Oct 5, 2024
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I know that usually using real-world customs in fantasy settings is kind of a lazy shortcut most of the time, but I’m currently thinking about the implications of diamond wedding / engagement rings in a D&D-based setting.
I mean, think about it. You vow to be together “‘til death does us part” and then you give them a way to escape death. You’re literally saying “even death could not keep me from you” or “I will never let you go”.
And of course the more expensive the ring, the more secure the promise. Splurging on a ring isn’t just vanity. It’s literally life insurance. (Or should I say life assurance.)
And even if you can’t afford a 300gp ring, diamonds are still the best choice for a stone. That “cheap” 100gp stone? Crush that up and you have a free casting of Greater Restoration. (If a larger diamond is life insurance/assurance, this is health insurance/assurance.)
Assuming that (as per my typical worldbuilding) a simple Lesser Restoration isn’t enough to cure more serious diseases, and given the common practice of making the client pay for the materials, a set-aside diamond could be the difference between life and death for someone who doesn’t have access to that kind of money.
Idk, I just think it’s a neat side-effect of gems as spell components that would be fun to play around with. The wealthy using veritable bouquets of mid-tier diamonds to ensure their partners will never die. Or a scandalous murder reveals that the victim’s wedding diamond was a fake. Did their spouse do that intentionally, and if so, does that mean they’re the murderer?
A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist
Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.
First Things First: Mineral Shapes
I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.
Second: Color
Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!
However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.
There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).
The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!
Pleochroism
Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.
Photochromism
This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!
Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!
When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!
sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!
Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!
But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).
How can your characters identify these minerals?
Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.
After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!
On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!
Worldbuilding Notes: Naming your Manor House
In order to name a manor house, usually a case specific suffix would have been added to the owner's last name, the region or toher related terms. While today almost all of the following may just be referred to as "Manor," these are the original classifications:
Court – buildings in which lords would receive their tenants (Eg.: Ashton Court, Kemerton Court)
Castle – Places of residence for royalty or residences of feudal barons in rule over several dozen other manors (Eg.: Lambton Castle, Hever Castle)
Park – used typically for houses built in the countryside with well-kept gardens and nature (Eg.: Hartham Park, Sandhill Park)
Place – likely a shortened form of "Palace", used for a grande residence with less royal connotations (Eg.: Hinxworth Place, Icomb Place)
Lodge – residences located in a royal forest during the feudal era, occupied by wardens or keepers of the forest (often specified as to the function: hunting lodge, fishing lodge, shooting lodge, ...) (Eg.: Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, Glen Affric Lodge)
Manor – residences for lords or (since the romantic revival) any grand country house (Eg.: Hughenden Manor, Ascott Manor)
If you make your lizard man look like a crocodile, that’s fine. Crocodiles are reptiles after all right? Might as well. We’d just be pedantic to call that wrong.
And a bird man? A bird man can be any type of bird doesn’t matter. Owl men, peacock men, penguin men, they’re all birds who cares right?
So tell me, why is it that a cat man can’t be a hyena? Hyenas are part of the suborder Feliformia, literally “cat-like” animals. Hyenas are closer related to cats than crocodiles are to lizards. Like really what’s stopping “Gnoll” from being a subspecies of tabaxi? Why are we so quick to group reptiles and birds together when we’re so specific about mammals?
Frankly I think it speaks to an implicit mammal centrism in humans that we must correct as our society begins to integrate sentient raven and octopus people.
100 FANTASY WORLDBUILDING PROMPTS THAT WILL ACTUALLY MAKE YOU WRITE (+free worldbuilding template to do it in)
GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE & BIOMES
A continent slowly sinking into the sea What do people take with them and what do they refuse to leave behind?
A desert that was once an ocean What ancient things are still surfacing from the sand?
A mountain range that moves one inch each year Who tracks its path, and what does it have buried beneath it?
A forest that grows inward, never outward What's at the center and why does it keep pulling the trees toward it?
A river that flows uphill What force drives it and what happens if that force ever stops?
A permanent storm the size of a country What civilization grew up around it instead of fleeing it?
A coastline where the tides bring in objects from another world Who collects them, who studies them, who tries to send things back?
Two biomes that share a border and hate each other What creature lives exactly on the line and who does it belong to?
A region where compasses point to something other than north What is it pointing toward, and does anyone want to reach it?
An island that only appears during a specific celestial event What lives there year-round and what does it think of the visitors?
FLORA, FAUNA & ECOSYSTEMS
A plant that only blooms when someone nearby is dying Is it worshipped, feared, or both?
An animal that has learned to mimic human speech What did it learn and from whom?
A forest where the trees share a single root system and a single consciousness What does it want?
A creature that feeds exclusively on magic What happens to a region when it's been there long enough?
A flower whose pollen erases short-term memory Who uses this and for what?
A fish that can only survive in enchanted water What does its population tell you about the health of the magic in a place?
A fungus that connects the minds of everything it touches What has it heard across centuries?
A bird that carries seeds between planes of existence What grows in places where it shouldn't and why?
An apex predator that hunts by following guilt Who in your world has the most to fear from it?
A tree whose rings record history, not age What event left the darkest ring?
COSMOLOGY & THE DIVINE
A god who died and whose corpse became a continent What leaks from it and who lives closest to the wounds?
A moon that is actually a prison Who built it, who's inside, and how close are they to getting out?
A plane of existence made entirely of memory What happens to the memories of people who die without anyone to remember them?
A star that a civilization believes is watching them specifically Are they right?
A pantheon where the gods have forgotten they're gods What are they doing instead and what breaks when they remember?
The space between worlds What lives in the in-between and what does it want from those passing through?
A creation myth that is factually accurate What does that mean for the people who treat it as metaphor?
A divine war that ended in a truce no one alive remembers the terms of What happens when someone breaks it accidentally?
A cosmology where the afterlife is a place you can visit Who goes and what do they bring back?
A world where the night sky is wrong Stars missing, constellations shifted what changed, and when?
POWERS, MAGIC & ABILITIES
A magic system where the cost is always something you love What happens to people who have run out of things to lose?
A power that only works when its wielder genuinely believes they will fail Who trains for this and how?
An ability that gets stronger every time it's suppressed What does a world that forbids it look like after a generation?
A forbidden art that was forbidden for the wrong reasons Who knows the truth and why haven't they said anything?
A magic that requires two people who trust each other completely What happens to the magic when that trust breaks?
A spell that takes ten years to cast and ten seconds to undo Who is patient enough and what are they building toward?
A power inherited through grief What does a family look like after five generations of it?
A form of magic that's been extinct for a century A child just manifested it. What do the institutions do?
An ability that shows the user every way a moment could have gone differently What does this do to a person over time?
A power that works perfectly — but only for other people, never for its own wielder What does this do to someone who has it for a lifetime?
SOCIETY, POLITICS & FACTIONS
A society built around a single shared secret Everyone knows. No one says it. What happens to the first person who does?
A government where leaders are chosen by lottery, not election Who games the system and how?
A city governed entirely by its criminal factions What does law look like when criminals write it?
A culture where lying is physically impossible What fills the role that lies usually play?
A faction that has been losing for two hundred years and refuses to stop What keeps them going?
A caste system being actively dismantled Who is leading it, who is resisting, and what does the middle look like?
A society where exile is the only punishment Where do the exiles go and what have they built?
Two nations that share a language but mean entirely different things by it What diplomatic disaster is waiting to happen?
A city where the poor live above and the wealthy live below What historical event caused this and does anyone remember why?
A faction founded on a prophecy that already came true, wrong What do they do now?
HISTORY, WARS & RUINS
A war that ended because both sides ran out of soldiers willing to fight What did the generals do and do people know?
A civilization that erased itself deliberately What were they hiding and did it work?
A battle that created a geographical feature The crater, the scar, the ridge what still lives in it?
A peace treaty written in a language no one alive can read What happens when someone tries to translate it?
A conqueror who gave everything back Why and what did it cost them?
A heroic event that was actually a massacre Who controls the story and who has been trying to correct it for generations?
A ruin everyone is afraid to excavate Not because of traps. Because of what it would confirm.
A dynasty that ruled for a thousand years, then vanished overnight No war. No plague. Just gone.
A war fought over something that turned out not to exist What do you do with the dead from a war like that?
The last thing a dying empire built And whether it outlasted everything else.
RELIGION, MYTH & RITUAL
A religion where the sacred texts are instructions, not stories Instructions for what and has anyone completed them?
A faith that worships a god who openly admits it doesn't know everything What does doubt look like in a religion built on honesty?
A ritual that everyone participates in and no one understands the origin of What does it actually do?
A schism caused by a disagreement about color What does the argument reveal about what people actually believe?
A religion that was proven false and grew larger afterward What does that say about why people believe?
A god who answers prayers, but only the ones no one intended to be prayers What does devotion look like in a world like that?
A temple built to a god who hasn't spoken in three centuries The priests still come. What do they do all day?
A myth that turns out to be a user manual For what and who wrote it?
A death cult that is genuinely not sinister What do they believe, and why does everyone misunderstand them?
A sacred site built on the exact spot where something terrible happened Is it a monument or a warning and who decides?
ECONOMY, TRADE & TECHNOLOGY
A currency backed by time, not gold Who controls the mint and what happens when someone counterfeits a year?
A trade route that exists because of a monster, not despite it What is the monster, and what does it take in exchange for safe passage?
A technology that made an entire class of people obsolete overnight What did they do and what did they become?
A black market for emotions Who's selling, who's buying, and what happens to someone who runs out?
A guild that controls access to something everyone needs What is it and what does the guild demand in return?
An economy that collapsed because of a magic spell Not war. Not plague. Specifically, one spell.
A society that invented something it immediately tried to uninvent What was it and did uninvention work?
A resource that only exists in one place in the world What does the country sitting on top of it look like?
A technology that has been developed three times and suppressed three times Who keeps suppressing it and why?
A merchant class more powerful than the monarchy What does the monarchy do about it and what does the merchant class do to stay ahead?
CULTURE, FOOD, FASHION & LANGUAGE
A cuisine built around an ingredient that is mildly toxic How did this become a delicacy and what does tolerance to it signal socially?
A fashion tradition where clothing communicates legal status What does someone wear when their status is contested?
A language with no word for 'stranger' What does that reveal about how this culture sees the world?
A food that is only eaten during war What happens the first time it's eaten in peacetime?
A clothing tradition that started as mourning dress and became everyday wear What does that say about what this culture has survived?
A language where tone of voice is grammatically required What do people who can't hear feel about this?
A dish that is considered both celebratory and funereal When did those two meanings merge and why?
A fashion taboo so old no one remembers why it exists What happens when someone breaks it and what does the reaction reveal?
A culture where names are earned, not given at birth What do you call a child before they've earned one?
A form of art that is illegal to view alone What does a culture believe about community if they passed this law?
ITEMS, ARTIFACTS & FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
An artifact that works perfectly but only once What is it worth and who gets to decide when 'once' is worth using?
A weapon that remembers every person it has killed What does it do with those memories?
A map that shows where you are not geographically, but emotionally Who made it and did they survive making it?
A book that rewrites itself to tell the story the reader needs to hear What does it show someone who genuinely doesn't know what they need?
An item that everyone agrees is cursed but no one will destroy Why, what are they afraid will happen if it's gone?
A relic that grants a power its owner already secretly had What does this say about where powers actually come from?
A mirror that shows you a version of yourself you don't recognize Is it showing you the past, an alternate, or something else entirely?
An artifact that has been stolen and returned so many times it has its own mythology What does the mythology say about it that isn't true?
A tool of forbidden knowledge that is remarkably mundane-looking What does it look like and how has that saved it from destruction?
An object that two civilizations both claim to have created What does each claim reveal about what they value?
✦ FREE NOTION WORLDBUILDING WORKSHEET
picked a prompt? now actually build it.
A spark is useless if it fizzles. The free worldbuilding worksheet turns any prompt above into a fully fleshed concept with every question you need to answer, organized so nothing gets lost.
YOUR CHALLENGE: Pick one prompt from the list above. Open the free template. Give yourself 30 minutes. Fill in every section from geography, culture, history, the works. By the end, you won't have an idea. you'll have a world.
the worksheet includes: ✓ geography, climate & biomes — build the land your story happens in ✓ powers & abilities tracker — 4 tiers from visual signature to writer's private notes ✓ society, factions & politics — who holds power, who's fighting to take it ✓ history & wars log — the events that shaped everything your characters live with ✓ religion, mythology & ritual — what people believe, and what they're wrong about ✓ culture, food, fashion & language — the texture that makes a world feel real
get the free worksheet here
Worldbuilding notes on spellrust.
In my setting, the Underdark has a magical weather phenomenon called dweomerfog, which some organisms feed on. Spellrust is a lichen that feeds not only on the fog, but on all magic. Having spellrust in the lungs can hinder spellcasting with verbal components, and in the bloodstream, spellrust can reduce the effectiveness or outright prevent magical healing. Even the dead lichen saps some nearby magical energy.
So you know how 50% of the Underdark races in dnd are "they are a joyless people who do not do anything for fun ever"? What if that's just a stereotype from the surface
You know how a lot of the western world says Russians never smile? I feel like the Underdark has a similar situation, where smiling for no reason is seen as rude and non-professional, almost mocking - and as a result the surface, where smiling is polite, thinks they must be joyless and depressed
(worldbuilding rant incoming)
