The Thread for Overthinking Felaryan Topics

Amaroq wrote:

But isnt necromancy pretty much the only type of magic that is not existing in Felarya? reviving the dead is impossible, so how can undead creatures exist in Felarya anyway? Naturally born vampires or those who got here via dimensional magic wouldn't really be dependant on that dark magic, but I guess they wouldnt be able to use it here either, thus they loose some of their power (if they ever had any necromancy). If Creatures can only exist while they maintain necromantic spells, then I guess its pretty much game over for them since their magic is nullified. Thus, Vampires who use necromancy to sustain themselves, are vulnerable like any other being of flesh and blood.

That's the one thing I never really understood about Undead, and the one thing that's never really explained. Once you use necromancy to create undead, the necromatic energy stays no matter what until that undead is fully destroyed. I've looked into why this is, but no-one seems to have ever thought about it so I could never find anything. Kind of annoying, but what can you do? =/

Parameciumkid wrote:

And why wouldn't the tried-and-true stake method work? It works on pretty much everything else, necro-magic or no..

I told you in the post, stakes normally only seal a vampire away. And actually, a stake would do nothing against a Lich, Banshee, or other major undead. But that's beside the point. Now, there are instances where a stake does destroy the vampire, but there are just as many instances where a stake to the heart only seals the vampire. And to be honest, when dealing with something as dangerous as a Vampire, I prefer to be cautious and assume that stakes will only seal a vampire away.

Also, random fact that I just remembered reading somewhere, though I can't remember where. There's apparently some kind of vampire that can't enter your home without your permission. It can go into public places without any problem, but it can't enter your house. x3

Well, to be clear Vampires lack a specific part of their blood called hemoglobin. They can breath and cycle oxygen, but they cannot produce hemoglobin - which is why they feed on another's blood. Only by drinking another person's blood do they gain the hemoglobin required. Fish (and therefor mermaids) do not use hemoglobin though, so a vampire couldn't feed on a mermaid if they wanted to stay healthy. However, I would assume the other parts of the blood that aren't needed are probably just cycled out or used for something else.

A vampire feeding does not require magical energy, but transforming one person into another vampire is another matter entirely. Lots of people have different theories about it. One possible theory is that biting another person turns them via some kind of magic - obviously nullified, another one is that by injecting their blood into another mortal is how they turn someone to be a vampire. That last one I'm more willing to believe, but unless vampire blood acts like a virus somehow, or finds some other way to latch onto a blood sell and turn them in the same way, then I don't think it'd work in felarya, and even then it might not work. I'm not that great at biology, I'd trust aether to answer that part of what I said, but he's more of a physicist I think.

Okay, that sounded really informed, but I must ask where you got this information because I've heard otherwise on several occasions.
For one thing, the human digestive tract is unable to assimilate hemoglobin, or any other protein, as proteins are destroyed in the stomach and broken down into amino acids, which the body then uses to make its own proteins. Even if you shut down the normal digestive process, it would require a major revamping (pun is happy accident) of the digestive tract to let the vampire absorb the large molecule that is hemoglobin, and a major change in the circulatory system and bone marrow in order to enable the red blood cells to take in external hemoglobin rather than make their own.
There are some fish that do not have hemoglobin, e.g. the icefish, which lives in polar regions where conventional blood would freeze; but as far as I've ever read, the majority of fishes do have hemoglobin in their blood, which is why it is red and why everything that evolved from fish has hemoglobin.
And lastly, mermaids aren't fish, though their similarity falls within the subjective scope of this particular fantasy world. Even if it's a hybrid with a type of fish that lacks hemoglobin, it doesn't mean a mermaid will lack hemoglobin, any more than it would lack hair or breasts. Actually, do mermaids have functioning breasts? I don't actually know... there's definitely a nipple there.
Anyway, I might be wrong - so if you can tell me where you found this stuff I'd like to see for myself and find out if I've been misinformed.

trying to make sense out of vampires is a fools errand isn't it? The concept of blood sucking undead was conceived long before anyone had any proper understanding of the human body. back when the blood was thought to be the lifeforce and the heart was the organ assoicated with the soul, thus the idea was that sucking the blood from the living gave lifeforce to the animated corpse

Maybe we should move on to a different topic.

Have we ever really discussed the issue of gravity in Felarya? I've had a theory for a while now that gravity isn't the same for all creatures - the bigger it is, the less gravity affects it. That'd explain why Crisis is able to move about silently while being enormous all the time, and why her breasts are so delightfully perky, too. XD Basically, everything on Felarya has a relative gravity based on its size class. However, I don't know if that really holds water, given tinies, and the fact that having a human technically weigh the same as a giant would fuck things up, like having a giant be unable to lift a really fat human because of weird gravity shit. X.x Help!

Instead of relative gravity we could always weaken the existing gravity so the giants would only be as affected as a human on earth, and each size fills in it's spot from there, but then we might have superman tinies...

DarkOne wrote:

trying to make sense out of vampires is a fools errand isn't it? The concept of blood sucking undead was conceived long before anyone had any proper understanding of the human body. back when the blood was thought to be the lifeforce and the heart was the organ assoicated with the soul, thus the idea was that sucking the blood from the living gave lifeforce to the animated corpse

Don't forget, the stuff in your veins was supposed to be air, since the dead always had them empty! The blood was just a humour, the same as phlegm. Sneezing and losing blood were the same thing: if it killed you, it was 'cause you were a pansy.

As for hemoglobglobglobglob, there's also cuproglobin. Wait. Hemocyanin. It makes you a Klingon, a mollusc, or a horseshoe crab. Besides, Bael, blaming the hemoglobin for anything would mean you can choke a vampire to death: hemoglobin doesn't do anything else. That... doesn't sound right.

Nergal, I'd like to talk to you in private later regarding the negative energy thing... as for the stake, what Para meant was that a stake to the heart would stop you, me, a 5-ton elephant, and a pack of mountain lions. If we could only improve our staking technique, we could maximize death while minimizing suffering in the battlefield! Imagine if you could just stake the heart of any enemy soldier. You'd stop 'em cold right away.

And yeah- what you make of a vampire depends on your background. D&D has vampires that fear garlic, in WoD that's just an old wives' tale, in Hellsing you'd be pretty much screwed... whatever.

To end the discussion... Nyaha, if you want a vampire dead in Felarya, feed it to Crisis. It works on everything.

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Nyaha wrote:

Have we ever really discussed the issue of gravity in Felarya? I've had a theory for a while now that gravity isn't the same for all creatures - the bigger it is, the less gravity affects it. That'd explain why Crisis is able to move about silently while being enormous all the time, and why her breasts are so delightfully perky, too. XD Basically, everything on Felarya has a relative gravity based on its size class. However, I don't know if that really holds water, given tinies, and the fact that having a human technically weigh the same as a giant would fuck things up, like having a giant be unable to lift a really fat human because of weird gravity shit. X.x Help!

Oh, you're on to the gravity too?

No, it wouldn't work to have things work that way, Nyaha. If you have light-gravity giants and heavy-duty tinies, you'll have a problem with inanimate objects. Do they react as tinies or as giants? What if you make a very big vase and chip off a bit, would it fall like the vase or like the bit? And how does Crisis deal with having tiny humans in her belly working at full gravity?

You'd have a little absurd too. If tinies have a more powerful gravity, that'd mean they would fall fastah, and giants would fall veeery slowly. Which would be fukkin hilarious, come to think of it, but we know Crisis can fall at least as fast as Lea. It's canon lol.

On the other hand, your lifting problem wouldn't be so. If their mass is normal and the gravity is what's reduced, then they shouldn't have much of a problem interacting forcefully: the guy with a ton of mass can still manhandle somebody who weighs a feather, even if it felt like a feather made of lead.


This is a solution I worked out shortly before joining, I'd recommend first making Felarya not to be made of atoms, and then... ignoring the square cube law by making inherent properties a function of mass. So for instance, the bigger your bones were, the stronger the bone would become, just by virtue of its size. The bigger Crisis' boobs got, the perkier they'd get, just by virtue of their size. And if we consider Vivian a single entity size-wise, the sheer mass of her boobs alone should make her skeleton more indestructible than adamantium. Tinies on the other hand would be light as a feather, and even more fragile than one.

That'd also make evolution near-impossible in Felarya: everything would naturally tend to get bigger, constrained only by the availability of the resources (which are, themselves, growing as fast as they can). Eventually over the generations, anything in Felarya would balloon to ridiculous sizes, which would lead the dimensional disturbances to throw in creatures with more relatively sane sizes- themselves powerless before the colossi.

It would, however, fail to explain how do Felaryan things live, eat and do anything outside of Felarya, where the world is made of atoms and there is a square cube law. If we make it so that nothing is made of atoms anywhere in the Felaryaverse, then there has to be a reason why giant preds are rarer outside Felarya, when logically everything would have to either be getting bigger with every generation just to keep up with the vicious cycle venerable custom. Why do things only get bigger in Felarya, other than food constraints?



I recommend a divine origin.

Perhaps magic forms some sort of support for living beings, and the more organic mass they have the greater it's effect.

I've mentioned gravity a couple times. The way I imagine it, Felarya has less gravity than Earth and that solves most of it. This includes stories where nekos bound back and forth between two tree trunks and climb up them like Samus doing a screw attack, or where a human falls 58 stories and lands on a giant's hand completely unharmed, etc. And of course this lets tinies be abnormally strong for their size, but even if they can jump ten times their height, that's still... only a meter at best. And I don't think even in low gravity that their tiny leg muscles would provide that much of a kick.

talking of gravity, I was looking at the map of Felarya and noticed something odd, There is an directional compass bearing showing which way is north, east, south and west. Felarya is a flat never ending dementional plain, so there is no magnetic poles for an compass to detect, as magnetic poles would imply Felarya is a planet spining on an axis. So noone on felarya would surely make a directional compass bearing on a map because the concept of compass navigation is of no use to them and they would have to come up with a whole different system of navigation.

Actually, DarkOne, we can still have a north and south pole without spinning.

It's very simple, just look at this.



Now make it A TRILLION TIMES BIGGER!

P.S: There is no giga coyote holding a giant magnet under Felarya, unfortunately... there are no magnetic poles. The only thing that tells apart east from west and north from south in Felarya is the direction in which the sun travels across the sky. It's always east to west, and if you're facing west, the north is to your right and the south to your left.

Stabs wrote:

P.S: There is no giga coyote holding a giant magnet under Felarya, unfortunately... there are no magnetic poles. The only thing that tells apart east from west and north from south in Felarya is the direction in which the sun travels across the sky. It's always east to west, and if you're facing west, the north is to your right and the south to your left.

Aww man, there goes my theory about Felarya's poles. *is kidding*

Actually, from what I remember reading on the wiki, there's no mention of a pattern for the motion of any of Felarya's suns. Coordinate systems for navigation are laid out based on landmarks and vary based on who's doing the navigating.

I would imagine trying to navigate based on the sun would be very difficult in a world mosty covered in gaint forests where you can't see the sky XD

Though I've always thought that Felaryians would navigate by magical means rather than working which way is north,west, south and east. Something like Captain Jack's Compass that leads you to where you want to go would be more useful.

You know, being a tiny would suck, even more then just being the number one prey for everyone. I mean think about it, a Giant Predator isn't going to really notice if he/she accidentally runs over a group or village of tinies. Heck, I'll bet even the most gentle Giant Naga in Felarya has crushed entire tiny villages by mistake and never known.

Darth_Nergal wrote:

You know, being a tiny would suck, even more then just being the number one prey for everyone. I mean think about it, a Giant Predator isn't going to really notice if he/she accidentally runs over a group or village of tinies. Heck, I'll bet even the most gentle Giant Naga in Felarya has crushed entire tiny villages by mistake and never known.

That's a clear and present threat, I'm sure of it: even if giant nagas are as rare as the Pope, the moment one runs ya over, ye'll know it. If you try to settle down in places a giant naga isn't going to slither over, that narrows your positions down as far as nekos be concerned... mwahahaha.

parameciumkid wrote:

Actually, from what I remember reading on the wiki, there's no mention of a pattern for the motion of any of Felarya's suns. Coordinate systems for navigation are laid out based on landmarks and vary based on who's doing the navigating.

True enough. I assumed the sun thing out of the definition of east and west, actually.

Is it common knowedge to humans that Felarya is an ever expanding world? because if so, then all invading humans are insane

No army is infinite, but Felarya is, therefore you can not completly take over something that never ends, there will always be more land, more dangers and more predators. Let's say that an army could take on a few gaint predators as if it was nothing, they would still eventually run themselves into the ground by going on an neverending war campaign.

It's okay for stories where humans are content with preserving thier own little corner from predators, but it really brings into question the logic behind some of the written plots where the human's ambitions really are "to cleanse Felarya of all predators"

DarkOne wrote:

Is it common knowedge to humans that Felarya is an ever expanding world? because if so, then all invading humans are insane

Uhh, to be fair, that's news to me...

DarkOne wrote:

No army is infinite, but Felarya is, therefore you can not completly take over something that never ends, there will always be more land, more dangers and more predators. Let's say that an army could take on a few gaint predators as if it was nothing, they would still eventually run themselves into the ground by going on an neverending war campaign.

Err... Nope. "Finite" doesn't mean "unreplenishable". Warm bodies happen to be frightfully easy to replace, as long as you're breeding, feeding, teaching and sending 'em fast enough. If you make the best of the resources in the land you seize, it might even be possible to replace everything else. In practice, though, that'd mean your boys would be throwing coconuts and ass jawbones at predators*, which could make it a bit silly to believe they stand a chance... or bringing settlers to the seized ground in to keep their war supplies stocked so fast it totally feels like they were playing an RTS lol.

DarkOne wrote:

It's okay for stories where humans are content with preserving thier own little corner from predators, but it really brings into question the logic behind some of the written plots where the human's ambitions really are "to cleanse Felarya of all predators"

Not really; the Europeans practically genocidized and slaverified America, and if it were twice as big they'd have done it twice as hard, that's all. Of course, if the natives were 100 foot tall man-eating fire-breathing giants, things might've went differently.

For starters, the Europeans would've been right

*Yeah, actually, you can make totally deadly stuff if you've got bamboo, WD-40, duct tape, a penknife, and some golden arrow frogs. But saying it like this is funnier.

[quote="Stabs"]

DarkOne wrote:

Warm bodies happen to be frightfully easy to replace, as long as you're breeding, feeding, teaching and sending 'em fast enough. If you make the best of the resources in the land you seize, it might even be possible to replace everything else.

Ah, but that assumes that after fighting and wasting alot of resources for a part of felarya land, that there would actually be anything there that can give the quick cash return at the ammount you need to compensate for the loses. They would obviously scout the land to be seized and estimate a value first, but how easy would to get a correct esitmation of land value when things are eating you? (the war hasn't began yet, so they woulden't send the army at that point)

Imagine the damage that would be done to your economic war machine if the land you just seized that you thought had mountains worth of ascarlin desposts under the ground actually turned out to have barely enougth ascarlin to cover 1/8 of the cost of the battle to get the land in the first place and there's nothing actually else there that can be used to cover that.

If you have an everlasting war on your hands, an over estimation of land value is prouberly going to happen quite a number of times. They would need to have the money to keep bouncing back every time if they want to keep it up.

It doesn't sound like a safe bet to me, noone in their right mind would want part in such an unprediactble and therefore potentially bank breaking investment, especially if the war's primeary intention is to elminate a race of creatures from their own homeworld.

Well, you kind of have a point there.

Yeah, it's going to be hard to estimate land value, and this will probably lead to people wasting their gunpowder in fighting the wrong tree a number of times, thus sustaining losses in equipment. But to be fair, that happens in real life too; war isn't just hell, it's also a world of frustration if your intelligence isn't very intelligent- or if the war drags on too long.

However, depending on how troublesome it really is for the invader to seize control of the lands and purge the locals, it might actually be, resource-wise, a good idea. If your guys can pull their weapons and supplies out of thin air all they want and face no challenge from anything in Felarya (or close enough), well, then you might have that front covered. If, on the other hand, you have it so that 5 out of 10 creds during the war go spent on bribes, your supplies are sub-par in expected quality, and your every officer got promoted by nepotism (and are absolutely incompetent at handling the resources they're given, or requisiting what they really need), you might want to work on that before trying to conquer anything.

What I'm trying to get at is, it could be possible, if we assume no sucker will make any criticrally mororinic mysteaks they can't bunse back frorm.

Though I guess the biggest proublem an invading army would have funding an ever lasting war is the question of exactly where the money goes and who benifits from it. Unfortunately in most cases Felarya armies are authoritarian, horde the benifts to an social elite while treating their workforce like crap, giving the workforce no incentive to be involved in an everlasting war as they would be the ones paying for it for the rest of time, which would surely be worser than the consequences of rebelling, essentaily meaning the masters seem to always force their own people to turn on them by being Stupid Evil

Makes you wonder how succussful an invading army would be in Felarya if they at least tried being cooperative with their own people and potential allies rather than looking for every opportunity to get on top regardless of the consequances.

Was reading something interesting about certain African socities that suggests that because some of them have little grasp of abstract concepts like time, they have problems understanding consequence, as you need to understand time to grasp that. And are therefore likely to be inconsiderate as they don't understand the effects of their actions outside the immediate desired effects.

So I was thinking if that can be another explaination for predator behavior. As much as we like to think our morality system is based on us wanting to do good, it's actually based on consequence. As children we got taught if we do something bad, we might be punished for it in the future. But first for that to be effective we need to understand the link of cause and effect, otherwise unless the puishment is immediate, the child woulden't be able to understand why they are being punished as the cause would be out of their mind at that point.

So if Predators don't understand concepts like time and therefore consequence, they will eat people simply for the immediate effect of satifaction, and not consider the latter effects of the person in pain. And if people were to attack them in revenge at a latter date, the predator would fail to see the link.

I for one, think that sounds brilliant. O.o

I sometimes read bios or stories with felarya characters who while not overpowered, still have an amazing set of skills that makes one wonder why the hell are they feel that they have to live the life of a underprivileged adventurer who has to go out into the felarya wilderness in order to make ends meet, when their skills alone could help make them much richer.

Kinda like in Scooby Doo, where the villains are all speical effect and costume artists, yet have to resort to crime.

Granted competition in the job market can make using your own talents to make money a bit diffcult, but places like Negav has no sign of being in an economic rut like ours

Well, their own bios should also describe why they take up adventuring when their skills are worth that much.

A few ideas if anyone's looking forward to making one such character:


-Illiteracy. You can't just read and write the common language of Negav just due to the translation effect. If you can't read the job ads, you're gonna have a hard time, stranger.
-Inability to adapt. Not everyone is suited to live in the big cities. Some people just love it out there, even if they'd die first in it.
-Being on the run. If someone's out for your blood in the city, then you might want to risk it out there.
-A desire for adventure. Because quests aren't only for dwarves!