The "Daily" Worldbuilding Prompt

[Orc Knight]

Question 21: Can you give the lyrics for a song from your world?
(Alternative if you have no lyrics written: Can you tell me about the meaning of one of your world's songs?)

I did have even lyrics once (long lost to the annals of Skype) that was a goblin ditty concerning the Queen Inivia and of her slaying abilities. It was often deliberately sung by only the bravest and shrewdest of goblins who could get away before their steady barrage of insults turned her into the rage monster Eld knows and loathes (sometimes loves). By the last chorus of it, it's pretty much suggested that she needs to really get laid and that the Sea Queen would be her best bet.

By that last line, one could expect the landscape to no longer be around for much longer as it was tore apart by her shouts, magic and general lack of anger management mixed with her berserker martial prowess. So, one had to be a really, really brave and smart goblin to get away with it. Many a brave goblin was put to rest because of it and later generations would get to grouse about the irony of it all.

 

[Ban]

Question 22: How many people roam your world, and who do you count as 'people' ?

 

[Blither]

Question 22: How many people roam your world, and who do you count as 'people' ?

Hm, I've never actually given much thought to population numbers before now.

500 years before present, in the pre-fall era, there would probably be about 1.5 billion people worldwide, with humans making up about half of that, and the rest being made up of the now-extinct races like Elves and Dwarves. Probably another ~300 million Atlanteans were living underwater at this time.

Later, the Dwarves and Atlanteans were both killed during The Fall, and all the other low-population specialised species like Elves were killed off in the next few hundred years after. About ~50% of the humans were also killed during The Fall and the subsequent wars.

So all in all I'd say probably ~400 million humans left, many of which are semi-mutated or fully-mutated abhumans.

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 22: How many people roam your world, and who do you count as 'people' ?

Peoples is a very stretchy definition in Eld. Anything with sentience and sapience may get a pass (even if it doesn't exclude them from being on the menu). So, there's a lot of peoples. I have no firm number for them though. Or even a soft number. Though it's a lot less then what it was before the Lich Wars.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 22: How many people roam your world, and who do you count as 'people' ?

I tried to do some maths to work out the population, but then hit the biggest wall: the numbers seemed a bit high for the kind of setting I was imagining.

As for what counts as people, generally, if it can hold conversations, it's a person. Dragons, while normally able to hold conversations, are not quite people, because they do not have any kind of proper social structure. That and the fact that dragons tend to kill those who do have conversations with them, so most people don't know that they actually can hold conversations.
It's likely that at some point, there has been a creature, most likely from Inespell's Rage, that can literally hold a conversation, in its hand.

 

[Ban]

Question 23: Can you tell me a little something about your world's organized crime?
(Obligatory self promotion here : A Primer on Organized Crime for Writers – Mythic Scribes)

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 23: Can you tell me a little something about your world's organized crime?

It's very loosely organized, even at the best of times. Pirates at sea mostly all fall under the Pirate Queen/King of the time and those who do not bend knee had better be wily about it or at least pay up if they want to sail in certain waters. Not many criminals can use kraken as hit men, but they can and do. Robber Barons and Hoods plagued the forests and small counties from time to time, though mostly only the Hoods are left and have been brought into the fold as undead hunters with the price paid in any loot they can grab. The cities have the Slum Lords, usually pretty ruthless owners of entire chunks of the city who will squeeze it for as much coin as they can and they in turn pay up to the nobility. And sitting at the very top are those in the nobility and royalty who use their power to get what they want. Though most of those have currently fallen into disgrace or death and undeath, leaving the Slum Lords and Robber Barons holding the reins.

The latest and most active bit of organized crime has been the chocolate and sugar smuggling from the southern continent to the Fea lands after the trade bans put on during the Lich Wars, leaving those who had that luxury to go without. So it was formed and ran by the Sea Queen and kept trade on luxury goods to the north for a princely sum. And when the ban finally fell out they were prepared to open full trade within months due to the smuggling lines.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 23: Can you tell me a little something about your world's organized crime?

Theres the cultists of Inespell, and there might also be an association of mages who practice Forbidden Magic, so that might count.

The fact that there's only one safe passage through the mountains so far means that smuggling things across the mountains isn't really possible, especially since a large number of the things one might try to smuggle across attract the more deadly creatures in the mountains.

Crime is pretty low in the Duongel's city, so there wouldn't be much in the way of organised crime there, and in the major human cities, it's about what would be expected of a city which is pretty much all human and sealed away from the majority of substances that would be considered illegal.

The human city just east of the pass through the mountains is aware that it is the most likely settlement for crime, so it is trying out a guild system not at all unlike the one that Terry Pratchett set up for Ankh-Morpork.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Question 22: How many people roam your world, and who do you count as 'people' ?

Most beings in the OmniCosmos tend to stay in the universe they are born in, but there's a handful of people who explore or go into other universes to fulfill certain tasks.

Question 23: Can you tell me a little something about your world's organized crime?

Um...there isn't any crime, organized or otherwise...

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Crystal, I think question 22 is population, not travellers

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Oh, well, in that case, I haven't given it much thought. The entire population of the OmniCosmos is probably in the billions. It's not a small place, that's for sure.

 

[Ban]

Question 24: I look above, what do I see?
(What colour is the sky, what do the clouds look like, how many moons, can I see the stars?)

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 24: I look above, what do I see?
(What colour is the sky, what do the clouds look like, how many moons, can I see the stars?)

The sky is the same colour as on earth, and at night, the stars are generally visible.

I'd say clouds probably look like clouds, though there's one permanently positioned above the Stalagmite of the Sky that's pretty odd shaped(as one would expect from something holding a building on it). Sometimes clouds act a bit strange, and usually it's because a deity or weather mage is doing something.

With moons, I'm not actually settled on that yet. There is definitely at least one, about the same size as Earth's, but as I'm not settled on how I want to make my world alternate between being hot and being cold(not counting seasons), I'm not sure about other moons yet. Or if there's two suns.

Absolutely everything above can be ignored while at Inespell's Rage, as nothing looks right or normal there, and you can't even give a definition for what is normal there because it changes so often.

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 24: I look above, what do I see?
(What colour is the sky, what do the clouds look like, how many moons, can I see the stars?)

The sky is generally blue, except when it's not. The clouds come in typical and atypical varieties, like not really clouds, floating lands and such. The moons are many and varied and I've got no real hold of how many there are in the sky at any one point, and they can't decide either. Sometimes they fight about it. It has one, mostly typical yellow sun. And you can see stars. And flying ships. And dragons and any other number of flying things. Possibly including squid if someone (probably drow) created flying squid.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Question 24: I look above, what do I see?
(What colour is the sky, what do the clouds look like, how many moons, can I see the stars?)

Once again, it depends on where you are. Since a lot of my current series takes place in the universe of Wyrd, I'll focus on that. The sky can be any colour at any given time, and sometimes you can see what might be some of the other universes in the distance.

 

[WooHooMan]

Question 24: I look above, what do I see?
(What colour is the sky, what do the clouds look like, how many moons, can I see the stars?)

If you step outside and look up, there's no guarantee you'll see the sky.

That being said, there's a dome of holy water covering the planet's surface. This can cause all kind of visuals depending on what is under and what is outside this layer of water. There is no real sun, moon or stars. However, there's a "black sun" which is small and not at all bright (though it's pretty loud). There's also pieces of the sun floating around the sky. I can't call them suns or stars as the exist in the atmosphere and are constantly moving.
If you go out into the sea, the image of a landmass appears in the sky as if there is an upside-down floating continent. This is just an optical illusion though.

The "sky's" color tends to be blue near the coast and more orange/red/yellow inland though is pitch black towards the center of the one super continent in the setting. This is because there's a hole in the sky there.

The biggest object in the sky is the smoldering corpse of a gigantic demon. The smoke coming from this corpse makes up a type of cloud. There are numerous small planetoids floating in the holy "sky-water." Many of these planetoids were man-made structures created and abandoned in ancient times. Some are near infinite-sized magical pocket dimensions that only resemble planetoids when appeared from the outside. One of these is actually the old sky that was compressed into a "ball" and replaced by the new "sky". There's probably a sun and moon in there.

 

[Vaporo]

Question 22
There are 4 races: Man, Smet, Grat, and Fel.

Man is, well, Man. Not really much more explanation needed there. Roughly a hundred million people in the world.

Smet are spirits that do not have a direct physical anchoring to the plane of reality. They exist halfway between Kumbasdo, the Land of the Gods, and the mortal plane and as such are very rarely even noticed by the other races. They were created by Gos, the god of thought, alongside the Fel when he gave up his mind to obtain the power necessary to expel the Generals to the Land of the Gods. The Smet are gatekeepers, charged with maintaining the boundary between the plane of reality and the Land of the Gods. Their population is a bit ambiguous, but generally numbering somewhere in the trillions

Grat are varied creatures created by the Generals to besiege this plane of reality. They are a combination of severely mutated mortal creatures and eldritch abominations from the Land of the Gods. When the Generals were expelled to the Land of the Gods, the Grat were left behind. With Gos gone, his brother Azizzi's power was waning. So, Azizzi allowed the Grat to remain in the world as an "official" race, provided that they did so peaceably. However, the Grat were created only to serve the Generals, and without their masters they lost all purpose in life. Most Grat are sterile, immortal, and barely need to eat. So, most of them found a nice hole or deep ocean trench to curl up in and hibernate until they find a new purpose, only awakening on the rare occasion that they need to eat. There are about a thousand "Higher Grat" scattered throughout the world, but up to tens of thousands of breeding "Lesser Grat" hidden in small, isolated populations.

Fel are "physical" spirits related to the Smet. They are shape shifters, but default to the form of a human and need practice to accurately imitate another creature. They were created by Gos alongside the Smet when he gave up his mind to obtain the power necessary to expel the Generals to the Land of the Gods. Their bodies are made from Gos's memories given physical form. The Fel were warriors. They destroyed the remainder of the Generals' forces and killed the Grat who refused Azizzi's offer of asylum. However, after the remaining forces were defeated the Fel lost purpose like the Grat. The Fel truly had no needs in the world. They don't eat, sleep, or reproduce naturally. As a result, they mostly just drift from place to place, doing whatever amuses them most in the moment. The only way they can reproduce is by bringing the remains of a Fel to the peak of mount Odo and allowing the latent power there to form a new Fel. They have a short lifespan, averaging about twenty years, and have no civilization. Their only real moral code is that they must return the remains of another Fel to Odo. In the past, their numbers hovered at around a hundred and fifty thousand. However, their exploitation by human wizards known as the Amul reduced that number to a few hundred (or fifty thousand, depending on whether you count the Fel that have been bound to magical stones), but it has since rebounded to about ten thousand.

 

[Ban]

Question 25: What are the boundaries of what is magically possible?

 

[Orc Knight]

Question 25: What are the boundaries of what is magically possible?

Given this is magic and Eld, there's not many boundaries' about for shackling it. There is no theoretical limit on it (and the humans are about the only ones interested in finding actual limits) and quite a bit is within the realm of possibility. It's one of those things that means it's possible for both the forests to get up and walk away and also means the dead can do the same with some prodding. The only boundary's set are more societal ones and laws. And obviously, those get broken fairly regularly.

An Edit: Though with the undead, comes the shackling of the magic and the sheer raw power of the world. As they are basically parasites that feed off of magic just to maintain themselves and the Liches even more so, it takes away the world's magic and doesn't feed back into it. That in turn breaks the cycle of it and stops the multiplication factors involved in being around truly powerful beings in the world.

 

[ScaryMJDiamcreep]

Question 25: What are the boundaries of what is magically possible?

Depends on a variety of things.

If you've been inflicted with vampirism or lycanthropy, then you can't use any kind of magic more advanced than universal spells, which are the weakest spells of their type, even if you could before. Divine spells are like the ultimate cure for vampirism and lycanthropy, as in my world, both are a set of spells that kick out signature magic from the mana pool(yes, I do visualise it as an actual pool, however metaphysical it might be), and divine spells don't like either of them, and will go over from their special pool and kill the vampire/lycanthrope spells.

If the magic you want as your signature magic is some kind of kinesis power(pyrokinesis, photokinesis, aquakinesis, etc), then you've got two options: go for the creation type, and be able to create something from thin air(using the examples from before, you'd get fire, light, or water respectively), or go for the manipulation type, and be limited to controlling that what is already around you. Each type is better in certain ways, and you can only ever use one type, with the only exeptions being: you get turned into a vampire/lycanthrope and cured, then decide to use the other type instead of recovering your old magic, or a deity blessed you with the ability to use both. Although in theory, it might be possible for someone to be born with multiple mana pools(not counting the divine pool), and someone like that would be able to have two signature magics, even having both a creation-type and a manipulation-type magic of the same thing.

No-one is quite sure what the upper limit for the strength of spells are, but everyone accepts that the limit is much higher for divine spells, and I don't think even the strongest of mages is beyond the kind of strength that a high level mage in an RPG would be, though it's a lot harder to get to that kind of strength due to how limiting only being able to use one type of magic beyond really weak spells is.

I think this might be the last one I respond to until thursday at the earliest, due to me having some mock exams over the next few days.