General Q and A

Quote :

If you want to argue that they can, you'd probably need to provide some very situational circumstances.

Translation: Screw the rules, I have plot!

Malahite wrote:

ZionAtriedes wrote:

Well, many people view vampirism as being viral, spreading much like a disease carried by mosquitoes. It's introduced into the victim's blood during parasitic feeding. This would mean that the vampire wouldn't take enough blood to kill, only severely weaken the victim. You'd be surprised by how much blood the average human can lose and stay alive. The body tends to cling to life with a rather determined stubbornness.

You could apply the viral theory to most races that create more of their number by transforming other species.

Well, some varieties of Vampire do not pass the disease through generic feeding. They must provide a "Blood Kiss", wherein they share their blood with the victim (now, whether this is a willing sharing of blood or just a blood sharing in general is up for debate / another matter). Without the "Blood Kiss", a victim will instead just die.

Which still complies with the viral theory, just that the infectant is carried in the blood, not the bite.

ZionAtriedes wrote:

Malahite wrote:

ZionAtriedes wrote:

Well, many people view vampirism as being viral, spreading much like a disease carried by mosquitoes. It's introduced into the victim's blood during parasitic feeding. This would mean that the vampire wouldn't take enough blood to kill, only severely weaken the victim. You'd be surprised by how much blood the average human can lose and stay alive. The body tends to cling to life with a rather determined stubbornness.

You could apply the viral theory to most races that create more of their number by transforming other species.

Well, some varieties of Vampire do not pass the disease through generic feeding. They must provide a "Blood Kiss", wherein they share their blood with the victim (now, whether this is a willing sharing of blood or just a blood sharing in general is up for debate / another matter). Without the "Blood Kiss", a victim will instead just die.

Which still complies with the viral theory, just that the infectant is carried in the blood, not the bite.

Either way, it wouldn't work...since viruses don't work in Felarya. The vampire/werewolf/whathaveyou can try to infect someone, but the boosted immune system of the victim would simply swarm the viruses and destroy them before they can begin to replicate.

Vampirism, Lycanthropy and such just don't work. They are either caused by a form of necromancy (if magical in nature) or a disease (if viral in nature). They could come in from offworld, but they could not make more of their kind in Felarya.

There's also the curse variety, which would work (theoretically). However, luckily for Felarya, the number of curse-based versions of Lycanthropy and Vampirism are on the decline. Often because the trait is either presented in a beneficial manner (in which case it's often much more difficult to accidentally spread, possibly even being a heredity only), or because it's being pseudo-science'd into a disease / virus of some sort (which is then handled by the soil aspect).

yes, there are many different versions of vampires. in chibi vampire, vampires cannot spread like normal, they are totally separate species, and when a human and vampire mate, the child is unable to reproduce. only by drinking a sip of a blood of the vampire "queen" (so to speak) are humans and vampires able to have a full vampire child or two vampires finally able to give birth. so there are no vampire transformations, the child instead would become the vampire.

aethernavale wrote:

Timeline generics so far laid out by Karbo. Not set in stone yet as there are things that might be added and some dates shifted, but it answers some and others will be added in the future. Karbo's still deciding on when and how things happen, and just who might have caused them *coughMicoloncough*.




Back to the whole space/star thing though. I for one have always had an issue with the 'rift' above Felarya. For one thing, as currently described the rift must be a convex or concave shape with localized regions of peaked flux due to things like the giant tree. For an operator like me, this is a classic example of power distribution versus neutron flux, and Felarya is all over the place. You want to minimize local power densities, as otherwise you cause uneven burnout. If we apply this example to Felarya, we would see that some areas receive more energy than others, thus we don't have even burnout. Additionally, the rift above Felarya is not a single entity - places like Evernight (or Miragia) are linked to a() different location(s) simultaneously than the other areas, presenting an entirely new complex radical to our equation. Yet it is described and translated as if it were a single entity, and this I find hard to swallow.

No offense to anyone that came up with the ideas originally, but it seems like too much thought was left out of how it started and people defined Felarya by elaborating the symptoms rather than determining the actual causation. In other words, and I mean this with the highest possible acclaim, you're a whole bunch of Easter-Eggin' troubleshooters.




Allow me to present my thoughts on how this works. In other fantasy settings I've read (particularly Northworld), the atmosphere problem is solved by thus - one planet, one original entity, is 'dropped' out of space. This original entity is then divided into multiple entities, forming several planes of existence (in Northworld I believe it was eight, been a while though). Each plane of existence was created individually, with its own atmosphere, star, etc - even though originally there was but one planet revolving about one star and that point of non-existence, complete with gravity well where the planet once was, still remains in the same relative location, still orbiting the original star as if the planet were still a single entity that existed on the 'real' plane. Each plane was complete with its own separate atmosphere (or non-atmosphere, as in one of the planes of existence the star has reached endoflife and scorched the atmosphere and all life from the planet, a red giant preparing to extinguish), including the exosphere and 'space'. The spacial entity serves no purpose however, as one cannot leave Northworld in this way.

In Felarya's case, however, I would say we keep the same general example but throw in the chaotic radical Felarya so often represents. While the creation of Felarya is to Karbo's mind alone, I see it starting in much the same way as Northworld did - with a few notable exceptions. I say the inverse occurred. That is to say, instead of one planet creating multiple dimensia we have several planets of varying dimensia creating one single inhabitable dimension. When this occurred the anchor points (such as in Northworld's example) were lost, such that there was no point of entry but a point of exit instead, and the point of exit, while still linked to the dimension of its origin, is now a random event in said origin (relating to the current snapshot) created whenever someone or something breaches the atmospheric/ground barrier. Each planet was captured as a 'snapshot' of time, so that the star providing the life for that region will never extinguish as in essence the stars Felarya sees in the sky are frozen in time - the point of time their planets joined with the mass of Felarya. Rather than creating several distinct planes, we get several dozen/hundred/etc local regions within a single plane of existence instead. In this manner, the various 'regions' of Felarya all have a common grouping of 'inhabitable' stars to pull from (thus Felarya never 'connects' to an uninhabitable environment because all the environments have been predetermined and they were all 'inhabitable' at the time of creation).

In some areas, the snapshot is fixed (Evernight). In the majority of areas, the snapshot is a random event with a random chance to change thus creating the multitude of skies that Felaryan residents see. If one were to pay attention however, one might notice in their lifetime (given that statistics are on their side in an innumerable amount of ways) the changes occurring above them and also realize that they are occasionally looking upon a sky they have seen before. Traveling between various regions of Felarya with differentiating snapshots is possible without causing alarm due to dimensional zoning. That is to say, each snapshot acts like a venn diagram, where you have the two different snapshots and a region of both snapshots existing together creating a dimensional friction point. Within this friction point the two zones 'grayline' together and elements of existence become fuzzy. You might go from having one to two suns above your head by way of a second sun slowly appearing from behind the first, as if it had always been there and was just eclipsed by the other. This way the changes are subtle enough that unless you were paying attention to them (and not on getting eaten) you would never notice them. These friction points are what cause the random warp events that drop people from various dimensions into Felarya, and thus you have regions with a high number of events and regions of low events depending on the friction that is occurring between snapshots. Miragia Forest would be an example of this (several snapshots venned together to create a region of high events and rapid weather excursions).

As to Felarya being round or flat, I envision it being both. Brain freeze yet? What I mean to say is that Felarya is a 'flat' entity as far as dimensional entities go, but is curved about upon itself so that in the manner stated within the wiki you get a single 'contiguous' zone. A person can walk from the origin point 'around' the entire world and wind up back in the same point. Felarya itself however is not a planet, the 'curving' that is occurring and allowing this phenomenon is entirely a spatial function.

This is fascinating o.o
I 'll need a while to get my mind around this one though ^^

I like what Aether's describing there, however it seems too static for me. Only a select number of suns, only parts of worlds locked in a snapshot...

I thought that Evernight was in part formed because of Déméchrelle, rather than taken from another world (since if she wakes up she can start a process that would turn the whole Felarya into a copy of it.)

Anime-Junkie wrote:

I like what Aether's describing there, however it seems too static for me. Only a select number of suns, only parts of worlds locked in a snapshot...

I'm not sure I understand that point - Felarya is made up of many zones with seemingly conflicting interests that still mesh together. Do you really need a one-to-infinite dot plot here?

Anime-Junkie wrote:

I thought that Evernight was in part formed because of Déméchrelle, rather than taken from another world (since if she wakes up she can start a process that would turn the whole Felarya into a copy of it.)

Actually, from the wiki the forest is what makes it night, not the sky. The sunlight breaches the canopy in some places. My thought on that was that the area itself was sort of like a parallel proxy zone - where you have a sun shining above (and this area is still random), and then the top of the canopy is the 'venn diagram' mesh, followed by the zone of Evernight (which is static). In this way, where sunlight might be able to breach it cannot and the forest is still free to grow as it likes. Just a part of the idea though.


Remember, this was all a piece of the byplay I originally developed to help explain how Ion managed to drop Westersea into Felarya, but I opted to drop it. Pretty much a massive handwave at the moment, because by the nature of Felarya you're not supposed to do what I did without drawing attention to yourself of the undesirable kind. I was going to mesh that into the story then with the development of the rock that Westersea is currently settled upon. Making it act like a sort of blanking circuit, where what happened on/around it was not 'visible' to dimensionally aware entities. Still a bit of a stretch though, and one of the reasons I've skirted about explaining it in the story is because I haven't come up with a nice definitive explanation just yet.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

I thought that Evernight was in part formed because of Déméchrelle, rather than taken from another world (since if she wakes up she can start a process that would turn the whole Felarya into a copy of it.)

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me which big button I have to push to make this happen.

The red one, obviously.


Ok, real question this time:

Chlaenas are stated in the wiki to have a mildy paralytic venom, which I understand and agree with - all octopuses have this. However, an octopus applies this venom with its beak. How does a chlaena administer her venom?


I'd rather not give them fangs or modifying saliva, as while the beak is the mouth of an octopus I believe several other species already have such features and would like to see a variance. The idea I had that seemed to make the most sense is that one of their fingernails (middle finger of each hand? It's the longest finger after all) is elongated and the venom sacs are contained within those fingers. The fingernail of that hand is modified to not end so much like a human finger/fingernail but terminate more like a claw/short beak melding with the finger (like their tentacles meld with their body or a naga's scales meld with her human flesh), allowing them to pierce skin and inject their venom. This also fits with the venom-in-ink example presented in the abilities section - she could massage and 'milk' her finger much like scientists do to a snake (or other such animal) with her other fingers and then flick her wrists, causing short bursts to squirt out and allowing the venom to intermingle with the water. Thoughts?

aethernavale wrote:

Chlaenas are stated in the wiki to have a mildy paralytic venom, which I understand and agree with - all octopuses have this. However, an octopus applies this venom with its beak. How does a chlaena administer her venom?


I'd rather not give them fangs or modifying saliva, as while the beak is the mouth of an octopus I believe several other species already have such features and would like to see a variance. The idea I had that seemed to make the most sense is that one of their fingernails (middle finger of each hand? It's the longest finger after all) is elongated and the venom sacs are contained within those fingers. The fingernail of that hand is modified to not end so much like a human finger/fingernail but terminate more like a claw/short beak melding with the finger (like their tentacles meld with their body or a naga's scales meld with her human flesh), allowing them to pierce skin and inject their venom. This also fits with the venom-in-ink example presented in the abilities section - she could massage and 'milk' her finger much like scientists do to a snake (or other such animal) with her other fingers and then flick her wrists, causing short bursts to squirt out and allowing the venom to intermingle with the water. Thoughts?

Weill having the vemon sacs located behind claws which are part of the finger does make the vemon more acessable; though what about having the vemon sacls lacted in the tentacles? There are some speices of Cephalopod who have claws in each of the 'suction cups' in their feeding tentacles; you could have the vemon sacks conected to those.

Those claws are present in squid, not octopuses, though I suppose in a way they're all combined together by the chlaena derivative.


Still, while the tentacles could do it I like the 'beak' idea better. It's a part of their physiology that didn't translate over - the beak is the one 'hard' thing about most water cephalopods (though some like nautili have shells, and others have a hardened barrier in the mantle). The tentacles don't translate over to that - besides, the animal that does sting with its tentacles would be the jellyfish or the anemone, and we have those as well. I wanted to give them a unique trait that correlated with their unique physiology. Obviously giving them a 'beak' seems a bit much though - while I like seeing animal traits show up in the human portions I think I'm against that particular notion.

Additionally, given the nature/structure of their bodies putting such a thing in their hands is not a detriment. Its not as if they can't move their arms just like their tentacles.

mhh interesting question. i admit I didn't really thought about this one. To me the venom was delivered by fangs but there is a point to have it delivered by nails instead. mhh

Seeing as old age, disease, etc... are nonexistent in Felarya, how are pests (such as rats, mice, roaches, etc...) kept in line in cities such as Negav?

Hmm.. I'd say strict and insanely dedicated pest control. But the best way to control negavian rodent pests would probably be having something introduced that eats them en-masse...

Alternatively, just catch a whole bunch of them and start selling hotdogs of dubious origin (and quality) for a profit!

Rats and Mice are probably held in line by Nekos.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Rats and Mice are probably held in line by Nekos.

Wouldn't suprise me if Neera, Tomthumbs and the like hunt and eat the smaller animals as well. Insects are high in protein, and even rats and such would have a decent amount of meat to someone 4 inches tall. With the healing factor, rats wouldn't be disease-ridden either.

so neeras would eat tomthumbs, and vice versa?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

so neeras would eat tomthumbs, and vice versa?

No, that would probably be a bit too close to cannibalism.

They would all probably eat various insects, rodents (mice, squirrels, etc), and other such small animals. They probably hunt them much like humans living in the jungle would hunt Druiker and such.

Pests are usually exterminated to prevent them from spreading diseases. Why waste time and money exterminating pests if there is no disease?

itsmeyouidiot wrote:

Pests are usually exterminated to prevent them from spreading diseases. Why waste time and money exterminating pests if there is no disease?

Disease works to limit both-ways: Remember that those rats are now immortal and immune to disease. Furthermore, they will still eat and leave droppings all over the place. Said eating can include anywhere from "supplies" to "structural integrity of building / boat".

EDIT: There's also the matter of reproductive rate. Brown rats? They can have up to five litters a year, and normally live only one to three tops. When you remove that, and the threat of disease killing young, if you had noone taking out the population...

Malahite wrote:

itsmeyouidiot wrote:

Pests are usually exterminated to prevent them from spreading diseases. Why waste time and money exterminating pests if there is no disease?

Disease works to limit both-ways: Remember that those rats are now immortal and immune to disease. Furthermore, they will still eat and leave droppings all over the place. Said eating can include anywhere from "supplies" to "structural integrity of building / boat".

EDIT: There's also the matter of reproductive rate. Brown rats? They can have up to five litters a year, and normally live only one to three tops. When you remove that, and the threat of disease killing young, if you had noone taking out the population...

Keep in mind, it isn't just going to be human-sized things and tinies controlling pest populations. Felarya has plenty of predators of all sizes. Wild cats, other insects, small carnivorous plants, etc. They'd all be able to help control pests.

Predators can only go so far when it comes to controlling pests.

Ever heard of a mouse plague? Their populations get so high despite the predators that the only thing that eventually stops it is when the food runs out and they resort to eating each other. During that time they'll even attack larger animals such as pigs and the like.

Hi, sorry if this has been answered somewhere else in this forum but I am a bit short on time to read through everything ^^;

My question regards to the story I will soon be writing, just some numbers and biology things. There will be 2 giant creatures entering Felarya from one of my worlds (with a human).

One is a giantess and one is a Naga. The giantess is around 200 feet tall, the Naga's torso would be similar to that of a 200 foot tall woman but her body is much much longer. I was wondering what the average height of a naga in Felarya? I want to know so I can more accurately compare them when they meet face to face.

It seems like the sizes may very from creature to creature, so maybe I will have to be more specific when it actually comes to writing the story, maybe feature a specific character from someone else's collection (with permission of course.)

Usually between 50 and 100 ft.