Recent content by shangrila

I mean, there's a couple of different options. My main thought is to view it like building a fire. Yes you can take the wooden logs off of an extinguished fire but on their own they do nothing. You'd require a spark (the witch's life energy) to actually reignite them (i.e., use them for the...

Ignore the people telling you it's too big or small. The world should suit the story you're telling. If it's a globe trotting advantage to prevent an apocalypse? Sure, fill that world map. But if it's not, don't stress about it. Do as much or as little as you want, so long as telling a good...

This is what I was going to say. I don't typically include elves in my own stories but if I had a situation like this I'd be using "half-elf" too. Trying to intricately explain just how my characters lineage is broken up sounds tedious to write, let alone read, especially if it isn't relevant...

As in...they glow? That could work depending on what you're going for. As others have said it'll be easier to brainstorm with more details about your magic system. In general you don't need a hard and fast rule. Even Sanderson uses the "faitgue" cop out in Mistborn (at least IIRC).

It seems to depend on what part of the world you're looking at. A lot of European folklore has monsters like this. Then you get something like the Indonesian penanggal and...yeah. Don't know if that thing works for you OP but you could give it a try.

If I remember correctly Joe Abercrombie does this, or something similar, a fair bit. Like anything it depends on the use. Overuse it and it creates confusion for the reader. But done tastefully? All good.

Nobody settles in towns and cities without naming them. That's a massive oversight. If you don't want to name each individual town in your fictional world, that's fine. But the idea that people would just leave them blank is absurd.

A magical litmus test seems the simplest. People above have suggested similar but even a piece of paper could suffice; they push their magic into it and turn it into a certain colour. If they can make it that colour, they pass. If not, they fail. That also opens you up for further...

Witchkin is another that'd work.

I find it boring to stick to one place. Setting can be as much a character as the actual characters so I don't want to constrict myself too much. That said, there's some bleed over. A "void" between worlds, a being that oversees the strings of time (the Weaver) and a few others.

I had an idea for a story set after all the gods had a Ragnarok style showdown and trashed the world, either dying or leaving in the process. Now everyone is picking up the pieces, trying to survive without the tangible existence of their gods plus all the monsters and other dangerous crap left...

It depends on how much of a deviation you want to have. The ideas you gave above are fine, but if you stray too far with any of the commonly used races people will just wonder why you didn't create a new race yourself.

It depends on what type of undead you're talking about, among other things. Civilisations evolve to fulfill people's needs, roughly speaking. So assuming the undead don't have to eat then, no, there'd be no zombie farmers. A zombie blacksmith? I could kind of see that. They may still need...

In one of my stories telepaths act as a sort of messenger service, able to transmit messages mentally to other telepaths over large distances. A magical telegram system, basically.

I have feathered dragons in one of my WIP. They're also titanic creatures, the size of small mountains. I also tried (and kind of failed) to come up with my own spin on vampires and werewolves. Both transformed; vampires into reptilian creatures and "werewolves" into something closer to a very...