# What physical traits make your world fantasy besides magic?



## daydreamer (Dec 1, 2016)

I loved the asif series with winters and summers that lasted years, i also loved mistborn with a world where ash falls from the sky. I'm in the world building phase of my wip and i want to add a little 'sumtin sumtin' to spice it up but  I don't want random flying mountains and lava raining on Tuesdays for no reason, what do you have in your world that makes it unique and do you like that sort of thing or a more realistic world?


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## Chessie (Dec 1, 2016)

I love this question! Mythology is my answer. Lots of it tied into the stories. The people of Mirovinia are also pretty superstitious and I've approached the design of the world to be dark/gothic in feel & intention. It's a northern land, cold and dark many months of the year, but also the settlements are built on high cliffs and mountainsides. But as to what makes it unique is Slavic & Native Alaskan folklore made reality.

Far as reading pleasure goes, I do prefer fantasy worlds that are high fantasy, high in magic. The stranger and more unrealistic, the better.


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## daydreamer (Dec 1, 2016)

Chessie said:


> I love this question! Mythology is my answer. Lots of it tied into the stories. The people of Mirovinia are also pretty superstitious and I've approached the design of the world to be dark/gothic in feel & intention. It's a northern land, cold and dark many months of the year, but also the settlements are built on high cliffs and mountainsides. But as to what makes it unique is Slavic & Native Alaskan folklore made reality.
> 
> Far as reading pleasure goes, I do prefer fantasy worlds that are high fantasy, high in magic. The stranger and more unrealistic, the better.



Sounds pretty interesting, i don't know why but i'm drawn to the darker types of worlds. I'm not going with that route though, i guess a little inspiration is what i need.


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## Chessie (Dec 1, 2016)

What are you going for?


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## daydreamer (Dec 1, 2016)

Chessie said:


> What are you going for?



Honestly i don't know, in my world magic has only been introduced a short while ago so it's not something the world has always had though this doesn't mean it has to be mundane. I know i want the setting to be more modern since i'm kind of over the medieval thing but i still love a lot of medieval fantasy. so far i have a creepy forest with weird stuff.


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## Chessie (Dec 1, 2016)

What about coming halfway between modern and medieval? Say...17th or 18th century? Then that way there could be guns and other weapons to support a world with minimal magic.


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## daydreamer (Dec 1, 2016)

Chessie said:


> What about coming halfway between modern and medieval? Say...17th or 18th century? Then that way there could be guns and other weapons to support a world with minimal magic.



Sorry i didn't mean 2016 modern! lol, more like what you said but i sort of want to omit gun since they would be overpowered


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Dec 1, 2016)

My world differs from our own mainly in the creatures and living things that inhabit it. I made up animals, plants and humanoid races for my world. The seasons, geography and weather, however, are largely Earth-like.


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## daydreamer (Dec 1, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> My world differs from our own mainly in the creatures and living things that inhabit it. I made up animals, plants and humanoid races for my world. The seasons, geography and weather, however, are largely Earth-like.



cool i love thinking up creatures.


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## WooHooMan (Dec 2, 2016)

My most commonly-used (and Earth-like) setting is nestled in the scales of a gigantic snake.  It's very Discworld-like.

The setting that is most different from Earth has mountains that are smoother and more curved than our mountains, places with "thick air" that one could swim in, "Earth-bound suns" that cause the climate to be much different than our world and moving forests.  It's also pretty colorful visually, like more saturated than our world.
The inhabitants include gargoyles, giant spiders, rock people, telepathic stocks of coral and frog people (among others).  The frog people are the most human-like with their culture being based on medieval India.
There's also the mythology but there's not really anything terrible uncommon for fantasy fiction.  The high concept is that this world was made by the gods as a test of what they could do.  It's like an experiment before they create a "serious" world.


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## valiant12 (Dec 2, 2016)

Weather patterns, seasons, weird geography, animals, plants , germs , chemical substances, random magical things happening , cuisine , etc.


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## Svrtnsse (Dec 2, 2016)

On a physical and visible level there are elves, dwarves, and anfylk (hobbits) in addition to the humans. There are also a whole bunch of less well documented and less common other creatures that may or may not be sentient or intelligent.

One thing that has come to play a role in adding depth and colour to the world that I hadn't first expected is the concept of souls/spirits. Everything that is alive (and some things that aren't) has a soul. This includes things as cities and villages, forests and mountains. The longer you stay in a place, the more attuned to the soul/spirit of the place you become. Similarly, the longer a place is used for a certain purpose the stronger its spirit becomes. 
En example of this is how you can enter an old house and when you step into the kitchen you might hear a faint heartbeat (the kitchen is the heart of the house). Similarly, if you step into an old pub, where people have had a good time for generations it might improve your mood and cheer you up a little.


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## Mythopoet (Dec 2, 2016)

My world is a completely alternate reality version of Earth. I call it Antichthon, which means "Counter-earth". 

First, it's a Hollow Earth and all the habitable lands and people are on the inside of the sphere. The continents of this Earth are similar to our own, but they are based on an ancient map of earth drawn by Ptolemy. So there is no North or South America, no Australia or Antarctica as they exist in our world. Europe is more or less the same, but Asia and Africa are very different. Everything on the map is based on how scholars of the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century viewed the world. 

As a Hollow Earth, there is a small "cosmos" inside it as well with a small "sun" in the center and a sphere of "aether" between the lower atmosphere where the people dwell and the sun. The celestial bodies other than the sun ("stars" etc.) are held in the aether and as the aether naturally turns around the sun, it causes the stars to appear to turn as well. 

On the outer sphere of the Earth is, from the point of view of the inhabitants of the Hollow Earth, the "underworld".


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 2, 2016)

The world in my WIP has seasons that are governed by something other than its relationship with the sun.


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## psychotick (Dec 2, 2016)

Hi,

Love this question. Some time ago I wrote the Arcanist which was largely a steampunk epic fantasy with magic - and one key aspect - magic and technology could happily coexist. At the same time Istarted writing a bizarro version of that world using the same starting point - ie a noble, third born son, living a happy go lucky life with little pressure, having both magic and technology at his fingertips. But I reversed one key aspect of the world. In Wings (yeah I still haven't decided on the title) magic and science are contrary to oneanother. Using magic near a technological device etc, may well cause the device to fail. Bringing technology into an area where there are magic spells in place, will undo the spells.

Now while this is important for the plot, it also completely redefined the rules of the world. In a world where magic and technology coexist, it's just a normal steampunk epic fantasy world. But where they oppose each other, each rendering the other useless, you end up with a world divided. If people want to use magic - say they have a wizardly gift - they have to live in a part ofthe world where magic abounds and technology doesn't. Likewise technologists don't want to be around wizards and magical objects etc. Fast forward that a thousand years and you have a world in two halves. The east is magical, the west technological. And there are countless laws in both lands about not having the two mix. So people in the technological realms, "evict" anyone with a magical ability and post off any ancient magical artefacts they might find. And of course vice versa - which is where the story begins!

But it's also a central feature of the story that this separation of technology and magic, is life threatening. That this division - ideological and actual - is going to wipe out the people. All the people on both sides. Something that is not widely known. On the technological side, a lack of magic leads to among other things, a plague. A deficiency disease actually where a lack of magic leads to the slow death of the body. On the other side, a lack of technology allows magic to run out of control, and those born with magic tend to have too much. They burn out young, many are born severely deformed as the magic in the unborn child twists them.

And then of course I threw some gods into the mix. One who wants to continue this division and thus end all life in the world as he considers it a stain upon his perfect cosmos. Another who wants it to stop.

Cheers, Greg.


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## daydreamer (Dec 2, 2016)

All great worlds, i spent a lot of time on the story and magic system but my setting is a bit bland so i'll spend some time world building.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 2, 2016)

Large scale geography puts down clues to my world. If you know tectonics you can pick out oddities that aren't magical, per se, but clearly aren't natural either.


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## Tet (Dec 2, 2016)

Well, what I think makes my fantasy world fantasy (other than magic) are the races and creatures, which I have put the extra mile in to make give them an evolutionary history. I guess history and natural history also makes my world interesting as well.


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## Tom (Dec 2, 2016)

Absolutely nothing. Take away magic, and my fantasy world is 100% naturalistic. I wanted it this way so I could see just how much magic would effect a normal world. Everything fantastical stems from magic.


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## glutton (Dec 2, 2016)

Monsters and unusually high human physical potential eg. cute girls fighting through being impaled, tanking and/or deflecting volleys of automatic gunfire including from mechas, beating up kaiju sized monsters with nonmagical melee weapons etc.


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## Peter Himin (Dec 3, 2016)

Well my doesn't differ fantasy wise per se, more that it differs in more science related ways, for example my planet is about 25% larger than earth but has rufly the same gravity due to it being less dense instead of it being completly sized up form earth and having higher gravity.
        Other ways it's different is the gaseous composition of the atmosphere whereas earth has 78.084& nitrogen, 20.946% oxygen, 0.9340 % agron, 0.04% Carbon Dioxide, and small amounts of other gases, my world has higher oxygen levels, lower nitrogen, and Carbon Dioxide levels, and an overall thicker atmosphere thus making it possible for lager animals than possible on earth, and would be slightly greener (although not immidetly obvious), making the sky more cyan than blue, and a redder looking sun. 
        Also the land to water ratio of my planet it diffrent with earth having about 70.78% water, to 29.21% land, and my planet having 72.94 water, to 27.05 land, broken up into like earth two main landmasses (including islands) one being 80 million km2 (15.68%), and the other 58 million km2 (11.37%)
          Note: the reason why I keep aluding to my planet, as my planet instead of a stright out name is, like earth there is many names for it, and I don't feel like just choosing one with which the entire planet has calls it (although not real).


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## Deleted member 4265 (Dec 4, 2016)

Honestly, the geography and climate of my world is pretty mundane. All the defining features of it are pretty much made by humanoid creatures. There are mysterious ancient ruins, an underwater city, that sort of thing. This is intentional because the setting of my WIP is completely urban. It doesn't make sense to have something like brain-eating manticore's roaming plains, or weird glowing caves that hypnotize and confuse the intruder (although the latter does actually exist in my story) if my characters are never going to set foot outside the walls of the capitols to see any of these things.


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## Vaporo (Dec 5, 2016)

My story takes place on two planets locked in orbit around each other, where each world essentially acts as the other's moon. There are no stars, so during the night there is perfect darkness whenever the opposing world is not visible. The people and animals in my world have a few adaptations to handle the darkness, but other than that everything else is pretty mundane.


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## TheKillerBs (Dec 5, 2016)

Vaporo said:


> My story takes place on two planets locked in orbit around each other, where each world essentially acts as the other's moon. There are no stars, so during the night there is perfect darkness whenever the opposing world is not visible. The people and animals in my world have a few adaptations to handle the darkness, but other than that everything else is pretty mundane.



Seems like night time travel would be a right pain in such a world. Especially sailing.


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