Now this isn't like the only species allowed in macrocosmic dream, it's just the ones I've currently thought up for OCs I've been working on for macrocosmic dream and world building settings
-Nagas. Half snake on the bottom, half human on top. They can be found anywhere but are mostly found in their main city/country, the city is located on top of a large slithering mountain said to be their old snake god who died to create them. They believe this snake god has issued the order for their strength festivals, if their god says the best way to survive is to find and give up their weakest... Who are they to argue?
-yokai. I specifically have a tsuchinoko girl character in this world, using one of the concepts power she turns herself human to get more alcohol and starts working at a bar whose most common patron is a tsuchinoko hunter. As she is a yokai her existence implies that other yokai characters can also exist, so go crazy.
-Bird people. They don't have a common name yet, but they're basically like regular humans but the ends of their hair is feathers instead of hair. They share the hair colour of their bird species and the same conduct, like for them being bright and flashy is masculine and a sign of being male, while having duller colours is seen as very feminine and a sign of being female. Unlike the nagas this species is most commonly found everywhere, their major city isn't as focused on returning like the nagas are, they migrate to anywhere they please and that becomes their home until they migrate agan, it's not uncommon to see one anywhere you end up basically. I have two potential characters for this species, one is a peacock bird man whose concept power allows him to use the eye patterns on his feathers framing his face to disorientate and hypnotize people slightly. By ends of the hair I mean every end, even on the smallest hairs, very hairy bird folk will look so fluffy and feathery. The second character is a trans parrot man, who dyes his feathers bright and colorful and wears colourful clothes. He's not much of a character right now, just the general concept really of how many trans bird folk can I add in with the cool sexual dimorphism birds have, they wouldn't care about dresses or tits/dicks after all, that's not how they identify gender even in this human form. It'd all be about colours and it's fun to play with
-dog hybrids. Basically dog boys and girls, it's exactly as it is everywhere else, you slap dog ears and a tail on someone and you're done. The character for this one is a border Collie villain who's very giddy and happy to herd people Into mania and panic at their mistresses command. They work with peacock man, except peacock man is very much unwilling and has been forced to be there.
-Cat girls/boys. Entirely here as a fuck you to genshins only girls get cat ears thing, lyney should have had cat ears, diona is the only one who makes sense having the cats be female only because shes a calico, those generally are female only cats. Lynette and lyney are not Calico cats his ass should have ears. Anyway yeah just like the dog one, slap cat ears and tail on someone and call it a day.
The Naga's are really the most in depth species right now with political issues in their city, leaving the city isn't exactly seen as bad to the Naga's, it's not returning to attend the festival that Nagas see as bad. It just so happens most people who go so far from the city and country are the ones trying to avoid the festival and stay alive, those ones are seen as traitors for abandoning their dying gods last wishes for their people to survive through the strongest.
The people in this world are very much affected biologically by the entities, if their planet is basically earth but different name, then the entities arrival has changed the planets course enough to allow various humanlike species to come into being and exist alongside humans. New species to be added are always welcome, it's not fixed or anything these are just the ones I thought up for neat character ideas. @rainbowprisimatic with dog/cat boys being a thing, then the half lion species your oc is can definitely exist here! Perhaps as a rarer, ancient form of the current cat people species? He is often from far in the past, so he could be the last one left alive because the others of his kind evolved into the cat people seen commonly or died out in the past.
Ahem, alright this has been months if not a year in the making but- introducing the rough magic system concept of
Macrocosmic dream
Long ago, five entities came to our planet, deciding to harvest the life force bless the people of the planet, four of these entities bestowed their powers onto the humans and creatures of earth (working on planet name so we're just calling it earth), splitting small pieces of themselves to spread amongst the world, seeking out living beings who reflect the traits enjoyed by the respective entity.
Time
(forgive the shitty image I cannot draw clocks and this was my prototype icon design)
Time is the flow of this world, with their gift on earth it allows things the time to grow, to advance and evolve
People who are blessed with times gift are often those with an innovative streak, those who risk remaking something and trying something new, or advancing something from the past. You could be an inventor, constantly seeking to create something new, or perhaps a chief who wishes to remake old family dishes for everyone to enjoy, the desire to know something enough to change it and remake it time and time again is a desire time adores seeing in humans. For time, nothing is new, even the wheel existed before it did, and it so loves when humans try anyway to create new things, to appreciate the old and make the new the new old. Currently I have no character examples of time to show how it works power wise, but I have some concepts.
You see, no matter the concept the basis of the powers remains the same, which is the users personal view of said concept. Somebody who fears time is always moving without them can gain the power to stop time, or perhaps they wish to catch up to time slipping through their fingers, and they gain powers of super speed. It all relies on the users personal views on the concept, and if it's more negative or positive can change the outcome too. This can range from "time is as inescapable void that claims and now I have black hole powers" to "oh yeah time is like clocks right? Gear attack. Clock hand sword." It all depends on the blessed's view.
Space
The counterpart to time, whereas time gives you the ability to grow, space gives you the room to. The environment you walk in, the air you breathe, space is all that surrounds you at any given time. This could be the space of your home, or the space of the stars and the black void beyond this planet's reach.
Space adores explorers, the people who want to see what is in the space it has blessed us with, who want to reach across and do something that affects the entire space around them. This can range from people who want to see every corner of the planet and the stars beyond, or people who simply want their presence to be felt across the world, an artist who wants to be spoken about in all corners for their work. Truly, space adores those with lofty dreams, the kind that seem as impossible as touching the stars themselves.
I do have two examples of how space has presented itself in people, the first is an ancient king, his one dream was to rule the entire world. He looked out at the plains and saw land to be owned, space to be conquered, and space bestowed in him a gift for his dream, if space was something to be owned then he would own it all as their king. His crown became the key to his power, retaining anything he placed inside that could help him rule his land, knowledge, advisors, treasures. They say this king never truly died, that his blessing was so great space allowed him to place himself in his crown, and that he rules on through his descendants to this very day.
The second blessed of space is aprello, his dream is lofty but still his own, and that is to make a railway system that covers the entire globe. Others may see it as simple, or insane, but aprello believes in it and refuses to let go. As a gift for his persistence space blessed him. He has the power to construct metal out of nothing, creating his own railway tracks and trains whenever he so pleases and wherever he wishes.
Order
(there's no yellow so time had to be orange and space is red so please excuse the pink it's supposed to be blood red in colour)
Order is life itself, blood and breath, if space and time are where you live and how you grow, then order is why you exist. Order is the blood in your veins, the lungs of a snake, the will to live and continue on of a salmon, life is order, but so is death. Life and death are the endless cycle which order embodies.
Order itself cares not for the humans infighting on its meaning, clawing at eachother throats insisting that it means the law and justice, that it means predator versus prey, nature versus man. In reality, order is all of these things as they all result in the same thing. Perpetuation. There will always be a predator hunting prey, the law will always persecute someone, there will always be man to hunt animal and animal to hunt man. Order prefers those who find themselves aiding in a cycle, this can range from a wealthy CEO undermining their workers, to a worker struggling to make ends meet at a dead end job. Or even to those who want to break the pre-existing cycles via revolution or grand change, because no matter what a new cycle will repeat itself. Order doesn't care how you feel about the cycle, it only cares that you progress it, that you help the snake devour its own tail for all time.
Order is one of the more versatile concepts, with a wide range between its blessed. Some are endowed with nature's blessing, control of plants or animals, others lean more towards humanity with the power of laws. I don't have a character for this concept, so I'll list some concept powers to help you get a better idea of how it works. One person can view order as the law, justice and the scales, their power gives them a hammer to issue out that justice, scales to balance their enemies hearts. Another thinks of life and death, the bell doth toll, and so their power is a bell that rings out death. Another thinks of life, and they can reanimate corpses under their control. Just some examples incase this gets confusing, but if it does I am willing to clarify it more, just let me know!
Chaos
You may think this one is evil, the opposite of life, but these entities exist beyond that. If life is your breath, then chaos is nature's. Chaos makes the winds blow, the tides turn and the plants bloom. If order is all blood filled life and death, then chaos is its counterpart in being nature's life and death.
Chaos adores those who are curious, those who want to understand the world around them, if a tree falls when nobody is around does it make a sound? Chaos loves those who wish to be there to hear it, to confirm. Those who become its blessed often range from scholars and students, to frat boys and people who basically just want to fuck around and find out. That's the basis chaos finds itself attracted to, those who mess with things to learn why, the curious and the reckless youth, the wise elders who want to learn more and the urge to know why.
I do not have a character example for chaos, unfortunately, this one actually caused me enough trouble that I made a Reddit post to get people's views on chaos for power concepts. Which resulted in amazing results as "chaos is mania, so the user can induce widespread mania in people and entities" and "dragon." I am not lying somebody said dragon and I love them, if they were in macrocosmic dream they would get dragon powers and they are the only one having this magic who is doing it right. One way to find out a chaos power for someone is to take whatever they'd get from order and reverse it. Humans often view chaos and order as opposites, and that's ultimately what decides the power. For instance a maid with order could view order as clean and neat, and have powers reflecting that. However if that same maid got chaos's boon then they would instead have the power to spread dirt and grime.
The fifth entity never did bestow their blessing on the earth, instead watching it's offspring of entities bestow theirs and how humans reacted. They say the fifths gift came later, and not as power bestowed but a presence felt. Turning itself into a human form to better experience the world, unfortunately no evidence of such an ancient forebearer exists, so it has been debunked as mere myth. (Don't mind this, this is lore for the traveler/rover equivalent)
Now, as there are only four entities bestowing power, there surely must be four elements only, right?
Evolution.
The hidden, lesser known fifth element. This is for a reason, as this element is no gift from entities beyond this planet's reach, instead, this is Prometheus's gift to mankind. A mad scientist who stole growth and evolution from time itself, turning his prize into a new fifth element he is constantly working to refine. He keeps his work hidden, but if you pay attention you might see the grey colour of evolution from lucky individuals.
Prometheus picks the subjects of his experiment very carefully, he can't go giving evolution to any random person, his work would get shut down for sure. Instead, Prometheus targets those who are desperate, who need power that the entities won't give for whatever reason. Humans should be the ones in control of their fate, no? So he blesses those who seemingly need it the most.
Now, Prometheus's concept is different from the others, it is not just evolution but human evolution, those who gain it have their powers form on their view of humanity. I do have two examples for this, but one is an exception to most of the rules. The first is
Cecilia. Crowned heir to the throne of the space conquering king, she is set to inherit the throne from her father, rarely seen by her large kingdom or her people due to her immense lessons, the crown princess must learn more, learn something new to better the kingdom. She hates It, and one day when sneaking off to learn something she wanted to know for herself, fencing, a man approached her. Blue hair framed his red eyes as he offered her an escape, you can't become spaces queen if you are claimed by another, no? And so she accepted, becoming a blessed of evolution. Cecilia is selfish, her main view of humanity? It is her. Humanity evolved and now she exists. So her power reflects that, she can make copies of herself, and only copies. Her power will grow and learn with her, eventually changing to seeing herself in all of humanity, and humanity in herself, basically instead of thinking of herself she views others as just like herself and therefore as important, letting Cecilia make copies of other things and advancing her power.
And the second holder of evolution, she is a unique case, special in its making as she was not blessed by Prometheus, in fact... He has no idea she even exists. His own work to himself in evolution created a unique copy of himself, exactly as he was once, unfortunately while he resisted the foolish urge to be accepted, to be understood, his copy did not come to the same conclusion and faked his own death. Prometheus moved on to perfect evolution, and Nasir found himself with a blade to his throat and then a wife.
What would you say a baby's idea of humanity is? An infant understands things at their base form, for they know no other way to understand, and when a dying baby is born, red eyes straining to see as she can't breath.. her instincts and small self believes in all her heart that being alive, being human, means surviving. Evolving. Adapting-
And a miracle happens, little baby roya is no longer dying. Red eyes strong as she smiles and coos, meeting the terrified red eyes of a man who understands the mark of evolution scored on her back, what this means for his daughter, for his dream.
And uh. That's macrocosmic dream! At least, a basic explanation of the concepts and the powers you can get. Including the man made fifth one of evolution. To make it easy, order is animal life, chaos is the environment, space is distance and the earth, time is growth and evolution is humanity. Now, just because that's what the concepts are doesn't mean the power is limited by it.
The powers are decided on human views, If a person is convinced order means nature then they're going to get plant powers, even if technically chaos is the plant one. Really chaos is natural disasters, tsunamis and tornados and all that. Order is the cycle of life, blood for blood. The other three seem more obvious I think from previous explanations so they're good.
Roya is special in that she's born with evolution, she's about to die and she gains it from Nasir's own influence of evolution, this doesn't happen with the other concepts because they're more self contained to the person. Prometheus hasn't perfected evolution allowing it to be received genetically, evolution itself is missing the primal ingredient of evolution, aka Prometheus is stumped because he can't progress in his work, but that's just because his missing piece is Roya aka evolution growing through bloodlines and evolving like natural and actual evolution.
There is more to this, like heralds of the concepts and the general idea of the forebearer, who is my idea of the basically MC of the concept, the rover or the traveler like from wuwa and genshin basically. But this should be enough to hopefully give your ocs abilities for each? I tried to make the reasons for getting the concepts vague enough that you can reasonably just pick one and have it fit, but still be detailed enough that you can really dig into it. It's entirely possible for two or more entities to want to bless one person because they fit their favourite kind of person, it's really just a matter of who gets to them first or meta wise whichever power you like best for them.
@rainbowprisimatic @uncreative-cryptid I hope you both don't mind the tags, but I mostly really wanted to make this more public because I very much want to put everyone's ocs into this system, i unfortunately don't have much of a world yet, like cities or kingdoms beside Cecilia's kingdom that is was ruled by that king who had space's blessing, and that's got some sorta rebellion going on, the people want to revolt and Cecilia is secretly helping the revolution leader who she is also sorta gay with but she's also entirely planning to sacrifice them to free herself from the duty of the crown. The crown also has lore but that's not important to the general magic system and so will be yapped about at a later date. If anyone else has read this far into my ramble of a project then feel free to also put your oc into this magic system, which at this point is basically just "this is their view on time and so here are the powers they'd get" or whatever concept you prefer.
Oh also- people can have similar or the same powers here, because it's based on your views it just means if you have the same or similar power to someone that you've got similar or the same views, or opposite ones, like with chaos and order who often get pairs because of human association. To the entities chaos and order match as much as space and time does, they're the same but human views make them slightly different. Okay, it is really late I am tired and making more typos then I want to correct so we're done now, that is the concept based magic system of macrocosmic dream! Don't ask about power match ups like the rock paper scissors thing I have not figured it out yet except that evolution is basically a void element and it doesn't react negatively or positively with anything because of it's unique creation from humans instead of Eldritch entity
I can't believe I've much stuff I've added/thought of for macrocosmic dream specifically because I wanted to add one moon thing for the sun and moon pairing it's like
The sun and moon are often paired as lovers and stuff and I wanna do that but I don't wanna step on the lions toes so I'll make the god of the sun interested in the moon god
I have cool ideas that happen to contrast well with said lion so I can sorta pair them up as opposites too
But their stories don't intersect so I gotta think of a reason why they're paired together in universe
Religion. Sun and moon religion
They stole both gods original myths from others and praise the moon more then the sun due to parallels mentioned earlier (beauty versus beast((cause lion and the other is somewhat more humanoid usually))) and this leads to them being the original perpetrators who helped wiped out the sun lions people
Accidentally make the guys who basically killed the bwyta'r haul for religious reasons (they wanted the sun myths all to themselves because "they're the only right ones")
Okay well they can't only worship the sun and moon because they stole both from others, so they must have had an original thing to worship and the sun and moon are the equivalent of saints ala Christianity going "your god isnt god hes just a special person to my god"
They worship the earth god and the planets now mainly
Now there's an earth god. (The other planets don't get a god that part of the myth was mistaken for being god for every planet so they think it's a gos for every planet but in actuality they were other gods unrelated or even the entities I dunno)
Macrocosmic dream would go SO hard as a dnd campaign, fr
So far I've mostly imagined it as like a game like wuwa and genshin but hey that might work, the forebearer might need fucking with as one MC in a dnd campaign doesn't sound like It'll go well, so they'll have to be another way to add in the fifth entity lore. But for the rest of the worldbuilding yeah that might really work
I'm not too familiar with dnd unfortunately and how it usually flows, so it might not work as I think. So far I think all my characters would be npcs as many don't reach that point of coming together like dnd groups do at the same time. Like by the time the story starts roya has already left her home and is searching for Nasir, but Cecilia is still heir to cosmosium and hatching her plan. Cecilia only gets the roaming part needed way later on. Do dnd played characters usually do shit like ascending to a version of godhood? Because if not roya is definitely off the table, she becomes a herald of evolution, the enacter of the concepts will, but Prometheus isn't the concept and so ranks below her, she's a herald for a concept with no will, so it's her will, she basically becomes the equivalent of a baby cosmic god, not as abstract as the entities, but with enough time she'll be as strong as them. An unplanned god baby if you will.
I haven't even thought of what aprello's doing, his ass is just fucking with trains somewhere I guess. Once again aprello is the equivalent of a joke character until I inevitably slap lore behind his ass like an unforgiving dm
So turns out there's two snake constellations, one specifically for the tail, Serpens cauda, and one specifically for the head, Serpens caput. This Is an absolutely amazing coincidence because now @rainbowprisimatic i can make a medusa style species so don Quixote can keep his snake hair if you wanna put him in this world!
The Naga's come from the Serpens cauda god humanoid line, meanwhile they have a counterpart species connected mostly by the snake connection that instead of having snake tails have snake heads on their head, it could have been two twin gods who disagreed, the Naga's snake god became the mountain for them to live on, meanwhile the medusa style peoples god did something different and in turn it's people kept their snake heads when becoming more humanoid. Since medusas often relate to stone perhaps this second snake god turned itself to stone to create it's people, becoming a statue to watch over them instead of a mountain like it's twin
Got inspired to try and figure out what kind of clothing the Bwyta'r Haul wore before their extinction, just for the fun of it, but... i didnt think it would be THIS difficult to make unique enough cultural clothing that doesnt make people instantly think of an already existing culture from irl. Lol. but i dont plan to give up. Will share if I manage to come up with anything !
Oh yeah clothes are tricky bastard's, I struggle with just regular outfits for my ocs let alone more cultural outfits a whole group of people will wear.
For some reason the idea to reverse engineer some clothes came to mind? Like, they lived in mountains right? Trying to be as close to the sun as possible, so they probably dealt with harsh winds and warm sun a lot of the time, as they'd likely not pick a high mountain with snowy storms because that would block the sun from them. So clothes that cover the skin to keep them from burning and are thick enough to block out the winds would work, harsh sunlight in windy weather can be bad I believe? I think I heard somewhere when I was younger that cool wind on sun being burnt by the sun only made it worse, I think it would burn you faster unless you hid from the sun? Eh, it's an unreliable memory, but hopefully the rest of that is enough to help even just a bit
God I love imagery. I'm finding a name for Cecilia's ex for the cosmosium lore post and one of my potential names is Diana, along with Delia, Diana is the Roman god of the hunt, moon and the wilderness, the equivalent to Artemis, and Delia means of Delos, the island Artemis and Apollo were born on.
The neat symbolism comes from Cecilia's patron saint name inspiration, the saint Cecilia was a saint of music, and Cecilia sognare as heir to cosmosium wears mostly oranges and yellows, colours of the sun (and the space concept), aka things similar to Apollo. Meanwhile the rebellion leader could be seen as the opposite but the same as Cecilia, for those who know her wuwa origins she's basically the Carlotta to Cecilia's fisalia, someone just like her but for some reason Cecilia can't comprehend they're just... Better. All she struggles with, they can handle.
This rebellion leader being the Diana to Cecilia's Apollo feels positively fantastic in my head, not to mention Diana is more primarily a goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and the countryside, this rebellion leader is primarily focused on the people beneath the nobles and the king, she stands for the people not born of high standing, those in the fields and those forced to conquer more land for the king. Most rebellions happen at night, be it disruption or sneaking in to enact plans against what you're rebelling against, under the light of the moon.
Now, Diana is also a part of a triple goddess thing, one of the faces of Hecate, which doesn't fit my image of her so far so I might ignore that bit. Her wiki page says Diana was the hunt, Hecate the underworld and Luna/selene the moon, so the hunting and wilderness/countryside thing still mostly fits. Maybe I could reference it in different facets of her identity? To her rebellion she is the hunt, the hunt of those who use and hurt them for riches, the will of the country angry against their king. To the nobles she is death, the underworld, a witch cursing to take away all they know, be it riches or power. Which just leaves the moon, perhaps Cecilia sees her as the moon side, a gentle, soft light reserved for those she loves instead of leads. Selena/the moon part of Diana is also often called upon for childbirth help, be it to get pregnant or to have an easy delivery, mostly because most births occured under the moon, so perhaps her moon facet is her when she's more loving and family orientated? Though I worry that comes off as "women can fight and be cool but they will always return to being mothers" which I don't want for this character. So that concept definitely needs workshopping
