Mention a random quirk of your world

Well the idea was that royalty was in the blood. Abdication papers don't change that.

Of course this is a royalist point of view. In the French Republic, him being a former king belongs in What Could Have Been along with Louis XVII and Napoleon II.

In my own marvel universe, the Solar System is populated with early colonists from the late space race and robots. Robots make up the majority of the population and come in all shapes and sizes, trading scrap, bullets, and so on. The most valuable thing a bot could want however is a Android body, finding a blank LMD or Synthezoid is akin to finding a buried treasure. Bots either take and modify the bodies to be some human form of themselves, or sell them to other bots looking to collect.

The reason being is that LMDs and Synthezoids are Ridiculously Human Robots and are capable of so much from touch, taste, and so on, allowing them to experience humanity in a way they want without many active risks.

Collectors however only use these Android Bodies as displays, shows of wealth and power.

That would actually be the main character, Milea Amrice. Though admittedly for a very technical definition of "reigning".

If you go by the time between her father's death and her renouncing the throne at sword point in exchange for her freedom "as a common citizen, taking only what she can carry from the palace", it's a few days. Most of which she spent unconscious due to her father's failed attempt to Mercy Kill her.

If you go by the time between her father's death and the First Republic of Akem-Ver being formally declared, it's all of a few minutes. The entirety of which she was unconscious due to again, her father trying to Mercy Kill her.

....thankfully for her things start looking up after that. Not in a "let's restore the Monarchy" way, but more in a "no one is actively trying to stab me anymore, and also I'm really good an Alchemy so I can at least provide for myself" way.

Science and magic are closely tied. Technomacy is encouraged, and leading scientist-types are almost constantly studying the effects of potions, shapeshifting, etc.

You gotta admire someone who can look at the positives in life.

So does that mean instead of elemental mages from the classical four, you have elemental mages from the modern periodic table?

Upon assuming the throne, every monarch adopts the surname/title "Dex Ducis" after the first king, Thaddeus Dex Ducis. So if your name was originally Bob Mendez, then history will remember you as Bob Dex Ducis.

The weird part is that Dex Ducis wasn't his surname. Ducis was, but Dex was his nickname. Short for his middle name, Dexter. Almost nobody who knew him every actually called him Thaddeus. When he first assumed power though, the media introduced him as Thaddeus "Dex" Ducis, but it became so common to refer to him by all three names that people started forgetting to put the quote marks around Dex, and then people just started assuming it was part of his surname.

Later students of history who grew up learning about Thaddeus Dex Ducis were confused when reading signed copies of his orders and seeing him seemingly leave off half his last name. But at this point he's too much of a historical and cultural icon for any efforts to correct this to really stick.

As a result of a hallucinogenic trip gone traumatically bad by its (accidental) founder, anaKesaris Suela, the Suelasa faith is strongly anti-drug. How strongly anti-drug varies: mainline Suelasa only reject hallucinogenics, and limit their intake of other substances. Orthodox Suelasa outright refuse alcohol, stimulants, and for those considered extreme even by other orthodox Suelasa, painkillers. Instead, they prefer to follow their prophet's example and drink only herbal tea, free of "poisons".

Suela herself did drink tea. Lots of tea. But not, as is commonly thought, herbal tea; this belief is the result of a mistranslation from the now-lost Old Yothic originals to the "canonical" Classical Yothic books. She drank coca leaf tea, which the most stringent followers of the faith founded in her name reject as "impure", and most of the holy texts (well, those that she actually wrote, as opposed to those written in her name by subsequent commentators and mystery cultists) were written while under the influence.

Edited by KillerClowns on Dec 29th 2019 at 5:35:21 AM

First of the New Year! Some denizens of my multiverse seek a mysterious fluid known as Cosmic Blood. Consuming this substance temporarily produces strong disorientation and permanent hallucinogenic effects, but grants its users potent space bending abilities. The substance itself is cheap, but few take the risk of buying and consuming it due to the fact that degraded or improperly manufactured samples have been known to cause users to be crushed into singularities or be smeared over whole solar systems.

Edited by ericshaofangwang on Jan 2nd 2020 at 12:22:53 AM

Magic fills the world... Literally. It flows like the wind all over the world. There are 12 major magic elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, Dark, Life, Death, Beast, Metal, Arcane and Celestial. These elements originate from the gods of those respective elements. There are also lesser elements, like Thunder, or Ice, but they are a result of mixing 2 major elements.

There are many consequences of magic being everywhere.
First off, almost anyone is capable of using magic. Every person, regardless of race, is born with an affinity towards at least one magic element. The strength of their magic depends on their magical aptitude. Certain individuals can have affinity towards more than one element. Usually, people draw stored magic in their bodies to cast spells, but more experienced mages can draw power from the raw magic flowing in the air, or in more sadistic or pragmatic cases, siphon magic from others. Being siphoned of magic is extremely painful. For this reason, such practice is universally forbidden.
Secondly, because of magic being everywhere, it often causes severe environmental changes. For example, if too much raw Water magic gathers in one area, it could cause a flood. Raw Earth magic could cause a mountain-shattering earthquake. Raw Fire magic could cause a firestorm. You get the idea. For this reason, mages are often dispatched to siphon some of this magic to prevent this, and people with magic-nullifying capabilities are sought after.
Thirdly, getting in contact wit raw magic can have unforeseen consequences. While it can give a huge boost to one's magic power (if the raw magic you're exposed to is of the element you have affinity towards), it can have severe side effects. In most cases, exposure to a huge amount of raw magic means a very messy death (usually entire body blowing up). In other cases, you could be transformed into an Elemental (or Chimera, if you're exposed to raw Beast magic), or be transformed into a completely different species. Races like Beastmen (Humans or Elves exposed to Beast magic), Fairies (exposed to Life AND Arcane magic at the same time), Treekin (trees supercharged with Life magic), Liches (exposure to Death magic) and Vampires (Humans or Dwarfs exposed to Dark magic) were created as a result of contact with raw magic and surviving. They are mostly seen as mutants, with the exception to Treekin (all races, Treekin included, can't decide if they're Life Elementals or a separate species).

All in all, magic made quite a mess. But, everyone is trying to live with it.

Megacorps run everything in colonized space, and I do mean everything. Originally when space colonization was first occurring they were powerful but still beholden to the Federated Governments. A few hundred years of political maneuvering, colonies built under copyright, and so on has changed that, this is both a good and a bad thing in a few ways.

In the good way, the Megacorps formed the Treaty of Ford that prevented actual warfare from being engaged with contests of champions instead, which lead to Mech warfare being developed in response. Battles are now entirely fought with champions in specially designed warfare, less people die and thanks to rules that nobody dares break for reasons they don't fully understand anymore, it's all very clean. Actual warfare is a thing of the past, which is good cause a tank would wreck a mech in straight up combat anyday.

In the bad way... well, it's nations and planets under copyright and the old Federated Alliance is all but a legend now.

Spaceship engines, depending on make, model, and enchantments, have a varying chance of getting the attention of an Eldritch Abomination called the Howling Void. Most of the time it'll just watch, sometimes it'll sing, but you really don't want any engine that has an enchantment of complete silence, or the Howling Void will play with the spaceship like a cat with a catnip toy and any surviving engineers will complain that it's harder to fix the aftermath when they can't hear what the engine is doing.

In a galaxy, where the United Earth Government has fought a civil war, losing several worlds to the Southern Cross and had a war with the Alien Cay Union, hope rides in a ship called Victory *cue theme music*

In this universe, Mars was colonized in the mid-21st century. Other planets soon followed.

However, between MegaCorp exploitation of their labor and Earth trying to contain their colonies Mars, the asteroid belt and several colonies near Io tried to break away from Earth control.

The key words are "tried to" - the United Nations sent troops and ships to 'pacify' Mars and the asteroid belt (they feared that the colonists would send an asteroid at Earth). Historians debate if the colonists ever came close to trying a "rock drop".

What they agree on is the administration of "Derrick the Dammed": UN Secretary General Derrick McDougan rallied the nations of Asia, North America, Europe and Africa to send troops to evict the colonists. A new starship drive had just been invented and new colonies were being setup far from the solar system.

The forced removal from the belt, Mars and Io wasn't just a PR disaster, the riots claimed 5 million lives on Mars and Earth as governments tried to contain the fallout. It turned out that the colonists who were "re-colonizing" Mars were from groups and corporations who supported McDougan and his allies. South Amercian nations were officially neutral, but when it was discovered that their governments were shipping out their prison population on the UN's "Ships of Tears", a new wave of riots erupted.

McDougan would be forced out by his own supporters, horrified at the outcome of his policies.

Those displaced colonists would eventually become the Secessio Plebis Liberation Army, rebels allied with alien governments. They founded the Southern Cross - the tale of the "Ships of Tears" coloring their bitter relations with Earth.

Ever since the removal, Mars, the Belt and Io have been nothing but loyal to Earth.

Edited by TairaMai on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:29:57 PM

It's been 700 years since the early 22nd Century when Driftspace, Mega-corp governments, the treaty of ford, and the vanishing of the Federal Alliance and yet to this day. All combat is based around Mechs, and nobody asks why.

Mechs aren't very practical war machines, they can be easily fought by tanks, if anything Tanks often win every battle, but people don't see a lot of tanks anymore. Ground Troops are used to hold or take a installation but on the open fields, mechs reign supreme.

This is by design, the Treaty of Ford was amended to ensure Mech Combat happened between corporations as a way of keeping the Federal Alliance from interfering. Kinetic Impusle, the company behind Driftspace's discovery and propagation into a instellar society for humanity wrote the Treaty and helped to enforce it, desiring stability in their universe.

Over the centuries that Kinetic Impulse has existed, it has gone through a few iterations of itself, with the most notable being Olympus Impulse, the version that was a team effort with Olympus Impulse. Olympus Impulse created great works of ships, Driftspace engines, mech units and so on, and buried most of them across colonized space, terrifying the other powers.

In its modern incarnation, Kinetic Impulse has embraced a form of techno-cultism over Mechs and Driftspace engines, and Kinetic Impulse is the only thing enforcing the Treaty of Ford all these centuries later. This actually holds a lot of sway as thanks to their secrecy and techno-cultism they are the only ones who know how Driftspace drives function, and can repair them and the Drift-beacons that allow FTL communication, if anyone dares try to violate the treaty they suddenly find themselves without FTL communication, or the ability to get their FTL drive fixed.

For the instellar society to work, Driftspace must work, and nobody dares cross Kinetic Impulse, lest everything collapse.

In the westernmost reaches of the continent of Akem is a vast region known as the Fallen Lands.

The Fallen Lands are not a desert in a technical sense, plenty of rain falls but little grows and few animals live. Of the planetlife aside from the occasional patch of lichen, everything is either highly toxic, cavernous, or both. Of the animals you will find there's the occasional vulture, but there's also giant spiders that bury themselves in the ground and can sleep for years waiting for some hapless soul to wander by at which point they will wake up and abruptly burst from the ground to devour them.

Somehow, some sentient life does make a living in the Fallen Lands. There's a few Goblin tribes who manage to eek out an existence. In addition there's a few solitary Ogres who manage to survive (the fact they are typically big enough to take out a giant spider with their bare hands helps).

Of the humans present in the Fallen Lands the cannibal tribes are the ones you want to run into. Sure they might kill you and eat you, but they also might not. And if they do kill and eat you, they'll at least have the courtesy to do it in that order. The same cannot be said for the other primary group of humans, the Cult of the Leviathan.

The Cult of the Leviathan is a full on Apocalypse Cult. Trying to bring about the end of the world by waking the Leviathans, Eldritch Abominations that can devour whole civilizations, through a copious amount of human sacrifice. The irony is that the Leviathans were awoken...and promptly killed off for good hundreds of years ago. The Fallen Lands themselves are actually the result of the death rattle of one such Leviathan. But if murder cultists were entirely rational people, they wouldn't be murder cultists.

The Fallen Lands are actually slowly receding as the Leviathan's death rattle fades. Not fast enough to really notice on a day to day level, but enough so that by the time the main story takes place, the earliest maps of the Fallen Lands show the boarder a good hundred plus miles further east then it presently is.

In short, the Fallen Lands are not a happy place.

In my world, there are several countries called the United Kingdom and at least one called the United States, but the actual United States and United Kingdom don't exist. For example, in North America there is a country called the United Kingdom of Vinland, while Australia is called the United Kingdom of Ludovica. Meanwhile, United States in this world refers to the United States of the Willelminas, which is an alternate Indonesia.

The Qorisayane word for "blessing", maqila (approx., "mah-kwi-lah"), is very similar to the Yothic loanword for lobster, rendered in Qorisayane as makila (approx., "mah-ki-lah"). As such, lobsters have become a traditional good luck symbol, particularly along the northeastern coast of Qorisa where both lobsters and the descendants of the Yoth are most common.

Because misspeaking one for the other isn't unheard of even among native speakers, a foreigner accidentally wishing "lobsters and fortune on your house and kin" instead of the traditional blessing offered between hosts and guests will thus usually receive nothing more than a gentle, polite correction from their host at a convenient time. The others will pretend to not notice, allowing all involved to save face.

(Unless, of course, the foreigner notices their mistake but, lacking the social skills to realize none of the Qorisayane are offended, issue a hurried, awkward apology capped off by a poor attempt a joke. As Farzaneh Shirazi will attest...)

The gods are all formed and shaped by belief, and thus depend heavily on the belief in their followers to survive.

The Four Horsemen may be like gods but are not powered by belief, they are powered by something far far worse, certainty. There will always be Death, people live and die every day. There is always famine, hunger and starvation occur everywhere despite best efforts. Pestilence is eternal, a new disease and plague appears given enough time. War is a constant, try to name me a civilization that has never fought a war.

Because of this, their catchphrase is more or less, "We are inevitable."

The setting focuses on a central, coastal city and outlying suburban areas in its wake. The entire metropolitan region is almost always shrouded in thick grey fog. Educated adults are aware of the existence of the sun and moon, and on some days the fog lets up enough to see their beams, but nobody's seen them directly.
The fog can form thick clusters and become agitated enough to form low-lying clouds, and locals have to take precautions against lightning strikes forming 20 feet above them. Human settlements in the region have become highly self-sufficient; dangerous animals lurk in the fog and people only stray into it if they feel like hunting (and even then, going alone is considered a very bad idea).
Occasionally, Ambiguously Human nomads visit from out of the fog, usually in merchant caravans or traveling carnivals; they wear masks and speak a language most people only half-understand, so they tend not to be trusted.

Edited by MadAnthony94 on May 12th 2020 at 3:08:21 AM

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Jul 10th 2021 at 6:42:48 AM

hell is real. it is very fleshy.

In one of my projects, the universe is a lie. Literally. An Outer God began lying and deluding themselves into thinking that something exists in the Void to the point that the lie gained form. Magic in this universe is the ability to lie and deceive the universe into thinking that a phenomenon is natural, and therefore materializes it. To do this, its denizens use the language that the Outer God itself used to speak the lies that gave the universe existence in the first place. The greater the change that one wants to invoke, the more outrageous the lie must be. Thaumaturges spend millennia continually telling these lies to make changes to whole realities that are generated by the Outer God.

The universe generates a new, connected reality on top of itself every time this Outer God tells itself a new lie. Each layered reality becomes more and more surreal and dreamlike the further one goes up, until things are so mindbogglingly alien that all logic breaks down. The major goal of many inhabitants of this twisted universe is to escape it by becoming 'real'. The major obstacle to this goal is that as soon as they fully understand that they too are part of the lie, they fade into nonexistence and another takes their place.

Perhaps the most enduring rivalries among the priesthoods of various Xayusa gods are between the followers of Xeqa and Anayathi. Xeqa is the deified first Empress of Qorisa, now Goddess of conquest, war, and ambition, while Anayathi is the God (sometimes Goddess) of peace and diplomacy. Their rivalry is most often carried out in the form of absolutely brutal martial arts tourneys, with far fewer rules than most. While Anayathi is associated with peace, their followers believe that sometimes Violence Really Is the Answer, and because it's an ugly business, one should not hesitate to use ugly tricks to end it as quickly as possible. Indeed, Anayathi's followers so far have a close but positive win/loss record over their warlike counterparts.

Despite being a sci-fi setting, magic exists. Or something that approximates magic. There are some branches of technology that are so complex, so esoteric that only highly specialized savants can make any sense of it. People have called these seemingly physics defying applications Techno-sorcery and despite not understanding it at all, many people make use of techno-sorcerous devices. After all, you don't need a degree in computer science to use a smartphone.

On the flip side, techno-sorcery is used to explain the stranger aspects of the setting like FTL and nano-medicine. It also allows wizards in what normally is a hard sci fi setting.

The two gods of the universe are currently gambling to see weather the universe will be purged of evil and ultimately destroyed and it's not too hard to do either, although atm it's kinda leaning towards the ultimately destroyed evil wins side. But it has a happy ending!

Edited by ShiningEmmy on Jun 16th 2020 at 12:41:32 PM

This one is from a very new setting I'm putting together. Set roughly 1,000 years in a future where the Earth has suffered through just about every conceivable environmental and political catastrophe, some more then one. However civilization has managed to trudge on, and technology has advanced (though not nearly to the degree it should have after a thousand years).

Among the many new societies that now exist are nomadic peoples that spend most of their lives sailing on the open ocean in convoys that range in size from a few dozen ships to several hundred. Complicating this lifestyle is the fact that, due to climate change, intense storms as bad as the worst hurricane in recorded history are a frequent occurrence.

However these "Sea Nomads" almost always manage to avoid the worst of the storms through the ancient nearly forgotten art of...satellite weather tracking.

While sending stuff into space isn't especially difficult with the technology of the time, Kessler syndrome has gotten so bad that anything sent into a stable orbit is practically guaranteed to get smashed to bits within a year or two (thus creating even more satellite fragments, worsening the problem). So basically no one sends satellites out, even the 2 superpower^note currently the Northern Union and the Southern Alliance don't see it as a worthwhile endeavor compared to developing their terrestrial infrastructure.

The nomads however avoid this problem by designing their satellite to orbit as low as possible where there aren't nearly as many fragments. The satellites are designed with aerodynamics in mind and can often be reused if recovered, as can the rockets that are designed to use fuels that can be synthesized on the open ocean.

For any parts or materials the nomads absolutely can't obtain on the ocean, the nomads will frequently trade with the Free Cities or the two superpowers, but the enter cycle of launching and reusing satellites is done on the water.