—Hardy, inventive, and bearded, dwarfs are another elemental-based species, with four major subcultures all based on the various parts and types of mountains they live on: the underground earth-dwarfs, the volcanic fire-dwarfs, the glacial ice-dwarfs, and the air-dwarfs who reside on the peaks of the highest mountains. All dwarfs share a love of mining, metalwork, jewel-crafting, and coining, with dwarf-make items being some of the best in the world, and dwarfs are often believed to be obscenely rich. In Warball, dwarfs are tough as nails, being hard to knock down, tough to keep down, and happy to pummel the opponent into oblivion while faster people do all the fancy ball work. Dwarfs also tend to have a good market in making armour for teams and paying big sponsorships.
—The difference of the name depends solely on whether they are of the forest dwelling kind (fauns) or mountain dwelling kind (satyrs). Both have the feet and horns of goats, and sometimes the faces as well. They are agile and more than willing to use their horns, making them a very popular choice for blitzers as they can hit and run with terrifying efficacy.
One of the rarest species to play Warball, werewolves can take three forms: fully human, fully wolf, or a mixture of both. The transitioning between forms is relatively easy, but can be briefly disorienting and so transformations are usually done in safe environments and not often on the move or in action. Their rarity means that their culture is rather mysterious, though it is known that they live in large family units and are on the whole less frightening than they are often believed to be, but this does not stop thousands of rumours and horror stories which keep them from establishing more civilized contact with other species. On the pitch their speed, agility, strength, and ferocity is highly prized and the few werewolf players that have reached the pro leagues enjoy substantial paycheques, while teams without them will politick heavily to try and gain them.
My first shot at a species bio, just picking a species that isn't likely going to feature much just to flex some worldbuilding muscles and keep this blog actually active.
Sprites/pixies/fairies/gnomes: All technically different species but no one much notices the difference. They are representative of the four elemental spirits: sprites are air, pixies are water, fairies are fire, gnomes are earth. Each has the ability to transform into an elemental animal: butterflies, carp, salamanders, and moles respectively. They do not feature much in Warball, but they are sometimes called in by teams to use surreptitious magics to affect the other team.
Let me know how this sounds and if I should add/change/remove some things, cause I love making up more lore!
A populous species that rivals humans in their ability to thrive in nearly every environment, ratlings have rodent-like heads, paws, and tails, and have a light coat of fur that comes in four predominant colours: black, grey, brown, and white. They are incredibly fast on the pitch, and enjoy using numbers to overwhelm opponents. Their inventiveness and craftiness rivals dwarfs and goblins, the three of whom form a triangle of mutual hatred against each other.
Trying to get an early start on a bit of fiction for the blog.
If anyone could give me a list of vaguely fantasy sounding city names and team names, that would be much appreciated.
I'm thinking stuff like the Holfsted Billhooks, the Argant Reds, and the Oliani Thunder-Walkers. I'll use those names in my fic, but any more ideas are always welcome.
(Am I crowdsourcing some of my world-building? Yeah, a little. Hopefully that doesn't seem sketch).
My bad all my [checks notes] 5? Followers. I'll do a quick post about Leagues, cause I think that's the simplest bit.
Leagues were created by the same despised Managers that wrote the Second Edition Rules, but to much greater public appreciation.
A large part of why Lagues were formed was because teams were so numerous it was almost impossible to sort out who was playing who and what and why and where.
So the ever-intrepid Managers sought a way to streamline the tangled mess of several hundred teams worldwide that all wanted to play each other. Efficiency is the name of the game for money-making minds like the Managers. The less hoops a coin had to jump before landing in a Manager's coffer was better, because every hand the coin passed through could be taxed, and the less a Manager had to pay in taxes, the better for his retirement funds.
Every professional warball team on the Dodec is governed by the INDWA (Inter-National Dodecahedron Warball Association). The INDWA is run by the High Managers, who govern such things as World Championships, approved team names, discipline for regular rule-breakers, and the maintenance of the Second Editions Rulebook.
Each major continent has their own governing association that manages the leagues on that continent on behalf of the INDWA, much like how dukes and counts run smaller bits of a country for their king. Within each continent, most kingdoms, free cities, empires, republics, city-states, and commonwealths have their own leagues.
To have a professional League, a sovereign state must have at least 4 teams, with a maximum number of 32. If a sovereign state has more than 32 available teams, they will split the teams into Ranked Leagues, with one half being arbitrarily "better" than the other half, and the best teams from the lower ranked League have an opportunity to get bumped up to the higher ranked League, replacing the worst of the higher-rank.
The reason for 4-32 being the approved numbers was because the Managers found that multiples of 4 worked best for arranging games, playoffs, and knockout rounds.
Every four years or so, Continental Championships are held, with the best team from each sovereign state going to play the best teams from all the other sovereign states. Naturally the winner of each Continental Chanoionship gets a pass into the World Championship, where they can claim the highest glory: winning the Iron Bowl. A simple trophy, the Managers put great effort into making the Iron Bowl seem legendary and mythological, mostly by clever campaigning and insinuating that the cauldron was where the skin for the first proper ball for the game was boiled, or something like that.
