Felarya fundamentals

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Well I can't talk about your experaices but I personaly tend to find it's not actually semi-capable humans that people receive poorly, it's the perception of semi-capable to fully-capable humans being designed solely for the purpose of attacking the predators (and therefore the fetish) that people get defensive about.

Yes, yes, the preds can slaughter thousands but because they do it in a cute anime style and you never actually see the people the eat die, it doesn't count. But let a group of properly-equipped humans with a solid plan go and take down a pred to defend their own lives/the lives of other humans, and people get all up in arms.

And that's kind of another thing too. People really have no idea how physically vulnerable the average giant hybrid is. Modern weaponry is insanely lethal, and being a hundred and fifty feet tall is a huge liability. A group of tiny people who know what they're doing actually has a huge advantage in any fight, since they can sneak around, keep out of sight, and potentially kill or maim the pred before he/she even realizes what is going on. You don't need tanks, you don't need plasma rifles or railguns, there's plenty of modern options that do the job just fine.

Honestly maiming badly is usually the best outcome. I know that's what the Isolon Fist tends to go for. If you kill a pred, then the disposal teams have to get called in, and it's just a huge mess for everyone (not to mention the paperwork D: ). But if you just hurt them a bit, maim them a little... then you can send them scurrying back into the forest to tell their friends "Hey, don't go over there and cause trouble. Those humans are dangerous!" Which is a win-win all around for everyone.

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: The ones who just want to passive aggresively attack the fetish and those who are into it under the guise of "writing from the human perspective" (or alternatively the ones who have a deranged loose grasp of reality and just want to attack the predator characters for being horrible people...somehow forgeting that the characters arn't real and just repersent someone's kink)

Oh that is most certainly a factor, and it speaks to a titanic amount of insecurity on the parts of the people writing fetish material. You see a similar phenomenon in non-fetish stuff too when people take criticism as a personal attack. You're pointing out flaws in their work, so they think you're pointing out flaws in them personally, and they tend to react poorly. Most of it is really just the initial author projecting their own self-doubts and insecurities on the criticism in the end anyway. People just need to be more confident all around.

rcs619 wrote:

Yes, yes, the preds can slaughter thousands but because they do it in a cute anime style and you never actually see the people the eat die, it doesn't count. But let a group of properly-equipped humans with a solid plan go and take down a pred to defend their own lives/the lives of other humans, and people get all up in arms.

They don't if you're very clear that your not writing a fetish story and therefore your not attacking their femdoms.

I haven't received a single complaint about my story when it comes to this sort of thing, not even when the first chapter involves the main character capturing a nine-foot Dridder and shoving it comically into the back of a vechile. But then what I think helped was the sense that my story was not a "Humans getting back at the vore-characters" kind of story and was a more of a "Fantasy comedy-drama that just happens to be set in Felarya" where human side fights with each other as much as the fantastical creatures, and where themes and ideas are actually explored....and not just constant anti-vore rants.

Gonna go ahead and jump into this waaaay after it's too late for my comments to have any value.  Meant to try putting something here a couple weeks ago, but just kept not getting around to it.  Oh well.  

Anyway, my list of things that seem pretty fundamental to the setting in general.  In my opinion.


A beautiful, mysterious, deadly world of ancient ruins and magic.  This is, I feel, the atmosphere of the setting at the most basic level.  Beauty, mystery and death contrasting off each other to make for a very compelling whole.

Giant predators are super dangerous to everyone.  Be they moe monster-girls or horrifying monstrosities like abyssal tonorions, I feel that the overall danger-level of the setting needs to be emphasized.  Well-equipped/prepared groups can and should be able to escape and/or even sometimes defeat the titanic creatures of Felarya, but I feel it should never be routine, easy, or without severe risk, lest we undermine the scale of the accomplishment when it does happen.  And if it were solely up to me, I'd probably give all the various giant creatures kaiju-style resistance vs conventional weapons, just to keep things more interesting.  It might also be worth noting that even the monstrosities and moe monster-girls have to work hard to survive.

Rapid healing + no disease/aging.  I know there's some debate on this in terms of the anti-aging in particular, but for me it's actually one of the more interesting aspects of Felarya.  Without further context, it gives the impression of some sort of incredible paradise, yet despite these considerable perks, Felarya remains someplace you probably don't want to go.  Come for the health benefits, stay because you died before you could actually enjoy said benefits.  xD  It does present some questions with regards to the places which have a far lower mortality rare, such as Negav, and how they manage population.  There's just no way accidental deaths could hope to cancel out the birth rate, so I'm not sure how to sort that aspect out.  

Necromancy/Resurrection doesn't work.  Honestly, I'm of the opinion that raising the dead (D&D style, anyway) really cheapens death and danger in general.  I'd be fine with saying that there is no real reliable raise dead spell/effect/technology in the whole known universe that Felarya is a part of, rather than a special case.


Aaaand I'm probably missing several really important points, but that's the best my coffee-deprived mind can do this early.  I'll just show myself out.

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A beautiful, mysterious, deadly world of ancient ruins and magic.  This is, I feel, the atmosphere of the setting at the most basic level.  Beauty, mystery and death contrasting off each other to make for a very compelling whole.

That's how I more or less see the general setting as a whole.  It's a shame most people just stick with the monster girls to whom all this mystery and beauty is run-of-the-mill stuff, instead of showing all that wonder and horror from the eyes of a human.

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Giant predators are super dangerous to everyone.  Be they moe monster-girls or horrifying monstrosities like abyssal tonorions, I feel that the overall danger-level of the setting needs to be emphasized.  Well-equipped/prepared groups can and should be able to escape and/or even sometimes defeat the titanic creatures of Felarya, but I feel it should never be routine, easy, or without severe risk, lest we undermine the scale of the accomplishment when it does happen.  And if it were solely up to me, I'd probably give all the various giant creatures kaiju-style resistance vs conventional weapons, just to keep things more interesting.  It might also be worth noting that even the monstrosities and moe monster-girls have to work hard to survive.

The thing that sets kaijus and just plain giants apart from each other is that kaijus usually have something like armored scales or a shell that justify why they are so resistant against conventional weapons.  Nagas, dridders, mermaids, harpies, sphinxes and centaurs, do not.  Snake skin sure as hell isn't very tough, and plain old human flesh isn't gonna stop bullets.  A shot from an assault rifle will penetrate, not very deeply, mind you, but it will penetrate, and it will sting just like being bitten by a mosquito.  I think giving the monsters random uber damage reduction against weapons is just plain lazy.  What should be emphasized from the monster girls, in my opinion, is their intelligence.  Unlike beasts, their hunting tactics are more elaborate and they can adapt to things that most beasts wouldn't.  For example, Lucilya takes full advantage of the fact can shrink to hide virtually anywhere while stalking a group of people, and she knows that she can wait until nighttime to strike, since they're bound to make a mistake if they're tired.  Crisis, if she spots two guys wielding staff among another group of people, can immediately deduce that they're spellcasters and make a note to take those two out first since they're the biggest threat.  Honestly, most of the time a random giant appears in a story, it's just standing out there in the open until it spots a human, at which point it will run after it to the point of single-minded obsession.  They may as well be dogs chasing after a car, and that's just lame.  Show a naga hide in the leaves and then strike once an oblivious prey is in position underneath her, show a mermaid sink a ship instead of directly attacking the people on board, show a fairy actually take advantage of her magic to incapacitate a prey instead of just being "lolz I shreenk u".  Show why they're a cut above normal beasts instead of just arbitrarily making bullets bounce off their skin.  Sorry if I got a little carried away there.

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Rapid healing + no disease/aging.  I know there's some debate on this in terms of the anti-aging in particular, but for me it's actually one of the more interesting aspects of Felarya.  Without further context, it gives the impression of some sort of incredible paradise, yet despite these considerable perks, Felarya remains someplace you probably don't want to go.  Come for the health benefits, stay because you died before you could actually enjoy said benefits.  xD  It does present some questions with regards to the places which have a far lower mortality rare, such as Negav, and how they manage population.  There's just no way accidental deaths could hope to cancel out the birth rate, so I'm not sure how to sort that aspect out.

You already know my opinion, but just to re-iterate, the lack of death from old age wasn't well thought out considering some of the safer places out there, and I think perfect health should be more difficult to achieve than just being in Felarya.  I get that it was originally supposed to be ironic, you can in theory live forever and you will never get sick, but the place is so deadly anyway that it doesn't even matter.  But with safe locations like the Jungle Bowl and Negav, the lack of illness only further exacerbates how poorly thought out the lack of natural mortality was.  I know there are poisons and parasites and such, but again, how likely are those things alone going to cancel out human birth rate in some settlements?  Plus, in my opinion, it kind of overshadows the fact that Felarya is supposed to be saturated with magic.  To my knowledge, there is no mention of mages or scholars coming to Felarya solely because it grants them an opportunity to further study magic or better master their craft.  For a place that's supposed to be extremely rich in magic, that aspect is incredibly underplayed.

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Necromancy/Resurrection doesn't work.  Honestly, I'm of the opinion that raising the dead (D&D style, anyway) really cheapens death and danger in general.  I'd be fine with saying that there is no real reliable raise dead spell/effect/technology in the whole known universe that Felarya is a part of, rather than a special case.

To be fair, D&D has rules concerning resurrecting creatures that make it a pretty tough choice to consider in the end, but I won't list them cause it would take too long.  Suffice to say, one important rule is that you have to have at least a piece of the body to resurrect (unless you go for True Resurrection, which is a 9th level spell, which takes an eternity to get to that level, assuming your character even gets to live that long), and given the most common death shown is being swallowed whole and alive, there's usually not much of a body left to bring back to life in the first place.  Ultimately, I support the lack of resurrection, since it's basically a way to stop hack writers who would otherwise abuse the hell out of resurrection to keep their precious characters safe.  Though, thinking about it, I guess nothing's really stopping them from dragging their buddy's corpse out of Felarya and resurrect them there, but that's beside the point.  The No Necromancy clause, to me, is another plug to a potential loophole, since you know hack writers would make necromancers who'd raise an army of undead giant nagas and crap if they could.  Admittedly, I still think the necromancy rule should be slightly reworded since I find the classification of necromancy as just creating undeads very narrow-minded, especially since the original definition of necromancy is to just communicate with the dead via divination.

Shady Knight wrote:

That's how I more or less see the general setting as a whole.  It's a shame most people just stick with the monster girls to whom all this mystery and beauty is run-of-the-mill stuff, instead of showing all that wonder and horror from the eyes of a human.

Techniqually there's loads of felarya stories from the eyes of a human, more than there is voraphilla fetish stories I would wager. The problem is that these so called "human perspectives" tend to be in the form of self inserts or characters who are barely anything other than 'Author Tract platforms'

Sadly, most people in the community who claim to write from the human side arn't actually interested in the humans of felarya (we would have seen more stories about human natives if they actually cared) They are in fact just using the human side to fullfill their power fantasies, which woulden't been so bad if it wasn't for the pretentiousness of it all.

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

The predators were nameless? Certainly there must be more guardians that the currently known...

really? that's all you're going to say, c'mon man, you can say more than this, really expand your thoughts on this, keep saying more of what your thought is in your head.

Let's all stick to the subject, please. What are the things a beginner needs to know about Felarya?

Stabs wrote:

Let's all stick to the subject, please. What are the things a beginner needs to know about Felarya?

1:The jungle is dangerous,but thee should not fear to tread there for the riches are numerous and really all paths in life lead back there eventually.

2:Big swords and guns are awesome but in Felarya speed, dexterity and luck are the only stats you need to worry with if a survivior you wish to be.

3: Negav is the largest known city, but not the only city in Felarya. It is a save haven but letting your gaurd down there is the equivelent of wearing a copper suit of mail in a lightning storm.

Uh I'll probably think of some more after I get a tissue....darn it.....That last one used a quote from a Discworld novel and reminded me that Master Prachett is no longer with us.

(RIP Terry Prachett.)

I thought of this while posting in a different thread: I think there needs to be clear lines drawn between how mych WE know about Felarya, and how much people in Felarya know about Felarya. Are we to assume that anything written on the wiki is also written somewhere in Felarya? Or are there things that we know about Felarya that the inhabitant scholars haven't firgured out yet? Personally, I think the latter is the better and more realistic option, but I don't feel like these discrepancies are made quite clear enough in the wiki. For example, is it as common knowledge that a fairy's wings are her weak point in Felarya as it is on this forum? Are there articles which go into some amount of detail on the personalities of some of Felarya's more well-known named predatory sapiens like Crisis and Anko? Things that people in Felarya do not know that we do should be properly and clearly identified as such. In my opinion.

Nyaha wrote:

Are we to assume that anything written on the wiki is also written somewhere in Felarya? Or are there things that we know about Felarya that the inhabitant scholars haven't firgured out yet?

There's definitely a mix. Some pages in the wiki are clearly identified as published papers (usually by archmages), probably available at your local university library, and others have the kind of intentional vagueness that would indicate a lack of knowledge from an in-universe perspective as well as from ours, despite the facts obviously being known by someone; other pages are definitely too detailed to be common knowledge. That seems like something that could do with a bit of cleaning up, along with a community/Karbo decision on how we want to handle in-universe lack or rarity of knowledge on the wiki pages.

Nyaha wrote:

I thought of this while posting in a different thread: I think there needs to be clear lines drawn between how mych WE know about Felarya, and how much people in Felarya know about Felarya. Are we to assume that anything written on the wiki is also written somewhere in Felarya? Or are there things that we know about Felarya that the inhabitant scholars haven't firgured out yet? Personally, I think the latter is the better and more realistic option, but I don't feel like these discrepancies are made quite clear enough in the wiki. For example, is it as common knowledge that a fairy's wings are her weak point in Felarya as it is on this forum? Are there articles which go into some amount of detail on the personalities of some of Felarya's more well-known named predatory sapiens like Crisis and Anko? Things that people in Felarya do not know that we do should be properly and clearly identified as such. In my opinion.

That's something that's been bothering me a lot recently. The biggest sticking point for me are the Guardians. Aside from the fairies whose queen is one of them, how do the predators even know of their existence? They show up so incredibly rarely that, realistically, nobody should have knowledge beyond unsubstantiated rumors, yet some people have giants refer to them as some analogue for gods, like instead of saying "Oh my God!" they say something like "By the Guardians!" (looking at you, Asuroth) and that just doesn't make sense to me. Hell, one of the biggest mysteries for people in Negav is trying to figure out how Ur-Sagol was wiped off the map in a single night, which lead them to speculate all sort of theories in-universe.

Shady Knight wrote:

Nyaha wrote:

I thought of this while posting in a different thread: I think there needs to be clear lines drawn between how mych WE know about Felarya, and how much people in Felarya know about Felarya. Are we to assume that anything written on the wiki is also written somewhere in Felarya? Or are there things that we know about Felarya that the inhabitant scholars haven't firgured out yet? Personally, I think the latter is the better and more realistic option, but I don't feel like these discrepancies are made quite clear enough in the wiki. For example, is it as common knowledge that a fairy's wings are her weak point in Felarya as it is on this forum? Are there articles which go into some amount of detail on the personalities of some of Felarya's more well-known named predatory sapiens like Crisis and Anko? Things that people in Felarya do not know that we do should be properly and clearly identified as such. In my opinion.

That's something that's been bothering me a lot recently.  The biggest sticking point for me are the Guardians.  Aside from the fairies whose queen is one of them, how do the predators even know of their existence?  They show up so incredibly rarely that, realistically, nobody should have knowledge beyond unsubstantiated rumors, yet some people have giants refer to them as some analogue for gods, like instead of saying "Oh my God!" they say something like "By the Guardians!" (looking at you, Asuroth) and that just doesn't make sense to me.  Hell, one of the biggest mysteries for people in Negav is trying to figure out how Ur-Sagol was wiped off the map in a single night, which lead them to speculate all sort of theories in-universe.

Actually it's silly to assume knowledge is the same level for everyone. Without a Internet, magically or otherwise, knowledge is spread by either word of mouth or books/scrolls or what have ya. Now preds can move around freely and thus their word of mouth is broad reaching BUT is tainted from most of them having little on their minds other than devouring humanoids. Now some don't allow this to get in the way of progressing knowledge: Fairies, Sphinxes and possibly some others I can't think of...Oh Jotuns have shown a love of tales and legends...Weirdly this makes me notice something I'll adress in another thread since it'd take away from the subject at hand. Anywho as I was saying: Predators can move freely without fear and thus can gather info on Felarya easily but most probably don't concern themselves with it but even if they did? Even organized predator societies are small and almost isolationist. That info doesn't get desiminated easily amongst the other predators except in a rumor or a legend likely.

Now humans can't move around as freely and thus can't gather as much info but what they gather can be refined and added to easier cause they have Negav and other cities and places of gathering where they can compile this info and add to it nearly continuously though politics, library fires and such tends to taint infromation. Look at history as an example. We get allot of what happened, but not all of what did and thus false info gets more and more widely believed allot easier. Honestly neither process is perfect but the point is neither can asorb all the revelent info in Felarya. I mean given the sheer size it'd be foolish to try even if there were no dangers. It'd take forever just to map out it's shifting, wavering geography let alone unlock all the secrets burried within and without.

I suppose one thing we could do, though, is try and distinguish between knowledge levels; going as far to write entire new paragraphs of articles for each knowledge level might be too far, but it might be worth it to reorganize some of the worst offenders to distinguish better. I'd think there would be up to three levels; common knowledge, representing what one might be able to pick up on the streets or from the local predators; expert knowledge, which represents the expected knowledge of someone who knows just about everything in-verse mortals know about the topic (for example, the various articles that are treatises on magic or versology from various archmages); and lastly, authorial knowledge, which is, well, what the person who wrote the article knows. I've seen plenty of all three mixed together in the wiki with no real separation.

Well thank you a lot for all your input, everyone !
It's very interesting and definitely offers a solid foundation to work from ^^