The "Daily" Worldbuilding Prompt

[Orc Knight]

Question 11: I want to travel from one edge of the known world, to the other. How do I go about this, and is it possible?

Do you want to go in relative safety or the full on adventurers package? Back in the days before the Lich Wars, near every sort of travel one see's in fantasy settings was available. From airships to dragons (griffons at ones own risk), regular ships and land travel and through Sylvan Gates. Travel by dinosaur and atop boars and other such beasties. Even early sort of magical steam wagons on the Southern continent and sandworms in the deserts. And a few other plane jumping options for those in the know, including travel through mirrors.

After the Lich Wars, well, travel, especially air travel has been cut down and most magical means of it short of riding a flying animal is quite limited. The Sylvan Gates have been closed off and the land is even more dangerous as the likes of centaurs roam as bandits and there are few are around to cull the war herds. Otherwise there will be a lot of walking or riding in trailers and carriages and boats.

 

[ThinkerX]

Question 11: I want to travel from one edge of the known world, to the other. How do I go about this, and is it possible?

My worlds, with one or two bizarre exceptions, are spheres - proceed far enough in one direction, avoid catastrophe, and you will eventually return to your starting point.

Char - the world of Solaria and Cimmar has more land than water - it's oceans and seas are almost landlocked. One could theoretically sail around the world, but portions of that journey would be on rivers and much time would be spent on the 'Unknown Southern Sea.' It would be easier to simply pick a spot in the vast southern plains and travel either east or west from there, though there's little in the way of civilization. The northerly or civilized approach...

Board a westbound ship in Corber Port, Solaria's largest city, spanning the strait between the immense Cauldron and the Mare Imperium, heading for great Marfaki Canal at the Imperial Sea's westernmost extent. Do remember to call at the Throne City for necessary permits and consult the geographical experts at Solace's great university along the way. The Marfak canal cuts through ravaged and haunted Drakkar (recently being populated by discharged imperial legionaries) to the Sea of Shadows, so called because Solaria knew little of its true extent, despite a long term presence. At Tessa, the port at the canals terminus, take ship south and west past stubbornly independent Arcos (once an Imperial city) and the bleak black cliffs of Nous isle (keep an eye out for pirates). Past Nous, thread a course through a tangle of tiny, strange isles and then sail for a week across open water to Cendoza, southernmost of the Rhaiduni states. At this point, seagoing vessels must be abandoned. Continue west along Cendoza's highways, keeping north of Gawana, a living labyrinth hundreds of miles across. Eventually, you'll reach the Iron Passes that guard the Rhaiduni lands from the nomads of the southern plains. Stock up on water and provisions; the journey's next leg involves a rude caravan track across a thousand miles of desert. This brings you to the southern fringes of decadent Celthania, a lingering vestige of the once mighty Agban empire, brought low by intrigue and compacts with demons. From here, you can either pass NE through Celthania (be wary of its decadent traps!) to a trade road that proceeds west to Cimmar's eastern boundaries, or take a boat south along the Grass River to Cenotaph City, Necropolis of the Gods, and from there take passage aboard a junk to the Nations of Heaven. Both courses take the traveler to the eastern shores of the Cauldron. From there, securing passage with either the Gotlander mariners (a cold realm between Solaria and Cimmar) or on a Chou trade fleet to Corber Port is a relatively simple matter.

Aquas - Unlike Char, Aquas is a world of water with but a single conventional continent. However, it does have another significant landmass - the impossible elongated ribbon of land termed the 'Strand' or the 'Spine' that effectively circumnavigates the globe on a rough NW/SE axis. In the vast majority of places, a traveler in good health can cross the strands width in determined hike of no more than a day or two. In other stretches, a archer with a strong enough bow can lob an arrow clear across its breadth. In a few places - perhaps a dozen total - the strand broadens to well over a hundred miles in width. These 'knobs' are the foci points of civilization. Caste bound Baradu's overpopulated cities, rude goblin metropolises, the vast, decaying multi-racial Dimmurian League, dominions of elves and rachasa and screa and more - all claim portions of the Strand.

The Pilgrim Shrines - focuses of immense psionic power - sit at regular intervals along the Strand. Parties of pilgrims, hoping for healing or comfort or good fortune flock to these strange temples. Some - a tiny fraction of those who embark on such journeys - walk the Strands full circle and (possibly) become figures of legend.

 

[Ban]

Question 11: I want to travel from one edge of the known world, to the other. How do I go about this, and is it possible?

All of the world (it is just earth after all) is known. The furthest people have travelled and settled is Mars, which you can only reach if you are part of a research team, or one of the crazy colonists trying to live out there to limited, though predominantly symbolic, success. This trip takes months, and is only done when Mars and Earth are at their closest point, so you'll have to be patient.

If you want to circumnavigate the world, you can take a passenger plane and do it in about 24 hours (including stops). Alternatively, you can take a series of European hyperloops and Russian mag-lev trains, all the way from Marrakech to the furthest edge of Siberia in the span of a mere 12 hours. At that point things get tricky however, due to cold relations between Canada (which owns Alaska) and the URS, and lacking modern infrastructure in most of Canada, which has been to busy containing the warzones to adopt mag-lev and hyperloop technology.

 

[Ban]

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?

Start with the first and easiest. The eating of sapients and sentients, on Earth, generally not very moral. On Eld, for a good portion of it's existence it's been perfectly moral. It'd be almost immoral to leave such a thing to waste and thus, it happened. And even in the most modern day, still happens from time to time, though the ones who do it usually try to only do it to their very worst enemies or those who really deserve to be cooked. This is not helped by the fact that a fair amount of animals talk, as they sometimes have a tendency to in fairy tales. If the food talks, that, by the simplest of logic, means everything is food.

That's probably one of the easier ones of separation.

 

[Ban]

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?

Great apes have been recognized internationally as sentient and sapient creatures, and the intentional killing of one can lead to life imprisonment. This was deemed necessary, after Gorilla's and other apes trained to sign like the late gorilla Koko, were released back in the wild, and in turn taught their fellow apes the same communicative skills. A species that can make its thoughts known to people through language, even if rudimentary, can not be reasonably dismissed as non-intelligent and non-feeling.

On that note, great ape populations have skyrocketed in the united state of Cameroon-Gabon. In the state, Gorilla's have proven to be a great boon in tracking down traffickers and middle-African war parties, through communicating the enemy's location with professional gorilla sign experts (A task becoming increasingly more difficult, as different gorilla groups develop different sign dialects). Chimpanzees have proven to be difficult to work with, and prefer to use their newfound linguistic skills to sign obscenities at rival tribes and nosy people.

 

[WooHooMan]

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?

Shapers believe that making promises is immoral.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Got caught a bit off-guard, and now I need to catch up

Question 7: Days, Weeks, Months, Years. How are they measured and what are they called?

The increments are all called the same, so you got days, weeks, months and years. The planet is the same size as Earth, and a slightly smaller orbit, so days and weeks are the same length, and years are exactly 364 days, without the little extra bit that leads to leap years, much to the pleasure of the Duongels. The orbit of the moon is much more refined, orbiting at exactly 28 days. This leads to there being 13 months in a year. Humans have the same superstition about the number 13, and Duongels just dislike that the last month of the year is an odd number, so the equivilent of Halloween is during this last month. Coming up for names of the months and days is proving quite annoying, as they haven't discovered astronomy yet, so I can't use planets to name them, and I haven't gotten names for all the deities yet, so I can't use those yet. And deciding what year it is is proving annoying as well.

 

[Ban]

Question 13: Zoo's, Waterparks, Amusementparks. Do you have any equivalent? (Bonus: Can you give me an example?)

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 8: Can you give me the synopsis of one of your people's cultural/national epics? The foundational myths as it were.

The deities of the world used to war a lot. These wars could last as long as a century, and were often filled with the blood of innocent worshippers massacred by the Apostles of rival deities. During the last major war, Inespell, the deity of instability and chaos, became much more powerful than the other deities without any clear source, and started attacking all the deities, even the passive ones who took no part in the wars, and those who thought themselves to be her allies. All the Apostles at the time, including Inespell's own Apostle, tried to defeat Inespell, and were all killed. The deities started to fear for their lives, so they made a pact of peace, and combined their powers to create Hosper Paxet, a person who would be able to be the Apostle of all of them. Hosper went to all the temples, bolstering the worship of the various deities, while also researching much about Inespell and the source of her power. Hosper then managed to track down Inespell and Inespell's new Apostle, and lured the Apostle away, killing him without alerting Inespell. Without an Apostle, Inespell had nothing to anchor her divinity to the world, and was weakened. Due to Inespell's weakened state, Hosper was able to defeat her, and sealed her away in a different dimension. The barrier between the world and the dimension Inespell was sealed in is weakest around the mountain thought to be where Gem Slimes originated from, so there is a cave there where cultists still worship Inespell, and much of the wildlife around there is bizzare and chaotic, with the prime example being the Gem Slime, which was only discovered about a century before my story takes place. The years count from the year Hosper was created, and at the time of my story, it's somewhere around about the 13th century(the century of superstition). There is a holiday to celebrate the anniversary of Hosper's creation(totally not a rip-off of Christmas), and one to celebrate the victory over Inespell.

 

[Blither]

Don't really have an answer to the last to, so:

Question 11: I want to travel from one edge of the known world, to the other. How do I go about this, and is it possible?

The post-fall world is a harsh place. The easiest way to literally get from one side to the other would be by hugging the coastlines of Rosk, the northernmost continent, which stretches most of the way around the globe. The Templar order keeps the mutant tribesmen and Vestiges (monsters) from straying too far south, and you probably won't freeze to death if you do it in the summer

There's still a good chance of getting killed or just starving to death if you don't have any survival skills, but it's safer than going anywhere else.

 

[Ban]

So no dinosaur parks, magic dueling grounds or no-gravity wonderlands? I'm a little disappointed.

Question 13: Zoo's, Waterparks, Amusementparks. Do you have any equivalent? (Bonus: Can you give me an example?)

Virtual reality arcades can be found in any self-respecting modern city, whereas the old entertainment types mentioned in the question are still as present as always. This is an area of worldbuilding I need to give some more attention to.

 

[Ban]

We've reached the end of week 2, well done everyone!

Question 14: What's the biggest, most beloved celebration of the year? (Bonus: How do I celebrate?)

 

[Ewolf20]

What's the biggest, most beloved celebration of the year?

There's a holiday in Ookraia that roughly translate to "the coming of winter". it's a bit like christmas, only santa claus is treated like the boogie man or krampus. The first portions of the celebration are devoted to the harvest, where everyone lends their hand in planting food for the winter. the leftovers are put under a heavily decorated stick that's used to ward off snow spirits. once the winter comes, the bug people enter their homes or move away for awhile. during that time they might say cheery tunes or folktales about the holiday. once winter ends, a person dressed as the "santa" figure comes by and gives everyone gifts for their hard work.

if you didn't know by now, they're humanoid bugs.

now, if a larvae misbehaved during that holiday, they're said to kicked out and spanked until winters comes. some races go out of their way to let the winter kill them off. Especially my bee people who this excuse to kick out their drones.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I need to catch up! AAAAHH!

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?
Ooh, I really like this question. For the most part, aside from a few fanatic cults and denser areas of the universe of Shio [dimensionally speaking], everyone in the OmniCosmos abides by the Truth of the Cosmos: 'I am you and you are me, and everyone and all are divine.' Consequently, there are no wars, no fighting, and no legal systems since there's no crime.

[If you want to know more, Ban, I can elaborate some more.]

Question 13: Zoo's, Waterparks, Amusement parks. Do you have any equivalent? (Bonus: Can you give me an example?)
I haven't actually thought about that. I'll have to investigate.

Question 14: What's the biggest, most beloved celebration of the year? (Bonus: How do I celebrate?)
Well...technically every day is a celebration, but in every universe, there's at least one day a year [according to those that have calendar systems and mark years] where the Eternal Ones have a party, and everyone in the OmniCosmos' invited--literally everyone.

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 13: Zoo's, Waterparks, Amusementparks. Do you have any equivalent? (Bonus: Can you give me an example?)

Menageries and some zoo's. The city of Crystal Rose likely has one of the stranger zoo's above ground. Not too many keep things like cockatrices, giant red aurochs or a boar king on display. The closest to an amusement park would be down in Paradise, but as it's drow amusement, it's also part carnival, circus and fueled by a hundreds of different drinks and concoctions, it's one of those that you enter at your own risk.

Question 14: What's the biggest, most beloved celebration of the year? (Bonus: How do I celebrate?)

The Victory Feast, which took over most of the mid-winter festivals after the Lich Wars. And you celebrate by gathering with a bunch of like minded people intent on being thankful for still living (and not undead), having a lot of food and drink and telling great stories of heroics and toasting to those who died during it and to those who prevent such a thing from coming again. Basically it's the big holiday smash with about a week of food, drink and tales.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

I do intend to have amusement parks of some kind, I'm just heavily backlogged and I've got mock exams in a couple of weeks.

Question 9: What do your common folk do for fun? (Bonus question: What does the elite think about this?)

In the Duongel's city, there isn't many who could be called "the elite". Poverty isn't a thing, because of how easy it is for a Duongel to get a decent pay and how high-paying most of the jobs that humans can do are, and because many of the richer Duongels are philanthropists. Many of the games the Duongels play are some form of projectile game that would be seen as impossible even by the standards of an Olympic archer, such as having one body stand behind a giant wall while the other stands on top, and using what the body on top of the wall sees to be able to shoot arrows at up to 10 targets simultaneously from the body at the bottom of the wall. The richer the Duongel is, the more expensive the projectile weapon they can get is, so the rich ones can do things like shooting an arrow at the straw dummy hidden among the rocks launched by a catapult 200 meters away. Just like my warning in the university one: NEVER challenge a Duongel to a projectile sport, you'd have to do some blatant cheating to even match their skill. I mean, a human might be able to hold out in a dodgeball match until time runs out, but they'd never be able to hit an opponent, unless they can somehow make the ball change direction midair. As such, dodgeball isn't a sport played by Duongels, as it'd be boring in a Duongel vs Duongel match. You might have a group of Duongels play a game where it's "find the shiny balls hidden around the city, winner is the one who has the most balls", but for a human to join in you'd have to have it be that it's only the balls that a single body finds, and make some way of telling which body found a ball, as to stop cheating. Flying probably also wouldn't be allowed if a human was taking part. The richer Duongels will play with balls that have been enchanted with expensive enchantments, so if you're friends with an elite Duongel, treasure that fact, because you might be able to have a level playing field in some of the non-projectile games.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 10: Can you tell me a tale, that is fictional within your world?

Hmm, the fiction within the fiction. That's gonna be difficult. Almost any stories about the deities are probably true, so can't go with those, and the story of the pair of Duongel mages who flew to the unknown continent on the other side of the ocean is, however badly distorted from the truth it might be, still a true story. The Duongels might have stories about a Duongel with more than two bodies(actually can't even think of how that would work, but that's mostly because I don't have all the details of their normal reproduction sorted), but other than that I'm not sure.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 11: I want to travel from one edge of the known world, to the other. How do I go about this, and is it possible?

To get from one end of the continent to the other, you'd have to make your way past the large mountain range that splits the continent in half. The bit right in the middle is where the cult of Inespell resides, so it's dangerous there, even if you ignore the strange chaos that is absolutely normal there. On one side of the mountain range is where most of the human settlements are, and there's very few non-human settlements, which explains why the humans didn't know about the other races in my world for quite a bit. A Duongel might be able to fly over the mountains, but the air gets so thin near the peaks that it's not safe to do so, and lower down the mountains is the realm of beasts, including dragons. There is only one safe route through the mountains so far, and it is heavily guarded due it being the only reliable trade route between settlements on either side of the mountains. The Duongel's city is about the furthest east you can go on the continent, while the capital of the largest of the human nations is the furthest west you can get. You would want to start at the capital at the west, as the Duongel's city is an infinitely more desireable end location. You would go past 3 or 4 major cities, and up to 20 small towns and villages, before you reached the pass at the mountains, with it being about a three day journey between each major city, and 5 days from the last one to the pass. Due to it being the only safe route through so far, the pass is a neutral zone, so any enemies you may have made on the way there would be forced to leave you alone. From that point on, you'd probably want to hitch a ride with a group of traders headed for the Duongel's city, as they would most likely know which settlements are accepting of humans, and often hire wizards and other forms of defence from monsters. The journey is a bit slower on this side, taking far more stops due to the danger, and because you wouldn't be able to go as direct of a route. You'd probably pass 1 or 2 large human settlements, and there's about 6 large settlements that are friendly to humans on the standard trade route, and about 30 smaller settlements along the way. The palace of Traviage, the deity of travel, is a point that pretty much every trade route on the east side of the mountains stops at, and it is highly recommended that you spend a day there before going on your way, as to not upset Traviage. All in all, if you were going by standard horse and carriage as your transport, and you were lucky enough to not get attacked by any monsters and were able to switch to a group of traders heading to the next stop almost immediately after arriving at a stop, you'd probably take about 14 days(17 if you take the route stopping at all 4 of the major cities) to get from the west capital to the mountain pass, and a further 28 days to get to the Duongel's city. Of course, once there you could volunteer to join the force trying to explore beyond the oceans. And if you were to befriend a powerful air mage, you might be able to fly the journey between the west capital and the mountains in under half the time it would take to go by the standard method. You'd still want to stop at Traviage's palace once you're on the other side though, to boost your chances of a safe journey. The help of a powerful air mage can easily cut your journey down from a 42 day journey to a 21.5 day journey.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 12: Can you give me an example (or more) of differences in morality between people in our world and inhabitants of yours?

It is generally considered immoral for a Duongel to participate in any sort of projectile sport ran by humans unless it specifically says that they can participate, as otherwise the Duongel would take all the prizes and that's no fun. It is also immoral to cause a Duongel to have large physical differences between it's two bodies, but most ways to do that take the form of something that is immoral anyway(force-feeding, starvation, causing injury intentionally).

On a different note, it is immoral to try and sell gemstones gotten from a Gem Slime(I guess it kinda counts as forgery), and most appraisers have special magic items developed specifically to be able to identify gemstones made by a Gem Slime. As such, Gem Slimes tend to be owned by mages or the rich, cause the rich would want the gemstones to decorate stuff with, and the mage might need them for magic rituals.