I'm just saying, if you're going to worldbuild magic being a "raw, primal force, akin to and interweaving with nature itself" you gotta explain to me why animals don't use it
I know the normal answer is "they just aren't smart enough for it" but idk I've seen enough media where a character uses a spell in a moment of brain-off panic ilI feel like animals could probably stumble into a spell or two like, accidentally
The old light house keeper sat, smoking a pipe his doctor told him to give up every year since the keep was young. Beside him, the only companion he'd had in over twenty two years, a cat who had been black once but had turned grey with age. The sun was setting and breakfast would be ready soon and then, the work would begin.
The air smelled faintly of flowers from the breeze coming off the mainland. It mixed with the salt air peculiarly, which was partly why the keeper lit up his pipe that evening. He and the cat sat, watching the sunset until the kettle screamed, calling forth a plume of steam.
"Hmmh," the keeper grunted as he stood, the cat opening one eye to watch as he shuffled in.
Coffee tins rattled and a glass bottle fell over in the cupboard as the keeper reached for his favorite mug. It was as old as the cat, and unlike the cat it was an ornate piece of frivolity. A friend from when he was young had gifted it to him, a bright red mug with flowers painted on it. Most of the flowers had scratches or chips in them now and the red was no longer so bright. Still, it was a reminder of someone he'd known.
Coffee in hand, the keeper stepped outside again. The cat stood, stretched, and made his way up the outer stairs to the top. With a grunt, the old man followed.
The top of the lighthouse was at a height that it should have always been safe from the waves. The old man knew better though, and so did the cat. The scars in the stone work from a wave dragging something across it gave away the sheer power of the ocean. The keeper glanced at the mark. The ocean had been hungry that night, but he'd fought to keep it from eating, not even it's rightful prey.
round 5 of????
dragons are split into multiple competing species including an offshoot which will head toward the gryphon/peryton/winged horse types sometime the early to middle triassic. during the jurassic, into the cretacious they all stay relatively small hunters of insects, mammals, small dinosaurs, fish and each other.
there seems to be something coming at the planet. it sparkles with something special. and then it impacts. KABOOM!!!!!
which lineage gets magic first?
round 4 of??? congrats! the ancestor of dragons and the othe 6legged creatures survived the great dying as a digger. as time goes on, the triassic begins. dinosaurs start becoming larger and more diverse.
when do you start flying as a small competitor of rhamphorincus types? (this is also when you split into flyers and ground/water type dragons)
round two of???? for people who love dragons and world building.
where did dragons, perytons, winged horses, and griffins split in the timeline? as the 6-limb ancestor was chosen this will assume convergent evolution with stem mammals and archosaurs later, but for now, some kind of 6 legged amphibian form exists which gains the typical scale protection and go from there
Pennsylvanian (Just before the permian, think giant amphibians and meganeura)
permian (early, along with the diversifying of the tetrapods)
LORE | REKINDLED is a transformative project dedicated to the S1/Pilot era of Rachel Smythe's Lore Olympus. Rekindled will attempt to re-interpret and reconstruct the foundations laid by Rachel Smythe in S1 of Lore Olympus' publication, while also remaining true to the themes and messages of the original myths upon which Lore Olympus is based.
We hope you enjoy this re-interpretation of The Hymn to Demeter - also known as The Rape of Persephone - expressed through the lens of a meta re-interpretation of Lore Olympus. Made by the fans, for the fans.
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"King Arthur and the round table" this, "king Arthur and the holy grail" that. All we have left of the OG tales are the wildly embellished versions recorded by Geoffry of Monmouth. Which, of course, the french courts further embellished.
These stories are based on remnants of already christianized stories. They may or may not have included Arthur to the degree he's includes in the later stories. (Love you BBC's 'Merlin' but you also are fanfic on the OG stories).
Anyway, the point of this entire thought is that I heard there's argument about whether or not a place in Wales has the round table or some church in England has it. In hearing this I learned that the early tellings of the round table said it could hold either 60 or 1,600+.
So, since an actual table being able to hold upwards of 1600 people seems ridiculous it got me thinking. (Especially since I already thought historians consistently put Arthur in the wrong time period. Roman? Absolutely not. Look further back please.)
What place in the UK is big enough and round and probably had oral history? Hmm.... oh, maybe Stonehenge?
It would have been an excellent way to bring "Albion " together as they built it, and then a gathering place for chieftains and their people to talk as equals. There's evidence of a round wooden structure having been there once upon a time so, put it together with European oral history got warped to the point of being unrecognizable and boom.
Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
rotating an idea for an FMA(B) AU in my mind where Ed has wings that are typically folded tight against his back and hidden by his red coat. He's basically born a chimera and chooses to hide his status to avoid obvious questions and suspicions.
But I want to lay down the background details, starting here:
Xerxesians, being prodigious alchemists, would of course have dabbled in chimeras and were the first to produce "successful" chimeras- similar to Greed's crew where they pass pretty much entirely for human. Most of their test subjects would have been servants, slaves, poor folk trading their bodies for coin, etc.
that's how we get Hohenheim- or 23, the twenty-third in a long line of chimerical experiments. He himself wasn't fused with an animal, but his mother or father was. 23, in turn, was actually born with a set of wings.
(Hohenheim being born a chimera is important to note bc it means his master not only made a series of healthy chimera, but ones that could reproduce! unfounded at the time)
Hohenheim was born w/ the wings of a lesser kestrel. I chose this bird more because it fits Ed more than Ho, but I just liked a few key details about it!
The lesser kestrel occupies a territory from Germany across the Middle East all the way to East Asia, which isn't super important given that FMA is set in a fictional world but loosely speaking, it's feasible that a Xerxesian alchemist could get his hands on one for human experimentation purposes.
I like the faintly red-brown coloration the males have on the back of their wings in combination w/ that black- very Ed.
They do well in grasslands/agricultural fields but are also adaptable to urban environments & co-existing with humans.
They are birds of prey!
however, they're quite diminutive birds of prey- meaning they're small and arguably very cute. (They're like 10-13 inches in length and notably smaller than Common Kestrels & other birds of prey)
Hohenheim's wings are proportional to his body tho, giving him the ability to fly.
As a slave, his physical fitness was well tested. He can fly and glide with great agility, but he was never allowed to go far because his master always kept him tethered to prevent his escape. Hohenheim also has a trail of feathers going down his spine but interestingly enough, he lacks a kestrel tail. He supposes that's not surprising, he lacks talons or a beak or eyesight far beyond that of a human. But perhaps he carries the genes for a tail. (Foreshadowing)
As an adult post-fall of Xerxes, Hohenheim found himself lost and shell shocked.
For many years, he contemplated cutting off his wings so he could better blend in with humans. But as a living Philosopher's Stone, he felt like it would be pointless endeavor and instead learned to hide them with a long coat.
Most of his canon story is basically the same until he meets Trisha.
When he fell in love with Trisha, Hohenheim knew full well that as a born and fertile chimera himself, it's fully possible their children will be born like him. He wasn't certain how great of a chance it was, it could be a recessive trait with no hope of ever resurfacing down his family line, or it could be a guarantee.
Hohenheim first has to reveal his wings to Trisha.
Even though he fully expected her to reject him at that point, understandably so, she instead accepted Hohenheim for who and what he was. She understood the possible consequences of their relationship and was completely willing to raise a potentially chimera child, together.
cue their first son.
To be safe, they have a home brith without a doctor or midwife, relying instead on Hohenheim's knowledge of alkahestry and human anatomy to tend to and heal Trisha.
And at the end of it, Edward Elric is born with wings. His were characteristic of baby kestrels, puffy and white and lacking the coloration or streamlined appearance that Hohenheim had as an adult.
Turning Edward over to properly examine his body, Hoheheim is horrified to see a small, tiny tuft of a tail protruding from Edward's lower back.
Dear god, his child was even more of a chimera than him! It's devastating to think of, until...
Hohenheim and all his souls cry at the sight of Trisha cooing at Edward as if he were a normal child, kissing his forehead and soothing his chip-like cries. She loves him. She loves their child, even if he was like Hohenheim. So brave, so loving, his Trisha.
But it also terrifies Hohenheim. He knew Trisha wanted at least two children, partly so they could help on their small family farm and partly so that the children could keep each other company.
All he has to go off of is the fact that his one and only child was very visibly a chimera. Ed will always be lesser than those around him- he will always have to hide his true self. But Trisha loved him and still wanted another child with her whole heart.
So they have Alphonse. And to Hohenheim's amazement, their second child has no visible chimera traits whatsoever! He's for all intents and purposes, human! He's human, and beautiful.
And perhaps, perhaps, just perhaps...even if Hohenheim does his best to treat both his boys equally, there's just the tiniest part of him that wants to recoil at the sight of Ed in the bathtub, flapping his wings and sending up bubbles. He's arguably slow to help Trisha bind Ed's wings before he goes out to play with Winry so they aren't seen, as well as when Trisha fits Ed with some kind of outer garment like a loose sweater or coat to hide the shape of his wings. He's possibly, if one looked close enough, a tad bit reluctant to groom Ed's wings. To gently pinch his pin feathers to release them (new feathers are encased in a white sheath as they grow out to protect them before they're fully developed), or combing his feathers or anything else.
The only thing Hohenheim does persistently and with excruciating effort/attention is when he clips Edward's flight & tail feathers so that even if he tried, he couldn't fly. It's honestly better if Edward never, ever learns how to fly and never develops the desire to. Far less a chance of someone ever uncovering his condition.
Hohenheim and Trisha have the same argument many times over the course of the first few years of the boys' lives. Hohenheim, as Ed's father, wants to take responsibility for his son's unfortunate condition by severing Ed's wings and tail before he's old enough to really remember them and the procedure.
Trisha, in contrast, argues that Edward's extra extremities are perfectly healthy limbs, even if his wing muscles are underdeveloped, and that it would be a tragedy to cut out such an integral part of himself.
Escape from Divinity may never end up as a finished full-color animation, but we can always pretend!
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reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.
And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!
Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.
this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.
my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.
so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.
the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.
also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:
it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.
#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass
On a Watsonian level, sure.
On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.
I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."
I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.
LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)
Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.
#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains
Western Washington vs Eastern Washington is a good example of a rain shadows effects for fellow writers.
Western Washington:
Eastern Washington:
For fantasy writers, Washington is a really cool state to study because we have nearly every biome from alpine forests, desert, alpine desert, rainforest, riparian forests, wetlands, coastal, and so on. We have two main mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We sit on three tectonic plates which give us said mountains (and earthquakes). Our ecology is really neat here.
Today, I went to the bookstore. My preferred genre is fantasy. I thought, 'let me see if there's anything I might like' and perused the shelves.
Instead of finding the synopsis full of mystery, intrigue and dark sorcerers trying to take over the kingdom or stories of adventure and dragon fighting (or even riding) or stories of magical horses picking people with "gifts" (ie magic), all I get is book after book of "romantasy".
Like, yes hello mysterious shadow man, I already met you and found you wanting. You are made of the same substance as your shadows. Sadness, emptiness and disappointment. I would like to get back to my 'downtrodden but still hopeful MC' (male or female I don't care).
Ah, here's one I might like. Oh, wait, it's another romance with barely any real Plot in order to make room for the "plot". No thanks
Ooh, this has a cool cover and title. Nope, first line of the synopsis includes some variation of "female mc has to save the kingdom by making male mc fall in love with her uwu"
I stopped looking through the modern fantasy, went around the corner and into the used section. There were maybe 5-7 different books I picked up with "adventuring party of some sort/mc has to stop the bad guy, will they succeed?"
I don't want my fantasy book to be a dimestore novel. If I wanted a bodice ripper, I would go to the romance section. Can we please stop dumping everything under the sun into fantasy/sci-fi?
Also, AO3 has better fairy "plot" than most of the romantasy I've heard of
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