More on Terra 102:

The planet looks like a normal planet with different climates and habitats on the surface. Go underground enough and you'll find out that it has a mechanical, metallic interior, and a computerized core with a non-sentient AI so it won't go berserk.

If you thought that the planet and the wildlife were placed there by Precursors... you are right.

Gifted may have crazy awesome powers of mass destruction, but depending on how their powers work, they need to be trained to use it via scientific studies. For example, Calia can do anything (create, manipulate, transmute, change other states of matter into) involved with solids, Melanie with liquids, and Amber with gases. All three need to have chemical knowledge of the matter they want to create or transmute some other matter into. If they want to shape their attacks or position the source of the attack, they need very good spatial reasoning and math skills.

edited 19th Aug '14 5:11:16 AM by ironcommando

When populating a refuge, an atlas tower will imbue individuals with specific knowledge kept in the Architect Library. This is to make sure that there are doctors, engineers, and even farmers capable of continuing everyone else's existence. Future generations are born without knowledge but can learn by consulting the Library telepathically.

edited 10th Aug '14 11:34:06 AM by Avenuewriter

Much of the world is made up of the essences of fallen gods. These typically take the form of minerals in soil, rock or sand.

They can be extracted and ground down into powders to be used as 'infusions' - burned in a sacred flame held in a face-mask then inhaled to produce various internal effects for a human, such as strength or enhanced vision.

However, these infusions can come at a price. Many of the more common infusions contain the power of gods that are dead, and have few side-effects, but other fallen gods are merely sleeping (some gods are still fully active, but their essences are somewhat difficult to obtain without ascending to their home dimension), and burning infusions of their power can cause them to influence you.

This may result in strange dreams, voices in your head or even total control if you take too much. The effects are cumulative and do not fade over time unless the god has no further use for you (which can also be bad for your health).

edited 11th Aug '14 3:31:16 AM by JimmyTMalice

Mana and Gifted soul consumption

This is a form of intangible energy given out by Gifted. It acts as a gas-like substance when outside living beings, saturating the air. Using spells consumes Mana. When beings capable of using magic come into contact with it, it is absorbed by them until the mana inside them reaches a saturation level (i.e. their MP is maxed). Mana is produced at a steady rate via a Gifted's link to Manaspace (also known by Magispace), an alternate dimension where magic comes from.

To maintain this link, a Gifted's Guardian (basically the Arcane half of their soul as a Guardian Entity) must consume sentient souls, averaging one per week once the Gifted reaches puberty. If the Gifted increases the rate of mana production (by using mp-excessive spells), the Guardian gets hungry faster. If they conserve, the Guardian stays full for a longer period of time. Anybody killed by a Gifted will usually get their soul consumed near-instantly.

A Guardian that is starving may force its Gifted to kill people for souls. Failing that, the Guardian will eat the Gifted's human soul, and prematurely emerge as an Arcane (essentially an extremely powerful godlike being).

Basically, Gifted can act like a Mana Tree that doesn't have to stay in one spot, and they provide very fast Regenerating Mana to anybody nearby. The tradeoff is that they have to consume sentient souls.

There is a lovely sandwich shop in Naughtwhere known for their pulled pork sandwiches... Long Pork Sandwiches.

In my setting, cigars were originally invented by dragons and were lit with their fire breath. Dragons tended to swallow smoked cigars to help fuel their fire breath.

I'd kill to see and illustration of one of your dragons smoking a cigar. That just sounds hilariously awesome.

Also, due to the size of most dragons, their cigars are big enough to sit on.

I wouldn't want to encounter a dragon from your setting. I have a huge aversion to cigarette smoke.

Terra 102:

Almost all the flora and fauna on the world are deadly and have bizarre powers. They're actually genetically engineered by the Precursors and placed there on the planet to grow, adapt and evolve, so the Precursors will be able to weaponize them. When the citizens of the planet made the meme "The _____ will kill you!", they meant it.

Giants are not actually physical lifeforms, as such. A giant is born when a natural spirit forms in an area rich with primal magic and starts to assemble a physical protective shell around it from whatever materials are on hand. As a result, the appearance and physical nature of giants varies tremendously based on their environment...a giant formed in a forest might be composed of dead branches, bits and pieces of bark, mossy rocks and maybe a live sapling or two, while one that forms on a mountaintop will be all rock and ice. Giants are strongly tied to their home territory and usually cannot go far from the place of their "birth" without starting to fall apart.

Giants will also keep growing as long as they have access to enough primal magic, and elder giants can be the size of small mountains. If the spirit forming the giant's core isn't destroyed, it will eventually grow powerful enough to merge into the land itself, forming a Genius Loci while leaving its empty shell behind. As such, it could be said that giants are really the larval form of the Genius Loci.

So would it be possible for one of these giants to assemble themselves with people or corpses if they appeared in a populated area or grave yard? I ask because as I read your description I couldn't help but think how terrifying something like that would be if it could do that.

Yep, corpses are a distinct possibility and I've actually considered having a grave giant make an appearance at some point. Living people (and animals) have their own individual auras that would fight off any attempt by a giant to use them as construction material, but living plants can sometimes be incorporated into a giant's shell (or they can take root and start to grow on a giant).

Also, since it's a The Magic Comes Back setting, temporary hot spots of primal magic can sometimes develop inside urban areas, theoretically allowing for the existence of city giants. Nobody is entirely sure what would happen if such a giant were to reach the Genius Loci stage, except that it probably wouldn't be pretty.

No one will bat an eyelid at an overweight dragon walking down the street with a magic stick. Seriously, it's that kind of world.

No Precursors at all, the people before the Black Empire were primitive and barbaric and the Black Empire pulled itself up by it's bootstraps to create every bit of technology and infrastructure by itself, this is why it's so perpetually expansive, forcing nation after nation to join and suffering from extreme imperial oversight which makes most internalized nations be let out on a very long leash indeed.

Vampires burst into flame when exposed to sunlight, however they are immune to flames so they become vastly more dangerous during the day or when exposed to UV light (although the smoke and flames tend to reduce their stealthiness somewhat). The Vampires realize this and have UV emitting pills to eat when they find themselves in a tough fight.

The story averts convection schmonvection as a flaming Vampire can give you 3rd degree burns at a distance of 5 meters away.

edited 19th Aug '14 4:29:57 AM by matti23

26 cylindrical "shafts" run from the surface of Terra 102 to the center of the planet. 2 are at the poles, 8 in the northern hemisphere, 8 in the equator, and 8 in the southern hemisphere. These shafts are barred shut by a Hard Light material.

If one manages to enter into the shafts, they'll find the area inhabited by strange energy beings and robots, all of which will attack on sight as their duty is to protect the core at the center of the planet. Under the planet's crust, there is mostly empty space outside the shafts due to it being a Hollow World.

The buildings created by the precursors are marveled at by explorers because they seem to have hard light bridges and terminals. They actually just cut your legs and arms off because they're regular cutting lasers... The precursors have a weird sense of humour :p

edited 16th Sep '14 2:09:39 AM by matti23

The Delver

A giant subterranean worm with psionic Deflector Shields, extremely tough armor, extremely sharp (and hard) teeth, extremely fast speed, and an extremely bad temper. The reason why the Terrans don't dig down past the surface.

It's speculated that the Delver is able to tunnel underground with little effort due to a combination of things. Firstly, its drill-like mouthpieces is made of a Hard Light substance known as Multiproof. This is the same substance that holds the bridges and city platforms of Terra 102 up. Having a beak like this allows it to break the ground. Secondly, the worm projects a psionic forcefield on its body, pushing away any displaced ground behind it as well as helping it move further.

The Delver is a huge threat to Terrans as it can potentially destroy the pillars holding up the highways and cities. Thankfully, they never surface high enough to affect the supports. Still, it is a huge threat to anybody attempting to reach through one of the 26 shafts on the planet.

There's quite a distinct difference between the "Spirit World" and Hell. The Spirit World is exclusively inhabited by Spirits, who take all shapes and forms. People do not go there when they die, but a person can be transported there through certain means. Hell is different between each person, a pocket dimension of eternal torture for each crime.

While there are certain spirits who resemble classic theological Hellfire demons, they are still considered spirits. The closest thing to demons in Hell are creatures that resemble a cross between a goblin and an imp, who are mostly around to psychologically torture the damned.

In my science fantasy i decided to throw out all the traditional fantasy races,humans included. and populate the cosmos with wired slightly animal inspired humanoids of my own design.

I also threw out conventional reality all together. after realizing that part of problem i was having world build was that i was trying to fit my "weirdness" into a normal-ish cosmology. Once i stopped doing that thing just started to flow. There are no planets, every world is a cosmos in it's own right, they are all connected through a labyrinthine maze of ethereal corridors.

A superhero containing world that is over the top, being based on Vsauce episodes such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VGDhGsYoSA or this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fL8zopddI . All reasonable scale (even for a superhero story) is now thrown out the window and there's people that can punch so hard that they create 100km deep craters at the point of impact and one dude with a 1100 dB shout that lasts for a 10th of a second. It's so loud that the shout creates a black hole with an event horizon larger than the observable universe. All the other powers have been cranked up to 11 and earth was already Fas Ro Dah'd into oblivion in the first few chapters.

As you may have guessed the scope of the story is over many universes and follows a group of people moving around the multi verse. Planets and galactic clusters tend to explode, get eaten or turn into black holes with great frequency during the course of a battle, leaving that universe an utter ruin. It's played for humor and the heroes are portrayed partly as incompetent as they tend to destroy the very people they intend to protect... as well as everyone else to happens to occupy that universe. In a few rare cases they can save somebody properly when they try to apply more creative or unusual tactics or uses of their powers.

edited 30th Sep '14 4:58:51 AM by matti23

Dwarves weren't discovered by the surface world until the early 1900s.

In a setting where a deadly plague wiped out humanity, and only those with the curse of the werewolf survived due to the curse giving them an immunity to all forms of disease, the Seattle Space Needle is now home to a pack of "hipster" werewolves who like to pretend the world didn't end.

Jabbits, the rabbit-equivalents on Terra 102, will kill you. With their venom claws. Yes, even the rabbit-analogues will kill you.

Thankfully, they can be de-clawed, neutered, and kept as pets.

Eldritch Abominations have names that are physically unspeakable. Meaning that even if you had the name of the being, written down in perfect handwriting and with a guide to pronunciation, only a small blip of quick static noise would come out of your mouth. One loophole is that people who use hearing aids (or similar devices) can bypass the static noise, and are able to hear the name of the creature with perfect clarity.