Villains in a world with metahumans will kill the heroes at the first opportunity, but won't use actual guns. Not many metas will. They don't really like the idea of having to use a weapon humans need for protection.
edited 28th Apr '12 12:27:13 PM by UmLovely
RISEEach of the sentient races in my world has a different way of reproducing.
Humans: You know what they're like and how they reproduce.
Oscha: Shape shifters that reproduce by shape shifting part of themselves into a new brain.
Felves: One-Gender Race of Plant People that use pseudocopulation with humans to become pollinated.
Fistar: Starfish-like creatures with a Healing Factor and the reproduction of an Asteroids Monster. Luckily, the thing that allows them to be sentient also limits the number of them that can exist at one time.
If it helps, oscha share quite a bit with the symbiotes from Men In Black The Series (shapeshifting aliens that need to stay attached to another living being in order to survive). Oscha are limited by how much of their form they can visualize. Their forms have No Ontological Inertia to the point that if they get distracted, parts of them will change back to their true form, with the only exception being their brains which handle their own shape subconsciously, and even then, those brains will have difficulty retaining their shape if they are damaged or deprived of nutrients. Transforming into their true form kills them due to that form being a blob of non-living slime that shapeshifts in response to nearby thoughts.
Also, I sort of enjoy thinking about all the Fridge Horror that I can use them for.
The entire universe is made of 2D panes.
my drawing blog ya'll UPDATES 10 TIMES A MONTH WOW, THIS IS STRAIGHT UP MUH SOGGY KNEEPeople have begun to use small nature spirits, called Sprites, to perform tasks. Each Sprite is attached to one of the five elements; air, fire, water, earth and electricity. So, someone may put an Earth sprite inside the hilt of a sword to give it increased strength, or use an air sprite within a closed metal tube as a sort of primitive leaf blower. However, the sprites have to be paid for their service using blood, which contains the magical power needed for their abilities. The only sprite not used are the electricity sprites, as they usually appear on land around lightning bolts and aren't around very long afterwards.
Currently working on a story set far in the future on a biopunk-themed colony world inhabited by various transhumans who run the gamut from recognizable but augmented humanoids to formerly human "starfish" creatures who are virtually indistinguishable from the technology on their planet. Every single piece of technology used by the colonists is a living organism, from simple syringes to enormously powerful, formerly human biocomputers.
Also, another short story I wrote (and have yet to edit into the second draft) features a future called the "Nexus", formerly the 22nd century, where temporal paradoxes caused by completely unregulated time travel- which is seen as every man and woman's innate right- are destroying the fabric of existence, erasing time itself. The "Nexus" is a tiny island of reality floating precariously in a void of nothingness, slowly deteriorating- a world without a definite past or future, and where the present reality is ever-shrinking, ever-diminishing. The multiverse is treated like an "information system" with many computer analogies, and an upper limit on how many different timelines it can accommodate without starting to break.
A few more:
- Our world, present day, more or less... except that traumatized people from a parallel universe where the government collapsed decades ago and society reverted to a primitive state start appearing at random, usually discovered by police committing minor crimes or having nervous breakdowns.
- A world much like our own, except that a mysterious corporation employs people to observe each other on CCTV cameras and analyze their behavior, not realizing that the people they are observing are themselves observing them. Slowly, these people all become increasingly paranoid and irrational.
- A future Earth is connected to a parallel world accessible by a stable interdimensional rift off the coast of Madagascar, traveled by a ferry-barge equipped with a multidimensional engine: the parallel Earth has only a single island continent, inhabited by temporally displaced humans and animals from various times and places in Earth's history, transplanted by random, unstable rifts to the parallel world (the only life that evolved naturally there is single cellular life and plant life); various hominids, including a unique ethnic group of humans that resemble red-haired Australian Aboriginals, but also specimens of Homo erectus and several Australopithecines coexist on the island. The aborigines practice ancestor worship and believe themselves to be descended from the more primitive hominids, whom they think of as living gods. Future humans from our world send anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists to the parallel world to study primitive society in the hope of transforming their own society with lessons learned from the Aboriginals.
- In an alternate timeline, an analog of the Holocaust happened to a race of alien Lizard People who've lived among humans in open secrecy, wearing skinsuits for hundreds of years (they don't live here in secret; humans know all about them; they just don't trust them or like sharing their planet with them).
- In one short story of mine that gleefully embraces many older Space Opera tropes inspired by Dr. Who and the Original Star Trek series, Human Aliens are extremely common due to parallel evolution, so much so that there is an entire naming and classification system to describe all the various subspecies, such as Parahominics (typical Human Aliens) and Subparahominics (unusual subspecies as well as aliens that resemble other hominids, for example there is a villainous group of Cybernetically enhanced parallel-neanderthals).
edited 12th May '12 2:30:56 PM by fulltimeD
My current story's world is quasi-historical in that it uses real-world geography and cultures (for instance, ancient Nubians, Ethiopians, and Anglo-Saxons), but the exact history and characters are all fictional. I consider my work more in the fantasy genre than historical though.
My DeviantArt Domain My TumblrI once tried to get a Mutants And Masterminds game going that was set in an alternate history Earth around the time of World War I, where metahumans existed. The catch was that all were the descendants, no more than three generations removed, of prominent 19th century individuals. NP Cs included Michael Sandow, a famous adventurer and athlete who's Made of Iron and endowed with superhuman strength; Nikki Telsa, estranged daughter of the famous inventor with the power to create lightning bolts; and the 3rd Baron Kelvin, world's most powerful cryokinetic. The Big Bad was going to be Otto Mobius, newly ascended Kaiser with space warping powers; among his followers was American expatriate Julian Gatling, a genius inventor with a knack for artillery and mecha, responsible for the setting's dieselpunk vibe.
Obviously, whatever powers a metahuman got were influenced by how their forebears achieved fame; why this was so was eventually going to be a plot point. However, I never got around to figuring out exactly how because the campaign never got off the ground; none of my prospective players knew enough about 19th century history to come up with a character concept. And they were too lazy to research it. Also, they hate me and don't want me to enjoy running my games. I could go on about their hygiene, but I worry I'll seem bitter...
edited 13th May '12 1:18:23 AM by SuperHeroineAddict
Another TL:DR post.My alternate history timeline ends in 1959, when America (controlling, either directly or indirectly, North and South America, South Africa, Britain, and Australia), Russia (controlling what is normally Russia along with mainland Europe) and Japan (controlling China, Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East) nuke each other into oblivion.
I just recently re-read 1984. Before now, I hadn't read it in a decade. And yet those are roughly the same borders as the superstates in that novel, and in that novel's backstory there is a nuclear war in the '50s.
0_o I guess my world is accidentally the backstory alternate history for 1984?
I'll leave it in as a meta easter egg and see if anybody notices. Mwuahahaha.
edited 14th May '12 5:42:20 PM by Flyboy
"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."^^^ That's funny: for the longest time I have been trying to write a story called "1948" taking place a few years after WWII, where O'Brien, (the man who would become) Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein all convene at a bombed-out cafe in a ruined London to decide the fate of the world.
edited 13th May '12 6:24:18 PM by fulltimeD
Child, singular; the offspring of a single torrid affair Tesla had during a moment of weak willpower. My research shows that he was actually quite sought after by the ladies; in my timeline, he conceived his daughter in a moment of passion, and later refused to have anything to do her or her mother. Thus the "estranged" qualifier.
Impressed you caught that, actually.
Another TL:DR post.Thanks. :P
Still, that still seems pretty horribly out-of-character for Tesla. Your research is right, but I have a hard time imagining him falling for anyone whose first love was not also science - trying to think of who the electromagnetism equivalent of Ada Lovelace or Marie Curie would be - in which case I doubt 'torrid affair' would be a good description of the result. Even that's assuming he wasn't actually asexual.
edited 13th May '12 9:46:39 PM by Noaqiyeum
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOAllow me to expand on one of my earlier posts. In the Empire of the Southern Cross, they have 11 gods, one for each planet, and the other two being their parents, the Sun and the Moon (an idea I had a lot of fun with :) ). In the neighboring realm of Regnum Leonis, since they worship the Roman versions of the Greek gods, I get the feeling it's going to lead to some hilarious Crazy Cultural Comparison for the tourists of the future.
edited 17th May '12 8:03:54 AM by Demetrios
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!The Demon Prince's court has seven animal-named wings. Every courtier carries two brooches to signify their wing and status. The bureaucracy is exhausting, and among the only initiatives without weeks of preparation are High Summons, top priority orders given by any Uppermost Ring member or the Prince themselves (it's a gender-neutral title) to any courtier at any time. The receiver is expected to respond immediately upon receiving it and work on the issue until it's solved. The only excuse for not doing so is attending one's funeral. Successfully carrying one out is often rewarded with a promotion, while failing almost guarantees the end of one's career in the court.
edited 28th May '12 2:57:16 AM by peccantis
Besides the roads on the subcontinent most of the story takes place stand large statues of the Orchid Child (a god who needs a better name). Those who sleep in the bosom of these statues will always rests undisturbed. It's customary to leave a bit of food or bedding behind when you can after enjoying the god's hospitality so that others may rest comfortably. It's considered bad luck not to.

2 Worlds: In a world, where myth and magic live, Orcs, Elves, and Dwarves were created by the creator god. Humans evolved on their own.
In a universe, where humanity not alone in the galaxy, Earth is the only place with "mammals." Other worlds have a rough approximation/equivalent of fish, reptiles, birds, etc., but not mammals.