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I never implied that when I created them, I even said they guided her worshipers. They've had implied intellect since day one.

Here. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13207120910A52800100&page=28#690

We covered this in the voting weeks ago. I even pre-mentioned the concept of rouge/fallen spirits and spirits who drew power from her on her behalf. (A few posts below the linked post)

edited 14th Mar '12 12:39:06 AM by Vyctorian

Huh, well I imagine the concept of spirits created by her and spirits spontaneously existing in objects do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Oh I never meant to imply that the rules her spirits followed should be enforced on all spirits in the setting, just her creations.

I think her spirits need their own entry.

Also opens the door to the concept of gods, Celestial Gods at least, having their own legion of spiritual entities which itself deserves it own entry.

Vyc: you forgot to say Yes or No on Exel's Celestial Gods.

Re: Progenitor and Dire Beasts: the way I understand it, the first are akin to prehistoric animals, while the latter are scientific experiments, so I don't see the problem of them coexisting, someone correct me otherwise.

Again, everyone, anything that's not an unequivocal 'Yes' will be counted as a 'No'. Make sure you made your votes clear.

My own votes coming tonight.

edited 14th Mar '12 5:03:48 AM by Sijo

oh, Ex's celestial gods should be a Yes

I edited by ballot. All Yes.

Sample Cultures #5: Beast-Folk (And one Duergar)

Kobold

After the success of the Black Emperor's Beast-Folk, he was quickly imitated by many others, including the distant Immortal God-King Imhotaz. Aezygyptiak word for beast is 'ko' and the word 'people' or 'folk' is 'bold', thus kobold. Of course, Imhotaz is a god and not regular beast could do. A shameless imitator further, he did as other gods did and used the great majestic drake. They have a couple other names such as 'dragonborn', 'draekin' and the technically accurate 'lizard-folk', but mostly kobold is the adopted epitaph.

A quarter of kobolds have functional wings, while another quarter can only glide and a quarter can breath fire. Fire and wings are not mutually exclusive, you just have to get lucky on the genetic lottery twice and those who lose out on both tend to be bigger and bulkier then the rest of their kin, especially so then those with wings. They are now the elite troops of Imhotaz's army and second in status only to the Jade Kings.

Utgaroar

Goat-folk who live in the mountains of Aesar. Their appearance, likely their very creation, was recent enough that it is noted in oral history of the Aesir as their being a time before they existed. They are on-off war and constant war with some of the Aesir tribes that consider them as food and are sometimes allies with the Aesir tribes that consider them people. The Utgaroar, being entirely herbivorous, are not considered competitors for meaty food and they normally eat plants considered unwanted by the Aesir. They move in great herds constantly migrating about and trade hard-to-find plant delicacies for some of the Aesir's featherbreath gas to give them floating wagons to turn their herds into caravans.

Jotunn

Frost Duergar. Once they ruled the peaks of Jotunhar and then the Aesir kicked them out and renamed the place Aesar. The Jotunn are pretty unhappy about this. Now they live around the base of the mountain and occasionally make war on the Aesir. Now, the Jotunn were once a very advanced people, the featherbreath gas may have originally been their creation alongside other lost wonders, but they were one of those advanced civilizations that grew decadent and complacent enough that primitive barbarians like the Aesir could stomp all their progress and advancement down to the ground. Some of their old magitek is still hidden in caches up around Aesar, searched for by both the Aesir and Jotunn and some Jotunn still maintain some old family heirlooms they may or may not know the full capability of.

They also have a on-off relationship with the Utgaroar.

Gnolls

The Dark Lands are mostly cold and mountainous, but by strange quirk a lot of their valleys are very hot. The ice on top of the mountains reflect light down and make the place miserably hot and ugh the humidity. It's like the air is made of watery hatred. Here, human civilizations mostly descended of the dark-skinned Chaukuku before their exodus to underground and the also dark-skinned Foriar who coincidentally also mostly live underground. This was the people that birth Hrod who then tried to conquer them with an army of hyena men called Gnolls.

When Hrod was soundly beaten, only a few loyalist gnolls remained with him and the rest fractured into regiment based tribes. The tribes still use their regimental banners as their tribal banners and give military based rank. Their settlements are war camps, all of their citizens soldiers and their culture attuned to war. Partly out of persecution and partly because of how Hrod had to leave them, most gnolls know only how to sustain themselves through conquest, and for it the persecution continues, feeding an endless violent cycle.

The Gnoll are highly organized and have a form of honor in the code of conduct handed down to them by Hrod which oversees their treatment of defeated foes and other such things. They make war upon one another until in these cases they are called 'war games' and are even more structured and codified since all parties have agreed upon them before hand. Deaths happen but being brutal and thorough is not as necessary since their are agreed upon victory conditions everyone agrees on. These can include violent games of capture the flag and kink of the hill.

Black Furs

The Beast-Folk of the Black Empire represent a more successful transition to peace-time after a much more successful war. The loyalist gnolls are rarely seen outside the Black Capital and the Black Palace but the Black Prince created beings from many animals: squirrels, rats, cats, dogs, wolves, lions, horses, cows, boars, elephants, rhinos, birds of prey, songbirds. Domesticated beasts like rats, cats, dogs, cows, horses and songbirds were most populous, used as working class with cows and horses used as farms and manual labourers, cats and dogs as those who did more complicated tasks, rats were set to dirtier tasks that their inherited immunity to diseases helped greatly with and songbirds did tasks with which flight as helpful for as well as set to being makers and spreaders of propaganda. To this day, these subraces have best integrated to peace-time and remain the most populous.

The Black Prince still used these species in his armies and indeed they often made the bulk of them. Their were a troop of rats that were in charge of chemical warfare, the Black Plaque Brigade, and along with rats being set to 'dirty tasks' their is a stigma upon rat-folk they struggle against to this day. Lions acted as singular scouts and wolves were their pack-oriented counter parts, the latter also acting as vanguards. Squirrels were also scouts as well as spies and assassins. The elephant-folk are as tall as their four-legged counter parts and carried heavy siege ordenance and rhino-folk, boar-folk, deer-folk and male cow-folk were shock troops. Bird of prey, the hawk-folk, were aerial scouts and terrors of the sky, acting out air strikes against cities unprepared for death from above.

Elephant, rhino, deer, bull and boar-folk were the face of the Black Prince's conquering armies and the 'horned ones' and 'tusked ones' suffer stigma as violent stupid brutes to this day. Wolf and lion-folk fare better for they were not seen as much and often are lumped with cat and dog-folk. Squirrel-folk were nearly not seen at all and other then being lumped with rat-folk do not suffer much stigma at all. Hawk-folk often even identity themselves as simply bird-folk and since they quickly became irrelevant after the beginning of the Black War when anti-air ordinance was developed most do not remember them. Some still look down upon all beast-folk them as unnatural beasts who dare to pretend to be humanoid, tools that should have been cast-aside once their task was done and invaders by those still bitter about the Emperor's conquest.

Their was also a population of crow, fox and raccoon-folk made latter but all were lost in the campaign of the Meikyuu Forest.

edited 14th Mar '12 6:11:23 PM by God_of_Awesome

Further Notes On The Undeniable Crystals

The Inevitable Armors

The Inevitable Crystal Bearers will learn to manifest armor around their bodies that augment their abilities considerably, representing their further developing unison with their crystals as the armor is a reflection of the Bearer's psyche, unique to every one (And not necessarily armor). The Immutable Crystal Bearers do not manifest any such armor, as the Black Crystal has eliminated the psyche of its Bearer and the White dare not intrude upon its bearer's psyche.

Black Fate

Each time the Black Crystal is reborn, it sets about a new mission, a new Fate it believes to be the destined course of things. Whether or not it failed last time is irrelevant and for this goal it can be a mix of far and short sighted, making grand long term plans and then making blindingly obvious mistakes. For example, one life of the Black Crystal set out to make sure no one great power would rise on the continent of Iropa and predicted the rise of Hrod. It set things up in the Dark Lands that should any power begin to rise all the others would unite to crush it. While succesful, it never set up to ensure Hrod's demise because it simply predicted up to the point of the first attempt and did not calculate he would try it again. When it next opposed him, it had less preparation and was first to shows its hand more openly and in the end Hrod himself slew the Black Crystal Bearer. After that, it did not bother him again. Not out of any fear or respect, but because it resets to a new Fate after every death.

The Fates that it sets out can be malign, benign or anything in-between. It's outlook is quite a bit alien although their are a few things observed and theorized. One, the Black Crystal believes in the balance of forces, good and evil, chaos and order and all that jazz. The Crystals of Inevitability have a pretty usual set up of heroic and villainous balanced evenly out but when the balance tilts one way or the other Black will take the opposite. The White Crystal of Free Will is the usual wild card in this regard, hence why the two have opposed one another numerous times over history.

Death Rates

The Black and White Crystal Bearers may live the longest of all the Crystal Bearers. The Black Crystal will lie in wait for lifetimes laying down plans and the White Bearer may live lifetimes doing jack and shit as some people would be inclined to do even if they had ultimate power. So throughout the average life span of the White and Black, they may see the death of two to three Green and Yellow Bearers. Yellow is Selfishness and will selfishly guard their life, although usually they piss off enough people to kill them. Green is Life and holds even their own in high regard, with some capable of making very cold risk-reward analysis on human life, some knowing the healing arts and some finding that those who spare their enemies get spared in return. The Green and Yellow Bearers themselves may see two to three Blue and Orange Bearers die. Blue is Joy and in the pursuit of their thrills may meet their end, although often without any regrets. Orange is Pain and some are more sadistic then cautious and meet a gruesome end by vengeful foes. The Blue and Orange bearer finally may see the deaths of two to three Red and Violet Bearers. Red is Death and many are careless nihilists who eventually are taken down like animals and Violet is Selflessness whose bearers may seemingly gleefully sacrifice their lives.

These are not hard and fast rules mind you but represent a known trend. The current generation to a one may break the mold like a fragile vase.

Aarrgh, came home late and too tired to reread all the entries like I always do before voting. Sorry, will try again tonight.

Things on my list to write:

• Terrestrial Spirits Things that naturally inhabit stuff and may themselves easily become gods.
• Celestial Spirits The individual manifestations of a Celestial God's will, possible competitor but not out-right replacement for title of angels and demons, likely just minus the 'ae' thing.
• Taurs
• Lycan This and Taurs I think deserve another chance, but as each their own separate entry. I think I'll still go with my original flavor of them being Proto-Beast-Folk.
• Anima Elfs Or something different but similar. Maybe include they can have bits other then animals (Like plant bits?), or maybe JUST plants (plant-mammal hybrid?), unstable genetics. If I keep with them being some Proto-Proto-Beast-Folk, it probably went Elfs ("Oh, we can add bits of nature to humanoids! Specifically us! Thus turning us into an unrecognizable and possibly genetically unstable race, wheeee! We need a proper motivation for this, wheeee!") -> Taurs ("Oh, I can human bits to animals! Specifically that torso, head and opposable thumb bit!") -> Lycan ("Oh, I can better mix the human and the animal! And you know what would be a great idea? Making it a transmutable disease!") -> Beast-Folk ("You Lycan, I'm real happy for you, I'ma let you flourish, but making it a transmutable disease is a terrible fucking idea. Also, I mixed it better." - Hrod)
• The Planet Somehow having more volume then Earth while not having more mass by being less dense?
• Land Masses The World Spine is something like the Americas, appropriate shape and appropriate theme really. The Island World is then made up of land masses ranging from the size of Japan, India, enough Australias to count on your hands and 1-3 ones the size of Africa.
• Human Cultures

No more races.

edited 15th Mar '12 12:40:51 PM by Exelixi

I'm actually not against more races :p

Restricting our creativity will not help us, we should see what works and work doesn't work that's what the voting is for.

edited 15th Mar '12 2:17:43 PM by Vyctorian

Also I want:

• Opinions and Suggestions on this list of things I'm going to write, before I write them preferably. And none of these are calling dibs, feel free to beat me to the punch.
• Bards Less a magic and not even specifically, although more often, music. The craft of using art to hypnotize, putting hypnotic suggestions into music that help, hamper and persuade as desired.

edited 15th Mar '12 4:27:30 PM by God_of_Awesome

I suppose we'll talk about the issue again later.

For now, think of this setting as coffee and these next few entries as Bailey's.

Selkies

A subset of beast-folk primarily living in and around lakes and seas. Their "beast" component appears to be that of a seal or otter. They are physically quite different from most other beast-folk in that they have a degree of control over their bodily shape; their bones and muscles have adapted very efficiently to an amphibious lifestyle, allowing them to give the appearance of simply "standing up" to go from looking like something along these lines to appearing almost like a human with unique facial features wearing a particularly convoluted set of trousers.

Selkies are stereotyped as being extremely promiscuous. This is partially to do with the lack of a cultural stigma against interspecies breeding; the Sylchie tribe, from which the subspecies is named, was the first beast-folk tribe to openly allow its members to court other humanoids, a fact which is reflected in the gene pools of many seaside human populations.

There are rumours of Selkie-like creatures living in the depths of the ocean, occasionally surfacing to harm or save sailors, depending on the story.

-they have a degree of control over their bodily shape

They are shapeshifters?

Thoughts on those ideas:

Manifestations of a god's will, made by the god, for the god, are a little too. . . There. Yes, the gods exist and are active, but being able to manifest direct links to carry out their desires removes the point of worshipers.

I see no reason why we'd need the planet to have more volume than Earth.

As I've said, I think one beast race is plenty, especially since the one we have is so easy to use for pretty much everything. Minotaur? Werecats (I'm getting to that, give me time)? It all works.

Sort of. As I explained, it's more akin to changing posture than true shapeshifting.

edited 15th Mar '12 4:46:54 PM by Exelixi

I would say, possibly, we can have Beast-Folk who were created before Hrod's, what most people know as Beast-Folk. Technically, they are -also- Beast-Folk, but they have such drastic differences they go by different names, likely the ones applied to them before and are considered in a way to be more primitive attempts.

Therefore, they can be listed under Beast-Folk but require their own sub-entries to explain them.

That works. I could label it something like

'"Beast-folk'''

Creation of the race

subtypes

subtype A

Subtype B

tribes

contribution to Human bloodlines

I think I will write up an entry called Proto Beast-Folk, explain how these are considered Beast-Folk, then write up with separate italic entries in reverse order of their creation and possibly begin or end with a little name entry for what scholars may call 'regular' Beast-Folk to distinguish them, although noting that most everyone else does not do that. I was thinking Anthropoids or Furres?

edited 15th Mar '12 5:07:03 PM by God_of_Awesome

"Theriomorphs" would be the closest approximation for such a thing.

Proto Beast-Folk

The Black Prince was not original in his design of the Beast-Folk, but he certainly perfected it to the point that when anyone says 'Beast-Folk' they think of Hrod's invented race. Before him though, their were others although they differ so greatly from Hrod's design that since that is what people think of when they say 'Beast-Folk', they must use entirely different names to specify.

Furres

Anthropoids, Theriomorphs, Anthropomorphs; most people just say 'Beast-Folk' so much that nothing has been set in stone. Animals that have been magically imbued with the characteristics of a humanoid and generally referring to what is regarded as the most perfect fusion, although some say that the fusion is bias towards humanoid and the people calling it 'perfect' are bias too.

Lycanthropes

The original lycanthropes were worshipers of a nature deity, Elena or perhaps a related more bestial entity. It is known they called this deity Lycana, possibly a corrupted form of Elena, and viewed her as the spiritual manifestation of the moon. It is important to note they also worshiped a god of civilization and order viewed as the sun, which comes up later.

As both a means of spiritual enlightenment and to gain strength over their enemies, these lycanites used a combination of their goddess's blessing and research past to infuse themselves with the essence of wolves. Starting from man, the result was a great deal more beast, feral and wild. Only under the light of the moon could they conjure the power to transform and under the full moon would be force to transform. Only those who had mastered themselves and brought order to the inner beast could retain their form under the light of the sun.

Their bite was meant to be poison, deadly to their enemies. They found that the poison was actually the very brew that transformed them. Most when injected with it would not survive the process although their chances rose the more moonlight touched them but the most assured way was a ritualistic injection under the full moon although then syringes are often employed and a bite is only improvised.

Entirely new generations were created as the first were, usually wolves, usually by the moon to that same goddess, by their have been some that used different animals, different gods or no gods and different stimuli. The rule of thumb was the more factors were involved the more likely a aspirant would survive the process as long as all factors were met.

((Exelixi already made a Werewolf entry and I tried to not contradict it as much as possible))

Taurs

The taur represented the more primitive version of the Beast-folk. Instead of infusing the subject with characteristics of human or beast, parts were outright transplanted. In this case the origin of the Taurs resemble the origin of the Furres in that animals were used as the base and humans part were transplanted onto them, usually every human part from the waist up, either replacing the upper half or more often just the head. Their is the Centaur, the Naga, the Harpies and others. The Minotaur is a weird example, being with a man's body but a bull's head. It is not known if they are some kind of mistake or more related to the Elfs below.

Elfs

Mortal Elfs, not to be mistaken for Sylvan. They are the most Proto of all the Proto Beast-Men. They are like the Lycanthrope, their origin is starting as humanoids but like the Taur being that they less infused themselves but added bits and pieces. Like the Lycanthrope, the original Elfs worshipped a goddess too; Elphena, most definitely Elena this time. It is interpreted from historical records and moderns results that the original and ancient Elf Culture were masters of biourgy and as a whole underwent biourgical augmentation for entirely peaceful purposes to achieve spiritual enlightenment and closeness with their goddess. It is unlikely that whatever race they were before was entirely represented in the Elfs but were later likely subsumed by Humans.

The augmentations were not entirely bestial either although it was the most common. Plants, minerals and other signs of nature were added to their bodies. So many augmentation were added that some were pushed into recession, only to reawaken rarely or when infused with new genes from other races. It is known that likely, like the Sylvan, they had pointed ears. Most likely the Sylvan have an 'Elf' stage named for the Elfs themselves. Perhaps the original Elfs were humans of some Sylvan ancestry. In the form they take now, Elfs always have pointed ears or something resembling a pointed ear or some pointed thing around the ear area.

Elfs and Dwarfs have many indications to be related, perhaps the same biourgical mastery lead to the creation of the Gifts which may perversely mean that the Machine Empire's Machine God is Elena unless a different god governed over the creation of the Dwarfs. Brownies may possibly be Elfs, perhaps Proto-Dwarfs before the Gift was created.

Hm. . . So, are we conflating the Lycanthropes and my Werewolves as the same thing, or different subspecies?

Perhaps a later version although their is the conflict that your version is one bite instant werewolf while I made it a great deal harder.

Seems redundant.