Mention a random quirk of your world

Without getting to hard into the semantics, how does this work? Are the general global populations the same (relative to the setting), or way more now that there are tons of other sentient species that should be considered now? Are there less humans to compensate?

Also you might want to look at the general race stats in general. Like, humanity's "endurance" is an interesting and in a lot of ways actually factually accurate advantage over other species, but unless it's emphasized it might just be a useless advantage. And there should probably be a half decent reason as to why none of the species have reigned supreme (or perhaps some species have?) and subjugated the others yet.

A bit of trivia for my Pony setting.

Spices such as pepper, cloves and cinnamon have magical properties in them that allow foods cured with them to be preserved for even longer periods than their real world equivalent can. Chilli peppers in particular are prized for this ability- they were even called at one point "Aroma Anni Dieique", or the "Year and a Day Spice" because it preserved food for so long.

Speaking of which, the cuisine of Isles of Avalon, the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the British Isles, is ironically thought of as being absurdly spicy to the point of being inedible by Ponies from the mainland continent. This is because the Isles of Avalon are actually an archipelago that stretches across the equivalent to the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, the Columbian Exchange happened far earlier (though not quite "Medievals eating 'taters", though the Three Sisters were introduced during the equivalent of the Middle Ages), with the Avalonians generally serving as merchants who brokered *Old and *New World goods who of course got first dibs on the spices before they were imported elsewhere.

edited 11th Jan '16 6:27:56 PM by SantosLHalper

After the extensive research on the workings of magic following the Awakening, it was discovered the four classical elements used in magic were in fact actually the four states of matter. Earth encompasses all solid materials, water liquids, air gases, and fire plasma.

Technically, aether is also part of that aspect of magic, corresponding to energy, but it is often not counted, as it is considered to be the binding force of the main four in the practice of magic, basically being seen as the magic itself.

Coming up with increasingly convoluted magic systems is literally my pastime at this point. I actually wasted a lot of time into writing a mock in universe research article trying to unify abstract magics (charms, curses, basically magic that in its very nature obeys no laws except those intrinsic to its type) and physical magics (elemental shit, basically anything that is for the most part subject to the natural laws of the universe after being cast).

@1301: There sure aren't as many human in Equus as on Earth, that's for sure.

Human endurance is often overlooked, especially over their much more interesting trait of popping up all over the place (making quite sparsely spread, except for the more homebound ones in the motherland). It's there, yes, but since it's a very passive thing, doesn't always get noticed.

I like this magic system! It sounds pretty awesome.

In a world that has giant robots, large complex cities, and super computers and advance weapons...there are no wheels. The wheel was never invented. Instead, all cars are built with robotic legs/arms. Anything that doesn't and still needs wheels to function has hovering technology.

On the topic of magic systems:

In the flying city of New Sanctuary, Earth's science and technology meet ancient magic and mystical lore, creating a unique melting pot of know-how.

One of its more controversial products is the group collectively known as the Reality Hackers. Coming from an IT background before discovering their magic gifts, the Hackers take the approach that the universe can be thought of as an immensely complex program, with the weaves and patterns of magic as its source code.

Reality Hackers strive to learn the programming language of reality. Their spells are scripts and snippets of code exploiting weaknesses and flaws in the structure of the universe. They can cut part of the metaphysical code of a substance's nature and paste it into another, allowing for quick-and-dirty alchemy.

More traditional mages tend to view them as a collection of nutcases...potentially dangerous ones, at that, as their experimentation has occasionally caused local reality to glitch. Some, however, think the Hackers might be on to something and have begun to incorporate some of their techniques into their own workings...

The following exchange between a Demon (the protagonist) and the local knight.

Immortality is the problem, it's the reason that there's no progress. It's why society is stuck at a medieval level.

So you're going to solve this problem by smashing everybody? How is that progress?

Well I'll finally get to finish my cardio workout for starters...

edited 14th Jan '16 6:03:15 AM by matti23

The Eyes and Teeth is an Eldritch Abomination beyond the void. According to those who know it best, the battered and broken remnants of the Song, it has always been and always will be, a power native to and fundamentally part of the Void Between the Worlds. Born of the unrealized potential of stillborn universes destroyed before time by fundamental paradoxes, it hates all those cosmoses that came into being and seeks nothing more than to return them to the state of non-being that defines it. Existing in past, present, and future, it already knows that it will fail in its goal, that a vast infinity of universes will fail to fall under its sway, that the perfection of the Void always has been and always shall be interrupted by the very concepts of time and space. This only fuels its hate further, for it turns its hatred of its own futility upon any cosmos where it has even the slightest chance of erasing it all.

Those who hear of this theory, and haven't already come up with a religious interpretation, generally accept this.

But some, most often Western Amalgamated agents with a strong taste for sci-fi, have a different theory. What is known is that the Eyes and Teeth managed to absolutely crush the Song, a post-Singularity AI civilization that was nearly omniscient and able to twist time itself in ways the human mind can only describe in vague, imperfect metaphor. Against far less advanced civilizations, however, it fails time and time again, managing a mixed-at-best record against apes barely able to construct a fission device. The usual explanation for this oddity is that the Eyes and Teeth managed only a Pyrrhic Victory against the Song, who left it crippled even in their fall. However, the Song were Abusive Precursors by any stretch of the imagination, wiping entire civilizations from time itself for simply wasting resources the Song believed they could use for their ineffable designs... and so, according to this alternate theory, some other civilization noticed, and created the Eyes and Teeth as a weapon, a carefully designed disease optimized to to destroy post-Singularity civilizations while causing only a caution-inducing inconvenience to more primitive ones.

I have every intention of bringing up both theories, and zero of settling which, if either, is accurate. It is a fairly important question in-universe, though. In the first case, the singularity might be the only way to finish what the Song started and banish the Eyes and Teeth. In the second, it would leave Earth nothing more than a record of the answer to the Fermi paradox.

edited 16th Jan '16 10:02:03 PM by KillerClowns

The dead refer to the material their bodies are made up of as Ghost Stuff (only living humans call it Ectoplasm) and it allows them to exist in both a corporeal and incorporeal state simultaneously.

Ghost Stuff also allows dead individuals to combine into a new being for a temporary amount of time, essentially a fusion.

New Pyrrhius is home to many failed settlements, particularly on the capital planet of Pyrrhius. The decision to place their capital on a Death World may have contributed to this abundance of failed settlements, many of which were the result of coming under siege and subsequently being overrun by local wildlife. This all came as a grim boon when Pyrrhius came under attack by Morokoth in the beginning of the Great Pyrrhic War. Many abandoned settlements were inadvertently target by orbital weapons, allowing the populated areas enough time to react to the attack.

Ever since the invasion, New Pyrrhius began building fully functioning dummy towns to exploit this. Unfortunately, these dummy towns have made for suitable homes for many refugees desperate for homes. Not ones to let an opportunity go to waste, the government has begun leasing buildings in these dummy towns as affordable housing, under the assumption that populated targets are more tempting for orbital bombardment. This may seem counter-productive, but New Pyrrhius has very little respect for the undesirables of this world, those whose laziness and incompetence led to their original homes and lives getting destroyed during the War. Most of these refugees are simply too glad to have a new home to notice the excessive number of solar panels on the buildings, or why the playground equipment is shaped like rows of military vehicles.

edited 22nd Feb '16 12:44:17 PM by MaxwellDaring

While everyone on Terra Illuminata agrees that extremely powerful, immortal beings exist, there are several different philosophies of approaching them.

The Illuminists worship Lady Light as the only true deity and consider the rest of the Five to be nothing more than the most powerful of many spirits that populate Illuminist mythology.

The Single-Chosen acknowledge the divinity of the entire Five, but believe that only their patron deity - which one it is depends on a Single-Chosen's origin - should be revered and bothered. They don't believe in lesser spirits.

The Pentei worship all Five equally, believing that each is responsible for different aspect of life. They consider the "spirits" to be a manifestation of divine powers of the Five.

The Armians believe that there is only one, multi-faceted deity they call the Ultimate, and that the Five are merely Ultimate's most commonly seen aspects. Like the Single-Chosen, they don't believe in spirits.

The Cerrists don't consider the Five to be divine in any way, merely another kind of being, different from man in the way man is different from plants, and not responsible for creation of the world or any such.

The truth is, as per usual, somewhere in between.

edited 17th Jan '16 5:17:04 AM by Kakai

Magic (As in, spells and enchantments and whatnot, not just anything that is impossible in real life) is exceedingly rare in this world, but what magic there is is based around the principle of communicating instructions to an (currently in an unknown location, but known to exist) underground reality-warping supercomputer made out of divine water, constructed from a lobotomized sea deity that once threatened the Precursors of the setting. Much like real computers, the danger lies in magic doing not what you want, but exactly what you told it to.

That actually explains Harry Potter

The rule of the multiverse is that no matter how many timelines or alternate histories there are, you can only visit the ones where a version of you exists.

This is due to the multiverse functioning in a way to keep itself uncluttered and prevent anyone capable of wandering from going mad.

It also follows a similar rule in that the only thing that causes the branches are important decisions that can affect the course of history. Unless that pizza someone orders leads to them curing cancer in one reality, it won't change anything should you order it.

In my space opera setting (Which still needs a name. "At the opposite end of the Milky Way, at some ambiguous point in time" is pretty long.) all of the major factions/species each have some famous work of fiction that is suspiciously similar to a piece of modern day Earth sci-fi.

The Cravyn have an old Star Trek-esque pre-spaceflight TV show called The Voidfarer Journals which among other things features Cravyn actors with unconvincing prosthetic foreheads, the Mroothan have a series of books about a time traveling brain surgeon, and the Murpaki have an urban fantasy movie franchise that's basically a mix of The X Files and Supernatural.

edited 26th Feb '16 11:11:21 AM by Corvidae

Due to the Schizo Tech nature of a setting I'm working on, it can best be described as Steam-Diesel-Atom-Punk; everything from land battleships to floating ray-gun destroyers to flying carriers.

This creates such situations as battlecruisers shelling landships, skyships lording over massed infantry, and, for some reason, entirely logical militaries utilizing all of the above at once.

Also, rocket-propelled torpedoes were invented in this setting's equivalent of 1940. As if destroyers (with basic sonar-guided conventional torpedoes) weren't already dangerous enough.

Even though the Pan-Arginian Empire was united by the direct action of a god, who also incinerated entire opposing nations, "pagan" religions not only survived the initial centuries of persecution, but now some sects have been hesitantly allowed by the Imperial governments, as long as their followers accept the temporal autority of the Empire and don't openly defy the Emperor.

edited 3rd Mar '16 11:11:52 AM by EternaMemoria

Not for any specific world, per se , but I've toying around with unusual diety ideas. For example, the god of nuclear power, weapons, and radiation.

The really question is: into which of my three worlds does something like that even fit?

Thanks to the efforts of Space Colonization and terraforming tech, everything that humanity screwed up about Earth's environment has been fixed. Earth is considered a Paradise now thanks to the efforts of fixing it.

USCF officials live on the planet comfortably and even people who serve with either the Jovan Empire or the Federation long enough can retire on the planet to live out the rest of their days in peace. That's not to say Earth is a complete utopia, but it's better than it once was for certain.

And thanks to modern medicine, humanity lives a long time.

Homeworld: Japanese culture infiltrated the US much sooner than in our world, and anime became a popular genre in the West during early sixties.

Lethia: Fiction is no longer an existent concept—only the leaders are creative, and they dedicate that to destroying everything.

Let's see. When the followers of a God of Evil tried to break the running cycle of creation and destruction that the gods are trapped in, they ended up tearing the planet to shreds, which now lie trapped and floating in the aether along with the remains of countless other worlds.

The ecosystem of Venus is almost entirely artificial. After a... controversial, for lack of a better term, report "confirmed" that the planet held no native life forms, a massive corporate push by a conglomerate of sponsors, primarily led by the Venus Core, a subsidiary of the largest corporate empire in the solar system, went to work on creating a fantastical, beautiful, alien landscape for a new generation to grow up on. As such, literal millions of independent species were created, either completely in a vacuum or based on existing species on Earth or even based on many fictional organisms.

Out of two hundred countries of the world, only about twenty are not ruled by gods. Of those, vast majority are "selfrules" (democracies), but there are some oddities. India is ruled by the human Council thanks to the country sitting on an enormous pile of saltsteel, which is invisible and intangible to deities. Finnia is pretty much anarchist, because its dozens of land deities could never agree on anything, much less on how they should take the country over. Aztatlan is by far the strangest case - for some reason they refuse to reveal, the local (fairly powerful) gods serve the Lord Emperor rather than the other way round. It kinda creeps other gods out.

China declared war on The Affiliation (an alliance of nations consisting of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and Japan). The war lasted six years from 2003 to 2009, and China lost. The aftermath? The People's Republic of China becomes the United States of China.