Stabs' Pit of Nightmares (and ideas)

(I had been thinking, maybe we could call this The Hobble, and place it on a grounded ship instead of under a turtle's shell. Kinda like how the Hubble keeps finding new stars, y'now?)

Miragia Location: The Coil

Danger: Moderate, tending towards Legendary over time.

The hollowed-out shell of a particularly large dead Torkudas in Miragia serves as a small redoubt for people looking for a way out of Felarya. While the Negav gate connects to many worlds, and the Ur-Sagol gate connects anywhere there's a portal, many worlds connect to Felarya only once, never to be heard of again. The people that end up in Felarya during those disturbances, if they will struggle to return to their homes, flock to a spot within Miragia known as The Coil.

The Coil stays in a relatively stable zone of Miragia. Continuous efforts are made to redistribute the dimensional unstability as far away from the station as possible; from there, vanishing land activity is monitored continuously. Most of the Coil's nonmages spend their time searching through vanishing lands, taking pictures and material samples, or in rare cases, attempting to pre-empt a vanishing land in order to be transported to another world so as to study as much of it as possible. A huge archive is kept inside the station, where the materials are compared and studied continuously in hopes of being able to tie them to a particular world.

Both the unqualified and qualified staff are ever insufficient to search as much as they would care to: anyone desperate enough to join The Coil is welcome. The odds of ever finding one's homeworld again are slim, but it does happen (though some people get desperate enough to compromise instead). However, many people die first as no risk is worse than an unknown risk, and the Coil is all about uncharted lands. Having any handy skills, on the other hand, will allow one to stay inside the shell, where the risk is almost minimal.

Supplies of all kinds are always in extreme demand there. They aggressively hunt anything that moves, trade cures (jars of dirt, mostly) with any vanishing land they can (and there are rumors that some small groups prefer to armor up and discreetly raid them), and freely deal in unusual demands that anyone may want to make regarding the uncharted worlds out there. They receive some aid from the OADD, Negav and Galfam-Abh, but it's never enough.

The Cult of Lataran stole the Codex where they kept identified worlds a few years ago. Though some effort has been made to rebuild the archive from what people remember (and there are backups outdated only a decade or so in both Negav and Galfam-Abh), a small reward has been posted for anyone who can recover the file from the Temple of Lataran.

I like it. It gives me the idea to present future stories or ideas based on true "Indiana Jones Like people." Not to mention it puts in a notion that someone will take advantage of the idea of dimensional instability as a chance to to be very versatile in research more than anything.

Too flesh out a few things, you should go into more detail of what kind of people are there. We know that most of them want to get back home but their could be an interesting research station that scientist all over the continent would go to to get a lead on their own personal developments or something similar too that practice. Heck i could imagine the bigger guys on the continent would give these guys a pretty penny to find stuff like castles or fields of rare fruit,minerals,resources in general.

Other than that I like it !

Very cool idea that, Coil. A location that not only takes advantage of Maragia's unusual properties. I also like the fact that people who've been displaced from their worlds and can't get back at least have a chance there. Gives me some idea of how Kate might try to get home one day. Likely fail but still it'd be interesting to see. Also I find this ironic since I just started watching Babylon 5 this month and this place sorta makes me think of it. All these different races and peoples all crammed into one place. Kinda heart warming. Though I do have to ask...what keeps preds away?

Thank you for your comments, RV, JE.

The heartwarmingness, JE, I think is completely accidental. Drown a sliver of hope in an ocean of despair, that's my recipe.

Yeah, they could profit with stuff, RV. You never know what you're going to find; you could find tech based on a scientific principle exploited in a completely unexplored way, or even tech that works because of something that wasn't known before. That's without going into magic, because... you know. Magic could be anything.

But at any rate, I think these guys would mostly pick up random junk from just about everywhere, archive it like they're OCD, and sell anything they've got more than one of (unless they get desperate, which is... all the time).

I imagine they could pull a profit too if they dropped some sorta dimensional beacon on particularly interesting worlds, opening them up for someone else to do the exploration (exploitation?), but that sounds kind of mean. You don't know what they're going to do to it; someone you know may be from there.

As for the preds... Miragia's only common predator are dryads. Any other predators would have to be deterred solely because it's Miragia, and they could end up just like the crazy preys if they don't stay away from the Coil. Beyond that and the 50-foot shell that reflects magic, I'd say The Coil is basically defenseless.

I did consider predators amongst the Coil, but then I remembered they don't need the Coil. Preds can wander into vanishing lands anytime they want to, and don't need to group up for protection the same way we hoomynz do. Besides, they wouldn't fit in the station, and those that do, fairies, don't live long outside Felarya. The only thing The Coil has to offer is food that happens to share their interests, but there's just too much risk, too much bias to overcome, and even then, The Coil isn't the best place to live in.

Crisis likes other worlds, though. Go figure. :B

I like the coil idea
It's pretty unique and in the same time it make sense to take advantage of the instabilities as a powerful defense mechanism. Nice job ^^

I was thinking about making fairies that were hybrids with magic elementals, then I realized we already have too many fairies and too few magic elementals. So, there was this old idea I had, based off creepy crap, and now it's as good a time as any for it to come out of the Pit of Nightmares. Here's my creepy crawlie for today...

Magic Elementals: Floating Heads

One of the most disturbing types of elemental known to exist, floating heads spend most of their existence as a diffuse, slumbering presence underground. They don't take a form, much less notice of their surroundings, until magic disturbs their sleep. The use of magic around a floating head during its slumber causes it to gradually awaken, starting to feed off the magic as it is gathered. They don't take much at first, allowing for magic to function normally, but they quickly get greedy enough for wizards to notice. A wizard headstrong (or desperate) enough to continue using such will find themselves in a very dire predicament as one of their spells outright fizzles and the floating head manifests its form instead!

A manifest floating head looks like a comely female- with no body below the neck, her head enshrouded in a morass of ethereal, shimmering tendrils, much like ghostly hair. The head itself measures around eighteen feet tall, more than enough to swallow a human whole. They are heavily decorated with collars, earrings, crowns, face-paint and headwear, sometimes even with facial piercings, eyewear or masks; while these objects may look like stone, metal, bone, coral, plastic, leather, jewelry, live flesh or what have you, they're actually part of the floating head, and fade away if somehow removed. The designs they sport veer towards the complicated and intimidatingly bizarre, sometimes including such features as moving pieces, musical instruments, "slots" within the face, and even body parts. It is theorized that floating heads are capable of changing those designs, but the lack of brave souls willing to look at one twice has prevented this from being confirmed.

Floating heads usually devour the wizard that "summons" them right away, rarely being persuaded to chat instead; a floating head will fade back into slumber less than a minute after appearing unless they eat, and this knowledge makes them tend to be rather inflexible on that respect. They become chattier after eating, hoping to fill the borrowed time with something, but their voracity inevitably comes up every few minutes. Those who have chatted with one know them to be frightfully intelligent, and rather fond of news about the world, which they claim to mull over between enforced periods of inactivity: having interesting tidbits may save your life with them.

Being made of magic makes them less than material; these elementals are perfectly capable of floating through solid objects, a great advantage in the underground they prefer to inhabit. They can disrupt spells around them with a mere glance; only weapons that harm ghosts are practical to use on them, as spells won't work without their consent. They prefer to snack on other magical beings if available, much like other magic elementals.


Lataran didn't seem like the worksman to me. Besides, given it's older than any other building, and he's not the god of stonecutting, I was wondering how had Lataran raised the place. Seeing that Karbo's close-up of the temple had elements that seemed to belong to Angry Birds or maybe Legend of Zelda, I had an idea. God of thieves... there you go.

Architecture in the Temple of Lataran

The temple of Lataran is older than anyone can remember. As far as any records say, it simply sprouted up one day, fully formed. For most adventurers, this is good enough: ruins do not need much of an explanation, as long as there's treasure in there. Good amounts of treasure are stolen every day, and brought to the temple, by the faithful of Lataran.

Lataran himself prefers to steal other things. Recent findings, comparing sketches of earlier iterations of the temple to its present form, show that the temple has changed form over time. Further research and cross-checking has proven that the architectural style of renovated areas matches perfectly with other styles developed elsewhere in the multiverse. A little questioning has revealed, much to everyone's surprise, that the architectural style isn't the only thing that matches. The entire architecture of the changed areas, down to the position of the water closets, matches that of specific buildings, in fact, buildings that mysteriously disappeared from their original location!

This discovery has been met with general outrage and tremendous bafflement. Suffices to say Othemites did not take kindly to learning that one of their temples that had been supposedly torn away, stone by stone, by heretics whose blood was spilled in retaliation, had actually been spirited away by Lataran and is now used to host a course named "The Way of the Monkey". The thousands of pounds of gold foil that adventurers (many of them financed by the Othemites) pried from its gilded halls only add insult to injury.

The proximity of the temple to the Giant Tree seems to suggest that Lataran might have stolen the tree too. The titanic dimensions of the plant, on the other hand, have led some to theorize that it was enlarged upon arrival as has happened to some people: even for Lataran, there's no way he could've stolen a tree that big. Some believe the closeness of the temple to the tree is evidence that Lataran is still pinned underneath it, remotely toying with structures to pass the time while he figures out how to dig himself out of that mess.

-The Tree

Not a lot of people pay great mind to the stars; the direction in which they turn is often missed, despite being one of the few indicators for the four cardinal directions. The stars all over Felarya turn in the same direction, and this is very important at sea. For those at land within the main continent, the Giant Tree serves just fine. In fact, by observing which branches they are facing, many individuals learn their exact bearing: while the tree is evergreen and gigantic, it is not cylindrically symmetric, and the rate at which its branches grow, fall off and regrow is slow enough as to consider it practically unchanging on a geological scale. The same branches have been pointing north for centuries, and most people know what the tree looks like from where they live.

-Thaumaturgical Directory
The entities one can make a thaumaturgical pact with are varied. Here are a few examples.

-Elementals (bind):
No elemental ever pacts with a binder willingly: it is as parting with a fraction of their essence, and unlike other thaumaturgical entities, they can't do this naturally. In order to make a pact with an elemental, one must bind it first (which usually involves slaying it and preventing its regeneration), strike a deal next, and finally enforce it upon the creature. The powers one can expect from the elemental are pretty much obvious- power over earth from an earth elemental, power over water from a water elemental, power over technetium from a technetium elemental...
The elements care to be free, and they will never abide by any deals if they are given an alternative. Hence, they must be chained, and kept from reaching both full strength and sufficient clarity of mind to refuse the binder: should the first threshold be broken, they'll break free, and should the second threshold be broken, only threats will help keep one compliant. Exactly what will deter an elemental from denying their binder depends, but most of the time, the threat of being bound for what will amount to an eternity with no possibility of ever reaching full strength will keep one mostly compliant. Should they ever break free, however, retribution is to be expected.

-Angels (reading):
Most angels are not willing to make pacts with anyone. Of those that are, most are known as squires or shieldbearers: naïve and innocent creatures with little power, often rather bare, with an almost childlike appearance and nearly unarmed. Untrained with their own essence, they employ it as a bargaining chip to gain the aid of a mortal in their everyday tasks. Anyone who can prove their heart pure and their cause just may call upon one of these: if they are found worthy of watching over the little angel (it goes two ways, as the angel will watch over them right back), they may even make a pact with them. Shieldbearers grant their binders the power to heal, fortify, protect and mend.
In exchange, those naïve things need their binder to provide help with whatever dillemas they encounter in Heaven: most of the time, this will involve giving moral advice, looking up information, and generally showing a lot of confidence. Squires are literal-minded, and given bad advice or talked to sarcastically they'll follow it, probably losing their contacting privileges in Heaven, which would leave the binder in (pardon the pun) quite a bind. Lying to one of those poor creatures is a dangerous proposition. While they'll fall for anything hook, line and sinker, they have a tendency to blab about it. Heaven doesn't like it when its most vulnerable people are used with no consideration: some heavenly retribution WILL be coming your way. So don't be naughty with the poor things!

-Ancestors (blood):
Ancestor pacts are the simplest to make, though very restricted. Elven wizards in particular favor this contact with their ancestors, and many rely on tutoring from these ancient beings in order to advance their skills. Depending on the individual's family tree, a contact with these spirits may grant many things, though it usually grants little beyond tutoring in a few trades, a thorough knowledge of the grudges that run in and around the family, and a fun way to gossip with your many sisters across extremely long distances.
While some fun relatives may very well be mighty warriors, holders of far-reaching secrets or arcanists of the highest degree, it's paramount to remember that spirits whose intention is merely to serve you are only an ideal case. These spirits were people like you, first and foremost, and expect to be treated as family: realizing that they are being treated as means to an end will probably end up badly for you. No one wants to spend the rest of eternity suffering fools, so being annoying with them is an even worse idea. Most importantly, some of them may have agendas that carry beyond the grave: while spotting one may give you some leverage, you should be really careful of what you could be getting into. If your grand-grand-uncle was a beguiler in life, who's to say he won't deceive you into doing his bidding? What are you gonna do about it, kill him?

-Demons (service):
In stark contrast with heaven, hell's hordes do not care for your good intentions. Rather than shieldbearers, demons who deal with mortals are known as "handlers". What interests them isn't so much pluck and purity, but ambition and ruthlessness, qualities that make for good contacts in the material world. They expect the individual in question to use the power invested upon them to advance themselves immediately as far as possible: if the handler evaluates the binder's performance as less than golden, be it because of small-mindedness, scruples, remorse or (please forbid) quitting, nothing short of immediate usefulness will stop the binder from being betrayed and slain in a wicked manner (and even then, not for long).
If the handler proves this beginning satisfactory, the individual will be allowed to keep those powers (assuming no display of weakness follows) until service from them is required. Needless to say, to refuse is suicidal: every service is followed by a shorter period of peace, until eventually more is required of the binder than they are capable of. They usually die at that stage, and their souls are finally reaped for the handler's master (or mistress, it doesn't really matter). Those binders who continuously subvert this stage, delivering no matter the demands, may one day look forward to an afterlife in demonhood themselves.

-Watchers (music):
These bizarre residents of Lydus have interests extremely difficult to grasp by human and humanoid standards, but usually skill with a wind instrument will grant one favor with these entities. Watchers can offer one the ability to see into faraway places, and travel there, striding across mountains, seas or even celestial bodies with but one step; their familiarity with the fabric of reality is also imparted upon the binder, who'll be able to foresee and identify disturbances upon it.
Their apettite for music is nigh-insatiable, however, and eventually most binders fail to maintain their pact: watchers need specific melodies, melodies that don't exist yet. If their musician fails to improvise a melody to their liking, the pact is over: long-time binders of the Watchers have consistently delivered the right music to their otherworldly masters because they have learned what they seek, not because they understand it. While failing to honor a pact rarely carries any consequences, those who use the watchers' favor to travel might very well find themselves stranded without a plan. Further, those abandoned by the watchers tend to find strange creatures drawn to them for the first fortnight; the secret to surviving those seems to be not to play any wind instruments at all.

-Correctors (???):
The Correctors do not seem to take a consistent nor comprehensible interest in Felarya, and in fact, whoever managed to curry their favor should expect to be ordered to withdraw from it immediately. Inevitably, however, they all end the same way: sooner or later, the Correctors have stolen all color and willpower from the would-be servant, as they take no chances with any rebellion after they have invested such a chosen one.

I love a lot those ideas

The floating heads are really interesting and original. I'm just wondering  where a prey go when they are eaten XP  Somehow it makes me thing of the mirror maws you find in Milkadis temple. The two could be related ^^

The temple of Lataran stealing parts of other architectures is certainly fitting for the god of thieves !

The tree orientation make perfect sense, I can imagine Crisis and others use it so naturally they don't even realize it ^^

And good job as well on those thaumaturgic contracts . I especially liked the angel one. It's kind of cute and not what you would normally expect XP

I'd like to add a couple of those if you agree with the disclaimer

Stabs wrote:

Not a lot of people pay great mind to the stars; the direction in which they turn is often missed, despite being one of the few indicators for the four cardinal directions. The stars all over Felarya turn in the same direction, and this is very important at sea. For those at land within the main continent, the Giant Tree serves just fine. In fact, by observing which branches they are facing, many individuals learn their exact bearing: while the tree is evergreen and gigantic, it is not cylindrically symmetric, and the rate at which its branches grow, fall off and regrow is slow enough as to consider it practically unchanging on a geological scale. The same branches have been pointing north for centuries, and most people know what the tree looks like from where they live.

Simple, but amazingly usefull! O.o I hope you expand sometime and say which directions and branch formations lead to where and what. Also love the Thaumaturgical Directory entires! Particully found of Angels, Demons and Ancestors XD

Sho'nuff, boss. I agree to the disclaimer for a couple of these.

Karbo wrote:

The floating heads are really interesting and original. I'm just wondering  where a prey go when they are eaten XP  Somehow it makes me thing of the mirror maws you find in Milkadis temple. The two could be related ^^

Could be. You ever figure it out, just tell me. I kinda imagined they'd use their brain for digestion, but being metaphorical about it (or sending them off, together with the mirror maws' stomaches) might be creepier.

jedi-explorer wrote:

Simple, but amazingly usefull! O.o I hope you expand sometime and say which directions and branch formations lead to where and what.

That could do. I was thinking, maybe the Giant Tree could be like... like it had a trio of branches called the Chordoni Triad, because they point towards the Chordoni, a broad branch called the Topazial Fan because it points to the Topazial, a high root called the Jadong Snake, because it curls along the ground but generally points towards Jadong, and so on?
Still, I'd sooner leave that part to Karbo. My mapping skills are gone somewhere featureless and inhospitable. Like Mare Tranquilitatis.

jedi-explorer wrote:

Also love the Thaumaturgical Directory entires! Particully found of Angels, Demons and Ancestors XD

Karbo wrote:

And good job as well on those thaumaturgic contracts . I especially liked the angel one. It's kind of cute and not what you would normally expect XP

Thank you both. Glad I have a thought to inspire you, though I'm sure some magical girl anime has done something of the same thing I did with angels. They do everything forever with friendship.

Also, the idea is flexible. If you want, you can have the devils being the ones you help while the angels are the ones that require a strict code out of you, or make it so that elementals don't need to be bound if they're willing to make binding pacts, but demons or angels do, or all entities need to be summoned and bound, or all entities can be both made pacts with or summoned and bound.

I remember you wanted to make magic a bit more uniform, so that there could be an approximate rank for anyone. I'm afraid I don't know how would this fit into that... ^^; Maybe by being given an estimate according to the creature that's made a pact with you: should you make a pact with Baby Cupid, you get rank 1, while if you are working directly under Iridan, you have rank 5, and somehow getting one with Faldhatée means the guy who does the rankings will give you any rank you want if you just promise to leave without hurting anyone. Good enough for a first draft, though I'm not sure all of Iridan's cultists (lol, yeah right) are provided exactly the same magic.

A'ight, time for another go.

Apocalyptus
While usually present in the Green Hell, those tall trees sometimes are seen further south. Often measuring around 100 metres (330 feet) in height, their tea-colored smooth bark displays spiraled ridges of multiple colors. This tree bears a unique fruit, overall similar to a bright yellow coconut. The shell itself is very tough, an excellent thermal insulator, which hides within a mostly liquid fruit with ironically metallic pits, like those of a peach, floating freely within an oily, bitter liquid.

The toughness of the apocalyptus nuts usually renders them inedible to most herbivores, which makes the fruit juice likely to ferment. At first this isn't a problem, but the fermentation products formed are ever more volatile, and they generate gases that increase pressure within the shell. Past a certain point, the pressure inside the fruit builds to such a level that a hard strike can break it. Immediately, contact with oxygen causes the fruit to explode, sending bits of shell and iron pits flying in all directions. The seed pits usually survive to grow a new plant, but a human-sized target caught in the vicinity of the explosion might not be so lucky.

Some natives harvest green apocalyptus juice for fermenting, which can be employed in truly deadly weapons. Most of them prefer to make use of the whole fruit instead, though, by burying it and leaving it to explode if a predator steps on it, or by using magic to detonate a particularly overripe specimen.

======

We also ought to reword the thing about the tree not being axially symmetric, Karbo. I think I was not focused back then, that article is so confusing it may as well be breakdancing. Here's a redo.

The Tree

Since the stars can't be used for orientation in Felarya, locals have to use landmarks to find their way. The problem with landmarks is that the trees are too tall, and obscure most of them.

Some natives get around this by using the giant tree as a landmark. It's perfect: the branches themselves are bigger than many landmarks, visible from much farther, and barely seem to change over time. If one pays enough attention not to mix them up, it's easy to tell what way one is facing, simply by checking which branch of the tree one faces.

Of course, there are two major problems in using this system. First, one must climb all the way to the treetops to get a good look at the Giant Tree. For flying and climbing creatures such as harpies and nekos it's not difficult, but humans can rarely employ this system. Second, the tree is massive: most smaller creatures who employ this system stick to one view of the tree and never learn others, because going all the way around the tree would require hundreds of miles of hiking and countless climbs up unknown trees to take long looks at the tree. It's enough for most of them to know which direction the giant tree is, and assume that if the branches they can see have changed, they have wandered into a disturbance (or simply gotten lost).

I like the Apocalyptus XP
It's a simple but really efficient way to spread seeds around ( like some plants actually do but on a much much small scale of course )  and it fits well the general danger of the area ^^
I'm just not sure about the metallic pits though. You mean it has metal fragments in it ?

And ok for the Giant tree, I'm adding your precision about it

Xerines
Starts with an X. I thought I wouldn't mind having at least one species that starts with an X, though maybe we'd better leave the X, Y, W and Z's to more mysterious creatures, with more arms, eyes, dimensions, and sheer craziness. (Xerinae is the name of the subfamily according to Mammal Species of the World, which seems a little less official than I'd like, but eh. It's Cynomis otherwise)

Xerines, also known as tunnelers, are a hybrid species that resembles humans combined with ground squirrels (marmots and similar species). They stand about as tall and heavy as humans, marked as different by the presence of two round ears near the back of their temples and a wide tail full of short, stiff hair. Most of them, but not all, sport thick frontal teeth and thick, protruding bone claws.

This species thrives in remote lands, far from Negav, where they make their homes in hard, rocky, uneven grounds. They favor mountains, but will readily colonize hills or even ravines if the conditions work for them. Their colonies are easily recognizable by the grid of crops atop them, and the occassional plume of smoke coming from the trenches underneath.

Xerines live in small colonies of 60-90 adults, with maybe half again as many immature individuals. Unlike other species, xerines do not camouflage themselves or hide their burrows. They dig grids of trenches on the ground, deep enough that they require ladders in order to come out of them: the gridded area between the trenches is used to grow crops. They mostly spend their lives in caves they hide within the trench system, coming above ground only to farm or forage. Some of them even go as far as to build mines under their trenches, were they to chance upon an interesting mineral formation.

Only the mature individuals ever venture outside the colony, which they mostly do in order to forage for some small luxuries such as fruits, tender stalks, firewood, timber, and (rarely) wriggly treats or extra water. They often carry tools crafted with unearthed rocks (some of which may be magical), fibers from their crops, and rarely bone or wood. The immature individuals stay in the trench system for as long as possible, taking care of menial tasks, sunbathing only at noon, and perhaps crafting the magic mineral-studded implements their trailblazers so favor. Magicians amongst the xerines are rare, and tend to focus on magic that assists in their digging. They often employ said magic in the construction of new colonies, where working swiftly is of the essence. The remaining adults rotate between farming and lookout duty.

The lookouts alert farmers about approaching threats, often through whistling: all adults will scramble for the nearest tunnel if such an alarm is sounded. Xerines are surprisingly succint, and adapt their alarm quickly to the kind of predator, the distance, speed, size, number, even combined species give them little pause for thought. One or two sounds suffice for them to convey so much information to the aboveground members that even a swooping harpy would witness only the members in her exact flight retreating, while the rest of the colony will just watch her fumble. The trenches dug into hard rock are often too deep and sharp-edged for predators to poke into easily, granting marmots a few extra moments to reach their caves. They only fight if caught within their burrows; they employ crude spears and knives for that, rarely resorting to biting and clawing.

The amount of time they spend away from the sun, often being waited out by stubborn predators, has led the tunnelers to find plenty of ways to amuse themselves. They also practice competitive whistling, a common activity even unto late at night when a predator tries to wait them out: while the official explanation is that they are practicing their whistling alarms, most predators theorize that the aforementioned whistling is intended to keep them awake until they go away in annoyance. They appreciate arts and crafts as a way to keep their sanity, and the walls of their inhabited caves are often full of carvings depicting grisly scenes where the artist clearly couldn't stop thinking of something. Their meager possessions are also engraved top to bottom, though the xerines have enough practical sense not to use an object if they've scratched it too much. This is not to say they're nervous people: the tunnelers are outwardly easygoing, come to trust quickly, and are confident enough not to be afraid to show it. More than one explorer has come to realize that he gets one peck on each cheek every morning not three days after introducing themselves, just as if he was one of them.

Xerines are mostly safe from all but the most industrious predators, which may decide to spend a great amount of their time widening or blocking their trenches. Rock harpies, which they cohabit with, are another problem, as they can simply suck them out of their trenches or burrows; the diggers handle this by digging branching dead-ends and extra exits for tunnels, so the air sucked in from one end is drawn mainly from the other; by hiding in the dead ends and clutching heavy rocks, the marmots avoid most of the force of the air current.

They have a difficult time with fairies. The otherwise foolproof plan for xerines' colonies breaks down in case of fairies, as they cannot deny the size-shifters entrance to their burrows. Some of the colonies solve this by improvising doors, which keep out most fairies; failing this, they enact plan B- to continuously run around their mazelike burrows and wait for their chasers to give up. Both fairies and other giant predators (which may join in the fun) seem to appreciate this sport more than the tunnelers do.


Settlements In the Wild

While Negav, Nekomura, Safe Harbor, Chioita, the Rosic Village and the ports in the Shimmering Sea make for most of the significant settlements on the continent, there are a few more settlements that may merit mention.

Nan Muo

Somewhere between Deeper Felarya and the Green Hell lies a small village. Nan Muo has a combined population of around 150 people, between nekos and humans.

The village is hidden below low trees, criscrossed by bamboo-like growths and large bushes. The foliage and terrain keep the town from sight and out of the preferred way for most predators, including the giant nekos that enjoy using bamboo as chopsticks to catch humanoids anywhere else in the forest.

The village sorely lacks in technology: they use and abuse bamboo for construction and furniture, barely even using stone. The few metal implements they have, knives and bamboo splitters for instance, they keep a watch on like hawks. Earthernware, bone, hide and rarely wood, complete the full spectrum of construction materials in this primitive place. The people of Nan Muo are mainly hunter-gatherers living off the wild, craftsmanship being minimal with one glaring exception.

While they have little ability to fight and very little technology, this also works in their favor: they have little need of anything in order to relocate. At any given time, they have scouted the next location to which they can evacuate as soon as they are discovered, where erecting their houses out of the local bamboo should not take long. If discovered by predators, Nan Muo can scatter and see themselves out in basically no time at all, a process they repeat often.


Elyseum

Nestled in a green valley on the side of a mountain, the buffeting, freezing winds and thin air keep this isolated valley away from sight and mind for most predators. Beautiful windmills and a small fortress peek over the edge of the valley, which is itself dotted with the red roofs of a small town.

Elyseum, as its inhabitants dub it, is an elven settlement secluded both by its difficult geography and its isolationist mindset. As befits elves, their way of thinking is proud and a little arrogant, in this case falling for the trap of self-sufficiency. The valley grows its own crops and raises its own livestock, thus hosting only a small permanent population, which makes the most of their lore to handle a small industry.

They produce most of their metal locally through alchemical means that include the controlled electrolysis of various minerals, powered by several windmills. Their alchemy extends into other facets of their industry as well, but its limitations mean they must seek basics such as wood and stone outside their valley. This is an appropriate occassion for young Elyseum elves to see the outside world, which charms many of them into leaving the valley forever. Elyseum trades rarely and sporadically.

For all its lore, Elyseum depends on its remoteness to prevent predator attacks. While this works for most of them, harpies do not seem to mind thin air much. They are basically the only predator Elyseum needs to worry about, and are kept in check through several gimmicks such as reflective silver-plated spheres that reflect sunlight into any predator's eyes, large metal ballistas tipped with poison, and so on, and so on.


F.O.O.D. hideouts

In order to expand its reach, FOOD uses small bases where they can rest and resupply with little hurry. In a display of ambition, these bases are not only open to them, but to any human(oid) in distress.

The bunkers have entrances ten feet across, so their entrance room can be used to park vehicles. The other rooms are rather spartan and submarine-level cramped, but also serviceable enough. The half inch thick steel walls are strong, and often placed under roots or something that a predator would have trouble removing, but once found, it's only a matter of time before something gets in.

Hence, most of their efforts go towards minimizing the likelihood of exposure. Besides the obvious camouflage involved, heat detectors in the vicinity transmit a frequency to any FOOD receptors should predators be nearby, warning them not to expose the entrance. Some of them go so far as to not only conceal the entrance, but even add tracked hovering platforms behind it so vehicles do not leave a track when they enter. It's only ironic, thus, that FOOD makes it a point of guiding people to them: there are even animatronic displays in some entrances meant to convince any onlooking predator that the human in question did not enter a bunker, but was eaten by a lurking member of the fauna.

Each bunker is surrounded at a decent radius by guide stones. Each stone uses a cryptographic display made of multiple illusions, which, in the presence of any humanoid not recognized as a predator, first call their attention, listen for speech patterns, and then display written directions to the safe place in the closest match for the target's assumed language. Working under the assumption that curious fairies are going to mess with the guide stones, the magic is first concealed from detection, and even assuming the cryptography was tampered with, the real reading is liberally sprinkled with grammar, spelling and calligraphy errors so as to make one wonder whether they are meant to be, while decoy readings make a point of being simple to find and be perfectly written. Fairies have not made it a sport of finding all the guide stones (yet), but the practice of raising the signs might eventually fall into disfavor.

So far, FOOD is known to have one outpost in the Great Rocky Fields, one near the border between Miragia and the Forest of Whispers, near Ur-Sagol, and another one near the Topazial Sea. According to their financial records, they may have built up to four more outposts, though the actual figure probably oscillates between one and zero.

Stabs wrote:

Their colonies are easily recognizable by the grid of crops atop them, and the occassional plume of smoke coming from the trenches underneath.

XD I can so see a adventurer getting the wrong idea about funny lines in the ground with smoke comming out of the holes. Probably would think it's a dark ritual of some kind or a portal to hell.

Stabs wrote:

Magicians amongst the xerines are rare, and tend to focus on magic that assists in their digging.

Heh. Clare used to use a spell for digging, but I doubt the Xerines do it quite like she did. Such as jumping at a wall of soild rock and then twist around like an auger cutting through the rock with enchanted hands. Still I imagine it's probably a site to see.

Stabs wrote:

most predators theorize that the aforementioned whistling is intended to keep them awake until they go away in annoyance

XD That's an amusing image. A frustrated predator sitting outside of the Xerine's holes glaring at them holding her ears and looking like she wants to murder the lot of them. "Grrrr will you just shut up and get in my belly!? Augggh!"

Stabs wrote:

More than one explorer has come to realize that he gets one peck on each cheek every morning not three days after introducing themselves, just as if he was one of them.

Even the males? XD I imagine it must be a pretty interesting experience to stay with a family of Xerinites for a extended period.

As for the settlements I think they're all pretty good. Especially the elven one and Nan Muo sounds particularly visually interesting.

jedi-explorer wrote:

Heh. Clare used to use a spell for digging, but I doubt the Xerines do it quite like she did. Such as jumping at a wall of soild rock and then twist around like an auger cutting through the rock with enchanted hands. Still I imagine it's probably a site to see.

I'm thinking of it more along the lines of Soften Earth and Stone. Replace a 1-foot layer of rock from a 10-foot square per level with clay, starting at cleric level 3, or adept at level 4 (though you'll need to research the spell).

jedi-explorer wrote:

XD That's an amusing image. A frustrated predator sitting outside of the Xerine's holes glaring at them holding her ears and looking like she wants to murder the lot of them. "Grrrr will you just shut up and get in my belly!? Augggh!"

Heh, thanks. Prairie dogs are also known as whistle pigs- or was it woodchucks? I figured it wasn't because their whistling was pleasant. And besides, prairie dogs send very complex signals through whistling. I figured maybe they'd get some practice while they had the noun in their whistling right atop them.

jedi-explorer wrote:

Even the males? XD I imagine it must be a pretty interesting experience to stay with a family of Xerinites for a extended period.

Italians do it too. I had to temper all that practicality with some cuteness, so I figured I'd go for pecks in the cheek. The picture of two prairie dogs kissing each other's cheek was sure inspiring.

jedi-explorer wrote:

As for the settlements I think they're all pretty good. Especially the elven one and Nan Muo sounds particularly visually interesting.

Oh, thanks. It was the visual component that made it worth making.

Guess what month it is? Dimensional March!



Oathbreaker
Size: 25 feet at the shoulder
Threat: High

These elementals bear a passing resemblance to giant dogs with red geometrical patterns on their white-furred bodies. Bred mostly by genies, Oathbreakers can be trained to recognize the scent of their master and follow them anywhere, even into other realms.

The master they follow is exempt, but oathbreakers are generally hostile towards magical beings, even more hostile towards nonmagical beings working magic, and extremely hostile towards anyone who seems to be agitating their master. This breed of elementals was indeed bred to take care of any presumptuous mortal that would bind their master, and the most likely outcome when they find one is that they eat it. They've been bred with great resistance to magic, and even kind of a sixth sense for it, pre-empting most mages before they can use anything, and displaying strange cunning where it comes to bypassing magical defenses: they easily circumvent magical traps, and somehow improvise workarounds for most wards and bindings.




Dimensional Excursions

It has been pointed out numerous times that Felarya's predators would need a LOT of area to stay fed. So I was wondering, where does the food come from? Thinking outside the box I had an idea- we always think about how people of other worlds end up in Felarya, but we rarely make the alternative experiment, dragging a predator outside. I was thinking, what would a predator do outside Felarya? So I cooked up a new phenomenon: dimensional excursions.

Assuming a predator had ways of leaving Felarya, it'd stuff itself silly the first chance it got, I assume, since that's always a high priority. If it had time left, it'd sate its curiosity or play around, but there'd be no telling if that's all it'd do. Alternatively, predators in an excursion could see themselves as outsiders, and act differently than they normally do (maybe even going as far as to not eat anyone during an excursion! :B I know, I'm speaking madness).

Note, however, that making this a normal occurrence means a whole 'nother can of worms. If we accept excursions, then we have to assume predators are a danger anywhere in the multiverse, because one of them could make an excursion to your city/town/hideout/walkabout and eat everyone out there. They are no longer a Felarya problem, but a multiverse problem, and that means the odds of them pissing off someone with the ability to glass Felarya increases to infinity. It also makes the guardians no longer just protect Felarya from invaders, but also from retaliation, and that's just fugly.

We'd also need to assume predators either have some ability to traverse dimensions on their own by virtue of their size alone (given predators do not all share a specific origin), or assume there to be stuff they can use in order to fuck up some unlucky schmuck's day.

Excursions

Felarya is responsible for many phenomenons, not all of which are felt within its confines. Some of its phenomenons affect other worlds- as is the case for dimensional excursions.

The phenomenon known as an "excursion" consists of an organism being displaced from Felarya temporarily, and spending some time in a different world, before being recalled by the same force that displaced it. If it is a world inhabited by a civilized race, the effects are either disastrous or imperceptible: either great destruction or nothing at all results. Given only disastrous excursions are ever remembered, it is not known how many lead to worlds that do not harbor a civilization, or how many happen to imperceptible creatures.

Giant predators and other carnivores often take the chance to devour anything they can. More rarely, they will instead avoid eating anything during an excursion, and put on bafflingly different attitudes than they usually carry themselves with, taking the opportunity to learn about a world different from their own. However, not all predators being sentient, excursions most often lead to tremendous destruction.

Excursions raise several questions. The prevalence of sentient predators and giant monsters in excursions suggests there may be a method to induce one, nonsentient giant monsters only going in one by accident, which is somehow easier for creatures of a certain size. The exact means have yet to be found out. All creatures under an excursion seem to carry some of the effects of Felarya with themselves, allowing them to pretty much act as if they were on their home ground: they have enhanced healing, stay unaging, and can understand any language, though these effects aren't as stable as they would usually be.

The possibility predators may pose a threat to creatures outside Felarya has made some question the wisdom of simply leaving Felarya be, instead of making an attempt to burn it down. However, most civilizations capable of traveling to Felarya are also capable of finding ways to prevent excursions into their territory from taking place, and they are most often happy to do that before (or instead of) invading.




Spiral vine

This bizarre vine forms brambled spiral patterns wherever it grows, the spirals studded along their lengths with fist-sized, hardened, transparent sacs full of glowing blood-red jelly. Animals capable of shattering the shell (or swallowing it whole) find it quite nutritious, but gone uneaten, their true purpose is to initiate the vine's next stage in its lifecycle.

Patches of spiral vine normally spread quite slowly and focus more energy in developing their hideous fruit than in growing, but in the vicinity of dimensional disturbances, the spiraling coils unwrap and extend towards the dimensional disturbance. The nutrients inside the gelatinous protuberances are then used to fuel rapid growth, allowing the plant to reach and spread over the dimensionally disturbed area that much faster. Once the spiral vine has reached the dimensional disturbance, it swiftly consumes its reserves in order to cover the entire nearby area. Height is not a factor: many people have reported a ground-level vine quickly crawling up a tree and anchoring itself to something in midair, then slowly exploding in growth until it generated an unnerving, irregular ring of hardened vines in midair that anchored themselves to all nearby trees.

Spiral vine has a strange relationship with dimensional disturbances. First, it pins and stabilizes them, often anchoring a vanishing land or generating a portal in the process. Then it spills over through them if possible, invading whatever's on the other end. It starts storing nutrients again when it has both locations and the disturbance pinned, generating red protuberances once more. However, in this new stage of its life cycle, the sacs' contents harden, growing duller, darker, and changing colors through the rainbow, going from red to violet, as they become more densely packed with energy.

When the sacs have grown black, the vine reaches the final, ominous stage of its life cycle. With little warning, it magnifies the dimensional disturbance and slowly forces it to collapse upon itself, rupturing the fabric of reality and tearing the plant itself to a fine mist that spreads through the multiverse, with some chunks of its dense fruit surviving, if they're lucky, carrying its seeds inside. The collapse is usually catastrophic, often compared to a planar mole's passage, leaving nothing of what was in the vicinity but a conspicuous crater and a spiral-shaped landslide.

Ironically, the vine dries up and dies if transported across dimensional boundaries through any other method but its own reality-bending implosion, making it rather difficult for it to spread from world to world. In fact, its root system's sensitivity to dimensional disturbances is such, that it cannot take root too close to one: it needs to be close enough to crawl in, but not too close, for it to initiate the rest of its lifecycle.

Even more sinister, once it has begun reacting to a dimensional disturbance, spiral vine will no longer respond to magic that controls plants. It does, however, respond to being pruned and harvested: some civilizations have been able to keep stable portals simply by carefully pruning a spiral vine's fruit so none of its fruits ever has the chance to turn black, initiating the final stage of its life cycle. In fact, killing the vine completely usually works.

Some predators have found a more perverse use to for the vine. Eating a spiral vine makes one sensitive to dimensional disturbances, and furthermore, it causes the consumer to be pulled back to the world where the vine was eaten once it finishes its passage through the digestive system. There is a critical mass of consumption before any effects take place, however, which limits the effect to giants like predators and kenshas. Some giant predators intentionally eat the spiral vine in order to initiate an excursion.


The Buoys

These large, ovoid monoliths made of blackened iron lie upright over the land. Their surface is inlaid with undulating designs reminiscent of tentacles, covered with a pattern of dots generating the optical illusion that the device's surface writhes from several angles. A large, red glass orb with a seed-shaped metal bar inside is suspended above each monolith, held in place by powerful, permanent magnets. From all angles, the glass device looks like an eye.

It's remarkable how other than the fact that they have endured for so long, those cast metal devices are outstandingly mundane, possessing simply no salient properties. They are noteworthy only because of their number (over 180 have been accounted for); they appear most often in Miragia, but have been spotted in other locations as well. It is suspected they are intended to warn outsiders to avoid the area: if one of them were to travel offworld, their unsettling appearance would encourage onlookers to steer clear. Instead, they seem to act as beacons for the local predators, who know staying close to the monolith, even after it travels, will allow them to return to Felarya as soon as the vanishing land returns.

Those are well thought out ideas here
I think having Felarya interacting this way with others worlds is a bit opening a new can of worms indeed but plants evolving to reach others worlds in order to spread seem something that could well happens in Felarya and there is just something about the idea of having Felaryan preds visiting others lands and creating myths there that is pretty fascinating XP
Good job on that

The Oathbreaker is a nice idea as well. I like the idea of magical pets of sort for genies and their name sound pretty cool ^^

Well, I made ya think, that's good enough for me. Time for April's batch.



Okay guys LET ME SHOW YOU MAH POKEYMANS

Red Crawler
Size: 3-9 feet long (1-3 feet tall)
Threat: Low alone, High in groups.

A staple animal in Felarya, the crawler is more common in the Chomikai commons, where the lack of predators allows these creatures to breed in ludicrous numbers. Ten-legged, long, with black beady eyes and a red carapace, the crawlers live in underground colonies of up to 150 specimens. Crawlers have a ravenous hunger, and seldom pass up a meal while hunting. If it isn't possible to distract them by dropping some food, crawlers have been known to attack humans: they aren't very fast, but they are persistent, and their jaws inject a slow-acting paralyzing agent.

Furthermore, they have a sort of natural armor: the top of their flat bodies secretes a thick layer of reinforced foam that forms both an insulant and a buffer to the outside, which sometimes they augment by sticking on it the toughest pieces of debris they can find. Its underbelly is relatively undefended, but its low stance prevents most creatures from exploiting that: they are notoriously hard to eliminate with a flamethrower or even low caliber gunfire. Hand-to-hand is more effective on small numbers, but large numbers are nearly uncontrollable, even by multiple fighters, as they tend to have prepared tunnels and pitfalls anywhere they are willing to show up en masse. It is recommended to stay off the ground by any means necessary wherever there are crawler alerts.

(Credits to CauldronBorn24 for explaining to me they needed more oomph)



Bunnicub
Size: 9 inches long
Threat: Minimal

Gathion is where the magiocrats come from, Karbo, according to Lord Telandros' wiki entry. I figured they would be adept at combating a threat coming from their own world.

A fixture from the realm of Gathion, the bunnicub is said to have been bred in ancient times by Bunndalf, a mythological figure which some consider an archmage and others a demigod. After clearing a forest of bunnicores, he used magic to turn the last few of them into this small and harmless creature as a congratulatory tribute to himself. Whatever the case, bunnicubs are clearly the result of tampering of some sort.

Bunnicubs are very cute animals, with swirling white designs on their brown bodies. Their short, padded legs get tired quickly, but they can hop far if they have to: most important of all, they have big blue eyes and round ears that move independently. Being stocky, fuzzy and attached to their owners, they are extremely cuddly, and find a place as pets in a few places around the multiverse. They eat pretty much anything, but prefer fresh fruit and vegetables, which they nibble at with their sharp teeth.

There is a problem with them: if allowed to eat a few pounds of meat, bunnicubs will fall into a coma and transform into bunnicores by the time they wake up. For this reason, one of the first actions of the Magiocrats when they came to power was to ban the breeding and import of bunnicubs in Negav: a wild population exists in Chomikai, where they have joined the base of the food chain. Hence, hunters in Chomikai are expected to take, bury, or hang, the carcasses of their kills.



Carrion Bunnicore
Size: Average of 5 feet at the shoulder
Threat: Moderate to Medium

Though the bunnicub has had size and aggression bred out of it with magic, eating its fill of carrion restores the creature's heritage. Aside from being much larger than the bunnicub, the bunnicore possesses massive claws and three rows of triangular, regrowing teeth on an elongated, wrinkled snout. Its hairless, orange body fails to conceal the bulging, rippling muscle cords underneath, and its back has several rows of dark, coriaceous protrusions that only add to the sinister appearance of its yellow eyes with small pupils.

Unlike bunnicubs, bunnicores are obligate carnivores and extremely aggressive. They will not hesitate to kill and eat any animal they find, even their beloved owners or bunnicubs. Bunnicores themselves are not considered edible: half a pound of the deeply bitter flesh they leave behind is toxic enough to make a man very sick, though some people will consume it in moderation just because they can.

Bounties on bunnicores are often offered around Negav, given their voracity and aggresiveness make them a serious threat. Wizards can also use an extract made of the livers of ripe bunnicores (freshly transformed bunnicores' bodies mostly melt upon death) in transformative magic: morphing bunnicubs into bunnicores was a popular industry during King Tohno's reign, and the ensuing accidents a staple of that impopular time. Efforts to use them as guardians have always been hampered by the fact they are so miserable in captivity that they die if they aren't drugged. It's said that the Negavian Underground boasts an arena where bunnicores are made to fight each other, their owners experimenting on ever more frightening strains of bunnicore...



Bold Glutton
Size: 8-12 feet tall when rearing up
Threat: Moderate

This brown creature looks like an oversized hybrid between a bandicoot and a hamster, except for four black, beady eyes, and a neckless body with a three-foot wide and deep mouth. Its neck is decorated with a long, red gall. The glutton spends most of its life on or near the water, regularly coming out to forage. It uses its oversized mouth to stuff a large gullet quickly, later regurgitating its meal and sending it down its true digestive tract.

The bold glutton has very well developed senses of smell and taste, and seems to have a weakness for large stockpiles of produce. Sometimes after catching wind of one, it spends some time planning on how to get to it. Its sense of smell is good enough to tell just how long any particular human has spent near any spot close to the stockpile, and its cunning is incredible: it's been known to figure out not only patrol schedules, but also some basic traps.

Some farmers have made it a point to cover their produce in wax or poison: this doesn't deter the creature, whose resilient and developed tract allows it to store poisonous food in its gullet harmlessly until it has a chance to clean it off or find an antidote. It's not known how the glutton can find antidotes: it's suspected its sense of taste is just good enough that it can taste the right antidote for a poison. The creature is so bold that if caught red-handed by a farmer in the act of stuffing its gullet, it'll consider stuffing itself with the farmer too. It stops paying attention to its nose while eating, so there is a chance to sneak off before it notices, but once it does, sudden movements are a very bad idea. An agitated glutton will resort to swallowing a threat if possible.

-Dungeons and Bagging

I'd been thinking about dungeons. Felarya has adventurers, and some of those are very much into looting ruins. So I had to ask myself where'd the ruins come from. Who'd have built those?

According to wiki, there's 4 major civilizations that have spread through large areas of Felarya. There's the Titans, who built Jadong Temple, there's the Elves, who had the longest empire, there's the Sagolians, of old Sagolian fame, and then there's the dridders. There may be some benefit to adding a little detail to every of those civilizations and their ruins at present day... so...

DUNGEONS IN FELARYA

The origin of the treasures in Felarya that adventurers often set out to unearth is a legitimate question. With rare exceptions (such as the Temple of Lataran), dungeons do not spring up to deliver treasure and monsters upon worthy challengers: they become that way through circumstance. Most of the dungeons in Felarya, and their treasures, are actually remnants from long-gone civilizations that just happened to contain valuable treasures. For instance:

The dridder empire, despite its short life as one of the dominant forces in Felarya, expanded and fortified rather aggressively its fortified lines under Sineria: dridder strongholds are frequent compared to other ruins. They are also the most recent, thus suffering the least wear and tear of all ruins. The great importance of giant dridders in their culture (their royal line was one of giants) means that most such strongholds sport chambers large enough for giant dridders to live comfortably on. Considering the girth of a dridder's abdomen, that means the structures are massive indeed.

Most work spaces for man-sized dridders were in plain view of the larger dridders, and floors were separated for the ease of access of the latter: given that man-sized dridders can climb both up and down easily, their structures eschew doors, favoring instead verticality and netting (now mostly gone) as a barrier for the unwelcome. Some of those strongholds were abandoned in haste, and a canny adventurer could locate extraordinary caches of weapons and currency within. Unfortunately, canny predators have made their home in those ruins, taking advantage of their thick stone walls for a reprieve whenever they need to rest, and of the giant amenities inside for creature comforts. Giant dridders in particular favor these structures for nesting.


Sagolian people used to expand rather aggressively. The empire's old capital isn't their only ruin, just the only that the jungle hasn't been able to properly swallow so far. Nonetheless, their building technique, favoring monoliths and large stone blocks is known to have been widespread during their time. Nonetheless, Sagolian structures were heavy in both magic and maintenance, and they have felt the disappearance of their masters harder than other ruins: all Sagolian buildings are now thoroughly dilapidated.

They are rich in whatever magic and lore hasn't disintegrated since those years. Sagolians claimed large plots of land, and occassionally it is possible to find a temple complex or a noble's villa lost north of the Jewel River: some of them have been cleaned out to the point that they have nothing to offer but respite from the rain, but there may still be great riches to be gleaned from the greenery-covered buildings.


Elven strongholds are even older than both dridder and Sagolian settlements. They harmonized quite well with their environment, some of them being even built into the surrounding greenery, which, thanks to special spells, would only grow around it. Due to this, these structures are even more concealed than normal, and unfortunately, every one of them has a layer of bark covering every surface that wasn't sealed against the intrusion of either light or plant stalks. Though jewelry is quite common in those ruins (it is said that the Jewel River now only holds what gems the imperial artisans turned up their noses at), the true prizes inside are mostly enchanted wood and ancient earthernware.

As both elves and Sagolians were aware of ley lines, there are very few elven constructions surviving on the west bank of the Jewel River: the empire had no compunction in razing major elven architecture to build anew atop it. Elves have not forgotten this, and some of them openly place the blame on contemporary humans for these acts of vandalism. Elven strongholds are more common on the east banks of the Jewel River, where some of them endure, inhabited, to this day.


Titans and their ruins were, unfortunately, scoured off the face of Felarya after their defeat, according to ancient elven texts. However, it's possible that some isolated structures have survived at great depths beneath the surface. If this is the case, even a single room from such a ruin would contain treasure of greath worth, both historical and monetary. The only structure currently known to have been created by Titans is the depths of the Jadong Temple. It's not known yet whether it is representative or not of the Titan architecture.

Titan dungeons have only been theorized about. Given their lack of bodily functions, it's very likely that the dungeons had only workrooms and corridors. Records on their behaviour suggest that Titans likely tended towards repetitive or iterative designs in the decoration of their mostly spartan, utilitarian facilities. It is possible titans may have employed other constructs in order to protect their holdings: even if titans are no longer functional, those other constructs may still be. Though currency is not likely to have been a staple of titan existence, their interaction with other races during their time means they may have been given to possess some, and no one has yet been able to replicate Alcazath crystal or Tedrek steel, thus they still have great potential for valuables. Finding the remains of a genuine Felaryan Titan is also a mouth-watering prospect to most adventurers.

It is theorized thus that both the Ascarlin Mines and the Great Tonorion Hive may be the remains of Titan sites.

Other forces have built and abandoned strongholds in Felarya on a smaller scale. Elemental Sovereigns may have built lavish palaces in remote reaches of the dimension (in King Trazix's fashion), genies have been known to make their dwellings as well, and many legends speak of Angels or Demons whose abodes are now abandoned. Finally, it's possible some buildings have been warped into the dimension, never to return to their original world.

Really nice ideas here

I agree that the chomikai commons indeed need some fauna of its own. i like the crawlers and the bold gluttons. They still look dangerous but a notch down to what you can find further in the jungle and that works well. Looking back at it the Bunnicores might be a tad too Zany though ? ^^; and I like the idea of a cute, harmless, creature metamorphosing itself into something much more dangerous but then the trigger may need to be more complex than just eating lot of meat ?

I really like your thoughts about the different dungeon types in relation to their origins. It makes sense and it really helps to distinguish them, their architecture and what you might find inside. They could almost be a sort of guideline in the adventurer guild or so ^^
Great job !

I'd like to use some of those, if you agree with the disclaimer

I gladly agree. Happy you found the dungeons to your taste.

As for the... bunnicores, well, that may be true. The idea behind bunnicores was that we could have another hazard brought forth by human intervention in Chomikai. Crawlers were made dangerous by repelling predators, the hamster-bandicoots were made dangerous by growing food, and the bunnicores were a hazard because people brought pets.

Besides, we could do with more metamorphic critters, animals whose schtick is being used in magic, and such. If bunnicubs/bunnicores are too zany, I suppose I can rework the concept into something more fitting. Perhaps drinking chemical/magical spill makes bunnicubs turn into bunnicores? You can probably make spill at home just fine lol.

I loved the dungeons descriptions! So detailed and really immersive!! =O It should be in the wiki somewhere I genuinely feel. There's only one thing I think you could have added to make it better: Traps and dangers listed for the earlier ones, Sagolian, Dridder and Elven. Speaking of thank you for stating there's some Elvish buildings and towns still standing! ^_^ Makes me glad I haven't writen the next Clare's Quest yet cause I want to revise Choya. <.<

That's a good point, Jedi. I didn't talk about traps or hazards...

I assume dridders, given their ability to move vertically, would put all sorts of obstacles on the ground so landbound suckers had a hard time. Some of those obstacles would be more hazardous than others (traps).

For Sagolians, megaliths and moving bits don't mix all that well. We'd be looking more at spell traps, if at that- those structures were supposed to be inhabited. Perhaps some long-enduring guardians, such as elementals or constructs.

Elven architecture is impressive, but I don't see them doing clockwork. I assumed they'd be more of the sort that uses guardians, most likely summoned, and magical traps.

Stabs wrote:

That's a good point, Jedi. I didn't talk about traps or hazards...

I assume dridders, given their ability to move vertically, would put all sorts of obstacles on the ground so landbound suckers had a hard time. Some of those obstacles would be more hazardous than others (traps).

Yeah but I think they'd also have anti-dridder traps if they were bright. Remember Dridder's had a queen but the selection process made it so there was at least one dridder queen waiting in the wings. Not to mention dridders are underated as tomb raiders and bandits. Hmm need to make a fic character like that when I get time to write actually, but back to my point: There should be traps on the ceiling and walls that only a dridder guard or somebody official could diffuse easily.

Stabs wrote:

For Sagolians, megaliths and moving bits don't mix all that well. We'd be looking more at spell traps, if at that- those structures were supposed to be inhabited. Perhaps some long-enduring guardians, such as elementals or constructs.

Oh yeah. Or perhaps dimensional anomalies like a miniture version of the fairy warpping spell? XD Oh you could literally have the stupid laybrinth puzzle from Zelda and games like that. Where it's only a number of sequences that will guide you to safety and every corner looks the same no mater which way you go. Add to that a Sagolian Golem or Summoned Beast roaming about? Yeah that'd be pretty fun. Also don't just think about it as damaging traps. Sagolians were massively smart I can see them leaving magical riddles that literally kill you if you get it wrong or do something worse.

Stabs wrote:

Elven architecture is impressive, but I don't see them doing clockwork. I assumed they'd be more of the sort that uses guardians, most likely summoned, and magical traps.

Or the very living structure itself? For example rooms that open then the portal suddenly grows vines over it or just swells shut like a chromataphore, I think that's the right word, and seals you in then the "building" just waits for you to rot away and become fertilizer after starving to death. Or have vines that can be spelled to descend and grab intruders or....oooh! The poison dart thing only with pretyt flowers like in Jumanji shooting them at you. Stealth and it fits the setting, no?

In the words of the Tenth Doctor: "Oooh my head, my head! I'm bursting with ideas!!" This is why this needs to be int he wiki look at how much stuff I got just from the themes provided!

With all the contact that Felarya enables between dimensions, one would wonder why haven't all civilizations pretty much progressed as one over time. Why do we have so many civilizations that aren't at similar levels of technological advancement? Even if it took millenia, Felarya has lots of those. Well, I thought up of a reason why we have some medieval stasis in spite of... you know, the possibility of interversal contact.

I wanted to suggest the possibility that the universal milieu is not the only one that has existed, and the Correctors don't just fight to keep the barrier of reality intact, but also do some damage control: the Outer Ones would, in this assumption, not only have destroyed many worlds, but destroyed what at the time was ALL the worlds. The Correctors, meanwhile, would actively prevent escaped Outer Ones from wandering into the Present Milieu.

WARNING: Large assumptions involved. Proceed at your own risk.

Side A: Offworld Travel

The Galfam-Abh MURCOWIH defines separate worlds as "Spatial systems, closed from each other's perspective, such that any element in one of them cannot have an univocal position vector expressed in a dimensional coordinate system whose reference frame is on the other", a definition that most travelers find both wordy and not very useful. For most travelers, the worlds are simply "separate realities such that the only way to travel between them is through interdimensional travel", a definition that the MURCOWIH considers both tautological and nothing short of precious.

Whatever their definition, worlds are worlds, and they are usually closed to each other. Ocassions for interdimensional travel aren't common in all of them, but it is considered obvious that the worlds are all connected on some level in the known milieu (It would be a purely metaphysical question if a world completely closed to the others could exist, after all!). Dimensional travel takes many forms: some creatures are capable of tracking and following dimensional disturbances, while some other individuals can jump dimensions entirely on their own. Civilizations may take it one step further: whether by learning the ebb and flow of these contacts, rearing those with the power to travel the worlds, or harnessing the dimensions through the sciences, many have over time achieved the ability to cross the worlds.

With all the benefits that trade between such civilizations can bring, one is left to wonder why are there no trade routes between all worlds, all the time. Why are there nodes in Felarya and Belerim, while Kumannis has only recently began to conquer Balfrezagg? Why do some worlds cling to technology that is considered backwards in others, when they are just as exposed to the near-infinite ambition and ruthlessness that the cosmos harbors? Why is any lore ever lost and worlds aren't all at the same level, if extradimensional trade can so surely preserve and cross-pollinate lore? Why is technology at this point and none other, when it's been over 12000 years since the war of the Correctors?

There are limitations, as it turns out. For starters, while the worlds may be infinite, the currently connected worlds aren't an infinite number, nor are they infinite in their extension. There are maybe ten thousand, and another twenty-five thousands are estimated, each with maybe sixty million people on average (some worlds have hundreds of times this number, many maybe a hundredth of it). Not all of them have the ability to develop interdimensional passage, either: a shortage of either ascarlin, dimensional disturbances, or native sojourners can keep a world from visiting others for a long, long time.

Second, many aberrant lifeforms are drawn to frequent passage between the worlds. The construction of gates always runs the risk of drawing the attention of extradimensional denizens, and sightings of anglers and moles, while rare, are assumed to be underreported. The worst aberrations attracted to dimensional travel, however, are invasive interdimensionals such as the Telks pirates, who have only recently been fought off Mebron thanks to Negavian aid.

Third, gateholders are competitive. Gates like the ones in Negav and Belerim, capable of continuous functioning without attracting dimensional aberrations, are extremely rare, and the advantage they give their holders is worth hoarding. Belerim, in spite of its minuscule size (barely a hundred thousand inhabitants), holds positively obscene wealth and the ultimate in just about every luxury within the milieu thanks to its special gates, a state which its privileged ruling class is determined to keep at all costs, even if it means at the expense of other worlds. Political maneuvering, misdirection and sabotage are but the tamest of their methods to keep anyone else from dilluting their advantage.

The fourth (and maybe most alarming) issue is the sheer unpredictability of the vast interdimensional void. For every world that has some valuable secret or resource, there are many with lethal environments or hostile natives, some of which are itching to expand into somewhere: it is believed that Kumannis acquired its offworld invasion capabilities after repelling an attack from the Telks pirates, for instance, and the latter's actions have created a problem that the entire milieu will have to face. It is possible that exploring a new world may one day result in meeting a civilization whose technological level outclasses Belerim just like Belerim outclasses everyone else. And yet, that's not the most frightening scenario.

Rarely (but still far too often), when exploring a new world, planewalkers have stumble upon the vast, alien ruins of a specific civilization in an environment that is just too bizarre, even for a random dimension. Sometimes, they just grab what they can and come back quickly. Other times, access to the world they are visiting is invariably (and often irrevocably) lost soon, and so are the planewalkers in question. Examination of the relics brought back by those who didn't stay for long suggest barely a handful of different civilizations, yet an indeterminate number of separate worlds with basically the same series of civilizations, estimated in the low thousands for each of them.

It is assumed that these worlds were not cleared out one at a time, but rather that the wipeout was simultaneous- something slew everything within entire milieus, long after a single culture had assimilated the entire milieu and connected it sufficiently to generate the observed homogeneity. What could have done it is indeterminate so far, as is the reason why contact is always lost so quickly. However, some specialists theorize that whatever destroyed those worlds is still there, keeping everyone away from them. Another theory is that something destroyed those worlds... and (hopefully) something else wants to make sure whatever did it doesn't get out into the present milieu.

EDIT:

On a closer reading, I see the wiki doesn't support the Kingdom Hearts model.

Da Wiki wrote:

What is known as the Physical World is that part of the universe where only physical objects are tangible, and spirits and souls remain, for the most part, entirely intangible and immaterial. Most Physical worlds come mostly under the form of planets and other celestial objects floating in space.

This is also necessary for the Vishmitali to make sense- they were, before Felarya, STAR-farers, not universe-hoppers. And so are many of the humans in the fanon.

Therefore, I have a question- would a Barrier of Reality breach mean that the entire universe is lost, meaning, by necessity, that multiple universes must exist, or is the damage localized around one solar system/around one planet only? If the latter, are all worlds ('cept Felarya) assumed to be in the same set of physical coordinates? Does Felarya connect only to livable worlds, or does it often connect to planets with toxic atmospheres or nonatmospheres? I know it sometimes connects to the middle o' nowhere, and still manages to suck things in... so does it have some sort of predilection for inhabited planets?

As designed, this article is incompatible with the structure of the material plane- unless we further restrict the "35k worlds in the multiverse" in the article to "35k frequent planetside warp locations with the right conditions for life in them, plus infinite balls of rock/ice/farts."