a single area of ocean the surface dwellers now call "The Great Barrier Sea." Merfolk mercilessly sink and destroy any ship or airship that tries to cross it, largely using the leviathan, so all trade routes must circumvent this very large body of water. None know Occus' reasons for concentrating merfolk forces in one area of sea for 7000~ years, without any other action.

As a final bit of merfolk information that has not been brought up on the blog, I would like to mention ardlins again, Aarn's saurian-koboldish creatures.

As ardlins are a brand new race, created by their god not 75 years ago, there are many, many varieties of them. Godtouched races are typically created with wildly different, genetically compatible breeds, allowing the strongest design to survive and shape the entire race.

There was a group of ardlins that spawned in the Great Barrier Sea, and most who even knew of their existence assume that the merfolk exterminated them, like they have done to all other aquatic godouched races.

Instead, the Merfolk chose to enslave them. As these aquatic ardlins are half the size of merfolk, they made for excellent "health maintainers" for the merfolk's larger biotechnological creatures. These aquatic ardlins are referred to as "biological units" and treated as a maintenance resource. There are thousands of these ardlins within Leviathan alone, scrubbing, maintaining, and repairing the smaller veins and capilaries of the huge beasts, where merfolk are too small to go, and their biotech creations too stupid to truly maintain efficiently.

>>3746585

Spoilers: those are all humans.

A unicorn is not a vampire or a fairy.

>>3747110
>Gypsies
>Human
lololololololol

>>3745698

It's a fantasy world. If Earth had some godlike creatures that want to create new races then we would probably have more than one sentient creature, wouldn't we? At least his races are interesting, all of them. Some fail with even one race, making them uninteresting.

>>3747249
Precisely. I mean, what would happen if you dropped a bunch of bio-engineers (with all the necessary equipment and biomaterial) onto an empty planet and told them that all the ethical and moral reasons preventing them from pursuing the limits of their science did not apply here. Also assume their technology and knowledge is leaps and bounds farther than what we have now. The trip caused sterility, but also immortality.

I would imagine they would start to come up with some crazy shit...

>>3747048
>>3747053
>>3747092
Wow. I guessed right on a lot of stuff, but you threw me some curve balls too. I love how you make note that they do not let their tech breed, but rather grow it in specific farms. That they have a history of genocide leading them to be the only godtouched in the sea beside the water dragons adds an interesting layer to their society. Especially so when you realize their patron deity has remained literally their patron this entire time.

Has there been a recent boost in the efficiency or advancement of merfolk technology within the past 75 years since the aquardlins (that name works out much better than I thought it would) were enslaved? It seems like the leviathan would have been much harder to maintain without them.

>>3747516

Irony is not the correct word, but perhaps in a measure of pointlessness, the use of aquardlins as "Biological units" has only increased Leviathan efficiency by perhaps 20%. Not much for the price of enslaving an entire race of sentient, fellow godtouched. Before the biological units were adapted, Leviathan was maintained by a horde of specially bred creatures that would repair leviathan's wounds, scrub plaque out of its veins, strengthen its muscles, and oxygenate its blood.

These creatures still exist, but before the aquardlin biological units were introduced, Leviathan's maintenance could only be directed by the instinct of these creatures. Flooding these creatures into its blood stream to prioritize repairs in a battle was also hit or miss, as too many creatures in one area might reduce efficiency.

With aquardlin help, these creatures can be relied on less, and the repairs and maintenance can be carried out more quickly, but the leap in technology is not that great.

As an side note, the merfolk race only adapted biological technology long after its genocidal campaigns. Though merfolk rely on few magics today, The informational processing power of wizardry technology was required for their gene therapy projects that led to their modern tech.

Wizardry, as a magic, was invented by the god Jennin, as a unique gift to his human creations. As other races stole the secrets of this art and science, so did the Merfolk. The merfolk chose to abandon wizardry, and all magic (save for the magical skills of the aquardlins today) when the Aldeoran race perpetrated the cataclysm that created the eastern islands, slightly before Nektos decided to create undead and break the afterlife.

Merfolk could see the damage caused to the planet's crust, under the waves, and understood that wizardry was not to be trifled with. Their modern gene therapy and computer-analogues involve biotech computers, with brains meant to process binary information, and display screens constructed from color-changing capillaries, such as in octopi.

As a final side tangent, most civilizations in and around the Eastern Islands (save for the nation of Igakari) either distrusts or even considers sinful the science of Wizardry, and some even, like merfolk, consider all magic too dangerous a technology to use.

sage for pseudo-scientific tectonics